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And night life.

That’s been my impression of Taipei so far. Scooters everywhere. they easily out number the cars and on some streets there are zones right behind the intersection line for them so they cue up in front of cars (and buses) at the stop lights and go racing ahead. Most of the cars in the neighborhood I’m set up in are taxi’s, lots of buses. I’ve seen a more affluent area only a couple blocks from my hostel that’s got quite a lot of privately owned cars. The subway, the MRT, is great. if it weren’t for the fact that the last train runs a bit after midnight, it would have BART beat, hands down. It’s faster, cheaper, trains come more frequently, its cleaner. It doesn’t connect far-flung cities though, that’s a downside.

The night scene is amazing. In the night markets, people line the streets with carts selling anything from stinky tofu to pins. It’s a huge, crowded bustle with vendors on loud speakers seemingly carrying on timed conversations with each other is a magnificent rhythm that keeps them from overlapping each other’s pitches. Fruit is everywhere. Yesterday I tried a fruit called fire dragon melon. Fantastic.

The alleys are different. In SF, you’d never wander down strange, random alleys and lanes. Here, that’s where you find some of the sweet stuff. Carts, people, cafes, upscale restaurants are all to be found down alleys.

Food is cheap if you’re eating off of carts. A meal from a cart is about $2 USD, an upscale restaurant can easily be $15. A good coffee is about as much as a large bottle of water, about $1.

I’ve been getting a fair amount of stares, but humorously, the most critical gaze was from another white guy in the MRT station. Guess he thought I was gonna mug him or something. Apparently there’s a community of foreigners around the Power Building. I’ve seen other white people around, but they were quite concentrated in that area. Pauline said there’s a foreign language school around there.

Every day it seems I realize more friends in Taipei. People who know people who are generous enough to show me around a bit. The people at the hostel are all cool. In addition to the guy that runs it there’s a French fellow working on this Ph.D thesis, a couple of friends from LA, and just this morning I got a roommate from Japan. Since it turns out I know so many people in TPE and most everyone is so nice, it’d be pretty easy for me to convince myself to extend my stay a bit, but there’s that other side that wonders what surprises HK has in store.

More to come (and photos soon, I hope)