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Published: September 8th 2009
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To all Neihu lovers please accept my apologies for the following. It was written when I had only recently arrived in Taipei and was still getting my bearings. The responses I've received to this post suggest that Melissa and I were not in fact in Neihu but in a neighbouring district. I'm not changing the title of the post as that would affect the authenticity of the blog but am willing to own up to my mistakes. Neihu I'm very sorry. It's Saturday and Melissa wants to go Neihu which is on the far north eastern section of the brown MRT line. I look it up in the Rough Guide. It's not mentioned, not even a passing reference. I try Wikipedia next. There are about four lines. It has a park and a temple. Melissa has zero interest in temples and apart from the possibility of taking a good photo, so do I. However she still wants to go. I suspect she's heard it's good for shopping. Let me take a second now to talk about Melissa's shopping as I really feel it's something that needs to be documented. As neither of us is blessed with a vast
amount of money she favours what I will politely describe as "pile-em-high" stores. These are generally tatty looking shops with an improbable amount of clothes crammed into an endless number of racks. Often in the middle of the store there is a section where the clothes are just piled up indiscriminately on a table and women gather there fighting like hyenas around a carcass trying to get the bargains. Asia is full of these awful places but she loves them and will pick through every single rack. I suppose time is irrelevant when you don't wear a watch. What makes it worse is that these shops are flanked by equally foul places so when she chooses to pop in I can't even make my excuses and tell her to meet me in the Apple Store and instead have to stand there like a plum until she's finished.
As you can see I'm not that excited about Neihu but there is a pizza restaurant so I'm happy enough to go there. We take the bus which is nice and easy and only takes us about fifteen minutes. We get off and we're right by the park. It's very pretty and there's
Lake footpath
Little did we know that carrying on down this path would take us into the armpit of Taipei. a fishing lake in it and I'm thinking that Neihu might be ok after all. Turns out we aren't really in Neihu yet. We start walking around and it's like being back on Geoje, the Korean island we were on together. There's a distinct Hick-town feel. Old men in string vests stroll down the middle of the roads. The buildings are shabby, there are almost no places to eat, certainly none you would want to go to. Neihu has only been connected to the MRT since July so it's not altogether a surprise that it's undeveloped and crap. I love the countryside, and I love the city but if you can imagine the worst aspects of both then you can imagine Neihu. We keep walking, and walking. Time ticks on and there's no improvement. We're a long way from the subway now. She's holding the map. I've had a few disasters with the map recently so I keep quiet. It's a tourist map which often puts major landmarks such as stations on the wrong side of the road so more often than not you end up going in the wrong direction. Eventually we run out of pavement and it starts to become dangerous as well as unpleasant. To make matters worse my flip-flops are chafing. After two hours of seeing nothing at all of interest or beauty we decide to try and get to the pizza restaurant . It's called Alleycats and there are 6 of them in Taipei. Alleycats is located on Section 5 of the road we're on but we're only on section 2. It's miles away and i'm amazed we've not had a row. We're both knackered, sweaty, hungry, dehydrated and without the slightest inclination to come back to Neihu. We jump in a cab and I dial the pizzeria and shove the phone at the driver. I've had it with maps and walking. The pizza turns out to be ok. If you had it back home you'd be disappointed but in my experience Italian food in Asia is pretty poor so I'm satisfied. We leave the restaurant and get straight in a cab, both of us delighted to escape.
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Mimi
non-member comment
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.