26 March 2014
The new new
West of Taipei, is New Taipei. This is a different new Taipei to the new Taipei which is east of Taipei where Taipei 101 is.
So its the new new Taipei, also called Banqiao, and its actually where the New Taipei city hall is.
Taipei is a circular area in the centre, and new Taipei is a donut shaped thing around it, I think, its all quite confusing.
Banqiao has obviously stolen lots of tax payers dollars, as the roads, parks, buildings, gardens are all of a high quality, lots of open space, kind of reminds me of the New Shanghai area Pudong.
Apparently if you go a few streets away from the centre of New Taipei its a very old part of of Taipei, so old that until recently it wasnt even officially part of Taipei.
Once they built a high speed rail stop there, one of only 2 in all the various new and old Taipei's, population growth and investment exploded.
So there you go. Now you know stuff about geography. Theres no mountains there at all that I could see.
On my way to the subway, I took a different street.
A night market was setting up. These things multiply. At 5pm its only just starting, no stinky tofu being cooked yet, lots of hungry school kids wandering about waiting.
Banqiao, site of many new buildings.
Obviously mega city was my first stop, because its mega.
On basement level 3 I found a place called super spicy noodle. So my choice was made for me.
This isnt beef noodle, its wonton noodle in chilli broth, lots of vegetables. It was great, and cheap!
Then I explored the FE21 store, the basement of which connected back to the subway via a series of tunnels full of school kids practicing their pop star idol dancing moves.
They werent very good.
Short update tonight, I have dark chocolate.