Location: Taipei, Taiwan

Sav: Our last day in Taiwan has arrived and we had the all important task of getting ourselves sorted before launch tomorrow. It’s laundry day! We spent the entire morning shivering in shorts and t-shirts, working away. I worked on booking and researching our next stop, while Max took care of some projects. Eventually when got our warm clothes back we ventured outside in the wind to get chinese scallion pancakes one more time. We wandered through the Ximen neighbourhood, already missing Taiwan.

We eventually made our way over to the east side park near the end of the afternoon. Since we hadn’t climbed up Taipei 101 earlier in the week, we planned to trek up elephant mountain for a sunset when the sky was clear. Well! The clearest day happened to also be our last day so we took the forty million stairs straight to the top and spent a long time watching the bright red sun go down over the horizon, and the city slowly light up.

Max: It started getting pretty chilly, so we skipped back down the steps to find food at our last night market: Tonghua. Two train stops later and we were weaving through the stalls where we found a vendor making noodles that seemed too good to pass by. He turned and unpacked a square of ramen (like those 25 cent college staple packs!) and threw them on a grill with a bunch of spices, lettuce, pork steak and a soft fried egg. We laughed initially at the ramen noodles but it turned out to be exactly what we were craving. To our surprise we hit the end of the market only a couple blocks later. It was much smaller than the previous night markets, although we did buy some mystery meat sticks and pork xiaolongbao. We also found this wide ominous stairwell off the main street that Sav was reluctant to go down. Creepy and somewhat nostalgic music bounced off the walls as we descended into… a massive grocery store? With an arcade attached? With rhythm games? Sign me up.

Sav: Max laughed excitedly and nervously as he slipped coins into the slot, prepping for what was sure to be a challenge. He ended up doing really well though! It certainly gave us a new appreciation for how fast the other guys were going, and we were already impressed before!

Okay story time.

Earlier in the afternoon we had decided on a whim to catch one more movie before leaving the country, as the theatres here are cheap and amazing (something we doubt we’ll find both of in the foreseeable future). We grabbed our kettle corn and sat in the comfy chairs to watch a taping of Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarves. After a few nonsensical Chinese commercials and movie trailers passed I suddenly had the thought ‘oh my god what if this movie is in Mandarin?’

GUESS WHAT.

IT WAS.

I absolutely can’t believe it didn’t even cross either of our minds once that that might be the case! Up till now they’d been english movies with Mandarin subtitles, but a cartoon? Definitely just straight Mandarin. We intermittently laughed and looked over at each other completely baffled for a few minutes, before we left the theatre. They exchanged our tickets for a showing of Little Women this evening, thank goodness. (Which was incredible by the way, if you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it.)

I checked beforehand that it was in English this time too!

We wandered home to pack our bags, a bit sad to be leaving Taiwan but excited to move on. We stopped to spend the last of our change at the claw machines, trying to win a small plush basket of fries with a cute face for my niece Ayla. It was hilarious and obviously rigged but fun to imagine her excited about them.

It’s been a great first stop on the trip and I am beyond happy to have returned. Onwards!

Sav