Time for Taipei

This is not going to be much of a journal entry. It doesn’t do much more than introduce the fact that I’m now in Taipei, Taiwan, and mention a new angst that I hope won’t be too much of a problem here. Oh, and there’s food involved.

If you found this page through a search engine and aren’t familiar with this journal, rest assured that the other entries are more substantial. Or, or at least longer. Sometimes excruciatingly so. So, by all means, please feel free to look around.

I left my previous stop, Chiang Mai, on a flight that departed a little before noon. It was scheduled to take three hours and forty minutes, but it was about 20 minutes early. Taipei is an hour ahead of Chiang Mei. So the clock-on-the-wall time when I arrived was an hour later than the flight start time and duration would suggest. Upon arriving, I had to go through customs, which took long enough that my bag was already circling the carousel when I got to the baggage claim area.

Taipei’s main international airport, where I landed, is quite a bit away from the city. The cab ride took about 45 minutes or so.

The upshot is that it was dark and close to 6:00 p.m. when I got to the hotel, so I didn’t do much worth writing about. Not, as you can see, that stopped me from writing anyway.

The taxi driver who took me from the airport spoke some, but not much, English. I told her the name of my hotel, and she understood that. Then she asked me a question that I think was confirming the hotel, but I don’t know. Her question didn’t sound like English to me. So I pulled up Google Maps and typed in the English name of my hotel. Google Maps helpfully showed both the English and Chinese names, and I showed that to her. She shook her head yes and made a confirming sound.

That’s a bit of foreshadowing of my new angst. As if I didn’t already have enough angst.

When I checked into the hotel, the front desk staff spoke reasonably good English, although with a pronounced Chinese accent.

After I went to my room, studied the toilet, and changed into a long-sleeve shirt (it’s a bit cooler here, yay!), I went out and walked a block or two from my hotel. My primary purpose was to check out restaurants.

*You might be wondering about that “studied the toilet” thing. It’s one of those jobs with a heated seat, built-in bidet, and a hot-air butt dryer. The words above the control buttons are only in Chinese. But there are icons on the buttons that I think I understand. I believe you can set a focused or wide spray, along with the spray’s intensity. And there’s a button for the butt dryer.

I experienced these sorts toilets on a previous trip to Japan. I’d provide a link but that was before I started this journal. And, as I explain in the “about” page of this journal, I only write entries reasonably contemporaneously. So, there’s nothing to link to here.

Enough about the toilet.

I saw a couple of restaurants nearby, including one that got a decent rating on Google Maps. Neither of them had any English signs whatsoever. They both had menus that had no English whatsoever.

I returned to my hotel and asked at the front desk if restaurants around the hotel usually have English menus. I was told, “If they cater to tourists, they might, but most don’t.”

I asked for a restaurant recommendation. He asked me what type of cuisine I would like. I responded that I wanted local cuisine. He suggested two, one that served beef noodle soup, a Taipei specialty, and another with a broader menu. I told him I’d like to try the beef noodle soup.

He said something to the effect of, “You can get beef soup in our bar. It’s quite famous. And if you’d like, you can try the beef noodle soup with stinky tofu.” He had a bit of a smile on his face when he said that last part.

When I planned this trip and looked for hotels in Taipei, I saw a user review that mentioned the beef noodle soup at the hotel. I’m skeptical about online reviews, but I decided to stay in tonight and eat at the hotel. Now that I’ve newly become nervous about whether I’m going to be able to get by here without being able to speak Chinese, I thought it would be easier.

Taipei Beef Noodle Soup

I looked at the menu. There were three beef noodle soup options: One plain, one with stinky tofu, and one with stinky tofu and something else; I forget what.

Thinking it would be an adventure, I decided to try it with stinky tofu. When I ordered, the waitress looked at me like she was thinking, “Are you totally out of your mind?” With a knowing look on her face, she asked me if I’d like her to put the stinky tofu on the side. I said no. She said she’d put it on the side anyway. I replied, “Okay, now you’ve scared me off of it, I’ll just have the plain soup.”

The soup came in a big, full bowl. The broth had a very meaty flavour. It was filled with large chunks of tender, tasty beef. The soup had a bit of spice to it, but that might be because I used the chilli sauce that came on the side. The noodles were fat and plentiful. I quite enjoyed it.

That’s one meal taken care of without speaking Chinese. I’m here in Taipei for five nights, then off to elsewhere in Taiwan where there’s probably even less English for four nights, and then back to Taipei for one night before I catch a flight back home the next day. If I’ve done the arithmetic right, that’s nine more days that I have to manage meals with only English. So, there you have it, my angst.

Come to think of it, I’ve already got dinner plans for tomorrow night taken care of, but that still leaves a lot of meals to figure out.

If my guidebook is correct, the rapid transit system here posts station names in Chinese and English and most of the tourist sights have English signs. So I think I’ll be okay in that regard. I just hope I don’t starve to death.

Oh, by the way, more than halfway through my beef noodle soup I realized I hadn’t taken any pictures in Taipei because it was already dark. So I decided to take a picture of what was left of my soup because what’s a journal entry without a picture?

Wow. This ended up being a considerably longer post than I expected, by a long shot, and there’s still a short aside to go. Please ignore that remark to new users about this being a shorter-than-normal entry. I hope you enjoyed it. I know I enjoyed the soup.