Taipei, Taiwan continued
So after taking two subways the brown line to the blue line we got off at the very popular station of Taipei main station. There are several lines you can connect to, people are running around, going to their train, it definitely has a hint of a new york subway station, but not quite.
The place was called “K-Mall,” I have no idea what it stands for, but it was pretty cool. We walked around the first floor, stopped at various booths, checked out the cool electronics America will probably never see, or at least not for a few years. We asked about prices, and Mrs. Chiang inquired about several items for herself.
We then moved to the bottom floor where I stopped at a place selling Mp4 players (video players), screen sizes varied from 1.5 – 2.5 inches, basically the same as the video ipod, some smaller. I strongly considered one particular one at one booth, but was very glad I held out and waited for the next booth. Literally we turned around to another booth and found this booth which sold “Klin,” electronics. I had no idea if this is a made up brand, if the dude makes them in the back of his truck but they were cool. They had varying models and items, but after Mrs. Chiang spoke to the saleman in Chinese, she told me that one particular one was on sale for 2990, and it included an extra battery, charger and a mini 2gb sd card. My intentions became serious and I began to look over the item, and through Mrs. Chiang ask several questions about the item. After about 20 minutes I decided to make the purchase. It cost about 90 bucks, but it was real cool. It has 2 gig internal memory and since the guy through in the 2 gig external card that made it a very nice 4 gig little video/mp3 etc player. It basically is the size of my palm, and has a 1.5-2 inch screen. Now could I have gotten it cheaper in Hong Kong with Raymond? Possibly, but since Taiwan uses 110 volt and the US style plug, that made the decision easier to make. I didn’t want to have a stupid converter for an mp4 player I bought in Hong Kong. The guy who I bought the player from also showed us that the batteries ran on lithium ion batteries, the same ones that are used in newish nokia phones, so he said getting new batteries were easy and not that expensive.
After making my first big purchase of the trip, I had a smile ear to ear, because I love cool new gadgets to mess around with and what better then to buy one in Asia where you can’t find them in America? It was awesome. We then continued walking through the rest of the basement floor and then I stopped at a demo station of Xbox 360 on some nice HD tv’s. I sat down and played some dude in NBA Live or whatever game it was for xbox 360. It was really cool, and since I am not an xbox kind of guy (hate the freaking controller and button configuration), I got mangled by him, but it was fun, and Mrs. Chiang seemed to find my bashing a little funny herself. After being down by a lot in the 4th quarter I made her tell the dude that I had never played before in chinese, he just chuckled briefly, and threw up another 3 pointer all in one motion.
From the K-mall it was time for more food, Mrs. Chiang was all about filling me up with chinese and local goodness, it was perfect. For the rest of the day we basically just walked around to many different little quarters of Taipei, hitting little markets that aren’t registered “tourist night markets,” which are really just crap, and over priced, even for the extremely affordable city of Taipei City, Taiwan.
At the end of the night we went to another place for food, and like the other times we ate food Mrs. Chiang insisted that each time we ate it was something different and something local, which was fine with me. She ordered us up some take out and we took a cab back to the apartment. It was clearly evident in both of our faces and bodily expressions that we were beat and even though it was like 9PM it was time to head back and chill out.
Dinner was excellent, and I the bed was nice. The apartment was a little warm, but I think it helped put me to sleep. I told Liz’s mom that I would try and sleep a little late, as I hadn’t really slept much in like four days.
Day 14 – Two week’s since I have left. Well 15, but 2 weeks since I landed on Hong Kong Island. I slept in pretty good and felt refreshed. I got up, got my things together and then Mrs. Chiang and I headed out. She was off to the library and I was off to the American Institute in Taiwan to try to get pages added again. I also had my laptop with me. The mp4 player’s software wasn’t working due to the fact that my dvd player was locked to only the american region of players, so I she called up and the dude said that he could get it going, I said no problem. Only bad thing was that I had to schlep my bag around all day. I generally just take my camera and that’s it. Oh well. I arrived at the institute at like 1030, went upstairs, and this time the lady on the other side of the glass was much friendlier. She explained to me the situation, that since I didn’t have an appointment, after I filled out the papers, they would have to honor all appointments before me, and then would do my passport. Basically I had to wait till everyone left, and right before lunch, they would do it. So I had to wait about 1.5 hours. Now since I did not have a phone with me, I couldn’t call Mrs. Chiang to tell her the situation, I felt bad, because she could have stayed at the library longer, instead of coming to the institute and waiting for me in the hot sun downstairs on the first floor. After like an hour plus I went downstairs and told her the situation, luckily she was there, and she said she would walk around and that I should meet up with her at the stores down the street, I said no problem and went back upstairs to wait for the passport.
Again after about 1.5 hours I got the pages added. It looks so shisty. They basically take one of the pages in the middle and paste in pages with a little amendment citing the date and time and place that the pages were added. They are lettered as opposed to numbered (which are what come with the original passport). Anyway, I was happy to get it done, and next on my list were passport photos, if I could find them cheap, quick and more than four. I think I needed about 10 for the 3 visas, but generally the rule I have read about is that you should have more than enough photos with you when getting visas, because if the immigration girl/guy wants to be a pain in the butt they can be and then you are really screwed.
So after I got my passport, I met up with Liz’s mom (grossman’s girlfriend). Grossman who’s first name I believe is Jason (kidding, but who uses first names anyway?) is an old friend, who I have known for what 20 years now? We went to elementary school, middle, high school, and went to the same town for college. His girlfriend’s name is Liz and her mom is the one who took me around for Taipei and really hooked it up for the past two days. Thanks!!!!! And Liz, I have a small gift for you as per our agreement. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait till the end of June for them though!
After meeting up, I told Mrs. Chiang that I was really hungry (I had a great bowl-movement before we left), and that I wanted to eat like whoa. She said no problem! This time she said we needed to have rice with food and not noodles because we had noodles the previous day. She took me to an extremely small vendor which sold or supposedly sold the first bento’s of taipei. Bento lunches, is basically lunch served in a small wooden box. People who have eaten in japanese restaurants know what I’m talking about, if not, I’ll have a picture of it when I get home for sure. It was real good. It was rice, a flavored boiled egg, a chicken bone, some veggies and a whole lot of rice. Now after 2 weeks plus of traveling through Asia without forks or knives, I have gotten pretty good with chopsticks. I even got a compliment from Mrs. Chiang which was nice considering before I left I was real shaky with holding and using them. But due to the fact that forks are a rare commodity and I wanted to try and fit in and absorb the culture as much as possible, I have tried my hardest to get good with them. Rice is probably the hardest, second to small nuts, or pieces of food left at the end of the meal. From time to time I go back to the caveman days of using my g-d given hands.
The meal was a little small, but good, and now it was off to find a drink. Now drinks in Taipei seem to be a huge thing. There are stalls and shops all over the place selling different kind of drinks. Shaved ice, fruit drinks, tea drinks, exotic drinks etc. This time though I told Mrs. Chiang that I didn’t want the heavy milk pearl/bubble tea, but was looking for a fruit and liquid based drink. After walking around for literally three minutes we came to a place that had a real long line (sign number one the food or drink is good, long line of locals, the more westerners, the worse and overpriced the food is!) This time I got passionfruit, which was delightful. It had a hint of a flowery taste, but was really good and hit the spot.
At this point Mrs. Chiang and I decided that it was time to actually see some of the touristy things that Taipei had to offer. So we hopped on the subway and were off to our stop…
Tags: Travel
Josh
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