Taipei #6 - Thursday

Today, all 3 of my meals were at the Hyatt, which while probably not as authentic of an experience as going to a local place, isn’t as bad as it sounds. The Hyatt has several really good restaurants where they don’t dumb things down very much for the tourists. Lunch was at Irodori, which is easily the largest Japanese food buffet that I have ever seen. In addition to the standard nigiri and sashimi and rolls, they had a huge amount of other options covering a large swath of non-sushi Japanese foods as well. Where to start… Well, they had some made-to-order rolls, but instead of the standard cylindrical roll, they made a cone out of the seaweed wrap, so it was like a small sushi ice cream cone. They had tempura, they had a noodle bar, where you chose your type of noodles, your broth, and some ingredients and they’d make it for you, they had a raw oyster bar with several types and presentations of oysters, and they had some hibachi-style cooked items, including whole fish if you were so inclined. They also had beef nigiri! Yes, that is what it sounds like – a very thin strip of tender beef (a bit thicker than carpaccio might be) over sushi rice. The flavor was very delicate, and the beef wasn’t chewy like I was expecting it to be, very high quality, very tender. They had a selection of Japanese desserts, none of which I know the names of, but I do note that they aren’t usually that sweet, and often are chewy, with fruit flavors.

Dinner was a group event at the Hyatt’s Shanghai Court restaurant. They gave us a private room that had a couch and chairs for sitting with drinks before dinner, and then a large round table for the 10 or so of us. There was a set menu of multiple courses, and all of it was really good, but I should certainly highlight a few things. Included in the appetizers were some deep-fried sardines. It has been a long time since I’ve eaten sardines, but these were very tasty and not too salty, with a nice delicate crunch. Next was “double-boiled chicken soup with Jin Hwa ham, fish lips, and bamboo piths.” The ham was quite salty, the bamboo didn’t have a lot of taste, but when cooked got nice and tender, and I didn’t run into any strange textures, so I guess fish lips just taste like fish. Another fun one – “wok-fried scallops and cuttlefish with peppers in spicy chili sauce.” Cuttlefish is a lot like squid – very tasty if prepared properly, like eating a dirty rubber band if not. Fortunately, this was well-prepared, tender and delicate. The texture may still be off-putting for some, but I quite enjoyed it. There were several other courses of fish and pork, all very tasty. One of the last courses was “wok-fried asparagus with Gingko Nuts and Fresh Lily Bulbs.” Gingko nuts remind me of a soybean or chestnut, a somewhat soft, pasty consistency, and a mildly nutty flavor. These are indeed the same as the source of the smell when female gingko trees drop their leaves, but they didn’t smell bad at all when cooked. Lily bulbs are starchy and a bit creamy, but pretty neutral-tasting. Lastly, we had “sweetened sago cream soup with coconut and red bean,” which was a cold dessert soup. It was interesting – not something I’d crave, but a nice end to the meal. I couldn’t really taste much coconut flavor, so my hunch is that it used coconut water or similar. 

Taipei #5 - Wednesday

I had a lunch seminar at the conference center today, so I ended up with an American-style box lunch (sandwich, salad, bottle of water). Yawn.

Dinner was somewhat more interesting. Some colleagues from a Taiwanese equipment manufacturer offered to take us to dinner, and they chose a place called FiFi’s, which is a haute cuisine modern Shanghainese and Szechwan restaurant. I deferred to our hosts to order foods that they enjoyed, and so we got to try a wide variety of things as dish after dish was presented. Notable among the different choices was a dish the host said was called “fly’s eye” which was diced meat (pork, probably) along with very finely diced green onions and what I think were fresh (not dried) peppercorns. Another appetizer featured fried shrimp diced up with onion and served inside of a lettuce leaf. Also there was sliced hot beef, which was a Szechwan dish served in an oil-based sauce that I thought was actually soup at first. It was very tender and quite spicy due to the red peppers that were cooked with the dish. We had ma pao tofu, which is soft tofu that has been fried crispy on the outside. As per normal, tofu doesn’t taste like much, but this was pretty good – shows that you can make anything better by deep frying it! Our hosts also made sure to order a specialty of the house, dong po pork, which is braised pork belly. This restaurant served it along with some flour buns so that you could make yourself a small sandwich. Pork belly is pretty fatty, but it was absolutely melt-in-your-mouth tender, and the braise made it very flavorful. Plenty of Taiwan beer to wash it all down, and I learned a toast in Mandarin - Gan bei ("dry the cup"). Dessert was some fried noodles dusted in powdered sugar that tasted a lot like a slightly less puffy and crunchier funnel cake, and a Chinese pancake with chocolate syrup on it.

Taipei #4 - Tuesday

Well, today broke my streak of only eating in Taipei 101. It was actually raining for a change (vs. the ever-present drizzle), and I was pressed for time, so I ended up trying out the Noodle Café in the TICC itself. We got a set of lotus root as an appetizer, and this was basically sliced thin and sautéed, along with some garlic, pretty good. I ordered some Dan Dan noodles, and they were also tasty. Cost about NT$200 including drink, so a bit more expensive than the food court, but since it was a full-service place, that’s expected, I guess. Dinner again had a benefactor, but because one of our dining companions is a bit of a picky eater, the chosen venue was Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. I’ve never had a bad meal at a high-end steakhouse like that, and this was no exception, but it certainly was in no way a local experience. If you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all, pretty much. On the taxi ride over, we saw a store called “Skynet Lighting” but no one in the car was able to get a picture before the light changed. 

Taipei #3 - Monday

More Taipei 101 today. For lunch, I tried a different stall. This time I got fried pork with miscellaneous vegetables, came with a side of rice and soup, and inexplicably, a fried egg. The presentation was pretty awesome, especially for a fast-food stand – the meal came out on a metal plate, still actively sizzling, and that was set into a wooden frame placed on the meal tray. Unfortunately, the food a bit of a let-down, especially considering the presentation and now good the other meals I’ve had here were. It reminded me of airline food. The vegetables looked (and tasted) like the cubed carrots and green peas that you get out of the freezer bag, and the pork was bland and dry. However, on the way out of the food court for lunch, we had a few minutes to kill, so we wandered into the toy store. 

While I was there, I saw things both creepy and awesome (and every combination of the two). Along with every Gundam and Pokemon type of thing ever, they had a great selection of Legos, R/C cars, plus a healthy dose of Japanese “kawaii” toys (think Hello Kitty and other cutesy things). 

The creepy stuff was this doll called Blythe which has a disproportionately large head and big anime-style eyes. Now that might make you think of the Bratz dolls, but apparently in that case, the creepy is overpowered by the slutty. This doll isn’t tarted up, so basically it ends up being something that kinda belongs in a knock-off Chucky movie – you know, you hear a noise from the closet, open the closet door and the doll is silently staring at you, so you throw it away, and the next day it shows up on your doorstep, staring at you through the window, and when you turn your back, it turns out to be hell-bent on your death and dismemberment? Yeah, kinda like that...

Also, they had these very weird knock-off Mickey and Minnie Mouse dolls that kind of looked like they cross-bred those characters with a robotic clown. Apparently they’re called “cubic mouth” and they may not actually be a knock-off: 

And last but not least… Manchhichi’s still exist! This store had an entire wall of them, all in different costumes.

Dinner tonight had a benefactor, so while it was still at Taipei 101, this one went a good bit more upscale. We went to a place called DiamondTony’s, which is on the 85^th floor. This is one of the destination restaurants in Taipei, owing to the view and to the high-quality ingredients featured. The meal choices were all “sets” where you would choose from a list of soup, cold appetizer, hot appetizer, entrée, and dessert. They started at NT$3500 ($100US) and went up from there.  My set had Lobster Bisque, a sashimi plate, quail with truffle, and the entrée was an Australian Waygu beef ribeye. Waygu beef is beef made in the style of Kobe beef, but not actually from the Kobe region of Japan, so like Kobe beef, it’s supposed to be the best beef you’ll ever have – extremely tender and flavorful. You’d think that with the combination of a view of Taipei from the 85^th floor and a meal like that, I’d be listing this among the top 5 dinners I’d ever had and raving about it for a long time to come. I feel almost guilty to say that actually, it was a bit disappointing. The quail was good, but mostly tasted like chicken, and the beef was very tender, but it was also quite under-seasoned even after I used the provided pink sea salt, and was not particularly well-seared. So generally, you might say that this is a restaurant known for its atmosphere and its view than for its food. As far as the view goes… This time of year, it’s very Seattle-like in Taipei. While the weather is warm, in the 70s, this week it has been almost constantly drizzling, interrupted with brief periods of actual rain. As a result, most days, we haven’t even been able to see the top of Taipei 101 from the street. It was similarly clouded-in during dinner, so the view was mostly like eating inside of a cloud. You could see some of the city if you walked right over to the window, but otherwise not so much. The folks I ate with are good friends, so we had a great time either way. 

One thing that was of note at this restaurant – it had without a doubt the coolest bathroom I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. The bathroom itself is quite modern and clean in design, but that’s not the interesting part. It is in a corner of the building, probably where an executive corner office would be if this was a corporate space, so it, like the rest of the space, is lined with windows. 

The urinals are on a half-wall facing the windows, so, you get a fantastic view whilst availing yourself of the facilities, especially on the one side, where there are windows to your left as well. I can’t imagine what it’s like when the building isn’t fogged in...

Taipei #2 - Sunday

Today I went back to Taipei 101 food court for lunch, and if it’s possible, it was even busier. Everywhere had a line, and watching for a table was worse than finding a parking space at Costco on a Saturday. I got a great big bowl of noodles with vegetables, pork, and kimchi in broth plus some tea for about $5, and then carried it around for about 15 minutes looking for a table before I gave up and ended up finding an unused bit of counter space at the corner of one of the food stalls and ate standing there. For someone with fairly poor fine motor skills, I’m getting surprisingly good at picking up noodles with chopsticks (at least in order to get them to my mouth in order to slurp them up). The food was again quite tasty – I guess if you’re not a fan of Kimchi it might not be your thing, but I pretty much never met fermented cabbage that I didn’t like, and the Kimchi added a nice sour and spicy component to the broth that was really good.

In what is rapidly becoming a theme (hey, it’s close, there are lots of options, it’s cheap, and the food is good), we went back to Taipei 101 for dinner. While most of the places are just little stalls where you order your food and then find a table in the common seating areas, there are a couple of actual sit-down restaurants. We had a group of 10, so we actually got reservations for a private room at a place called Din Tai Fung, which specializes in dumplings, buns, and other steamed items. They are apparently one-star Michelin rated, and it was definitely worth it. We ordered all sorts of different dumplings with different combinations of meat and vegetables in them, as well as several varieties of Xaio Long Bao, which are a special kind of dumpling that contains a solid filling as well as a bit of broth, and is then steamed. You take the dumpling out of the bamboo steamer tray, dip it in the sauce, which is a mixture of Chinese black vinegar, soy sauce, and julienned ginger, and then place it in your spoon (one of those wide, flat spoons you always get in the Asian restaurants). You use your chopsticks to pierce the dumpling to release the broth and steam (so that you don’t burn the heck out of your mouth), and then eat. Gooooood stuff. Worth noting that they have a US franchise now too. We had a couple of soups, including a very good hot and sour soup and a shrimp wonton soup. There were also dessert dumplings, one filled with red bean paste (sweetened) and another filled with Taro.

I also had my first sampling of the local beer, aptly named “Taiwan Beer” which makes up the majority of the market here. It’s a fairly standard pilsner, but as one of my colleagues noted, it is a bit more full-bodied than most of the other well-known Asian pilsners, almost like a less-hoppy Heineken. The interesting thing about this meal was the price. The way that they work it is that a private room comes with a base price. That is, we can have the room, but we are going to be charged a minimum of NT$10,000. However, the cost of the room itself drops the more food and drink we order, so if we spend $10,000 or more on dinner, the room is free (or put another way, we pay for the room, and up to $10,000 worth of food & drink is free). What this means is that for a party of 10, enough food to thoroughly stuff us all was about $34(US) apiece.  I’ve eaten at plenty of places where the food wasn’t as good and the entrée alone cost more than that.

Taipei #1 - Saturday

I''m staying at the Grand Hyatt Taipei. It is a nice, if fairly standard business-class hotel across the road from the Taipei International Conference Center (TICC) where IETF is being  held. According to The Internet, which is never known to be wrong about such things, it’s apparently haunted, and has several different tapestries hanging in the entry hall that are supposed to ward off evil spirits and protect the home… 

Breakfast is included in my room rate, so I tried out the buffet this AM. As with other places I’ve stayed in Asia, it’s a huge buffet with a combination of American, European, and Asian breakfast items. So this morning I was able to have: crispy bacon (they made a point to label it “crispy” and indeed it was), honey baked ham, and I could have had an omelette, a crepe, etc if I so desired. However, also on offer were Chinese buns and dumplings, and miscellaneous hot Chinese food items that you wouldn’t normally consider breakfast.  I remember really liking the buns and dumplings from Beijing, and well, I can get an omelette anywhere, so you can guess what I went for. By far the most exotic thing I tried was something called “century eggs” available either by themselves or in shredded pork congee, If that list sent you directly to read the Wikipedia link, don’t feel bad, the only part of that I recognized was “pork” too. Congee is basically rice porridge, and is not all that flavorful by itself, but the pork was a nice addition. The Century Egg in the congee was more of a textural element than it was a flavor, as the pork was the main thing you tasted. I also had a century egg by itself. The egg white was translucent and brown, and had the consistency of gelatin and very little flavor. The best way I know to describe the yolk was that it was “distilled” egg yolk – more concentrated flavor, but you were more aware of the sulfurous and other off-tasting compounds in the flavor profile too. That is to say, it wasn’t bad, but not something I’m likely to crave. They also had a section of fresh honeycomb set up with a tray underneath it, so that you could cut off a section of the honeycomb yourself, and if you wanted, you could get some additional honey from the tray.

 I had some carrot juice this morning, but I hear that it constitutes murder, so I probably should enjoy it sparingly. J

Here's a great picture of the Taipei skyline from a Flickr user. 

If you click to make the picture bigger, and look just to the left of Taipei 101, there is a building with red square lights around the top windows. That was across the square from our hotel, so that gives you an idea of where I was staying. This was taken from the opposite direction (on the hills overlooking the city to the east). My room faced west towards the mountains.

The downside of today is that it’s been rainy and gross much of the day, and I haven’t been inclined to go exploring given the weather. One of the things on my list was to go up on Taipei 101’s observation deck, but the visibility is so low that I think that would be a waste of time and money, so that may have to wait. I did go out at dinnertime and check out the mall at Taipei 101 (it’s basically across the street from my hotel), and it was so misty/foggy that you couldn’t even see the top of the building from the street, so my hunch was correct. 

 The mall is pretty amazing though – it’s 5 floors of all high-end designer shops (Bulgari, Tissot, DeBeers, Emporio Armani, etc). However, the reason that I went over there was to grab some dinner. They have a huge food court on the basement level, probably 40 or 50 different restaurants, including a McDonalds, a KFC, a Subway, a Cold Stone Creamery, and an Auntie Anne’s pretzel place. It’s very busy, and a bit of an assault on the senses, especially for a jet-lagged tourist. Rest assured, dear reader, that I didn’t punk out and fly 10K miles to eat at McDonalds. I found a Japanese place called Momoya, and got a set (combo) with Shrimp Tempura and Udon Noodles, plus a Kirin for about $8.50. It was a good amount of food, and pretty tasty. I saw one of those sushi places where you sit at the bar and take things off of the conveyor belt as they go past, but it had a pretty good line, so maybe I’ll try to hit that some other time. 

24 hours of traveling, part 2, NRT-TPE

Picking up where I left off, in Narita airport...

They delayed boarding slightly due to an aircraft change, and as I checked in they noted that my seat no longer existed. Fortunately, they re-assigned me the equivalent exit row seat, so I was in good shape. The announcements on the plane go tri-lingual for these flights, English, Japanese, and Mandarin. It’s interesting to listen to them back to back like that. We sat on the tarmac at Narita for about 45 minutes, which also made us late getting into Taipei. 

Customs and immigration was a breeze. It actually took me quite a bit longer to get my luggage than it did to go through immigration. I was curious to see if they were going to say anything about my passport, because while the US (and many other countries) are not required to have a visa to visit Taipei, their visa/entry rules require at least 6 months’ validity remaining on one’s passport. My passport expires on May 27 2012, so I had a margin even from the end of the trip, but I definitely had to double-check to make sure I didn’t have to renew before I left, and they didn’t say anything.

The word from Those Who Know These Things is that not a lot of places in Taipei take credit cards, taxis definitely don’t, and outside of hotels, an Amex (my corporate card) is a useless green hunk of plastic. So, I needed to get cash. Bank of America participates in the inaccurately named Global ATM Alliance so that you might have a chance of getting money internationally without paying exorbitant banking fees. Europe, ok, Canada, no problem. Africa, Central and South America, Caribbean, etc are a bit hit or miss, especially since BoA only recognizes reciprocal relationships with a bank in its home country (that is, Deutsche Bank in Germany is ok, but not in Poland, etc). Asia? [crickets] Nada, zip, zilch. BoA at least has a direct affiliation with China Construction Bank so that you can get money in China (I used it last year in Beijing), but it’s not applicable to branches in Hong Kong, and they have nothing in Taipei, so I stopped at the first ATM I saw. My general assumption is that it’s still cheaper to get local currency via an ATM than via the currency exchange in the US, and I’m not keen on traveling with a large amount of USD to change once I get here anyway. In general, I sort of feel like if you fancy yourself a global (or even National) banking player, it shouldn’t be my problem that you aren’t where I am when I need money. I can understand hitting me with a charge if I am too lazy to go even slightly out of my way to get to the closest BoA (or affiliate) ATM within a certain distance radius, but if you don’t have *any* options for me, you shouldn’t be charging me for the “convenience” of accessing my own money. If you lose money eating the other bank’s fees, that should be your incentive to get a reciprocal relationship set up, or get some ATMs deployed. But given that this is the bank that thought it would be a good idea to charge $5/month for people to, you know, use their debit card for actual its intended purpose, I’m not holding my breath.

There was a huge line for the taxi stand, due to the fact that several international flights had landed at about the same time, and it was pretty late. I wasn’t really keen on waiting in the line, as it looked like it was actively losing ground (far fewer taxis taking people out of the queue than new people entering), and it was already 11pm local time, meaning that I'd been up for 26+ hours straight. So when someone came up to me and tried to sell me a taxi ride as I was trying to find the end of the taxi line, I accepted, despite my better judgment. I knew that normal taxi fare from the airport to downtown was usually NT$1200-1300 (which is usually meter fare + tolls), so when he offered a NT$1400 flat rate, I figured the extra $3-5 US was worth the convenience of getting to my bed that much quicker. The fixer made a call on his cell phone, walked me over to the arrivals curb, and within 2 minutes, up drove my cab (Toyota Corolla, I think). I noted that the driver slipped the fixer a bit of cash, so I guess it benefits both of them. Fortunately it was a licensed cab (though the driver didn’t match the picture on the license) just running off-meter. In 40 minutes or so, I was at my hotel, receipt in hand, and I daresay that the driver was more responsible than some of the cabs I’ve had to/from Dulles. I didn’t see anything notable in terms of cars, but that probably had a lot to do with the fact that it was rainy and late on Friday night. I did note two things on the ride – a lot of the trucks and buses have LED lights that flash or change color (blue, red, green, white, etc) to make them more visible, either aesthetically or for safety reasons, and there were a few places where some construction of piers for the new MRT (Mass Rail Transit) extension to connect Taipei with the airport had created some low overhangs, and they were festively decorated with yellow LED rope lights instead of low clearance signs.

24 hours of travel, part 1, IAD-NRT

This is the first in a series of posts about my recent trip to Taipei, Taiwan.

IAD-NRT leg was long. Really long. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly long it is. [apologies to Douglas Adams]  I mean, no matter how many times you see the 14 hour flight time, and even though I’ve done that flight at least 3 separate times now (6 if you count roundtrips) I always forget just how long that actually is. It’s so long that I: read a novel and a half, two magazines, ran my laptop battery totally dead doing work, ate two meals and a snack, dozed off for a bit, and the flight still wasn’t over. 

I don’t really sleep on planes, not because I have to “help them fly” or anything, but I have a bit of a catch-22. I’m 6’4” and most of it is legs. Since I can’t remove them to stow them in the overhead bin (or worse, gate-check them because they won’t fit in the bin), I usually try to get an exit row or bulkhead set so that my legs still work when I get off of the plane. But on most long-haul flights (777, 747, etc) the exit row and bulkhead areas are where people go to stretch and are usually right near the lavatories, so there’s always noise and light and activity, not conducive to sleeping without chemical aids. Also, I can’t seem to sleep sitting up – I can’t do it in a car either.

You know, people are fond of joking about us living in the future, as in “we live in the future, where’s my flying car, jetpack, hoverboard, etc”  but really, on flights like that, my response is always “we live in the future, where’s my suborbital (or supersonic) flight?” This is also put into sharp relief because typically while on these excruciatingly long flights, I’m reading some near-future sci-fi/cyberpunk novel where people can be on the other side of the world in a matter of a few hours. Being able to get to Asia in half or a quarter of the time (aka, not having it eat a full day) would be such an improvement. Remembering a documentary I saw about the Concorde, I continue to be disappointed that we actually took a step backward in commercial air flight evolution, and are still using tech that is nearly 50 years old. However, I’m becoming convinced that just making traditional jets (those that fly at 30-60k feet) fly 2x or 3x the speed isn’t really the right way to go. There just doesn’t seem to be a way to make that efficient enough to be cost-effective, considering thrust, heating, and noise problems that limit your potential routes at those altitudes. Taking the thing to the edge of space (say 300k feet) and letting the earth rotate under you would be far more effective, the key is getting the launch/takeoff to the point where that is cost-effective, and getting the whole thing to the point where it’s routine. I keep hoping that Virgin Galactic and others have concrete plans to take their nascent space programs beyond the “rich-man’s bucket list” stage, but I understand that this initial trip to nowhere is probably necessary to bankroll the R&D to make it accessible for us commoners who can’t reliably get their companies to spring for a business-class ticket to Asia, let alone something exotic like a suborb. I do wonder if anyone’s done the math on what the break-even point would have to be for some of the longest routes to make it cost-effective for business travelers (or even just executives) based on the value of their on-clock time.

While I didn’t have to go through customs and immigration in Japan, I did have to go through security to get to my transfer gate. A couple of interesting observations – the English translation of the posted notice to passengers made me chuckle – “…In order to prevent hi-jacking and other acts of aggression, all passengers will be required to undergo a security check for hand-carry items and parsonal [sic] effects…” As with every other country outside of the US, you don’t have to take your shoes off in security. However, I noticed several pairs of slippers in the hand-search area, so that if they pulled you aside for a secondary search, you didn’t have to stand there in your socks.

I actually made it through Narita in enough time that I could have made the earlier flight to Taipei, (I know this because I went to that gate only to discover it was the wrong one) but I didn’t want to risk losing my exit row seat and having to wait for my luggage, so I didn’t try to get on that flight. Instead I killed an hour or so charging my phone and laptop and taking advantage of free WiFi. Sprint actually has CDMA roaming agreements in both Tokyo and Taipei, and sends me a helpful text message to tell me the local dial code, per-minute and text rates, and also that mobile data is not available except with GSM “World” phones. But since the alternative is my throwaway 2G Nokia with a prepaid SIM, and the 12 hour time difference makes it unlikely that I’ll be using my phone except in emergencies, that’s ok by me. I do miss the data access though. Perhaps I should look into a secondhand Android GSM phone for traveling…