I forgot to mention in my blog about day 8 in Taiwan that we discovered a Harrods store in one of the many department stores in Taipei. As you’ll see from the pictures though, it doesn’t really represent the grandeur of Harrods of Knightsbrigde in London.
Archive for
August, 2008
...
August 27, 2008 19:54
19:49
So, this is the day I learn about Taiwanese hair cuts. We headed off to to an Update salon (Update is a chain of hair salons in Taiwan), and in good fashion arrived just a little late. Baby talked a little with the people at the salon, and they had no problems finding me a designer who could work on me, even though we didn’t make an appointment for me. After a couple of minutes wait, we were taken to a couple of chairs in the salon, and luckily we got to sit next to each other. My designer was the first to arrive, and she (I think it was a she, although I must admit I’m not quite sure) turns out to not speak any english at all!
I need to point this out: I’m not the kinda guy that would normally visit a hair designer! For some reason though, this was emphasized to the extreme, and this was nothing like a hair dressing experience in Norway.
Luckily I had my darling there to help me with the language thing, although she kinda found it hard to explain what I wanted done (hell, even I didn’t know what I wanted). After a little back and forth, pointing in magazines and stuff like that to reach a kind of agreement, my designer sent me along with her assistant, so that I might have my hair washed and my scalp massaged. Except for the chairs (the kind that would rise and tilt so that I might lie on in like a bench or something) being ridiculously short (leaving my calves hanging off the end so I felt almost like falling off), I almost fell asleep during the massage. Turns out the assistant did speak a little english though, and she really wanted to practice on me, so she was complimenting me on the nice drawings I had on my arm and stuff. Yes, she was talking about my tattoo 
So my hair cut began, and it felt kinda nice sitting in a chair next to my baby, with some girl running around getting me coffee and stuff making sure I was comfortable. Almost the way a proper rock star would be treated I guess. In the end, I think the designer was happy with the result, I thought it way too short at first (got used to it now though, so I guess it looks kinda good) and the designer was so scared I wasn’t satisfied. I commented on her tattoo (a really small chinese dragon on her left upper arm, almost like a tribal) which I liked – and so I think she calmed down a little, as I was friendly like this.
My baby had a hair cut that involved the cutting of hair to a very small degree, and the introduction of mousse in her hair to a very large degree. As it turns out, this isn’t usual, at least not amongst her peers, and became the topic of more than one conversation between her and her friends – funny, the chinese word for mousse is – mousse.
After finishing our 2,5 hour hair designing adventure, we headed for a really late brunch at a japanese place. Food was, as usual, great.
In the afternoon we decided to head for the Xi Lin night market, which is world famous. We went around for a couple of hours, looking at this and that, trying all sorts of snacks and foods. Although a shoppers haven, most of the stuff there were for girls I think – and there was so much people that it was almost impossible to stop and really look at stuff. A funny and interesting thing happened a couple of times, suddenly all the sales stands started moving about, in one direction, the people stopped selling and just headed out of there. A few seconds later police would come through the area. I’m guessing the stands in the streets that make out much of the life of the market (and also makes it REALLY cramped to walk through) aren’t legal. Less than 5 minutes later however, they were all back, and business was back to normal – until the cops reappeared an hour later. Like a game of act and mouse.
August 26, 2008 00:14
Some various pictures of pot stickers, Taiwanese pineapple cake, Tieh Kuan Yin (tea, really good one) and liquorice.
August 23, 2008 10:08
These are some pictures from our trip to Tamshui on the 7th day, were we went to the fisherman’s wharf, took a boat ride back and shopped loads of chinese snacks and stuff. Later we had dinner at the Red Castle… simply amazing 
August 19, 2008 17:13
So, now I’m sitting at the Hong Kong airport, waiting for my flight to get ready for boarding. They just pulled up the airplane so I’m guessing they’ll start boarding in like half an hour or something, they’re loading he catering now.
Leaving Taiwan is the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time. I was seriously considering not to, of course my common sense didn’t let me though – and I guess I should be thankful about that, I mean, being an alien in a country where you don’t speak the language, and on top of all without no job (and thus no money), no place to live etc – well I guess that’s planning for disaster. Anyway, Baby’s going to Germany in a month, and I couldn’t stay in Taiwan without her, could I? So, the countdown has begun!
I just had her on the phone (the second time since coming to HK actually) and we just agreed to chat a little online while waiting for my flight So – this is me, signing out – at least until Frankfurt.
August 12, 2008 15:48
Some pictures from my sixth day in Taiwan; today I’ve been wandering around Taipei on my own, just enjoying the city. I’ve managed to get some nice food for myself, coffee (not a big success, even though I specifically asked for hot coffee I got ice cubes in it), I’ve gone shopping for some clothes and other stuff with great success, not even knowing the language. Now, I’m off to the shower, and then I’ll go out for some Ritz crackers.
05:05
Naah, no reason in particular for the title, except this is about the fifth day on Formosa and I kinda thought it sounded a bit cool.
A rainy day, so we decided to stay indoors for quite a while, listening to the rain outside. As you might have seen already in the pictures, chances are the window in the bedroom didn’t give away the sound of rain, so now you might have an impression on how thick the walls are. I guess that’s the difference between the NT $2000-ish room I’ve got and the NT $6000-ish rooms at the Ambassador, which is just around the corner. Oh, and windows of course.
Sometime in the afternoon, like maybe around 5pm, we headed out for some chow. Rain had stopped, and it was really hot outside. We stopped at some small restaurant in the street, which according to my girlfriend is some kind of chinese junk food kind of place. In essence, the way the food was prepared was very much the same as the hot pot thing, except we didn’t get our own pot – so we pointed out what we wanted, the lady running the place prepared it, and we ate. Food was delicious (what gives, junk food is amazing all over the world for some reason) and we talked about something that was on the news about a woman that’s been kicked out of China and wouldn’t be allowed to cheer the Taiwanese team during the olympics because she brought the Taiwanese flag in her luggage.
Dinner was followed by coffee and iced tea at the parlor next door. The coffee was probably the hottest coffee I’ve ever been served, it took like 15 minutes to cool off to the level of being drinkable. The lady at the store was really curious if I’d enjoyed my Americano as we left. Taiwanese people really are friendly, I can’t say I see this happening back home.
After this we split ways as she headed home for the night, and I walked around for a couple of hours, till about 10pm I guess. Found some interesting places that I might be going back to during daylight, and made friends with a really scabby dog which followed me around a couple of blocks. The dog looked like a Formosan Mountain Dog, which is an own race from Taiwan.
When I was walking around, I discovered I’ve spent all my money on my phone, so I need to find somewhere to get like a refill card for it. I’m guessing 7-11 or Familymart is a place to start looking for such. I discovered what I believe to be some kind of night club just a minutes walk from the hotel, in the direction we just never go – except when my girlfriend was (not) taking us back to the MRT on the first day. Also, I thought about going about adding some pages to my blog, with a more de facto style, concerning Taiwan. Maybe even to add some pages in Norwegian on the subject of Taiwan, because my experience from trying to figure out stuff about Taiwan before going here, is that the sources of information vary greatly in quality. It would be kind of cool to have like some travelers advice or something here, so that if someone other than me wants to go here (which they should, the place is amazing) they’ll have some sort of information that will be at least near correct. Oh well, we’ll see.
Oh, and I decided to learn one chinese word or phrase per day for the next year. So I learned the word Shì, which has several different meanings, and is most commonly used as -day in words like saturday, sunday or the day of a month (like 1st of august).
August 11, 2008 20:11
Because of unforeseen events, I spent rather a lot of the day on my own as she had to see to her family. I went to the Chiang Kai-shek memorial hall, a massive building. If you should ever visit Taipei, then this is definitely one of the places you would wanna visit, simply for the sheer size of the place. Of course, the National Theatre was being redone as I was there, so a the totality of the place was a little disturbed by machines and stuff. Nevertheless, an amazing sight.
As I closed up on the chinese gates that is the main entrance to the memorial area (I think), some girls noticed me taking pictures of the gates and decided I should take their picture for them as well. They didn’t know much english I guess, they were all going like “Please, please” – and when I answered “sure,” they all giggled and repeated what I’d just said. One of them smiled as they were getting ready to pose for the camera and said “Cute boy!” much to the laughter of her peers, and as I returned the camera to them after a job well done (I took two pictures, haha), most of them went like “Thank you, thank you!” while this one kept going “Cute boy! Cute boy!”
After the trip to the CK Memorial, I went back to Taipei Central Station to locate a train to Taoyuan, the hometown of my girl. I managed to get from the MRT and to the transfer area, spent some good 20 minutes walking around a really crowded area, trying to understand where to go for the trains and how to get on the right one. Strangely, some of the informative plaques had headlines in English, like “Northbound – timetable”, and everything in it was still in chinese!
So, after 20 minutes of being bumped into every other second by people, still not knowing the first thing about where to go, I decided to go back the way I came from and find my way out, have a cup of coffee (drinking in the MRT stations will get you a NT $1500 fine) and then go at it again. I managed to get out in the end, after having walked for ages in some supermarket filled corridor (where every shop was closed, it being sunday and all). I started walking around town, and soon realized I had no idea where I came from and how to get back. So, I went onwards of course, no need going back when you don’t know where back is, and walked for maybe an hour, maybe more, just looking at stuff. It was really nice actually, although the heat and humidity was unbelievable. And suddenly, I stood in front of my hotel – just like that, out of nowhere!
Later that afternoon, I went to meet her at the Taipei Central Station. We went back to the hotel, picked up some coffee from Dante’s and a couple of pizza’s from Pizza Hut on the way, and just chilled at the hotel. I walked her to the MRT as she left for home, and on the way back took a couple of cool pictures, that I decided to nickname “Taipei by night“.