We were greeted by the plaintive wailing of a fire engine as it hurtled into our tiny lane just ahead of us midweek on the way back from school. after a momentary panic until we assured ourselves it had stopped just short of our place we proceeded to watch the firemen swiftly and efficiently cut through the security bars on the apartment down the way (makes you wonder why anyone has them: they went through them like a hot knife through butter) and extinguished some kind of smouldering fire that was pumping smoke from the big silver kitchen vent. Check above photo for the ingenious way to get fire trucks down all these narrow nooks and crannies: just make them in miniature form...they're kind of cute!
This weekend was cold! We're not sure if it's the last hurrah of the long winter, but we hope it is. As is the way in Taiwan, the mercury drop is not quite as dramatic as the "real feel": the saturating humidity makes it a dank and unpleasant cold, seeping slowly through to the bone. It's certainly not as dramatic as a European sleeting cold, or a still, serene Japanese freeze, but in a lot of ways it feels so much colder. As Cassy often says, maybe we've, "Turned Taiwanese"!
We rugged up and glided down to Ximending on the MRT on Sunday. We changed at Taipei Main Station and took our usual off-shoot line, but unusually this time, we went west instead of east. The old suburb of Ximending grew up around the now razed west gate of the city and is known for the historic Red Theatre, along with the more recent attractions of KTV and movie theatres along with the plethora of stores and restaurants catering to the young people of Taipei. Many of these youngies are also trying to emulate the pop culture of Japan, so stores have an eclectic mix of fashion and trinkets and everything in between. If it's cute and crazy-trendy, you can find it (usually many times over!) in Ximending. One of the lesser publicised areas of the suburb, especially round the red theatre, is an enclave of shops and bars catering to the young gay population of the city, and we had an interesting experience here, which I'll save for a bit later.
We wandered the streets and found all sorts of weird and wonderful things to check out before eventually getting a little peckish and deciding to have lunch up on the 5th floor of one of the buildings in a side street. Cucina Italiano was a pretty standard set-style restaurant with a nod to all things Italian, but offering a fusion menu of Taiwanese/Italian and extras. It was crazy cheap and surprisingly delicious. After a set including salad, soup, main meal, dessert and coffee, we paid slightly less than $20 in total. For that you'd expect some lesser quality gear, but my dinner, for example, was exactly the opposite: spicy prawn fried rice with 7 large fresh prawns on top!
After lunch we drifted across to some market marquees that Cass had noticed being set up in and around the Red Theatre since we'd arrived earlier. All the stalls had great quality handmade stuff of one variety or another, but all of it was top quality. Unlike a lot of fare in the night markets, which can be cheap and tacky, these stalls were housed by real artisans. There were all sorts of one-off design T-shirts, soups, jewelry, artworks, lights, hair combs etc. etc. I tried on an amazing T-shirt, but even though it was extra-large, it was still a bit tight. I know, I'm huge! Seriously though, it caused quite a stir as I tried it on and tried to make it fit!
Drifting out the end, we wandered past shops with some seriously raunchy and graphic photos of impossibly well-toned and hunky men really getting it on. One such shop stocked an amazing range of men's underwear but also had a rack of Billabong board-shorts on sale outside. After trying on a pair in the miniscule curtained off area inside, I'm now the proud owner of two pairs of top quality, genuine board-shorts. The undies looked pretty good too: might get some of them next time!
Cass got herself some seriously hot high heeled suede boots at the local SOGO on the way home: she'd had her eye on them for a little while, but finally decided to take the plunge and get them. So, we had a little retail therapy, but most of all just enjoyed the day out in a very different part of town than the ones we usually inhabit. The excitement was all a bit too much for us later in the evening as we were both exhausted, again necessitating the late arrival of this blog: I'll try to get back on track next week, promise!
Photos: the fire drama and some of the sights from the streets of Ximending.