Not another Tienmu restaurant biting the dust! We went out on Friday evening ready to taste the Thai delights available at the Orchid and the Elephant on Tienmu East Rd. only to find the ominous red sign with black characters drawn asking for a new tenant. Why, we asked ourselves? This was great authentic Thai food served in beautiful clean and tasteful surrounds: it always seemed packed and popular. Well, I suppose we hadn’t been for a few months either. Taipei residents are so spoiled for choice in eating establishments and very, very unforgiving for those that charge what they feel is a premium. The poor restaurateurs must have such a low margin, I don’t know why anyone gets into it. Anyway, we went off to “Bird”, but the sign was off and no-one seemed home so we scootered off to the west to find the “heard of, but never been to” Thai Town. Bad move! We couldn’t find it in the maelstrom of Friday night traffic so made our way back to ye ole faithful Café India, where we enjoyed an absolutely mouth watering array of Indian delicacies.
Saturday’s lazy morning passed pleasantly as we fired up the coffee maker and ate raison toast and pancakes while enjoying lots of news from home via Herald clippings which we’re still receiving with great glee on a regular basis from Mum. Cass had arranged with her friend Kathy to visit the megalithic Taipei Jade Market (which Mum would also remember!) to have a look for some items. She went and saw her sapphire man, Kumar, but was disappointed in his lack of wares and lack of prospects for any more under a reasonable price. They also went to the adjoining flower market which is modeled after the jade market and is on the same gargantuan scale. How individual stallholders make a go of it is perplexing to say the least: perhaps they used to be restaurateurs! Cass arrived home with no gems (unusual!), but with an exquisite orchid instead, which we’ll try to keep alive as long as possible, neither one of us claiming to have anything remotely resembling a green thumb! I went off with Carl at midday to find the elusive expressway route to Wanli. We threaded our way through some traffic mayhem at Neihu before seamlessly sluicing onto the number 1 expressway north. From here, we went through the tollgates before transferring to expressway 3 and then exited at Wanli. “Backdoor Benny” style, we then traveled the last few Ks of the mountain road to the sea and popped up at Green Bay. Hurrah, we’d done it! We had a surf at the Rocket, not much good, but we managed to attract quite a crowd unfortunately. On the way home we missed the Neihu turnoff and experienced a few nervous moments in the guts of Taipei, but we made it out alive!
Sunday was almost a déjà vu of Saturday. The same lazy brekky followed by various plans, which all ended up being shelved as the sun came out again. We decided to take the mountain road to the activity centre at Jinshan. It was big and wild and even though we were expecting nice warm weather and had optimistically brought the beach umbrella, it was a little chilly and overcast. We ended up at the Rocket after checking Green Bay. It was pretty big and wild, but I went out by myself, safe in the knowledge that Carl was just a few minutes behind us. It proved to be really big and wild, but thoroughly enjoyable and I managed to get a fair few good waves. The best thing is, I just love the crowds here: when it gets above about 4 foot on the set, most of the local boys just don’t want to know!
We had a great weekend, topped off by finally finding the last few episodes of Australian Idol on an unexplored torrent site. I’ve dutifully downloaded same and we’ll have our Sunday dinner watching them, just as if we were at home. This overseas life is not all hardship(!) Photos: Cass with goods, Dave on a Rocket wave, Dave’s new fish and Cassy not too sure about Dave’s lovely new “hair”!