#LikeTheLocals - Day 3

#LikeTheLocals - Day 3

I learned my lesson last night when it took me about an hour and a half to write two blog entries, so I’m starting this one at 2:30 p.m. Unfortunately, this blog will just be me rambling about what I can remember from the day thus far, without much structure (sorry Mrs. Koops and Mrs. Brewer). 

This morning, my dad and I woke up at around 5 in the morning after going to bed at around 1 in the morning, so we didn’t get much sleep. The jet lag skipped a day and is hitting us hard now. We laid in bed for about 3 hours reading and watching the only 2 TV channels that spoke English: the US Open and a sumo wrestling tournament. I bet you can guess which one we spent more time watching.

We hoped to be sneaky and go up to breakfast (which is free, as my dad loves to remind me) around 9:30, because we stereotyped all Asians as early risers. Boy, were we right. There wasn’t much food left because so many people had come and gone, but luckily all the American-looking food was still there because apparently Asians avoid it like the plague. While we were eating, there was a rare White Tourist sighting, far outside their natural habitat. We saw FOUR white people in the span of 30 minutes! It was crazy. Breakfast was a diverse collection of bananas, watermelon slices, oranges, nectarines, hard-boiled eggs, knock-off American cereal, french fries, and chicken nuggest (autocorrect tried to spell it n-u-g-g-e-t-s, but according to the people of Taiwan, “nuggest” are the new thing).

In an effort to be more #likethelocals, we looked up grocery stores near us, and to our surprise, there was one right down the street! Even more to our surprise, it was underground! The people of Taiwan are kind of like gophers, digging under the city and expanding their colony. There is so much more to our street than what we first thought. 

Speaking of underground, we booked a tour with a local (in an effort to learn more about the culture to be more #likethelocals) and agreed to meet at the Taiwan Main Station for the metro/train at 11:30 a.m. To kill time while we waited, we walked around this GIGANTIC underground mall for around 3 hours because the tour lady canceled on us. Oh well. We had a lot of fun walking through all the shops (and converting how much money each item was in USD… it made us feel very intelligent and more #likethelocals because we knew how much we were actually spending). Despite walking around for 3 hours, the only thing we bought was some groceries from another store we found (!!!) and some colorful claw clips for my sisters. It’s funny how a simple purchase can make us feel like we can conquer the world. I was going to buy a pretty yellow sundress and a reusable bag, but my mom quickly vetoed both of my great ideas. She isn’t even physically here and she is still maintaining her fashion tyranny.

We finished up in the underground mall and realized that we were starving and still hadn’t had any authentic boba yet. I navigated through the streets with my dad in tow to a not-at-all-sketchy boba shop. After much pointing, grunting, and pantomiming, we (it was actually just me but I wanted my dad to feel as though he helped) successfully placed an order and got our first taste of authentic Taiwanese boba. It’s totally worth the hype. We were becoming more #likethelocals by finally trying some of their food.

After my dad had somehow managed to order us a somewhat edible lunch at a random restaurant down the street from our hotel (our first hot meal since we got here because all the food is either deep fried, covered in oil, or suspicious looking so none of it is very appetizing), we realized that a tragedy had happened. My dad had thrown away our only fork that we had acquired at Panda Express where we ate lunch before we left LAX. Forks are apparently a hot commodity over here, and spoons and chopsticks are totally overrated. So, I had to eat my food with a weird spoon thingy. Thanks a lot, dad. Not to mention that the food looked like a knock-off Panda Express meal and tasted like the smell of oil.

Side note: food is really weird here. We try to eat #likethelocals, but the locals have built up an immunity to the disgusting-smelling toxin that is oil. Everything here is bathed or deep-fried in this oil that you can smell from a mile away. It clings to you, too, as we learned the hard way after the night market last night when we came home and the smell of oil was stuck deep in our clothes. If it isn’t bathed in oil, it smells awful. I’ve read a lot of travel blogs about how bad the food smells but it still being really good, but my dad and I can’t be too close to the vendors without gagging. Oh well. There’s always McDonald’s and our newfound grocery store (I haven’t emphasized enough how stoked we were to find one because we would kill for some food that we actually recognize!!!). 

We were supposed to hang out for about 4 hours until we left for another night market (selling clothes this time), but we both fell asleep at around 4 and woke up Monday morning at 4 a.m. Fun times. 

Thus concludes day 3 (and the start of day 4 because I didn’t get the chance to post this blog before falling asleep).

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