day 9

Christmas Day! Although it didn't feel like it. No snow etc. We wandered around Banciao for a bit, discovering that a christmas tree had appeared overnight by the Hi-Mart, and early that afternoon we took the MRT into Taipei.

when we arrived in taipei, i had this glorious plan to drop off our bags at my dentist cousin's office before going to the taipei 101, but.... plans were ruined after an experience with this asshole taxi driver. so we got in and i said to go to "jie long lu" (jie long road) at the crossroad with the night market. however, my chinese isn't THAT good, so i didn't know how to say everything with all the roads and whatnot. believe it or not, this dumbass yelled at me! i'm the CUSTOMER. a PAYING customer! AND A FOREIGNER. AND A TEENAGER. jeez. so he said "hey, it's not like all taxi drivers know every single road." for pete's sake you are a TAXI DRIVER. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THE ROADS. so yeah i offered for him to just take us to jie long road and we'd search ourselves, and in a very bad tone he replied "it's like 6 km long, you're going to search for it yourself?" so i got really pissed off and just said "fine. just take us to the frickin taipei 101." so he did and we left without saying goodbye. GOOD RIDDANCE.

Ok. So yeah, then we went into the Taipei 101...the tallest building in the world. It's filled with the most expensive designer stores... Prada, Gucci, Dolche and Gabbana...you get the picture. We didn't really go into much, because obviously we don't have that much money (sadly). Although we did have fun looking at the jewelry at Tiffany's. Then we went up to the observatory via the fastest elevator in the world, 101 meters per minute, up to the 89th floor. It was a bit cloudy, so we couldn't see all that far, but you could still look over the entirety of Taipei. We took the listening tour, and when it got dark the whole city was lit up and it looked really cool.

my favorite is watching the little teeny cars. anyway, we decided it was time to eat dinner so we went down to the basement where the food court is. it's HUGE. i've never seen a larger selection of foods in one food court. we walked around in a circle about 2.5 times before settling on what to eat. kari had a japanese thing.. something-don. anyhow i sampled some and it tasted really good. it was a rice bowl (well like cauldron) with fried eggs and onions, then over that was chicken. it came with a soup hotpot. and mine? EVEN LARGER. holy crap, okay. i had a sizzling plate of spicy pepper beef with onions and bean sprouts with some tofu and egg on the side, then a bowl of rice, a bowl of veggies, and a bowl of soup. it was so good, but way too big.

Side note: All the places in the food court have plastic representations of the food they serve...so bowls of plastic shrimp, chicken, etc. in glass cases. Which I thought was kind of funny. Ok back to Steph.

i always get really thirsty here, because instead of a drink to quench your thirst, everyone has hot soup. and i'm just not used to it, i need something cold to wash down my meals. so right behind me was a fruit smoothie shop that looked so delish, so we got a papaya milkshake. SO GOOD. it was seriously, so so good. afterwards i looked at kari and then we decided to get another drink. hehehe. so then we got a kiwi slushie, which was also really amazing. i love fruit!!

By the way, we're splitting almost everything here because the portions are so huge. It's rare when we don't. But it's STILL so much food...we both still end up really full.

After leaving the Taipei 101, we met up with Steph's dentist cousin and he took us to his apartment, where we were to spend the night. After hot showers, we went down to the movie theater in his basement to watch Pirates 2..which Steph hadn't seen yet and I've seen twice. Haha. So we finished watching at about 3 in the morning, and went to bed. Merry Christmas.