For Valentine's Day, we ladies decided to go out for dinner and dancing. We went to a wonderful restaurant named Sufoods, which serves all vegetarian food (Emily is a vegan, so we wanted to try and find something she could eat too, rather than just the Cliff bars she's been eating this whole time).
The restaurant had a very high class atmosphere about it, but a 6 course meal was only NT$400 (US$13.60)! Each course looked like a work of art (and was delicious). Unfortunately, they put cheese on Emily's order accidentally, so they had to bring her another one, but they waaaaay overcompensated with kindness! They brought the whole table free drinks (non-alcoholic fresh juice), Emily got her plate on the house, they gave us a free dessert that had "Happy Valentine's Day" written on it--the Chinese don't celebrate Valentine's, mind you--and some adorable fruit-shaped note pads and pens; they were so apologetic! Oh, AND I got to eat Emily's cheese-covered dinner as well as mine. :D
Us at Sufoods, photo courtesy of Shine (front row, right)
After dinner, Emily and Nellie went home, but Sweta, Christine, Shine, and I went to a bar called The Brass Monkey. It was full of foreigners (I was told by a nice Irish man that the Taiwanese don't have quite as prevalent of a drinking culture/bar scene as other countries do; most bars are for foreigners, and specifically, 'sleezy foreign men trying to pick up 18 year old Taiwanese girls, and unfortunately, they're usually successful'). While that may have been the underlying motivation of the establishment, I never felt creeped out--in fact, I had a ton of fun! The DJ played some well-remixed top 40s, and threw some throw-backs to my high school (and even my siblings' high school) days. To my convenience, everyone spoke English, and to my flattery, men and women both told me everything from "you're so beautiful" to "you look just like Uma Thurman" to playing a game of Guess Kristen's Nationality. I danced with my very own UN of dance partners, and everyone was very respectful of each other--men ASKED me to dance first, no one groped me as a form of greeting (nor groped at all, thank god), people weren't lewd or obscene, and no one was so sloppy drunk that they were sloshing drinks on others (and if they did spill, they were extremely apologetic to everyone). Man, if only the REAL UN were like this, maybe there'd be less war.
Sweta and Shine were smoking by the door, and Christine and I just got too hot to keep dancing, so we joined them out on the sidewalk (you can just stand on the street with your drink; you don't have to remain roped off like cattle--nice job Taiwan! I met a very kind Asian American man from Oregon named Daniel who has been teaching English to 6 year olds in the suburbs of Taipei for the last 3 years, and his ridiculous (tall) white friend Mike, who was heavily hitting on Christine (who wanted no part of it).
We also met a group of Irish men who were determined to start a fight about something with anyone. They were trying to get Sweta to fight about whether American football or rugby was better ("they're completely different sports, they're both good, I'm not gonna argue with you about this") and me about David Beckham's value as a player ("I just think he's attractive, and has one really entertaining move--I don't actually follow the game"), but it was all in good fun. No one was rude, or aggressive or anything, just a bunch of guys on vacation being just that to impress some girls (as the one shy guy of the group told me over a beer as we watched his friends out-shout each other about which city was best, Mead, Dublin, or Cork).
I met an Australian-Taiwanese man named Andy, who's accent Christine couldn't stop laughing at (when he spoke English, too, his accent was a mixture of Australian and Taiwanese, which was an interesting combination). He was in the Taiwanese army (all young men must enlist for 1 year, but I don't think the army has ever been deployed). He was not happy that he had to cut his hair off, and that all of his fellow soldiers made fun of him for being from Australia. He was very nice, and was trying to teach me Chinese (though Christine shouted, "you're teaching her wrong, your accent is so bad!"
When I noticed the club closing down around us, it was 4 AM! 1) I don't know the last time I was out at 4 AM, and 2) I don't know the last time I've ever had so much fun I didn't notice 6 hours fly by! Since Sweta and I don't know how to get home on our own, we were kind of at the mercy of Shine and Christine, and when asked by Dan and Mike to get breakfast, we joined them. However, just before we hopped in the cab, some strange, tiny Russian man joined us.
When we got to the breakfast place (Taiwan's answer to the 24 hour greasy hole-in-the-wall diner--this one actually was a hole in the wall...), we were joined by Daniel, Mike (who presented the table with a cold 6 pack--where he was hiding that, I will never know), their couple friend (who's names I didn't catch), Andy, one of the loud Irish guys Sweta was talking with, and the strange Russian man who informed us that he was a fiction author, and presented us with some of his books, and offered us girls a place to stay at his "villa down the street". We laughed, said no thank you, and he went on his way. We all ordered danbing (a traditional Taiwanese breakfast, like a crepe with an omelet and a slice of ham inside), and laughed over the events of the evening. I looked at Daniel and asked if something this bizarre and sitcom-like had ever happened to him before and he said "every time I go to that bar--welcome to Taiwan!"
After breakfast, Shine got a call from a friend who was at a 24 hour Karaoke bar, and she and Andy left to join him, and Sweta, Christine and I took a cab home. In the (later) morning, Emily greeted me at the foot of my bed with a cup of coffee, and we went on a solo adventure to find a vegan restaurant she'd found on the internet. Unfortunately, when we got there, it was closed, but we enjoyed finding our way around Taipei on our own (and the help of Apple maps).
Downtown Taipei by the MRT main station
This guy cracked me up! His arms wave back and forth--like a drinky-drinky bird! Maybe Buffalo Bituminous should have employed a couple of these guys! ;)
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