Vietnam

Still need to write about our last day in Taipei, but we have arrived in Vietnam. And I just watched He's Just Not That Into You for the second time this week. Its good.
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Forgot

I hate writing these on my phone... Anyway--- Claire is a really skinny tiny little girl and all she did was complaing about how fat she was. She is maaaaybe a 00. Maybe smaller. We had to basically get her an intervention. And then she doesn't care about calories when she's doing shot after shot at the club!

Oo and at the biggest night market in taiwan, we saw super cute cats! Asia-style cats that were so well behaved! They'd sit on the shelves of the store and let people pet them and love them. I loved that store. At that same place this crazzzzy man started talking to us. He was definitely way strange and out there. We gave him the name Barney since he didn't know his American name. He said I looked like drew barrymore. I swear I don't see it and don't know why people say that! I almost convinced him she was my mom though.

Beds are uncomfortable here. Well, the first few nights were fine but ojce we got to claires... Ow. One side of the mattress is normal, for winter. Then you flip it to the side with a bamboo mat to keep you cool during summer. I literally have bruises on my hip bones, elbows, knees, any where bones stick out and touched that thing is sore. Plus claire only had a fan. Aha so interesting....
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If I See One More Mall...

Taichung is soooo hot.
There are so many huge gigantic beast malls everywhere and apparently Claire and Annie spend most of their lives there. We went to two Thursday. Here's what you do: start at the bottom and literally go to each of the 10+ floors and walk in a circle and look at weird clothes that are oddly overpriced and then do it again. It seems like no one is even buying anything, it's just a zombie-like ritual to stay cool. My feet are killing me from going to the mall. We did find some little popper toys and decided to take them into a bathroom and pop them. We thought there'd be a prize inside but instead the four of us together sounded like an explosion and we all ran out pretending like nothing happened. Leave it to the Americans to make their Chinese friends look crazy.

There was a Japanese market on the bottom floor pretty similar to little tokyos market except the size of whole foods. Alyssa got a ton of candy and I decided to try a little thing of sushi. My thought process was that market sushi in taiwan must be better than market sushi in LA because even though both aren't fresh, Japan is closer to Taiwan so the fish should have arrived first! ...it tasted like ralph's sushi. Oh well.

It started to rain while we were in the mall and we knew this because the mall actually announces it over loudspeakers. So we had to postpone our trip to a different night market and instead went and hung out at Claire's boyfriend's apartment. Ok, her boyfriend has been in Taichung 9 months studying Chinese. He is from Panama and they have to speak chunks of each language to have a convo. Alyssa and I actually had to ride in a taxi with him to the mall that morning because he had some errands to run. He is leaving to go home (should have left last night) and didn't even have a ticket yet? Plus he looked so Euro trashy and was kind of an asshole. But the best part was that he was carrying around a big gold bag with his dog inside.

We eventually had dinner at a place called pig house with good chicken. We had to teach the girls what Happy Ending meant since there was a huge sign on the wall. The place was good and apparently a secret since its down a really sketchy street off the main road that no one can find. But the place was reallly nice and well decorated. I was almost worried. Almost.

Anyway--- this day was pretty uneventful until the evening. Then the shit hit the fan and grew wings and attacked every living life form within 3 miles. I will keep it short and say that there is a reason I don't go to clubs. Bad things happen. Especially when you are the sober one. This place gave out round after round of free shots. In a matter of minutes everywhere was completely gone. Actually, the Chinese guys were all passed out. We took pictures. it was strange. I was sooo tired and still with my bad cold I've had all week so I didn't really enjoy the cigarrette smoke and fog machines destroying my healing throat. When we were walking in, the bouncer said Alyssa had to put one of her things in a locker outside, so she runs around the line waiting outside and steps onto a "tile walkway" which was actually just a designed waterway thing. So we was just standing there in the water yelling out my name like she was drowning or something. I almost passed out from laughing so hard and everyone must have thought she was insane. there. Annie had put alyssa'a bag of japanese candy and shoes into a locker and hadn't kept the key by accident. I paid 15 bucks to get a locker broken into to find her stuff but unfortunately we guessed the wrong locker so we still don't know where her stuff is. But who cares about that, on our way home in the taxi we realized alyssa's wallet wasn't there. After an hour of freaking out (everything was in it)... We found it and the world was right again. Now she's only forgotten her shoes and umbrella so she's getting a lot better! Just kidding.

We went to bed at 4:30am. We had woken up that morning at 6am. We were tired.

Oh, I tried uploading pictures to flickr but I couldn't stay awake to wait so hopefully the computers at the hotel in Saigon will work fine for it and not be too expensive!
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Racial-Profiled

I'm living through real-life racial profiling because of swine flu. This is so funny. I'm American, so if I cough, or don't, or wear a mask, or don't.... I'm giving you a virus. Watch out!
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I'm a retard.

I can't spell or write.
I'm a fob and not use to typing a crap load on a blackberry.

Uhhh I don't care, I'm tired.
Blah
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Taichung! Not thailand stoopid.

HEY HEY its not jessie, its uuhhhlliiissa so you might ready my fobby-ness.

So day 3 and we woke up to get ready for our adventure to Taichung. Jessie and I took a bullet train, superfast ride only 30 minutes. Right as we taxied from the train station to Jessie's friend CLAIRE's aparment and got out we immediatly felt the difference in temperature. SUPERR HOTT. The only thing is.. we gave the taxi driver the address to her place and instead of dropping us off at her house, he left us at some university. Long story short we mad friends with this boy named JACKIE and helped Claire find where we were.
She finally found us, but they way we had to get to her place was through a SCOOTER!!!!!!! OOHH EEMMM GGG!! We were freaking out! The three of us had to fit on ONE scooter. Ummmm not gonna happen. So... Jackie offered to drive one of us. And lucky girl was me! oh soo scary, but it was actually fun.

After we got settled in her place, we meet up with ANNIE, and got taiwanese "shaved iced" yummie. You choose your toppings like, apple jelly, pinapple jelly cut into the shape of stars, boba, red bean etc. Once we were done we went over on a quest to find jessie some lime juice. We found it! But through difficult translation, the lady vendor wouldn't sell the juice to us without water cause she thought it was weird and didn't know how to price it. Hmm... Off to the grocery store we go I guess. Finally some lime!

The four of us scootered over to the department store and walked around the mall. (Jessie knew this was bound to happen cause people walk around malls cause its so freakin hot!) We played in an arcade. Basketball, a punching strength game and won tickets. We attempted to redeem our prize but we didn't have enough to get a little pen. We had 27 tickets n you needed 30 so we tried giving it to one little boy and the mom didn't want it. So we walked over to these two teenage boys, but when I handed it to him he started speaking CLEAR ENGLISH, jessie and I were AMAZED and thought it was bizzare. After we looked at over priced clothes from the US and europe and went to the best BOBA place in the city. It was really good. Boba and milk tea.

The "night market" opens at 2 pm so we walked over and saw a plethora of AMAZING clothes, jewelry, toys, and fooooood. The new trend over her is BOWS. Cute boys for your hair. OH and when people ride their scooters they wear masks because of pollution. Girls wear supper cute ones with designs and patterns and at the night market we found tons of masks! We had to buy one!

For lunch we ate squidballs and dim sum (Pictures will be up, no worries) and drank yummmie watermelon juice. Jessie ate some pineapple, but didn't like it very much. Said that it was "too warm, maybe old or something" haha.

Weiird! We saw these two european metrosexual boys in TAIPEI the other day and then we saw them at the night market in Taichung! Jessie started to freak out laughing. It was pretty weird.

So we scooter back to claires apt, while Jessie napped. As for I went over to Claire's new apartment to chill and watch taiwanese television. (I guess sponge bob is super popular here) I met Claires male friend, he didn't have an american name so I gave him one. We went through a list of names and he liked the name RYAN, but I'm not sure he can even pronounce it properly. In the time jessie was a sleep, CLAIRE was showing me here blog. He backround image was "Blake lively and leighton meister", so I casually said, jessie and I went to high school with Blake. Annie and Claire, I kid you not, started to SCREAM, because their favorite show is Gossip Girl. We left Ryan's apartment and stopped by another night market on the way home.

Bbq chicken butt was one of my favorite foods at thhe night market, alongside the fried quail egg on a stick!! We played games. One game was a ring toss, you throw the ring into a vast amount of lined up goodies, toys, drinks, bobbel heads, etc. And whatever you got you get to keep. I saw bunnies!! and a hedgehog, a white one! I was tired at this point and wanted to join Jessie at SLEEEPIINNG! So I said "goodnight world zZzzZZzz"
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Second day in taipei

(Hey, that rhymed!)

So we woke up and took the subway to the end of the line to a city called danshui. Alyssa can't pronounce it for the life of her. The clouds made the view pretty terrible... Most pictures online are at sunset with beautiful colors and boats floating in the water. This kinda looked like the salton sea during the apocalypse. Instead of walking by the water we chose to wander around the streets and are glad we did because they had really fun shops and food stands. Our first drink we tried was a tea drink with jelly and these tapioca balls that looks like fish eggs. We thought that was weird so we went ahead and drank some. It was ok, nothing special. (Later we asked James what the drink was and he told us that those weren't tapioca balls, they were fish eggs. We were like whhhhhhhhhhhhhattttt?????! I mean, they tasted fine so whatever. Then LATER my Taichung friend Claire explained that they aren't actually frog eggs, they're pieces of passion fruit that look like eggs so they call it that. As long as there aren't baby tadpoles swimming inside me, I'm fine.)

We had to try one of the gigantic frozen yogurts they offer that range from maybe 8in to over a foot tall. Yah, all "That's What She Said" jokes aside, they weren't horrible. They don't use milk in them so it was rather strange. Plus they just looked... Awkward.... Especially when you saw couples walking around: the girl always had a small and the boys ALL had larges.

Then we shopped at some trinkety shops and bought some cute things. Taiwan admires Japan so they offer a lot of the same items or attempt to at least. OHHH then we found a purikura!!! (Can't remember the Chinese name, just Korean) and took supah cute pix!! For those who don't know its a photobooth where you can decorate the pictures after. We have some from Ktown and now have legit ones from Asia! That was fun especially since it was just like ktown- we couldn't read anything and the owner didn't speak english and just kept saying he liked our designs ahaha.

When we got back to the downtown area we wandered around their version of times square which personally wasn't that much fun. There was a big Harry Potter ad though, that was cool. We tried some noodles that weren't that great and went to another place where Alyssa got alfredo pasta! What a freak.

Then we headed back home for our afternoon nap so we would have enough energy for the night market. We went with Leslie who luckily got work off, and James met up with us. Since it was a Wednesday there weren't too many people so it was nice. Plus the weather is a bit cooler at night (not much). Oh we kept noticing people burning things outside their shops and found out its like ghost money for their ancestors. We just thought it was annoying because the ashes kept getting all in our faces.

Alyssa bought 100 things at the night market. Oh shoes run so small here they usually don't even have a 7 and a half for me! So sad. There were lots of people to watch and it was real funny when they'd see me and try to speak english.

Um my hand hurts. I really need to find a computer next time. Alyssa will fill you in on our first day in taichung. We should be able to upload pictures Saturday morning (Friday night for you people...)

PS... You'll know when Alyssa blogs because she writes like a FOB!
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Safety

What makes absolutely no sense is that people here are sooo health concious. They have disinfectant every 2 feet, everyones wearings masks, yet they let their one year olds ride on their laps on their scooters with out helmets. Very strange.
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Just a Doggy Poo

Alyssa and I are on the train back from Danshui and we realized we forgot to talk about this movie we watched at Leslie and James' house called Doggy Poo. They saw it somewhere and had to buy it. When we get back we will show a picture of it. Ok this movie was dubbed in English and is about a dog that poos on the road and all these animals and leaves and things (cute cartoon versions) tell him how stupid he is because he is "just a doggy poo". Then this mound of soil falls off a wagon and has this southern black man accent and the poo and the soil talk about life and death and then its gets into religion. You'd think it would be funny but it ended up being a really depressing film where pretty much the whole time the doggy poo is crying and has to deal with his friends dying. And the southern black man piece of soil was pretty amazing.
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QUARANTINE

So guess what? All of my fears were confirmed when we walked through the fever scan and the Taipei officials said I had a fever. I've been checking for a week, so how is it that in a matter of 14 hours I go from a completely normal temperature to 100 degrees? SO they made me where one of those masks... yes they did... and I had to fill out a form because they are probably going to watch my every move in this country. Alyssa just kept laughing and taking pictures, so nice of her. As soon as we walked away I removed the mask, but everyone in this country where's them so I would look more like a local if I did wear them. Oh wait, I forgot I am a white girl with red hair--- every single male in this country smiles at me for extended periods of time, even while motorbiking around sharp turns. How they do it is quite a feat.

Backing up the flight was horrible with HOURS of straight turbulence the guy from the Phillipines next to me who had never flown so far before saying with every bump, "Jesus, oh Jesus... Jesus... Oh, oh Jesus" making things so much better. There was also a Chinese woman, the same one who kept speaking to Alyssa in Chinese and either offering her a newspaper to read or saying she looked like the girl on the cover, who was praying really loudly. At first I thought maybe she had a bluetooth but that doesn't make sense 36000 ft in the air. Nope, just prayers... or else she was talking to some invisible person. Who knows. Also, our Chinese porridge came with this package called Tuna Flavored Floss. We were like, what the hell?! It's actually just tuna flakes and seasoning to give the porridge more flavor. The porridge itself was rather odd, with fish flakes and bones I believe... still not sure.

Yesterday was difficult to get used to the time difference. But Leslie insisted we try to stay up until 8 or 9pm. We went out to Taipei, taking a very nice bus from right outside Leslie and James' house, straight into downtown, and then rode the subway from there. Everything is very straight forward because even though people speak Chinese, the signs and announcements are all in English. Taipei is a lot easier to get around than NY, that's for sure.

Alyssa and I went to the 101 building just to do it. It was pretty boring to be honest. I mean, it's not the world's tallest building anymore so what is so exciting, huh? It was cloudy so the view wasn't great but at least the elevator ride up was entertaining, with like a rave show on the ceiling and lasting only a few seconds, climbing dozens of floors.

So far all the food has been delicious. We went and ate at the best dumplings restaurant in Taipei with Leslie's Chinese counter-part, Miyona. We had pork, shrimp, veggie, spicy pork in sauce, bamboo with a sweet mayonnaise, and endless Oolong Tea. For dinner we went over to a beer house near Leslie's house in Nhan Kan and had clam soup, eggplant and basil, lamb in a delicious sauce, and a Taipei dish called 3-cup tofu which was awesome. Right now I'm eating breakfast and it is this like, Chinese burrito I guess? Strange... rice wrapped around pickled veggies, a Chinese doughnut which isn't like a doughnut at all, and a hard-boiled egg. Not my favorite, that's for sure. The milk tea that came with it is delicious, which Marie will be happy to hear because I normally don't drink it but it is much lighter here in Taiwn. It is the international drink, anyway.

Oh, very funny TV commercials and advertisements around town, of course. At the subway stopped we watched a commercial about a sanitary napkin that literally makes you fly. Slow motion shots of the girl's butt were also involved as she jumped up and onto a bike seat. Very cute.

Although it takes 20 minutes to get into town from their house, it's a really nice area with food everywhere late into the night. And yup, you can smell that stinky tofu from blocks away. I will probably try that on Saturday once we get back from Taichung. Alyssa wants to blog a bit so hers will be up next! Oh we slept mostly the rest of the day and night. So so tired and jet lagged. Pictures will be up later today.

Pooh bear suit

The beginning of all the really cute asian children we will encounter. Right after we took this he covered his head with a suitcase.
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On our way

See you in taipei!
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For Your Info

I'll try my best to document our travels as entertainingly as possible. It will work basically like my Europe blog but probably with less frequent posts depending on access to computers and whether or not my hands can handle typing them out on my Blackberry.

This time around, however, I won't be in a pack of 30 girls and a cowboy from across America to make fun of, so I can only really make fun of Alyssa. (Just kidding Alyssa... kind of).

Right now the pictures are obviously from my Europe trip last summer but the Flickr feed will be updated as I take pictures in Asia.

Anyway, wish us luck. At least we know we won't get Typhoid Fever. And hopefully the body scan at the Ho Chi Minh airport doesn't say we have swine flu, or you probably won't be seeing us again for a while.