Story of the Day:
This ironically has nothing to do with Taiwan but I think it was one of the funniest things that happened. So Tam spends 15 minutes discussing how we can keep our dirty laundry in one of the empty cabinets but not to lock it because we don't have the keys for the newly installed cabinets. She also goes into great detail about how she accidentally locked one and couldn't get it unlocked. John, Eddie and I nod and I put my clothes in an empty cabinet. Eddie then procesds to put his dirty laundry int he same cabinet, closes the pad lock and clicks the lock and says... "UH-OH". Uncontrollable laughter ensues. Good one Eddie, we eventually get our laundry out by prying open one of the doors a crack and pulling it out piece by piece. Simply hilarious.
Taipei 101:
We leave for Taipei 101 in late afternoon so that we can see the night view. The view is as you would expect. Personally I kind of like looking up it more than I like looking down from it, but that's just me. Either way, it was great to go inside, ride up one of the world's fastest elevators and see the humongous mass dampener. After we went to Taipei 101, we decided to walk towards a random builidng and try to get to the top. Why? Why not? That's how good adventures are made and I was right. We accidentally stumble into Eslite mall, which was actually mentioned in one of the guidebooks. Inside, I found my favorite store in Taiwan. I will try my best to describe why it is my favorite but I don't know if I can accurately describe its awesomeness. I'm still not entirely sure what this store specializes in or if it even has a theme, but it does not matter. It had everything from clothes to furniture. Looking at the storefront, the entire store seems to slope upwards. The floors, ceilings and walls are all covered with an eye-blurring pattern. Both sides ofthe store are lined with tilted glass display cases. The walls of the display casese follow the tile of the sloped ground and each horizontal glass piece is skewed so that the objects displayed remain level. Stand long enough in the store and it begins to feel as if the objects are all slanted and nausea soon follows. Such an awesome store.
At night we go back to a bar that Melissa, Jose, John and Eddie found on their first night in Taiwan. Somehow, they manage to find the one mexican/hot dog stand and bar in Taiwan and we actually go back like 3 times throughout our trip to Taiwan. The bar is bartended and owned by the cool bartender simply known to us as "Ben". He runs the shop with his girlfriend and mother and it's a very personal business. He takes a liking to us almost immediately and offers us a whole list of free drinks including a pitcher of sangria, beers and at the end when we tried to leave, he made us all take 2-3 shots of tequila with him. At this point I still had a headache and the alcohol didn't help all too much. Cool bartenders mean trouble. But Ben really was cool and he even called his friend in Fukuoka once he found out we were going to be living there for a year.
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