Some stuff that I did in Taipei:

The night markets are a must-see in Taipei. A few streets are closed off and the shops are all open and there are stalls with food and cheap trinkets and lots and lots of people. The food stands are of questionable hygiene, and the quality of the goods is, well, also questionable. But it is a lot of fun to wander around for an evening, and a great place to pick up things you might need like socks or t-shirts or luggage or cell phone bling, as long as you aren’t super concerned about how long they last. There were some great t-shirts at the night market, but unfortunately none that would fit me. (I feel so big here.) One had a panda dreaming that he was a robot.

At one nm I had stinky tofu: deep fried tofu in a funky smelling sauce with cabbage. It was pretty good. Stinky, though.

Side note- I did manage to find a few t-shirts while I was here, but not too many and always in a regular retail store. I know it is supposed to be just a stereotype that people here are smaller, but they really are. I was looking at t-shirts Taichung and at the night market stalls down there, the helpful shop keepers kept steering me towards the mens t-shirts with a polite smile. Mmmm, thanks. I am going home now to eat more Pringles.

I also saw t-shirts with international sizing on them. On the label the t-shirts said: American- size medium, European- size medium, Asian- size large.

It will be weird to get back to the States and go to a restaurant not be the tallest and biggest woman in the room. One nice thing about my height is that I can stand on the bus and be able to see all around me. And I am tall enough that that I am not at anyones’ armpit level on public transportation.

I got to experience hot pot. I was whining about how I hadn’t experienced this integral part of Asian culture and my roommate took pity on me and brought me to place that served vegetarian hot pot. It was. . . ok. I think that meaty hot pot is probably better than veggie hot pot. Hot pot is when you have a pot of soup and you put it over a cooker (a little gas flame at the restaurant that we went to) and the soup boils. Then you put in various vegetables and noodley type things and cuts of meat and let the soup cook them, then you fish the stuff out and eat it. Mine was just ok because the vegetarian option was Buddhist style, so no onion or garlic, just herbs. This is fine, but I don’t think it was a flavorful as it could have been. Also, I think there is a set combination of herbs that go into Buddhist dishes like this, because I got a few Buddhist frozen soups at the grocery store and they all had the same flavoring. So they tasted ok, but not great. So my hot pot was ok, not great.

Buddhist cooking doesn’t allow onion or garlic because they are stimulants. So no stimulants allowed, I guess. Buddhism also allows you to only be vegetarian some days out of the month. I don’t know a lot about Buddhism, but it sounds like an interesting religion. For instance, with this whole vegetarian thing. It is good to be vegetarian, sure. But that is hard to do. So you can just be vegetarian for a few days, and sort of build up some points in that area. If you can’t be vegetarian all the time, then just do it some of the time. It feels like a fairly flexible religion. But maybe not. Like I said, I don’t really know a lot about it. A friend of mine was telling me about a theory some guy in Taiwan has about Buddhism and vegetarianism called intentional vegetarianism. It goes like this- if you don’t intend the animal any harm, say, you have no ill will towards it and you didn’t want any particular animal to die, then it is ok to eat the meat. Sounds a little cagey to me, but whatever.