springs and shimps

I felt a little lousy this morning,it was hard to get going. I woke up early and got some kinda breakfast item (I have no idea what, some kind of goo with pork on top). I came back to my hotel and drank tea and chilled out for a bit before really getting started with my day. Around 10:30 or 11 I got on the train to Beitou , its a district in Taipei famous for its hot springs! I went to check out the beitou hotspring museum. When the Japanese colonized Taiwan, they brought onsen. Beitou was one of the prime time areas. Beitou was called Hokuta then, and they actually found a unique mineral in the springs and named it Hokutite. I thought that was cool. :)

After checking out the museum, I decided to enjoy some hot spring time. It seems that there is some kind of rule that a single person can’t rent a private hot tub here, I guess due to the concern they have of you passing out or something. I went to a public bathhouse instead at SweetMe, which is a long-standing hot spring resort in the town. I spent hours enjoying the spring and the various temperature baths. I even took a light nap near the end. The hot spring helped enormously with my morale, my health, my digestive discomfort, you get the picture. I felt very relaxed.I enjoyed blow drying my hair after.

I stopped at the hotel again before setting out around dusk for Ningxia night market. I stayed near there last time I was in Taipei, and I remembered liking it. It still holds up! I got taro/sweet potato balls, takoyaki, grilled zucchini, and thinly sliced grilled beef wrapped around green onion. I felt satisfied and left, meandering a little bit back towards the Zhongshan neighbourhood and resting at the train stop.

I wasn’t feeling quite ready to wrap up the night yet,but I didn’t know of anything cool happening and I didn’t really want to ambiguously drink at a bar when I have 11am check out tomorrow morning. I looked up some ideas of what to do, and prawn fishing came up. Actually I’ve been eager to try it for awhile! When I got there, I was handed some bait and a pole, and I purchased an hour of fishing time and a beer for around 400NTD (around $12USD) I was really bad at it, and the shrimp were really scary. But I managed to catch 4 and the last one I wrangled and subdued all by myself. I had varying degrees of help for the first 3. I felt like I was finally understanding how to read my bobber as my time was coming to a close. Then the clerk grilled my 4 prawns and I ate them, feeling so proud and awesome. The guys next to me literally caught enough to have a heaping pile hahaha. It’s a really cool thing. When I walked in there was a group of businessmen talking over plates of shrimp they caught. I kinda want to get better at it. I wish we had it in Arcata.

day 1

I decided that going to a cafe in Zhongshan neighborhood was how I wanted to start my day today. I asked a random passerby for directions to a cafe called “waha” and she was kind enough to walk me there and chat with me on the way! It was nice to have a little escort, she even explained my presence to the shopkeep. It was a very friendly interaction and I was able to practice some conversational mandarin. I’ve been lightly studying the language for about a year now, its very challenging. It’s good for me to be able to practice in real world conversations. I feel like with language learning, I have a really hard time retaining the information, but the shock and discomfort of trying to produce words from memory in a real life situation makes them stick a bit better. By happenstance I ran into her again shortly after at a little Japanese dessert shop. I got her name, Yvonne, and her LINE number. She actually sent me some recommendations for a couple restaurants including a beef noodle shop. Cute! I spent most of the day putzing around shops, purchased a few small things. I went to a Hakka restaurant for lunch and got pork and fried tofu and cucumber salad. It was pretty good! Hakka cuisine came from mainland china. I’d love to try some indigenous Taiwanese food also. Another popular cuisine here is Fujian, which comes from the southern part of china across the sea from Taiwan.. Japanese cuisine is also very popular. I saw someone online draw a comparison that pizza isn’t really an “American” food right , because it’s Italian , but then tomatoes aren’t really “authentic Italian” because they aren’t native to that area of the world. So I guess similarly , food in Taiwan is made up of a lot of cultural influences to become what it is today. At night, I met up with fashion design student Peggy at daodecheng dock and we shared a drink and talked awhile. It was interesting to hear her perspective on life in Taiwan,as it sounded like she’d traveled worldwide pretty extensively. I liked talking about fashion design with her. I told her I envy that she gets to live in Taipei and study fashion! She didn’t seem to share all of my enthusiasm , saying that she’d rather live in Europe or England or the US instead. She showed me some of her collections and a clip from her final runway show and they were all very impressive. I hope to have my designs walk down a runway someday.

touchdown

They gave me not one, not two, but three meals on my flights thru Asiana airlines. And its a Korean airline, so they served bibimbap and chicken and rice. Yum. Everything went really smoothly. I decided to pay for an ESIM at the airport instead of buying one ahead of time, which I’m really glad for. The ESIM folder on my phone looks crazy still from my adventure in 2024. I purchased a plan for unlimited data and text and it came out to about 20$. Another perk doing it of this way is that I have a Taiwan phone number, which already came in handy. I was able to create a LINE account and use that to set up a mobile payment to rent a locker at the train station. Mobile pay is really popular in a lot of parts of china, so I feel like this is useful information for when I finally go there. Taiwan is different in a lot of ways though, obviously. Getting off the plane and onto the train, buying an ESIM and setting up a virtual payment. The first day is always so logistical. Then I ran into Justin at Taipei Main Station, which was really random! In a city of 2.5 million, we happened to pass each other. He was my first connection here when Raven and I visited in 2024. Jocelyn, my coworker at Mokka, passed his contact info along then and we met up with him and had lots of karaoke and hotpot fun. I mean, I’m sure it helped our odds of running into each other that i spent an hour aimlessly wandering. He was there because he was headed to the airport for his trip to Japan. I knew that I was arriving and he was leaving the same day, but it just seemed crazy happenstance to run into him there! He gave me some lunch recommendations and was on his way. Have a good Japan trip Justin! I’ll see you on the 28th! I had several hours to kill before my checkin, so I did what any sensible person would do— I went to the busiest, most intense shopping district in Taipei. I wanted to get a novelty item, a 3D figurine version of the card that lets you on the train(easy card). It felt like something I should cross off my list early on, and having surmounted so many logistical challenges already I thought I’d be up for it. Unfortunately, I found myself unsuccessful.The internet gave me a lot of conflicting reports on where to buy them. I actually did see a couple at various 7/11’s and Family Marts, but finding them felt more like finding a needle in a haystack than browsing a beautiful wall of trinkets. I wasn’t super into any of the ones I was finding. I finally gave up, starving, jet-lagged and exhausted. And bought a normal transit card at the station. Re-found the locker which I had stored my luggage in (not the easiest) and headed to my accommodation. Which is super weird by the way , lol. It’s a self check-in and at first I felt like I broke into somewhere, but I finally figured out the way to my room ( I am so lucky a housekeeper was there and help me ). It’s tiny and freaky and sorta smells but I can walk ten paces out the front door and be in the “ Minquan “ train station. Also the neighborhood is pretty cute. It’s close the the SUPER cute neighborhood, which is only one train stop south. It was a struggle to keep myself awake, but I knew it was gonna be crucial to adjusting to the time zone, which is 16 hours ahead. Lost a full day during my flight— must have crossed the international date line? I managed to sit and look at my phone while I rested a bit in my hotel room, then I ventured out to get some things from 7/11 - water and a steamed corn on the cob ( more about the 7/11 offerings to come ) . There were beautiful red lanterns lighting a lot of my evening walk, and I saw a cool temple in the middle of them. I decided to close out my night by getting a foot massage at a parlor, it was definitely a little awkward but I’m glad I did it and might do it again. It’s a big thing here. My feet certainly thanked me. Can’t wait for my first morning here tomorrow!

a new adventure

follow along with me on a new adventure! I'll be visiting Taiwan again from march 15-30th this month. Wish me luck!