Pig Pig Donuts: It's The Best Day of My Life

Sportsws:
How can a guy like me who's been in this
dirty the better half of my life live a clean life?
I was suppose to either end my life sick with no money.

For those of you who have never been to Asia this saying might not mean much to you. Even if your experience with this is only through websites like Engrish.com, I have to say there is nothing like seeing it first hand. This is only a small example or sampling from what is very common here in Taiwan.

We arrived in Taipei, Taiwan at 5:30 AM on Friday morning enduring a short 13 hour flight and losing almost an entire day to the curve of the Earth. After an hour wait in the customs line we met up with our driver and suddenly we were off into the city of Taipei. To my surprise the traffic was light and the streets were clean. Much of what I had remembered and expected to see simply wasn't there.

Katie and I were dropped off at our first hotel concisely named: Chein Tien Youth Hostel and Activity Center. Since we had arrived so early in the morning our room wasn't ready, in fact we had almost 8 hours to kill before we could get in. So the adventure begins...

We left our luggage in the lobby and made our way out into the city for the first time on our own. The humidity here is amazing. Coupled with the tropical sun and 90 degree temperatures, the heat index often goes above 105 degrees. Needless to say we were quite grumpy and covered with sweat after only a few minutes of walking. Luckily we managed to find a gas station selling bottled water (the tap water in Taiwan is undrinkable), bearing the name: "Ionic Water". You see Ionic Water is special, the label on the bottle informed us that "we need trace minerals!" Slightly refreshed and..er...mineralized, we pressed on.

The day was dominated by one simple task: Finding food. We walked for miles and by miles I mean kilometers in search of a mythical place called the "Taipei Underground Mall." After several hours of searching, reading and misreading maps and being helped by a very kind local we found the mall we sought. The "mall" was in no way a "mall" that one would find in the U.S. It was rather a series of underground tunnels with occasional vendors selling things we really didn't need: This was the Taiwan I remembered. After scurrying through the labyrinth of tunnels and electronics stores we found a place to eat. We pointed at the picture of a chicken on rice and the gracious host gave us the best part of the chicken: the fat (and some chopped bones). Needless to say we ate only the rice and went back to the hotel (via train which was AMAZING) and settled for a dinner of Coke Zero and instant noodles ($1.75 total).

We woke up on our second day with a new resolve. We took a taxi to the "Golden China"--the hotel we will be living at for the next 9 days and were pleasantly surprised to find our room ready after only 30 minutes of waiting. Things were looking up. The pains of hunger began to gnaw at us again and we decided to venture back into the city. We took the train to Taipei 101 (the tallest completed building in the world) and were shocked to find a massive basement floor full of food.
The building itself is beautiful and later on this week we plan on going to the top to take pictures. At this point we were distracted by something else, something far more fascinating, frightening, unexpected and sinister: The Disney Channel's High School Musical Dance Tryouts. There really are no words to adequately describe this but I will do my best.

Imagine if you will an infectious tune. You know, a tune that gets stuck in your head and nothing, absolutely nothing you do can drive that tune from your head. Now imagine that the song wielding that tune is being played repeatedly. Not twice in a row, but rather let's say twenty times in a row. What made this bearable was that upon each playing of the song, there was a dance routine performed by some of the cutest Chinese kids you have ever seen.


It was pretty funny and a nice introduction to the Taiwanese obsession with dancing and performance.

We watched 5 or 6 routines but couldn't bear the heat any longer and began the trek home. Thankfully the trains are air conditioned and immaculately clean. In fact we discovered you not allowed to eat or drink once you are on them or you will be fined heavily. This system of trains (which did not exist when I was in Taiwan), is a testament to the Taiwanese resolve to see things always improved and effective. This is something we have seen in other areas of the city as well, and though we have only been here a few days, we have already begun to admire the Taiwanese people.

Tomorrow we will begin our training so we stopped by an infamous Taiwanese stationary store to get supplies...