lattie dah well lattie f-ing dah, you are from london and nyc...you must be soooooooooo civilized!!!! i'm from chicago btw, so i'm not nearly as cool as you are, ha ha. and btw, you were waaaaaaay off on the age. i've got enough years behind me to spot pretentiousness.
Chris, please read my recently added apology to Neihu at the top of the post. One day I'll get the map out and will try and confirm where the hell we were that day!
Neihu, the armpit of Taipei? You gotta be kidding. That would be YongHe or ChongHe. I've lived in Taiwan 10 years and worked in Neihu 4 years and find much of Neihu to be perfectly decent (by urban Taiwan standards). I agree it's nothing spectacular, but it's hardly an armpit. More of an elbow. Sorry you had a bad day.
Just Curious, KJ... If I go searching for a proper toilet in a bathroom full of squatters does constitute as disrespect to the culture? Should I go squat or go home?
KJ, The blog's author is my man, and I was there, and let me tell you a thing or two:
A) We've been living in Asia for a damn long time (not Chinese speaking Asia BTW) and are well within our rights to eat pizza without being called ethnocentric, myopic, or what have you, by some uppity, self-righteous, hypocritical 20 year-old staggeringly ignorant snot-nosed punk (yes, I can tell your approximate age by the outright assumptive and combative nature of your staggeringly ignorant response). We've also lived in Asia long enough to not get too excited about temples for a while.
B) We called Alleycat's and handed the phone to the driver for his sake as well as ours. We "shoved" the phone at him to speed things along, as we felt bad about sitting in the taxi not knowing where to ask to be taken and wanted to waste as little of his as well as our time as possible. It was not rude, and he certainly didn't have the same impression of us as you do. We were all laughs and smiles the whole way, like one big, happy fucking multicultural family.
C) You, my friend, are a giant douche for coming onto a site and assuming things about people, as well as for calling a complete stranger you know nothing about nasty names.
Just because you are from Kansas where everyone is sheltered, ethnocentric, and intolerant, doesn't mean the rest of the world is like that and you need to go around playing multicultural/tolerance/assimilation police.
We're from NYC and London, and speak several languages and have lived all over the world and among countless other cultures, so we don't need some coming of age corn-fed hick telling us how to conduct ourselves respectfully in a foreign land. Congrats on your escape from Whitesville, USA and your newfound worldliness, but you should probably get over yourself, lighten up, and get a sense of humor.
Stop being such a little douche.
Seem to have rattled someone's cage here. If you had bothered to read it properly you would have seen from the other comments that I actually have no idea where we did end up that day and have admitted as much. Also you would see that my bad mood was attributed just as much to our being lost, hungry and dehydrated as anything else. Incidentally I'm sure you're all sweetness and light in that situation. Had also only been here a matter of weeks when I wrote that so unsurprisingly hadn't mastered Chinese. I speak two other languages fluently and have no doubt that i will do in due course. If you managed it in a fortnight then hats off to you sir but don't attack the newbie. No i;m not particularly interested in temples but so what. I don't have to feign interest in every aspect of Taiwanese culture. I love the food, the people are great, the countryside is beautiful. Temples however don't rock my world and if I want to write it down I will. I also won't pretend that a place that looks like a crap-hole is all quaint and cute. No doubt you're one of those pretentious douches who has taken up Buddhism and Tai chi. And yes every now and then I do get a hankering for some western food, hence the pizza. I'm two months into my life in Taiwan now and like anyone else I'm having good experiences and bad experiences. You've decided to come on my blog to show everyone that you can write Chinese. Well done, you've assimilated well. Now sod off.
What a douche wow, what a douche you are. can you say grumpy old snob? neihu has some really great qualities if you'd get your self-righteous head out of your ass and looked. you're in taiwan right? maybe look for some things that are not italian. hmmm, no interest in temples? good thing you choose taiwan to live in. i'm from the U.S., but i often wonder why so many western douche bags like you even come to asia. i'm sure you "shoved the phone at the driver" at the driver because all you can say in chinese is 你好 and 謝謝, and i'm sure you didn't even say the latter after insulting the driver. douches like you need to go back to the west, or get some class and learn the language and culture, and more importantly, be respectful of it. douche bag 101.
Hi,
I actually went to Shillin for the first time today and it looks a really nice area. The night market is in fact at Jiantan, which is one stop futher south on the MRT. Shillin-Ximending is a really easy journey. I think you could do it in 15-20 minutes. Just one change at Taipei Main Station. To Taipei 101 would take longer, maybe half an hour to the City Hall MRT station but this really isn't a big city and it's easy to get around. As for somewhere to stay there seem to be a lot of hotels both upmarket and medium priced all over the place. The eastern part of the city is more modern than the the older western area if that's any help.
Bizarre museums There are many bizarre museums in Taiwan, and I'm sure some are crappy while others are fascinating for their tackiness. There's the Dried Bonito Museum, the Sons of Sanzhi Museum, Taiwan Salt Museum, the Postal Museum, the Crab Museum, ...
Location After went through your Taipei blog, i'm very keen to visit taipei. Its interesting reading your blog.
The problem is i dont know which area is the best to have accomodation. Any recommendation? I planning to stay in Shilin area due to the shilin night market but also heard ximending is a good place to stay (happening place). Confusing now, lol.
By the way, how far from shilin to taipei 101 and aslo from shilin to ximending?
more crap There's a Museum of Cakes and Pastry near where I live in Shilin -- signposted from Exit 1 of the metro station. I've never been bored enough to check it out. And if you're serious about crap museums you probably need to track down the Museum of Fishballs (yuwan bowuguan) in Danshui which deserves legendary status if it's for real. I saw a photo of it on a blog once.
Hi. Yeah it was fantastically uninteresting.
BTW I credited your food blog in an earlier post. It was like a bible for us when we first arrived. Keep up the good work.
Haha. I have a feeling that the really bad bit we were in wasn't actually Neihu but somewhere close by. We had to take a taxi from there to get to Alleycats. Have since met a couple of people who live in Neihu who claim it's ok too. I'm not entirely sure then where we ended up that day. Somewhere between Jiannan rd and Neihu MRT stations is my best guess. Sorry if i made you panic.
Don't tell me that- now that it's too late! This is a little bit of info a little too late as I just moved to Neihu a couple of weeks ago (straight from California), about a 1-1/2 block away from the Alleycats you've mentioned (haven't tried it yet, I am waiting until I get really desperate for western food). Yes, the distances and direction on sec. 5 is confusing as hell since the road goes in a loop of sorts. However, it can't really be that bad here right? Really hope it's not the backwaters...Arrggg...
PS- I am guessing that you didn't take the closest MRT station to get here since the closest one is only 1-2 blocks from Alleycats. Also, you may want to know that the couple of restaurants next to Alleycats on the main road of section 5 is decent. One of them is an all-u-can-eat meat grilling place, yum. Just in case you ever make it out this way again, LOL.
I've decided to move to Taiwan to teach English. After 15 months teaching in Korea where i met my American girlfriend Melissa we both felt a change of scenery would be fun and agreed on Taiwan. Neither of us know mandarin, neither of us have a job lined up and neither of us know what to expect or how long we're going to stay.... full info
Forts
travellingaristocrat
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas KJ.