The Young Curmudgeon

Yet More Photos From Taiwan

(Click to Enlarge) I remember an episode of Futurama (one of the greatest TV series of all time) in which Fry and Bender eat a restaurant in which all the food is whizzing by them on conveyor belts and they just take what they want as it comes around. Little did I know that these sorts of restaurants - which exist only as sci-fi spoofs here - actually do exist in Taiwan. The picture is of the food conveyor belt at a "hot pot" restaurant, a sort of automat on crack, where you pay a flat rate to take as much food as you want off the conveyor belt and then cook it yourself it in a pot full of hot broth.

(Click to Enlarge) Here's the contraption you cook your food in.

(Click to Enlarge) And you can control how hot you want your pot to be.

(Click to Enlarge) Just as in the automats before them, there are people toiling hard behind the scenes to make it all happen. I looked behind there and there were only two people doing everything. Yet, they somehow kept the conveyor belt constantly stocked with food.

Hey Everybody! I Found Another Big Box of Slides from my Vacation!

Aren't you excited!? Make yourself comfortable. I'm popping some popcorn. The doors are locked from the inside.

(Click to Enlarge) This is "Sun Moon Lake", the largest body of fresh water in Taiwan and probably its most popular tourist attraction. The natural beauty there is absolutely stunning, and the omnipresence of this slight fog gives it all an ethereal, heavenly quality, simply awe-inspiring.

(Click to Enlarge) This is (I think) Wenwu Temple at Sun Moon Lake. Impressive, no?

 
(Click to Enlarge) In the temple was this weird vending machine. I could never figure out what was in there? It looks temple play sets or monk action figures or something. Strange.

(Click to enlarge) This is a random no-parking sign in Gaoxiong/Kaoshiong/whatever. I post it here to illustrate the proposition that in Asia everything must be cute.

Taipei 101

(Click to enlarge) This photo makes me cry. It's Kim's Grandma looking out from the observation deck at Taipei 101, currently the world's tallest building, and it probably will be for a while given the way things are going with the Freedom Tower. Sure there's not much of a skyline to look at, but still it's a really nice observation tower with a very sleek design and when we were there there happened to be a jazz orchestra playing standards for some event, which really heightened the experience. Grandma was really happy about the fact that they offered the audio tour in her native language of Taiwanese as well as in Chinese, Japanese, and English. When she was growing up Taiwan was a mostly rural, agrarian backwater under Japanese occupation. Now, here she is in the downtown of a Taipei that has literally more than ten times the population it did when she was a girl, looking down from the world's tallest building at a modern, democratic, free Taiwan. She looks quite pleased.

(Click to enlarge) Here we are in front of a photo that shows you what the building looks like from the outside. It's strange design is meant to somehow evoke bamboo shoots tied with ribbons. I don't see it either. The other white guy is Kim's Cousin's boyfriend who is German. He's moved to the Taiwan and is learning Chinese. He works at the building part-time giving tours to groups of Germans.

(Click to enlarge) Here I am with Kim's cousin in the shopping mall part of the tower inside Barista coffee, a charming little coffee shop with an eye-catching logo that reminds me of something or other, but I just can't place it. Actually, the funny thing is that while the English characters say "Barista Coffee" the Chinese name is simply "Seattle Coffee".

Damshui Fisherman's Wharf

(Click to enlarge) This lovely shot (which is as close to the promised Blade Runner-esque chaos as I've come to offering) was taken by Kim at the Damshui Fisherman's Wharf area, a sort of a non-seedy Coney Island [So not like Coney Island at all then - ed.] near Taipei. Though touristy, it's really a pretty good time, with shops selling every imaginable thing, a lot of great street food, a diverse crowd of Taiwanese and foreigners, and arcades!

(Click to enlarge) This is me playing a video game that by all rights should become the next Dance Dance Revolution and sweep the world. Instead of hitting an arrow on the floor with your foot at the proper time as you do in DDR you hit one of those traditional Japanese drums. You're actually drumming along to some sort of traditional Japanese song and it's really fun. The first time I played I only got 40% rhythm, but then I let the rhythm move me man and I got 72%. A whole crowd was gathered around to watch this foreigner play. I would love to see this game in American arcades but it would never work because they couldn't trust people with these heavy drumsticks. Kids would either steal them or hit each other with them. Too bad.

(Click to enlarge) I took this picture too slowly to get what I was going for. A second or two before I snapped this guy was making Indian roti or naan bread by throwing it into the air like a pizza crust. I thought it was cool that there was Indian food right on the Fisherman's Wharf. In South Korea, where I've lived for a year, they have Indian food, but that just means a handful of high-end restaurants in Seoul and Pusan that cater almost exclusively to foreigners. I was pretty impressed that Taiwan, besides these types of Indian restaurants, also has little places tucked into corners of everyday street scenes and catering to Taiwanese people as well as foreigners.

(Click to enlarge) In Taiwan, the trucker hat menace continues apace. Apparently, they're huge fans of Suicidal Tendencies over there. Who knew?

McDonald's is not Blandly Universalist! (UPDATED)

(Click to Enlarge) Some people use McDonald's as a shorthand to mean roughly "Bland globalized/homogenized crap which is killing off local cuisines and cultures", but what I find fascinating is how Mickey D's actually tries to adapt to local cultures by offering slightly different menus all over the world, or at least the menu has been different in every foreign country I've been to. I didn't actually eat at McDonald's while I was in Taiwan - after all I was only there for two weeks - but when I dropped in to use the restroom I snapped this picture of the value menu. Sure, 1 through 5 all have equivalents on the American McDonald's menu, but what manner of strangeness is number 6!? Rice cracker buns around lord knows what!? And than there's number 7 with a completely different looking type of rice cracker bun. And number 8 is fried chicken, which we think of as American but which is incredibly popular throughout Asia and which McDonald's doesn't offer in the US. It's hard to see but below the value meals is a poster for some kind of special on corn soup. Fried chicken and corn soup is in fact the most popular combo at a Taiwanese McDonald's. I love taking pictures of things like this, things which are both foreign and familiar at the same time. In case you're wondering, the price in NT Dollars translate to roughly the cost of McDonald's food in the US, though a little less expensive, like most things in Taiwan.

UPDATE: Karol points out something I should have noticed, there's no Royale with cheese. They didn't just translate it as something different because of the metric system. This staple just isn't there.

The Inaptly Named "Art Street"

(Click to Enlarge) This is taken in Taiwan's third largest city, Taizhong (Taichung), on "Art Street". Art Street is breathlessly hyped up in all the guidebooks and websites as this hip, eclectic little neighborhood of cool shops, restaurants and galleries that's a viable destination in which to kill a whole afternoon or so. It turned out to be a short couple blocks or so, mostly filled with stores selling the same kind of crappy knickknacks you could find at a million other places in Taiwan, and little, if any, art in sight. There were a couple of nice cafés and it was a  pleasant enough little area (as you can see), but I really don't see how you could while away more than a couple of hours unless you were really desperate. Don't believe the Lonely Planet (and everyone else) hype!

 

Great Thai Food in Xin Beitou (Shin Beitou)

(Click to Enlarge) Taken inside aThai, the excellent Thai restaurant that's part of The Aegius Club, a hot springs bath/day spa/health club in Xin Beitou, a sort of Northern suburb of Taipei known for its hot springs and general beauty. Thai food is really popular in Taiwan and, based on this experience at least, the Thai food there seems to be far better than most of what's offered in North American Thai restaurants. The food we had was spicy, more complex in flavor, and involved none of the gloppy, greasy, sweet American-Thai standards like Pad Thai noodles.

The first of the dizzying array of family-style courses to go around the table were a Papaya Salad - somewhat similar to the version typically found in American Thai restaurants but with a more complex, more bitter flavor - and a lovely green salad. Next was a huge whole fish (the whole animal is almost always served in almost any Asian country) served in a lemony/lemongrassy broth that put you in the mind more of Vietnamese cuisine than Thai. Still, delicious. Next were some juicy, succulent skewers of chicken and pork with a variety of spicy sauces to dip them in, and none of them that overly-sweet crap (What do they call it, peanut sauce?) that they give you in the US. Then it was time for the main course of two different coconut-milk-based curries served with pork and beef, each perfectly creamy and spicy. After that there was something I'd never had before in any type of restaurant, squid wrapped around  meatballs. The combination of the rubbery, unyielding texture of the squid with the softer meatball inside - and the different tastes - made for a hearty, slightly spicy treat.

The dessert was one of those things that I love about being in virtually any Asian country -or in an Asian neighborhood in the States - one of those shaved ice/condensed milk/fresh fruit concoctions, a perfect refreshing counterpoint to the heat and humidity outside and to the somewhat heavy meal.

(Click to enlarge) This is a picture from outside of the restaurant/spa/health club/whatever so you can see how cool it looks. The people in the picture - whom I caught unawares - are our friends' Uncle and Aunt, the coolest funnest people I've ever met. It was their idea to go to this restaurant.

I got a card from the restaurant. The English part of the card (I can understand and speak a fair amount of Chinese but I'm close to illiterate) says:

No. 6, Lane 20, Chung-Ho Street, Pa-Tao, 112, Taipei, Taiwan

All I know is that it's very near the Xin Beitou station on the MRT. If you get out there and walk around you see a 10 story or so building, taller than the ones surrounding it, which says "Aegius". On the ground floor of that building is where you want to go. (Yes, I think what they're going for is "aegis").

Pics of Parked Scooters in Gaoxiong/Kaoshiung

(Click to enlarge) The dominant means of transportation in Taiwan is not car, not bicycle, not subway, but scooter. You know how a few years back some nerd came up with the Segway because he thought it would solve the world's problems by giving everyone their own compact personal transportation?

Little did the nerd know that the perfect solution already existed.
Scooters are already lightweight, compact, mobile and easy to operate. The only problems are: 1) Everyone on scooters still leads to a lot of congestion on the road, and 2) You need to find some place to park them. Both problems would exist with everyone on Segways as well, and scooters are marginally less nerdy. In the case of Vespas, of course, they're actually cool, but I saw very few of those in Taiwan.

The place to park scooters is most often on the sidewalk in front of the business you're going to, so this often makes it unpleasant to simply walk. Taipei is the only city with a subway system - called by the prosaic name of the "MRT" - and this seems to have cut down to some extent on the scooter congestion problem, because it's much easier to drive and walk there than it is in Gaoxiong, the second biggest city.

The Lonely Planet guide to Taiwan has a picture of, literally, an entire family of five people on a scooter. I thought that this was a lucky shot of something strange when I saw it, but such sights are actually commonplace. You very, very often see little kids riding scooters, sometimes standing up in front of their mom or dad and not wearing a helmet while the parent wears one. Another thing is little dogs in the baskets on the front of the scooter. This is not such a big deal, but it's strange when you see a small dog or sometimes a big dog riding on the scooter itself. The weirdest thing I saw was in Taipei; where on a busy road a guy had a poor tiny little dog on a leash next to the scooter, using every ounce of its energy trying to keep up.

Kending

We unexpectedly got to stay at this great resort in Kending (Kenting), this area of beaches and national parks in the South of Taiwan which is one of the country's most popular tourist attractions. It was a mixture of areas of stunning natural beauty with more typical beach areas with tourist-oriented areas of bars and Thai restaurants that morbidly put me in the mind of the kind of areas that were hit by the tsunami.

(Click to enlarge) This was the view from our hotel room, with the Taiwan Straits in the background.

(Click to enlarge) Taiwan has a number of indigenous tribes. According to the Lonely Planet book, no one paid much attention to these indigenous peoples until recently when there became a more concerted effort to forge a unique Taiwanese identity, for both tourism and political purposes. One result of this policy is that every touristy area has a tribal/indigenous theme, sometimes to an absurdly kitschy extent. These pictures are all from the lobby of our hotel.

 

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One thing that was universal about this hotel, and not uniquely Taiwanese, was the crowd's reaction to the all-you-can-eat-buffet. I saw multiple plates going on simultaneously, immensely fat children, true American-style gorgification. It was again hard to hold back though, as the buffet was a glorious synthesis of all the best food options in Taiwan, with Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, and Western food all offered. It was possible, nay desirable, to have a meal involving sashimi, grilled octopus, roast beef, and shumai.

(Click to enlarge) This is a real Lost in Translation moment at the resort. These girls are singing "Midnight at the Oasis" or Sade or something equally cheesy to an audience of no one. Just outside of the frame are people trying to get their buffet on in piece.

(Click to enlarge) "Beware Snakes Maybe Around in the Bush" A sign at the hotel, outside.

(Click to enlarge) We took a bus tour to some of Kending's many breathtaking sites of natural beauty. This is an area of cliffs by the sea whose name escapes me. [It's called "Longpan", and it overlooks the Pacific.-ed.] The view was truly magnificent, as was my belly after days of all-you-can-eat buffet.

 

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More Taiwan - Hutoupi and the KTV Bunker

(Click to Enlarge) This is Hutoupi Scenic Area, a regional tourist attraction near Tainan, Taiwan in the South of the country. Our friends have an  uncle and aunt who live an idyllic life near this beautiful little park, renting out bicycles to ride around it. I even took a bike around; the first time I think I've been on one since I was twelve or so. It was a lot of fun, and I even remembered how to do it. It's like riding a bicycle. You never forget.

The bike ride around Hutoupi was how we started day 2, but the big event was that night, when we were all - including grandma - going to "karaoke". When I speak of "karaoke" of course I'm not talking about the embarrassing-yourself-in-front-of-a-crowded-bar version of recreational singing that we have here in the US. I speak of what the Koreans call "noreh bahng" and what the Taiwanese call "KTV"; a private room where you and your friends can watch videos, sing songs, smoke cigarettes, get drunk, and hit tambourines, all in privacy and relative luxury. I'd been to some nice private singing rooms before, in Korea, in Manhattan, and in the Korean suburbs of Washington DC, but none of this prepared me for the sheer opulence of "Party World". Party World is a huge chain of KTV places. Every outlet of Party World is 5 stories or so of pure KTV, open 24 hours a day, yet it's so popular you have to call ahead to reserve your private room no matter what time of day or night.

The entire place is magnificently, grandly appointed in wood and leather, with an atmosphere more like that of some old-fashioned private club than of a karaoke joint. And, each room has its own private bathroom, a luxury I've never seen anywhere else.

(Click to enlarge) This is a picture of the outside of our room. This does not look like any karaoke/noreh bahng/KTV/whatever you wanna call it joint I've ever seen. And, on top of everything, you get  access to a decent  buffet included in the price of your singing time.

(Click to enlarge) The entire music and video set-up was absolutely state-of-the-art. The place was staffed by an army of super-competent professionals all wearing tuxedos and Britney Spears headsets who seemed to anticipate your every need. They were always there with more drinks, the perfect tweak of the sound system, whatever. My only single complaint was that - because this wasn't a place where many foreigners tread - the selection of English-language songs was thin. All the songs listed were quite old, which suited me just fine, the better to weave my trademark tapestry of irony. The only problem was that the English songs were used so seldom that it took them forever to come up when you selected them. My wait for my signature song, "Against All Odds (Take a Look at me Now)" by Phil Collins lasted hours.

The funniest part of the whole experience I unfortunately couldn't convey through pictures. It was this weird policy/safety/earthquake video that you had to watch before you started singing. Suffice it to say, Party World is more prepared for any eventuality than most military forces. The Chinese was too complicated for me to understand, but I saw a lot of shots of people rappelling down the side of the building on elaborate pulley set-ups and massing in tight formation with the Bobby Brown headset people. Truly bizarre.

(Click to enlarge) This is a shot to give the idea of how opulent our room itself was. Check out all the wood and leather, and the aftermath of the buffet, and the multiple phone lines, and the temperature controls.

(Click to Enlarge) And this shows how much every enjoyed their KTV experience. Yes, Grandma is a little tuckered out here after two days straight of partying. (We stayed at Party World pretty late). That's probably why she seems to be absent-mindedly throwing up some kind of gang sign.