Shopping and eating in another country! (Part One)

So the big adventure of the month is that Cindy and I Chinese-d it up in Taiwan (specifically Taipei) from Saturday ‘til Tuesday. It was goooooooooooood times, yo! We didn’t even know what the hell we would do there until a few days before we left, but it was way better than I expected it to be (not that I expected it to be crappy or anything) and I highly recommend going there! Good shopping and eating, good people, good times, good trip, yo!

Shinders and I made our way to Narita on Saturday and we left that afternoon. We went knowing we would be losers and see a movie while we were in Taiwan, but had to choose between The Devil Wears Prada (I fucking love that movie!) and The Departed. Well, Cathay Pacific made that choice easy for us, as we got to watch Prada on the plane! Woot! Anyway, the flight went way fast thanks to the movie. So we got to Taiwan and found the airport to be ghettoooooooooooo! Not a good first impression at all! We also got ripped off on the yen exchange, which was not cool. So we booked the (cheap-ass) trip through a (cheap-ass) tour, which means they would pick us up from the airport and take us to our hotel. We did the same in Korea, but this one was totally different! We had this fucking crazy-ass Taiwanese lady who was like the most Chinese lady ever! That is not a good thing when it means she has to deal with Japanese tourists (and us) and try to be all formal and Japanese-like! She was formal for like three seconds and then started using informal speech, sat down and didn’t look at us while giving the tour on the bus (a big no-no) and was just fucking crazy and NOT Japanese! It was amusing but weird! Like, you cant learn a language and not learn the culture, yo!

Anyway, after getting taken to like 300 hotels before ours (not amused!), Cindy and I finally got to the Santos Hotel, which was really damn nice!!! I was impressed. Plus it was right next to two conbinis, how could you complain?! Of course, in Taiwan EVERYWHERE is next to two conbinis, it is CRAZY! There are like 300 times more conbinis than in Japan, which I didn’t think was possible.

That night we went to the Shi Lin night market, which is the biggest night market in Taipei. It is BIG and was crazy crowded! We soon discovered that Taiwanese people NEVER sleep and NEVER stop eating! Seriously, if Cindy and I were amazed at their eating ability, something is SERIOUSLY wrong with them! We honestly got full just watching them eat. Of course, that didn’t stop us from eating, ourselves! We were sadly the most wasteful people ever in Taiwan, as we just wanted to try bites of everything, so we would try things and throw away stuff we didn’t need. Whoops! So yeah, we devoured all kinds of food that night while we wandered around the crazy-crowded market. For some reason we went to countless markets, even though we soon discovered we hate shopping at markets. The thing one does in the (pointless) search for bootleg DVDs! I did get a couple of cheap legal DVDs, though, which is good enough for me!

That night we went to bed hella late (2 AM, what am I, a college student?! Hehe) and slept a bit before discovering the greatest restaurant in the world the next morning! What is this mysterious amazing restaurant? You will have to wait to find out, muahahaha.