Night Out in Taipei

A random night out here in Taipei. We are living the high life! Without Jon, so it mostly consists of cut fruit in flimsy clamshells, noodles out of plastic bags, and this most recent late night out at a local park. We are in the Da’an neighbourhood, but this is, of course, just a tiny neighbourhood parkette, and not the actual central and large Da’an Park.

And in a crack between buildings: there’s a sliver of a glimpse of the famous Taipei 101, Taipei’s equivalent of the CN Tower, although there’s more fun things to do at the bottom of it, mainly consisting of a giant mall that has a McDonald’s and a Lamy kiosk. I have not actually been up Taipei 101 (in fact, I have also not been up the CN Tower) but I hear the view is pretty good. Isn’t that sometimes how it is? Real life in a grubby park, across from a MOS Burger, where you can just barely see the famous sites, sweaty and sticky and gleeful.

I’m terribly behind with the blog, in fact so behind it’s basically hopeless. The tsunami of photos on my phone, to translate somehow into something salvageable to be put online, is impossible to wade through. It’s not! It’s just me wallowing through a smaller tsunami of procrastination. I bob about. I will get there. Or maybe not.

In any case, we are mellowing ourselves into Taipei, melting into the heat and the rain and the crowds of people moving at varying speeds. The network of subways is magnificent, although we did, for the very first time, experience our first major delay the other day. It was strangely reminiscent of the TTC: lines of people backed up onto the escalators (although here they do this brilliant and novel move where they turn the escalators off so people don’t crowd onto the platform), no one really knowing what’s going on, the speaker going off and on about a “delay.”

Mostly we’re just hanging out and finding our groove, revisiting some familiar scenes. The kids plead and cajole for time in the parks at night, when the heat is slightly less oppressive, so even the mosquitoes can come out for a little jaunt. Who am I kidding! The mosquitoes seem to be jaunty at all times of day, so best to be prepared with the essentials of life.

More to come.