Monday, October 14, 2024
I’ve said it before, but I think this one will be a short one!
Today was a bit of a “down day” after yesterday’s excitement. Melz was back in school, and Chuwan and I had no plans for the day.
We rented YouBikes and headed out for breakfast. We stopped at Sukiya for breakfast. Now this was a necessary stop. I’m a big fan of Yoshinoya, and I love gyudon. Gyudon is workman’s food. Cheap and filling.
The few places selling gyudon in Phoenix treat it like it’s a rare gourmet dish from Japan and price it accordingly. The one place remotely near me in Phoenix sells it for $14 bowl. A standard bowl in Taiwan equates to $3.40.
I go to Yoshinoya every time we go to Taiwan, but this is the first trip I’ve noticed Sukiya, which is a competing Japanese chain to Yoshinoya. I’ve never tried them or even heard of them until this trip.
On Day Three, I went there for the first time, but in a fit of uninhibited craziness, I didn’t try the plain gyudon. I went with gyudon with cheese. It was interesting, good even, but it wasn’t a fair comparison to Yoshinoya. It was absolutely essential that I go to Sukiya and try the plain gyudon before we left.
Chuwan was happy to go along and have a full Japanese-style breakfast with fish and a variety of small plate items. It was all under $10 between us, and I had a larger portion of gyudon to boot. I put it as neither better nor worse than Yoshinoya, but it was delicious.
After we ate, Chuwan had what she called a “crazy idea” (and it was.) She plays a game called Honkai Starrail, and Pizza Hut Taiwan is currently running a cross-promotion with the game. Chuwan proposed that we ride the bikes to the nearest Pizza Hut where she could take pictures of Honkai Starrail decorations on the restaurant.
Crazy, but harmless, and an excuse to ride the bike more, so I went along.
After she snapped her pictures, we continued until we came back to Hung Rui Chen (see also Day Three) and bought some more sandwiches to stick in the fridge at our Airbnb. Plus, it gave me an excuse to ride the bike more.
Aware that we had not yet managed to eat at Din Tai Fung, Chuwan had been monitoring the average wait times at the various locations. She had decided that the Din Tai Fung in the A11 Building of Shin Kong Mitusukoshi was the one that usually had the shortest wait time.
We contacted Melz to see if they wanted to meet near the restaurant.
Buses in Taipei are frequent and go pretty much everywhere. Historically (for me, that means in the years I’ve been going to Taiwan), they’ve also been illogically routed, with multiple different buses going to the same place via different routes. The routes are circuitous. There are multiple different bus companies. They drive like maniacs. A single bus stop can have as many as ten or more different bus routes servicing it, and, of course, the signage was entirely in Chinese characters. The buses also don’t seem to run on any meaningful schedule. They follow extended loops but don’t have scheduled times to be at the stops. They just get there when they complete the next loop. Depending on the route’s popularity, there may be more than one bus on the same route, cutting the interval time down.
It was virtually impenetrable for a visiting foreigner. I avoided buses like the plague unless Chuwan was leading the way.
But things have changed for the better.
Many of the bus stops now have digital signs showing how long until the buses on all the routes arrive next. You still need to know which bus routes will get you where you want, but that is now solved by the fact that Apple Maps now has public transit routing info for Taipei (Google Maps does, too, but it’s Google, so fuck ’em!)
To get to Shin Kong Mitsukoshi A11 we decided to take the bus because the subway would require three trains and two transfers. One of those transfers would have been at a bitch of a station, where you get off the train two or three stories underground, then transfer to a train that requires you to go three stories above ground, and then back down underground on the next transfer.
I decided today was the day I would figure out which bus to take!
Apple Maps also had the bus arrival times, presumably fed by the same data feed that updates the digital signs at the bus stops. Because the bus routes are so plentiful and follow many different routes but cross over many of the same destinations, this leads to the weird situation where if you ask Apple Maps for a route now, it may walk you to bus stop A and then tell you to grab bus X, but if you wait a minute or two, it may tell you to walk to bus stop B and catch bus Y. A minute later, it will be different again.
That lead to more than a little anxiety on my part because, there is one thing certain about Apple Maps routing directions: If they tell you it’s a 9-minute walk somewhere, it most certainly is not a 9-minute walk. But if the best route is so contingent on timing down to a minute or two, will you be catching the best bus?
I decided to wait till we got to the bus stop before asking what the best route was. That worked perfectly. The buses have also upped their automated “announcements” of stops game, often including English when appropriate.
I knew which bus to get on, and I knew when to get off, and I could double-check it by following along on my phone. Perfect.
Note to visitors to Taiwan: I just watched a YouTube video where a family tried to catch a bus, and they were mystified as to why the bus just drove past them when they were at the stop. They speculated that the bus was out of service. They probably did not know that the buses won’t stop unless they’re letting someone off or you flag them down.
All hail the bus!
There was a wait at the door of Din Tai Fung, even though we arrived as they opened, but it was only about 5 minutes, and the food was excellent, as always. I really could eat here every day, but they’re not cheap. There’s one opening in Phoenix next year, and I fear what it will do to my budget.
This location had a little robot that showed us to our table. This is the same type of robot used by Kura Sushi to serve drinks. One wonders why Din Tai Fung uses it for a different purpose than what it has clearly been designed to do. (In the picture, you can see the “I’m Honeybee, please follow me” sign on the tray where you place food or drinks for delivery.)
After lunch, there was a temporary(?) Pokémon store in the complex, so we went there at my wife’s and child’s insistence.
I had a bit of a sad moment while wandering the Pokémon store. I overheard a man explaining to a woman that these Pokémon they were looking at were Taiwan-exclusive products.
It was a sad moment because I have been working very hard on learning my Mandarin lately, and I have been trying to listen to people on the streets and the trains and pay attention when my in-laws are talking, and I am making some progress; however, this man wasn’t speaking Chinese. He was obviously Taiwanese but spoke rudimentary Japanese to the woman. I picked up more Japanese than Chinese.
For 26 years, I’ve been exposed to Chinese and have been trying to learn it (admittedly, most of that time, not aggressively). I haven’t taken a Japanese course in over 27 years, but I still picked up more Japanese in that one conversation that I can after several hours of listening to the Taiwanese people. Disheartening. My brain has clearly ossified.
We took a break for the afternoon.
My dinner plan in a nutshell was: God dammit, I’m going to eat at a fucking McDonald’s, and they’re not going to stop me.
I’m not even a big fan of McDonald’s; it’s just been shitting me that every time I try to go, they’re too packed to have a seat.
Melz was up for it, and Chuwan suggested a plan. We rented YouBikes and rode to McDonald’s near her parents’ old new house. It was a two-story restaurant that we used to go to for breakfast with some regularity. It was neither near a subway line nor any major urban nexus points.
When we got there, they had eliminated the second story and converted the location to take-out only. The pandemic has much to answer for.
Melz located the next-nearest McDonald’s, and we continued riding into the night.
The next one was about 1.8 km away along a major road, but when we got there… it was 9:00 PM and packed but, by sharing a table (common), we were able to get three seats to eat.
My aim has been to have the fried chicken at McDonald’s. On previous trips, it was pretty damned good, although, on our last trip, everyone felt the quality had significantly declined. Hoping that was just an anomaly, I wanted to try again.
And then my brain went haywire when I saw they were selling “K Chicken,” which was Korean-style fried chicken. I ordered that instead. You know you are in trouble when they serve you your food with a pair of complimentary plastic food service gloves.
It was messy and it wasn’t good, and it seemed that the underlying chicken wasn’t very good either. It was a lot of effort for a very disappointing meal. If there’s one thing you can say about McDonald’s, it’s that it’s not supposed to be a lot of effort.
We ended the evening walking to the nearest subway station and returning home, sadder and a little wiser.
Only two more full days are left in Taiwan, and we have no plans for either day.
*Google Maps is far more prevalent in Taiwan than Apple Maps, and you’ll end up using it from time to time whether you like it or not. Google Maps also has one obvious and very helpful advantage over Apple Maps. Google and Apple will both show you where the YouBike stations are, but Google Maps will tell you how many bikes are available and if there are any open spaces to dock your already-rented bike.