On Fire in Taipei

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From the home base of the Grand, with its outrageous buffet and sinister underground evacuation tunnel (not open the public, but travel writers have perks), I spend the week exploring Taipei. There are some 18 universities in this city of 2.6 million, and more scooters and bikes than I’ve ever seen, anywhere. Narrow streets are lined in neon, the smell of deep fried fish and pork dishes smoke up the white, wet Asian sky. It will take some time to adjust to the humidity. Even the cameras keep fogging up every time we exit an air-conditioned bubble. I was on the mainland last month checking out the Yangtze River, and although Taiwan and China share the same language and culture, there are differences. People here appear friendlier, less pushy. I hardly encounter the infamous Chinese “chwark” spit, and while traffic is wild, drivers afford each other more respect. Lungshon Temple sparkles in the peaceful prayers of candlelight, the spiritual home for the country. Shops are colourful, plastered in cute, bright-coloured cartoon characters that remind me of Japan. Characters like the comic poo-people on the menu of Modern Toilet.

I read about this toilet themed restaurant online, and I’ve become quite fascinated with proving that sometimes you CAN believe what you read on the internet. So here we have a restaurant where customers sit on designer toilet seats, eat from toilet shaped bowls, drink from urinal-shaped cups, and buy poo paraphernalia. I ordered the number two, a delicious chicken curry. It arrived in a miniature porcelain toilet bowl, and the carrots floating in the brown stew reminded me of the last time I drank beyond my talent. I’m not taking the piss, but the potential for puns here are endless. Rock bottom prices, fit for a king on a throne, the food was anything but crap, which explains why there are now 10 stores across the country. I ask the owner what inspired such a scatological take on dining? “Just for fun,” he says. The same answer applies if you ask me why I chose to eat here.

What I won’t eat is snake, and I won’t drink the bile of snake bladder either. Snake Alley was once home to whores and superstitious inequity, but today it is the home for tourist stalls, out-of-place sex shops, and somewhat distasteful (and therefore thoroughly fascinating) snake kitchens. Drinking the bile is supposedly good for virility, eating snake soup is good for skin conditions. Since I owned a pet snake once (albeit one that bit me), my gut sank watching them hung up, skinned and split for this bizarre serpentine cocktail. Large cobras atop a cage were taunted by a creepy old man, and he picked one up and threw it towards the camera. For a big man, Sean moves quick. Our tourism board guide Wen showed remarkable and admirable restraint. Normally, government officials do their best to sanitize the experience of a travel writer, and we often have to break rank to see this kind of thing. It’s pretty horrific, but it’s there for the locals, not for the tourists. Real travel often offends the sensibilities. That’s what makes it so much fun.

There are some interesting rock formations at Yehliu Geopark, up the scenic north coast, eroded into spongy phallic shapes by wind, water and time. The coastline is beautiful, but there are no leisure boats to be seen, for reasons of national security. A large number of surfers are in the still ocean water, waiting for a freak wave from a typhoon nailing the Philippines to the south. It’s a rare blue-sky day during monsoon season, when heavy rains unleash themselves onto all those poor scooter drivers. Like the mainland, the sky here is mostly a haze, fogging the view from the way up high. Taipei 101 is not a lecture class; it was the world’s tallest building. An engineering marvel with 101 floors, it has only recently been pipped by the Burj Dubai, but remains a symbol of Taiwan’s economic power. Women give birth to life, it appears men give birth to phallic symbols of longstanding greatness. Inspired by the flexibility of bamboo, the building is covered in symbols, from massive coins on the exterior for good fortune, to stylized dragon gargoyles for protection. It has the world’s fastest elevators (60km an hour, you reach the 85th floor observation deck in just 37 seconds), and four massive damper balls to stabilize the building from strong winds and earthquakes. Architectural porn, if you’re into this sort of thing.

This has been fun, but now I’ve got stories to write, pitch and hopefully sell. Hosting a travel show is one of the best jobs in the world, but there’s more work than you realize setting up those beauty shots, improvising decent dialogue, shlepping from one place to the next. 10, 12, 14 hour days, every day, and then comes the writing, the photo galleries, tying up interviews and frayed nerves. Not that I’m complaining, just that I have to wrap this up before we take off to Korea, and a new adventure begins.

The Grand Hotel
Taipei, Taiwan

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