A trip to Taipei would not be complete without a taste of local cuisine, ranging from street hawkers selling various fried foods to the most savory or spicy beef noodles. The retail area is lined up with small shops, the quaint ones in dark alleys but most probably with a nearby well-lighted convenience store around the corner, and on ther other hand, there are a lot of self-service noodle houses where the clerk hands out a menu/price listing on a clipboard to you, you tick off what you want, and the quantity then you wait til it is served on your table, then you pay on your way out. Efficient, convenient, and fastfood, especially after a hard day of shopping or cruising the night market, or the Guang Hua electronics market. The best way to find the most popular shops is to ask the taxi driver to bring you there. We did and found one near our hotel. It was way past dinner, and our afternoon meal with Melody at Ikea restaurant (where we bid her adieux as she leaves for London tomorrow for her masters) has long been burned from looking for the best deals for hard disk drives, thumb drives, Wii, PSPs, power adaptors, wireless routers, Ifan, flat LCD screens with TV tuners, and hentai.
I remember Sim Lim Square in Singapore, and I remember the vibe, the energy of the mostly guys shopping, negotiating, comparing prices, window shopping, looking for a bargain there, and I compared this with the crowd at Sulin Night Market where there are rows and rows of shoes, blouses, mini-dresses, and other trendy casual outfits; one stall after the other, and there are girls who go ga-ga over shoes, trying on one pair after the other, looking for the right one, and ending up buying 3 pairs.
By 10 PM, Xtin and I could hardly feel our legs, and we wait for the guys as they max up their credit card, use up their local taiwan dollars, and try to withdraw some more in order to satiate their gadget fixation. What is it with men and gadgets?I looked around and I see a lot of new stuff- a digital photo frame costing NT$3700 (roughly PhP5.5k), lots of ipod/ifan/boxter accessories, 12 megapixel digicams and many other things you don't need but you'd want.
Lost in the gadgetry, geek looks and reeking scents, I marvel at this industry, and looked back at the time, once in a galaxy far far away where I was part of Fujitsu, and our hard drive output is 1 Gig internal hard drive, to be shipped to the US and Japan. This is circa 1996. Almost a decade after, the old technology is obsolete and prices are going way down, and the electronics industry is more alive than ever. Even Gilmore in the Philippines is turning into something like the PC destination.
I knew what I wanted, and I did not have enough excitement over gadgets as I have with shoes, so I was done after a few minutes but had to wait for my boss who was beyond himself, passing by the stall where there are 2 chicks manning a digicam store, and looking for cables and adaptors and other stuff. He has just been here the night before. Xtin was almost about to faint from hunger, and we finally get to sip the hot soup at past 10. Three convenience store stops later, we head back to the hotel and decide to have a nightcap at the ground floor bar. She drank milk, while I took Taiwan beer. The other franchisees and guys were there, and we laugh a lot about our Guang Hua experience. What can I say, the guys just love it!
The night before, Sam took us to dinner at Noodle Master, a lovely pricey noodle house, also down at the East Road. But the best dinner was at the basement of Sogo Hotel in downtown Taipei, a restaurant called Din Tai Fung, where we taste the best shao long pao, handmade, with pork and soup inside the tiny morsel of steamed flour, the best seaweed appetizer, and spinach dumplings. The noodles are handmade as well, and are assembled where shoppers can view the entire process. We ate more than enough, but did not dare pick the last piece of the dumpling, because the Taiwanese say, the person to eat the last piece will not get married, ever. Since Xtin is getting married next month, and I am hoping to, one day, we don't touch it, and instead, finish off our soup, which is always served the last, in the Taiwan tradition.
It was a tiring trip, the past 3 days, but the Taipei experience this time is different. I wonder what tomorrow would bring. With the way things are going, with all of us shopping with our third world salary when we visit another country, we might as well not eat for the rest of the month, just to make our own balance sheet. Why do we do that? And then pretend we are happy, while the Chinese would not be able to sleep without 30% of their pay going to their savings.
I will talk about my one on one with Barbara Gonzales next time, and would attempt to recount each lesson. I saw her just before I left for Taipei, and I have an assignment. With her, we do not talk about food, but the rain...
Next stop: Bangkok in October; if not, Malaysia before the year ends, but definitely not Singapore.
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