17 March 2017
Accidental dream mall
Riding the new tram to the giant mall
This evening I ended up at the dream mall by accident after accidentally riding on a Melbourne tram in Taiwan. Allow me to go on with boring detail.
My plan was to walk a great distance to a place advertised as the biggest night market in all of Taiwan and therefore the world, a place so big it used to be two different markets and it grew until they absorbed each other and became a mega market.
A 90 minute walk later, past the biggest razor wired army base in all of Taiwan, I arrived at half a dozen sad looking food stalls, a strange semi abandoned animatronic dinosaur obstacle course, and 172.3 hectares of sheds and white lines painted on concrete memorializing what used to be the Taiwan mega night market experience.
However, much to my surprise, nearby the new tram line was in trial operations, and its free. Anything free is fine by me, its one better than cheap. Go on the tram I shall, I dont even care where it goes.
It went to the Dream mall. Astute readers of my 2011 trip will remember I went here and went on a rooftop ferris wheel and watched a roller coaster disappear into a hole in the middle of a wave pool on top of the biggest mall in East Asia. Yes, thats all true as amazing as it sounds, but forget the mall, what about the tram?
The tram is a Melbourne tram, exactly the same, same door buttons, same bell noise. Either these were made in Melbourne, or the Melbourne tram companies claim that they designed and built the tram in Melbourne is false. In the age of alternate facts I dont know who to believe.
At 6pm on Friday, the streets are packed with food carts protruding directly into traffic. It was chaotic and quite dangerous.
One of the many art installations in parks I previously mentioned, this one is bamboo, and oyster shells. They must have cleaned them well as it was odourless.
A bit more of the oyster shell LED light tribute to the tensile strength of bamboo.
This is where the mega night market is supposed to be, at this point I still thought it might be hiding, it wasnt.
Dinosaur park used to cost money to enter, now its free! And its just me.
There is an even weirder obstacle course thing above the admittedly, impressively large moving dinosaurs, the booth attendant appeared to be dead, or dead asleep, so I didnt bother.
Part of the abandoned mega night market.
A Melbourne tram.
Admittedly the seats are a little different, but I am positive they are otherwise the same design.
The dream mall. I had no intention of coming here. It is impressively enormous.
The food court goes on forever, then goes around a corner, and goes on forever some more.
I am a big fan of the food court, because its so cheap. Cheap beats good, every time!
My dinner was a tomato version of beef noodle soup. The broth despite being beef colored really was quite to-ma-to-ee.
On my way back I stopped to appreciate this impressive overpass. Cause thats the sort of activity I enjoy.
Any day with more than 40,000 steps is a good day.
33.8km according to my watch, but it was slightly more than that because I ran about 5km earlier in the day without telling my watch, which increases my stride length.
Thats more info than anyone needs to know about my Garmin forerunner 225, except my heart rate is currently 41. I like my very slow heart.