Today was a national holiday here in Taiwan. I’m not even sure what the exact name of the holiday is, it’s always just called Double-10. It is, in theory, the day that celebrates the over-throw of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and the formation of the Republic of China. In Taiwan, nothing is that simple, especially when it deals with China. There are also people here who believe it is strictly a holiday of the invading, occupying Chinese forces that landed here and took over the island by force in the 1940’s.
Politics aside, there are thousands of ROC flags lining all the streets in Taipei. If I didn’t know better I’d say there was a factory in mainland China where these were cranked out in their millions. (I say, “if I didn’t know better” because while China may make all the rest of the world’s flags, this one particular flag would certainly get a team of policemen to lead a crowd of angry citizens to the factory owners door and then walk away letting the crowd have their way with him. Don’t laugh, they do that all the time. Damn, now this website will be banned by the great firewall of China!)
It was also the end of a three-day weekend in which many stores were closed and lots of people had time off work. It also means I wasn’t able to get Cong You Bing for 3 days instead of just the usual Sunday dry spell.
There’s supposed to be a massive fireworks display and parade, of which we saw neither.
Instead, we went to Taoyuan today for lunch. Why Taoyuan? That’s a longish story but, in a nutshell, Mr. Huang 2 spends a few days in Taoyuan at this time of year visiting family. He invited us down there for lunch not realizing that we couldn’t all fit in Mr. Huang’s (1) car with the two car seats in it, so, in the end Mr. Huang 2 drove to Taipei to pick some of us up and we drove the 1 hour 45 minutes to Taoyuan for lunch.
Oh? You didn’t ask “why”, you asked “what’s Taoyuan?” Taoyuan is one the seemingly endless urban sprawl pouring south of Taipei. On our trek there, at no point, did I feel I’d left one town on the way to another.
Here’s another fascinating piece of trivia about where we went: We drove 1 hour 45 minutes and arrived at a point in space exactly 14.1 miles as the crow flies from where we started. It had been raining in the morning, many of the vendors, particularly the one I wanted to visit, had been closed, and since we had to leave 2 hours before lunch, I didn’t get breakfast.
We arrived at a Department store which smelled wickedly good – it had both a KFC and a McDonald’s in the basement pumping out the delicious smell of fried chicken and french fries. Despite some slight glimmer of hope that we’d driven nearly 2 hours to eat at KFC, we ate in a Japanese buffet on the top floor.
Normally, that means I’m going to steal out as quickly as possible and head for the McDonald’s in an attempt to survive, but in this case they did have some particularly good chunks of grilled beef, marinaded in something completely un-Japanese tasting, cut into bite-sized cubes and grilled to medium rare. I had several plates of those and was sufficiently well fed.
I also had a slice of nice-looking chocolate cake, which could have been excellent except for a mysterious layer of some material that looked liked crushed cranberries and tasted like shredded carrots. The Japanese are an odd people!
Michelle went to town. She would, in turn, go to each of the adults at the table, take them by the hand, and lead them to the buffet so they could get her food. She was ever-so-cute when she’d do it and no one could resist. She ended up eating 7 pieces of cake, several bowls of ice cream and who knows what else in the process.
I left for a walk during the long afternoon of talking at the table, explored the store (typical) and then went for a walk outside. The day had cleared and the street was thronging with thousands of people. It was every bit as lively as downtown Taipei, if not more so.
When we drove back to Taipei, we passed the street with all the cameras. I’ve been thinking about upgrading my existing camera with a digital SLR for some time. I had finally figured out how to use a film SLR camera when the jump to digital came. Tomorrow, we’re going to be heading into the mountains and I’d really like to get the control possible with an SLR back before I leave.
As the camera shops appeared to be open, and having done some research on “good” prices on the ‘et before leaving, we headed out to see what we could find. In the end, the prices are good, but very comparable with what’s in the states if you shop. There are issues with warranties and I don’t carry $30,000 NT is cash with me, so I didn’t get one.
I’ll give it a lot more thought before we leave town on another trip next week, but I know when I’m up in the mountains tomorrow, I’m going to miss not having a new camera.
For dinner, we walked 5 minutes to Subway for a 12″ BMT and then next door for provisions shopping. My recollection is there’s not many food opportunities on tomorrow’s trip. “Provisions” turned out to be shoestring potatoes and oreo cookies – well, at least it is just like camping when I was a kid.
Tomorrow we take trains, trains and more trains for Alishan, high in the mountains. Hopefully it won’t be too cold, we aren’t exactly packed for winter weather.
Somehow I doubt I’ll have internet access, so I’ll keep these up-to-date and post them when I return.
