Whilst i have been in Taipei, all you see advertised, absolutely everywhere, is the Floral Expo.
Now you would expect this to go for a weekend, but no, it goes for a year. Its like the World expo they have in Shanghai at the moment, except its just for flowers, and theres longer queues to look at flowers.
Everyone must like flowers, school kids are here in their thousands, I dont think I have ever seen so many people, on a thursday morning for a show now its 11th month.
The problem with this is, I never actually saw any of the main bits of the show, as the organisers had conveniently put up signs 'QUEUE WAITING TIME FOR THIS PAVILLION CURRENTLY 73 MINUTES' etc.
The shortest queue I saw for any pavillion was 65 minutes, so I never went in any, I just walked around the things, ate food and looked at the outside exhibits.
It all looked a bit tired to me, like after 11 months people had given up keeping everything looking fresh.
After about 2 hours of not looking at flowers, I decided to move on, the train station nearby went to Danshui, which I vaguely recollected as being in the mountains.
Turns out I was wrong, it goes to the ocean, to a place a bit like Blackpool or Brighton, lots of balloon popping games etc.
It was quite a nice place, again lots of interesting markets, and lots of stalls selling every kind of dead thing on a stick, or a pineapple cake.
It would seem to me the average Taiwanese person is engaged in a daily competition to see who can consume the biggest variety of bits of animals deep fried and put on sticks. If you get bored of just the heart of a snake on its own, dont worry, they will grind it up for you and turn it into snake blood sausage.
Heres the entrance to the flower show, the lines are longer than they appear, they go around corners and stop and they let people from the end of part 1 of line join onto the start of part 2 of line.
Theres all sorts of different whistle combinations required to coordinate the line movement.
I immediately headed to the food court. I was quite impressed that they were actually making the food here, I saw big vats of soup, people stuffing dumplings, sausages being fed into whatever the hell holds a sausage together etc.
Heres what I had for breakfast, its not what I asked for but its what I was given, the bread was actually delicious, very crunchy. The cake thing however, I bit into it and it was like biting into a balloon, it just collapsed into something 1/2 a centimetre high.
A sea of flowers.
Yeah, more flowers.
Hong Kong has followed me here with flowers.
This tree was pretty cool, I dont think it was planted for the exhibition though.
All over Taipei you find smoking booths like these. Get into your booth filthy smokers! Smoking is generally banned outdoors as well as in. So they put the smokers inside there special door so they dont pollute the outdoors, except where does the smoke inside their little room go?
I guess you can save on buying smokes and just stand in there and smoke everyone elses smoke.
More foodcourts at the flower fair, I think lots of people came here just to eat.
Not sure which country this area belonged to, it was probably the most impressive area but its not really a garden or flowers so much as a building.
Nearby on a hill is this enormous temple thing, I dont think you can get there easily.
There was a live puppet show to keep children entertained, the puppeteers were terrifying loud at screaming when their puppet was killed.
Heres the view at Danshui. I think across the other side of the ocean here is called Bali, but not the Bali we all know and despise.
Everyone enjoys a good boloking.
Danshui street scene 1 of 2.
Danshui street scene 2 of 2.
I decided to have lunch here, they were extremely happy to see me. Very grateful for my $2.
Some sort of noodle wonton soup was given to me, I pointed at the menu and was advised against the beef thing I wanted, and we eventually settled upon this.
Around Danshui is a maze of market streets, many undercover with pigs being butchered in front of you, and then next door to pig guts splashing onto the street is a temple like this. I can safely presume its not a mosque then.
Look closely, all around the place people like this ride on the back of busses with their entourage giving endless speeches on loudspeaker, just like Japan. This guy was waving like he had won.
Tonight I set off into the fancy shopping district.
Despite every little side alley and night market being chock full of people, the fancy shopping area was all but deserted.
It was all the regular chanel/gucci/louis vutton stuff that is of no interest to me, but I wonder how these shops are remaining open.
I did manage to get completely lost walking around the area, not really an issue you can navigate by Taipei 101.
So because theres not much to tell except for my dinner which the pictures will tell (this makes little or no sense) I will now take this opportunity to tell some stories from earlier in the day I neglected to include.
When I was riding the subway there was a small boy in a baby stroller, he was very happy and kept standing up in the stroller and bouncing up and down. His mother was repeatedly trying to get him to sit down, but he kept pulling his legs up out of the holes they go through and trying to climb out.
Eventually, the mother had had enough of this, and pulled the canopy all the way over the stroller so that all you could see of the baby was his legs. His legs soon disappeared again, I was watching intently at this stage inside the stroller there was a lot of commotion going on for a few minutes, then it all stopped. Had he suffocated?
Then, all of a sudden, his head popped out of one of the leg holes, and he had the proudest look on his face I ever saw.
Now for some language stories.
Whilst I was at the flower fair there were a lot of school children, and many of them would look at me and say Hello!
The game went like this each time
(child): hello!
(me): good morning, how are you today?
(child with confused look on face): ...........hello!
Now the other language story, each time I buy something, I assumed I was being spoken to in Taiwanese (Hakka I think its called), pretty much everyone say the same thing.
I have since worked out they are actually speaking english, and saying 'preciate', which is chinese for 'appreciate', which is short for 'we appreciate your custom, good day to you fine sir'.
Why they are taught to try and say appreciate rather than thank you, I have no idea.
A random furry beatles cover band was appearing inside a giant abandoned mall for no reason, playing yellow submarine, with dog barking noises for vocals.
Whilst we're on a dog theme, these dog grooming places are everywhere, theres competing franchises like 711/familymart is for humans.
Looking down inside a giant mall, with no people.
And this is the high end luxury goods outdoor mall, also abandoned.
I said I wouldnt post any more photos of the building, but I lied. I had no tripod and nowhere to balance my camera, so instead you get post modern neonist.
Heres my dinner, this is the national dish of Taiwan. Beef Noodle Soup. I loaded it up with chilli as well, it was delicious. My eyes were watering, it felt fantastic, the fire was quickly put out with a bubble tea afterwards.
Theres not a lot of big buildings in Taipei, due to earthquake concerns, but a few are popping up in the new taipei area. Plus you get some light streaming effect from long exposures for good measure. Now all I need is a waterfall and some fireworks for the cliche trifecta.