Location: Taipei, Taiwan

I had the most lovely morning, as I got to wake up to a FaceTime from baby Ayla and Kasia and Landon. It turned into quite a morning of catching up with people, as I also called Meaghan, and then Max. I have been missing home so it was a nice to ease that feeling a little bit. I was starving by the time all these phone calls were done so I grabbed Helena and we went to a Chinese pancake place she loves around the corner. I have no idea what exactly it was (surprise surprise) but it was stuffed full of eggs and basil and it was crispy so naturally it was amazing. I mean how could it not be.

A few days ago I wrote about really disliking bubble tea, and almost immediately got a message from my friend Pauline saying “I’m sending you on a mission. I will not allow your bubble tea journey to end here.” She followed this up with 2 photos: a map of how to get to Tiger Sugar Milk Tea, and a photo of what to order. What’s the harm right? Pauline’s recommendations are usually amazing. Well it turns out I didn’t hate it. I could actually maybe even grow to like it? The Pauline strikes again.

I decided to join the hostel walking tour with Caro, Thomas, and Cody, which was all about the Golden Age of Taiwan. We walked for a few hours while the guide explained a lot about the history of Taiwan. He took us up Dihua Street, which I went to a few days ago but I was super happy to go back, as it was one of my favourite places I’ve seen so far. We went inside Xiahai City God Temple and he explained all about how you can ask the god of love for a partner. BUT. You have to be extremely specific. Like if you say you want a rich, handsome Taiwanese man you have to say exactly how rich, exactly how handsome and from where in Taiwan. There’s also dishes of moon blocks everywhere, which are red crescent shaped pieces of wood you use to divine your future. So when you’re asking the god of love for your specific partner or whatever else, you throw the moon blocks on the ground and they give you an answer. You need 3 consecutive yes’s on the moon blocks for it to be a real yes from the god.

But wait wait it gets better.

You can ask as many times as you want. Literally all the temples stay open late so people can just continuously throw moon blocks on the ground until they get the answer they want.

THERE’S MORE.

You can also just pay 300 Taiwanese dollars for a real yes (which is like twelve Canadian dollars). Not a bad trade to find the live of your life. Capitalism!

We came back to the hostel to play a few rounds of darts and say goodbye to Cody, as he is heading back home to the US tonight. A bunch of us (Caro, Thomas, Helena, Zach, Jack, Danny, Claudio, Sona and I) went deep into the downtown to find this one particular fast fry restaurant, which is where you order a whole bunch of tiny dishes and they put them on a lazy Susan and everyone shares. It was amazing! We had all kinds of spicy chicken, fish jaws, some kind of egg rice, saucy shrimp and a bunch of other things that I, again, am completely unfamiliar with.

We proceeded (after a few beers at Revolver bar) to basically run aimless around the city, stopping at multiple 7-11’s to grab snacks and more drinks along the way. Everywhere you go there’s these hole-in-the-wall cubby’s filled with claw machines, and we stopped in and spent our loose change trying to win little plush characters. I got overly excited about almost winning a pikachu that I definitely don’t have room in my bag for.

Here’s to hopefully a lot more nights like this.

Sav

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New People:

• Cody – USA
• Danny – USA
• Claudio – Italy
• Sona – Hong Kong