西門町 continued

As promised…

After Steve bounced to get dinner with fam, my friend and I looked around some food ourselves. We found this spot with good oyster vermicelli.
More pics:

Rap-star wannabe left his street cred at home

香腸 - Taiwanese Sausage

Sticky Rice

Ximending on a rainy night. I'll be back, green goblin

One of these days I’m going to explore this area for the higher-end clothing boutiques. But I’ll let the rain win this time. This time.

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Typhoons and Tornadoes

As I was bracing up for some shitty weather over the weekend, the last thing I expected was to hear about even shittier weather back at home. Hard to believe that NYC actually got hit with a tornado. Wtf? This ain’t Kansas! I called home last Friday to make sure everything was ok. Apparently trees are down everywhere. I found out my block lost electricity for some time. Thankfully everyone is safe and sound, as far as I know at least.

Taiwan had its own storm to deal with over the weekend: Typhoon Fanapi. Many homes in the mountainous areas had to be evacuated, fearing landslides. Luckily Taipei avoided the worst of it. We just had to deal with some rain- although it did trap me indoors this past Sunday, which is punishment enough.

All was not lost, however, as I got to spend some quality time with good peeps. I stayed over at a family friend’s house and got to hang out with one of my college friends from New York.

The first time I made a trip out to Taiwan, I stayed with my dad’s longtime friend’s family in 竹圍 (Zhu2wei2), which is only 2 stops away from Danshui. At the time I was a total noob and quite useless but they took great care of me and made feel very welcome.

I like to think of them as extended family, and it certainly felt that way again as I stayed over for the weekend. The kids are around my age so I’m able to practice my budding Mandarin skills as well as learn some swears, slangs, and dirty words (isn’t that the whole point?). The favor was returned as I explained some of the finer points of American English such as: What is a pimple? What is a pimp? Why is the show called “Pimp My Ride”?

Rain put a damper on plans for Saturday but I was still able to meet up with Steve, my friend from college. We were in the same Chinese class for two years but lack of use has made him forget a lot of it. S’all good, though. He hasn’t been back to TW in 13 years so it was good to see him enjoying the place. I went to 西門町 (Ximen-ding) with one of the family friends to meet up with him. Our first stop was the Red House Theater. It was built in 1908, but wasn’t used as a theater until later on. There are still live performances going on during the day, which Steve and I didn’t know about at the time. So when he saw somebody dressed as a geisha come right out of the bathroom, we were quite confused (my other friend cleared it up for us).

There’s a section in the first floor for independent designers. I got a T-shirt for my friend last time I was here, so I was hoping they would have new stuff.

The Red House Theater

Outside the Betelnut Store

He just mad cuz I'm stylin' on him

The guy behind us is a total square

Afterwards we strolled around Ximending for some snacks. I saw a place selling mango shaved ice + ice cream…

...had to do it.

Part II to come! I have a test later!

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