I really didn’t do anything today. My dad is still feeling a little under the weather, so we made no plans to go out, which is a little nice. I did venture out on my own to look around at a few of the farther rail stations, but didn’t see anything interesting. One of these days, I’m going to have to go out to find a geocache or two to plant these travel bugs. I did get some relaxing reading done during most of the day, which is fine by me.
After dinner, my uncle and I did go out to the famous Shilin night market. If there’s a polar opposite in touring styles to laoshi Shin, it’s my uncle. His english competency is about the same so touring usually breaks down to a brisk walk with pointing and some attempted communication in Chinese. Some of the times I know what he’s trying to say, other times I just nod and say “yeah”. He does get the idea when I want to stop and take a closer look at something, but there’s no way for me to convey any thought about what I’m looking for. For instance, I’m trying to locate an embroidered Taiwan flag patch, and saw a small airsoft store, but couldn’t convey to anyone what I was looking for. It’s a little frustrating, but sometimes I’ll come across a store clerk that can speak Engilsh. It’s a wonderful thing.
The Shilin night market is a crazy kaleidoscope of color, sights, smells, and sounds. I’m not sure if Friday nights draw larger crowds than other nights, but the place had a higher volume than all the other markets I’ve been to. There were areas for carnival-like games of chance, food courts where I swear I smelled stinky tofu (the other item on my no-eat list), and lots of male and female fashions, but mostly female. Any souvenir trinket you could desire could be found here, with the exception of my aforementioned patch. Glass baubles, jade jewelry, cell phone charms, items of every kind.
There was another small area where a local pet store set up their animals for sale. They sold baby chicks, cats, puppies, turtles, and fish. Nothing really exotic, but they did have one bulldog and what looked like two French Bulldog puppies.
We breezed through the market pretty quickly, which wasn’t too bad since I’m much to large to even think about trying on any clothes and I don’t think the fashions much suit me. Upon arriving back at the apartment, we were greeted with a very loud movie being projected on a small movie screen in the park across the street. I’m not sure how long it’s going to go for, but I doubt something like this would ever be able to happen in the States. My uncle said that when he was young, he would watch these old Taiwanese movies. I guess it’s some kind of community entertainment for the old people. I’ll just stick to reading my Nook.
No comments:
Post a Comment