Ximending is vibrant at night. Photo / 123RF
The capital of Taiwan shows its true colours during an evening wander for Eli Orzessek.
I'm lost. Walking down a dark alleyway in Taipei late at night, I see three guys warming their hands around a fire burning in a metal bin " their amused expressions are illuminated by the glow of the fire and directed squarely at me as I pretend to know exactly where I'm going.
Finally I'm getting the "back streets experience" that I've been yearning for, while feeling every inch the tourist, complete with lots of shopping and a big camera bag. I don't even feel vaguely unsafe though, muggings are supposedly quite rare here.
Taipei is a city of contrasts, rough around the edges with a shiny, modern centre that dazzles the eye.
Driving into the city in our tassel-curtained tour bus, I marvel over rows and rows of apartment blocks, lining the freeway like formalist sculptures. I spot an ornate Ferris wheel with a sunburst centre, piles of IT recycling, a golden swan on top of a garage surrounded by car wrecks. There's great beauty in all of this glorious shabbiness.
As the city approaches, the silhouette of the Taipei 101 skyscraper comes into view. It's the tallest and largest green building in the world, a marvel of quake-proof engineering at 508m.
On an organised tour, time alone becomes valuable, so I decide to stay out late-night shopping in Ximending, a happening and fashionable area frequented by local teens who congregate under the neon lights.
Despite its youthful inhabitants, it's in an older area of Taipei, the cobblestone streets packed with shops hawking crazy fashions.
The smell from stalls selling the aptly named stinky tofu might assault your nostrils at any turn.
It's also home to the famous bathroom-themed restaurant, Modern Toilet, which boasts 12 branches throughout Taiwan and overseas. My group eats there and not everyone is as blase about eating out of a toilet bowl as the locals are.
The food is fairly unremarkable. It's really about the experience of sitting on a toilet at a bathroom counter while you eat chocolate soft-serve curled up like a turd. For an additional TWD$50 ($2.34) you can have your beverage served in a urinal - it's an especially effective illusion if you go for the lemon iced tea.
When I decide to strike out on my own that night, it's about an hour and a half until the shops close at 11pm. I want to get a haircut and a tattoo - Ximending has a whole "Tattoo Street", a back alley lined with slightly rough but cool-looking cheap tattoo joints.
I've been seeing Peanuts stuff everywhere around here and even visited a Snoopy-themed exhibition, so I've decided to get Charlie Brown's 1950s-era face somewhere on my arm. But I'm running out of time. Everything's starting to close around me and I can never seem to find my way back to places I checked out five minutes earlier.
The thrill of it all - the independence I yearned for, the bright lights, the insanely fashionable kids - leaves me light-headed. Plus I keep running into that damn stinky tofu, which I'm told is a delicacy. I'm keen to try anything, but I just can't get past that smell. It's overpowering and intense and just plain stinky.
When I finally work up the nerve to enter a salon and ask for a haircut, it's too late. "No! Xiexie [thank you]!" says the guy behind the counter in a sing-song voice with glasses, perfect hair and righteous hipster disdain. I slink out into the crowded streets and chicken out on getting a tattoo while I'm at it.
To relax, I play the toy-grabbing claw machines in a video game arcade that gets bigger and bigger as you venture through. I find myself playing the claw machines many times in many locations throughout Taiwan. I have two toys to show for it - a cute round chicken and a yellow man with a poo on his head.
Another popular arcade game here is a basketball game where you shoot real hoops with real basketballs.
There's a game at another interesting place in Shihlin we visited on our first day, where you fish for shrimp out of an indoor pool. There are several of these fishing places on Zhishan Rd.
The beers are cheap and it's a great place to chill out after a busy day, even though the shrimps aren't biting for me. The pros around me haul up one after another.
In the background, kids are climbing into the basketball machine to borrow the balls for a more unregulated game that threatens the serenity of the shrimp pool.
People are crazy about basketball here, from the NBA to local leagues and Japanese leagues. A tourist attraction in Taroko features a large wooden statue of Taiwanese NBA star Jeremy Lin, complete with Lakers jersey. When we stayed at Hotel One in Taichung, my room had a small television in the bathroom and I watched the NBA channel while on the toilet and in the bath.
I take the metro from Ximending back to a stop near my hotel and that's where I get really lost. The main streets are divided by lots of little narrow alleyways and I'm constantly going against my better judgment and attempting to "just cut through" them, getting even further off track. But it's during these "shortcuts" that I see some of the most interesting sights of my trip - the guys with the burning rubbish bin, a woodfired pizza place on top of which apartment-dwellers have hung a sign reading "NO MORE WOOD SMOKE IN OUR COMMUNITY", a dog in a hut with a note saying "Do not touch me. I will bite you".
I stop to take an Instagram picture of the dog that bites, a couple of Taiwanese girls are giggling and doing the same. "Oh, cute!" one exclaims. The dog looks fairly unimpressed.
After 45 minutes of wandering, I ask a woman for directions and she speaks perfect English. The hotel is 10 minutes down the road. I check into The Regent and go up to my room.
Looking out the window, I see the park I crossed earlier - and the exact spot I made a wrong turn. So close, but yet so far - ain't that always the way.
But that's a great adventure in itself - and Taipei is one of the best cities to be lost in.
CHECKLIST
Getting there: China Airlines flies from Auckland to Taipei via Brisbane.
For more information: Visit eng.taiwan.net.tw.
The writer travelled courtesy of China Airlines and the Taiwan Tourism Bureau.
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