Last Friday I got a new apartment. I like it alot and we have it pretty well furnished. Both my roommate Leo and I got nice mattresses and box springs really cheap on a major sale at Ikea. We also got a few things off Craigslist.
Sunday night we were picked up by a shuttle at about 8:15pm. We arrived in our Singapore hotel 33.5 hours later.
On the way we had a 10hr layover in Taipei, Taiwan. At first we were upset about this but it ended up being great. We took the one hour train into Taipei with the help of a nice lady who translated for us. The tickets were only about 2 american dollars each way. We walked around Taipei for about an hour before we decided to try to find something to eat. It was 8am there time but felt like the middle of the day to us.
This is where is started to dawn on us that absolutely no one spoke English. We could not find any open restaurants but then saw alot of people waiting in line. Finally we decided that I was going to experience whatever they were eating so we got in line. I went first and when it was my turn, I pointed at the food that she had given the person in front of me just assuming it would be good. She didn't understand and we had no way to communicate. After a minute another lady working there brought me a menu that was in English. We pointed at what we wanted and got some delicious dumplings. Mine had pork and cabbage in it. Right next door there was another small bakery like place where I was able to use the point method and get a small egg quiche like thing(kind of sweet) and a slushy. All the food was delicious.
We walked around for a few hours just trying to see all that we could see. There were mopeds EVERYWHERE and driving crazy. We even saw two hit each other. The whole city seemed a little dirty and incredibly busy.
For lunch, it was almost impossible to find somewhere that had both food and chairs to sit. For four hours we had been walking with our carry-on luggage (my backbag was 30.5 lbs according to the airport.) We sat in a small place we finally found with chairs and food. There were two ladies making dumplings, and two other workers cooking and everything looked very authentic. We sat down and naturally our waiter who seemed to be the owner(only man working, in his 40s or50s) There were no menus in English, and the wall had all the items in prices but all in Chinese. I just pointed at a price I thought they would charge for what I wanted hoping it would be good. We made it apparent we spoke no Chinese and there was an awkward second where we kept trying to communicate anything.
Eventually, he went to the freezer, got out a dumpling and showed it to us. We all shook our heads and gave thumbs up and each got a delicious plate of dumplings. When the food came he pointed to the fridge and we all said yes, we would each like a coke because we saw those on the top row. He came back with 4 beers called "Taiwanese Beer" and there were no arguments. While we were eating there was a sort of buffet set up with plates of different foods set out for the apparent lunch rush to come. Being that I wanted to experience their food, I walked up and through a series of pointing let him know I would like one and chose what looked liked noodles. When I looked close enough, they had heads and tails. It was a plate of small fried minnow looking fish. They were delicious.
When we paid we decided to leave a tip since everything was so cheap. He didn't understand but we persisted. After this he brought us three more plates of various foods. Eggplant rolls, a salad that did not have dressing but ginger & herbs and prawn dumplings(amazing) that he put on the table and called "Special". The only English word we heard the hole time we were there. It was an amazing cultural experience and we left with lots of smiles and thumbs up. In total for about 24 american dollars we got 8 beers, 4 plates of beef dumplings, fried minnows, eggplant rolls, Taiwanese salad, and prawn dumplings.
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