The Aussie with the Dragon Tattoo

[The great firewall of China strikes again. I wasn't able to put this up until we crossed the border into Vietnam, but it was written over a week ago]

So I actually wrote most this post a few days ago. Having done it in the notes section of my iPhone, with just an accidental copy/cut the whole thing was deleted and unable to recover. Did I learn my lesson at all? Hell no. Im at it again in notes, since this is the easiest way to continually jot down my ideas. Plus I got nothing but time to kill in the Taipei Taoyuan airport. But I digress...

Taipei has been a place i'd always wanted to check out.  I was hoping it would be a perfect jumping off point for our Asian journey. After a quick stop at the JFK Shake Shack for a shackburger, a truly proper final American meal, Roland and I were off to Taipei.  When we landed and got thru customs after 18 hours, we came to the grim realization that we landed in an airport we hadn't planned on. This international airport was an hour outside the city, and didn't connect to the metro,  leaving us semi stranded on how to get into the city at 11pm at night {Mistake #1}. With no knowledge of the area we were tested right off the bat on our travel wear withal. After we Heismaned a few aggressive cabbies overcharging their fare, we managed to find a bus that made the hour long trip to the city center for only 5$.

We didn't make any reservations for a hostel {Mistake #2} and were declined at our first choice of hostel due to a lack of rooms. This left us stranded in a Taipei alleyway at 1230am. Off to a great start...

A quick cab to our second choice of hostel, and a good 15 more lost minutes in an alleyway, we found the small 7$ a night hostel around 1:30 am. We got our own private "room" with no AC and just a fan conveniently blowing on Roland's top bunk. There was just an awkwardly small common room and the only English speaking guest in the 6 room hostel was a mid 40's Aussie named Mike with a bright red dragon tattoo covering his entire back. The exact kind of character I was expecting to find in a 7$ a night hostel (dude looked EXACTLY like Christopher Lloyd's character in Dennis the Menace (http://visiondelcine.com.ar/imagenes/christopher-lloyd-74-anos-de-magia/ ))Talking with him was a hilariously wild ride, from his views on Asia to his getting kicked out of China. I'm expecting to find a lot more of these hostel dudes along the way. 

We speant the first couple days doing touristy things: Taipei 101 area that was a lot like Sanlitun in Beijing, Din Tai Fung for soup dumplings, Shang kai Shek Memorial, the national museum, even a trip to the movie theatre to see Kick Ass 2 (the bathroom at this theater was worth the price of admission. I have seen the future of public bathrooms, and my friends, a glorious future awaits). But We found ourselves having wayyy more downtime than we were thinking, and this was even with waking up at noon every day and frequent post ups at Starbucks. 

The beat thing we did on the trip was probably climbing Elephant Mountain. It's about a 10 min walk from Taipei 101. It had steps guiding you the entire way up the mountain, so it's not too intimidating, but it really kicked my ass.  I started off the hike like I was shot out of a cannon. But the steepness of this quick hike was unlike anything u had ever climbed before. I wish I took a picture of the angle of these steps, but I was more focused on not popping an artery in my heart on the way up or completely busting my ass on the way down. 

After the quick start i never caught my breath, and was pouring sweat not even halfway up, something that had become a common occurrence in the 100% humidity Taiwanese air. The whole time we were being passed up by local geriatrics with their AM/FM radios with not a bead if sweat on them, taking the even steeper routes than we were. Not the best feeling for a healthy 23 year old getting his arse handed to him by an 80 year old. The skyline view with the setting sun was completely with the hike though and put the city into a nice perspective. 

That night, in our one serious night of partying, we got real western and went to Brass Monkey for ladies night and hopefully a chance to meet to white people. Living in a tiny, very anti social hostel, we hadn't really met anyone worth going out with. Actually we were relatively nervous at first. We're both pretty social people, but neither of us had gone out with just another dude for a hard night of partying before. So it took us a little bit, and some trial and error, to get going. After a handful of shots, we got in a real groove, making friends left and right, and eventually high-fiving,getting invites to pool party's and pulling numbers to set up meets on our next stops. We were up till 7am the next morning, but walking back to the hostel as the sun was gracing the city with its presence, we got our first real fun taste of Asia. 

 

The next day, after sleeping in just a little too long, we took a 40 minute train to the port city Keelung, famous for their night market. Labeled by Anthony Bourdain as a must see stop in Taiwan. It was a complete sensory overload. The food porn level was just off the charts. We were completely KOd after this place and after the naps that ensued, regretfully took the night off {mistake #3}. 

The last day was spent with a friend of Roland's who was in Taipei teaching English and included a night of Korean BBQ, beer pong and houka, and by Sunday we were zooming off to Shanghai. We wish we could have seen a little more of the island (it seems like a real backpacker could make a killing around the easily accessible Taiwanese topography in about 30 days time), but we've been learning from our mistakes on the fly and hopefully becoming better from them by the end of this thing. 

[Since we're stopping in 6 vastly different countries along the trip, I thought its be cool to give my opinion on the countries, best thing we did/ate, and any regrets. Hopefully this isn't just completely redundant from the posts, but ill give it a shot] 

My 2 cents on- Taipei: I guess being in mainland China for so much time made me long for a place with China's qualities, but with a japanese sensibility. And boy was i right. I had always seen Taiwan as a watered down version of mainland China, but in a good way. The influence of Japan on the city though almost blew me away. The locals were very kind.  

This made the city very accessible to westerners and is a great starter city for anyone who hasn't been to Asia before. The city itself was way more beautiful than I thought, I came in under the assumption that the 50s style Japanese postwar architecture  hadn't aged well abs has left the city with a cold feeling. I came off with the perception that the city was so old it was interesting and with the surrounding mountains, was quite beautiful. The little smog and near perfect weather the entire time we were there didn't hurt. 

This is a city of professional eating.  Im still bloated from my time in Taipei.  Straight bomb Japanese food on Japanese food. We struggled to find daily activities that didn't somehow revolve around food. There was an odd amount of nothing to do during the daytime, especially for a city of 6 million. And when we would ask people we met for their  'must do things in the city',every answer involves some serious eating or was received with kind of a blank stare.

Favorite thing we did: Hiking Elephant mountain 

Thing we wish we did: Went out more, but jet lag kinda cramped our style. We definitely regret not partying harder in the city, and there is for sure a solid party scene, we just missed out on it. With Shanghai on deck I'm not too worried tho. 

Best thing we ate: Japanese garlicky sweet and spicy fried chicken