Water, Water everywhere

Those Who Know These Things told me that I shouldn’t really drink the tap water in Taipei, and sure enough the hotel room was outfitted with multiple bottles of water (free, not the normal 2000% markup), including one in the bathroom for teeth brushing. So I dutifully stuck to bottles, though I’m pretty sure that one or more of the restaurants we hit over the course of the week were serving tap water, so who knows. My point in mentioning this is that it seems odd to me that we fix the “undrinkable tap water” problem by moving plastic bottles around instead of improving the standards of the water supply. But maybe it’s more of a precaution for tourists who don’t have the same gut bacteria and immunity living in Taipei would provide, rather than the fact that the water is actually risky to drink. Either way, bottled water generally seems like a waste to me.

Somewhat related, most of the places I went in Japan and Taipei have automatically flushing urinals. This isn’t surprising in and of itself, they’re becoming more and more common, especially now that retrofit kits are available. What’s strange is the flush logic I observed while in Asia. While most auto-flush toilets wait until you leave and then flush, these all did a short flush as soon as you step up to them, and then flush as normal once you’re done. I have to assume that there is some sort of logic to that pre-flush, since they all did it, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why that might be, and it seems to be a waste of water.

Taipei #8 - Saturday

Saturday dawned bright and sunny, of course it would do that on the day I leave. Cab ride to the airport was uneventful. I rode in a Toyota Wish, which I believe is a Matrix here, but I thought that perhaps it was somewhat like the “Wish sandwich” from the Blues Brothers, in that you wish it was a different car. It’s actually pretty comfortable, but the joke is fun to make. On the ride, I snapped the picture you see here, my cabbie saw 140kph, and I got a better view of the construction work being done to build an extension of the MRT system so that there is rail service between downtown Taipei and Taoyuan airport, which is more than 40 minutes away even in light traffic. Most of it is elevated rail, and it’s pretty interesting to watch it being built.

The highlight of the morning came while standing and waiting to check in. While it may sound like I’ve lost my mind because I'm happy about waiting in line at the airport, the reason it was the highlight of the morning was that one of the screens was showing what the English subtitles called, “Airport Safety Propaganda.” It went over all of the standard stuff, but had the unique angle of using these very ornate puppets which appear to be traditional Chinese string puppets, complete with mouths that open and close, and traditional costumes. To make the anachronism even more pronounced, they go through the security check point, boarding, using portable electronics (a cell phone and a tablet pc) on the plane, etc. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, the English translation was either done by someone with a sense of humor or is just one more unintentionally hilarious example of Engrish. I wish I could find a video of it online, but so far no luck. I know that a colleague was taking some video, but I’m not sure if it’s been posted or if it even came out well enough to read the subtitles.

Fortunately, because I was with several colleagues from IETF, they were able to get me into the airline lounges both in Taipei and Narita as a guest, so while I waited for my flight in Taipei, I was able to get some breakfast, including a can of Pocari Sweat, which you may remember from Japan. But even better yet, the United lounge at Narita had these great automatic beer pouring robots. You took a frosted glass from the case, placed it in the cradle, pressed a button, and the machine tilted the glass, filled it almost full, then straightened the glass and dispensed foam to give it a nice head. I was so impressed that I took video.  

The flights in and out of Narita were both pretty bumpy this time. Turbulence doesn’t really bother me, but I was somewhat surprised, because it was severe enough that they had the flight attendants in their seats for a good 30-45 minutes longer than normal, and for such a big plane (777), there was a lot of dancing. Another interesting quirk of the 777 – it rains inside of it! During take-off and landing, at least where I was, near the exit rows, the vents above the aisle and near the window drip a significant amount of water intermittently. I’m not sure if it’s because water freezes up inside the vents while airborne and then thaws as the temperature rises, but all 4 777s I flew on this trip did this.

Taipei #7 - Friday

The IETF was trying out a different schedule this time, so we ended up working through what would have been the lunch break in the interest of ending earlier, so no lunch for me. I went back to Din Tai Fung with some colleagues for an early dinner, and it was just as good as the previous time. We fed 4 of us with a huge amount of food for less than $30 apiece. 

After dinner, the weather was “clear” enough to see the top of Taipei 101, so a couple of us headed for the observation deck. I use quotes there because it was actually pouring, but that seemed to keep the visibility a lot higher than the normal drizzle, so we figured it’d be better than nothing. It turned out to be a great view. This was one of the few times where I really wish I had brought a better camera than just the one in my phone – it really can’t deal with those very low-light shots that well. 

Taipei 101’s observation deck has elevators that hit a peak speed of 1010 Meters/minute, and the display in the elevator said that we ascended to 382 meters in 37 seconds. The elevators have an aerodynamics capsule complete with a spoiler on the top and bottom, and they have air pumps to help equalize the pressure for passenger comfort. It works better on the way up than on the way down, as I only had to pop my ears once on the ascent, but it happened about 4 separate times on the descent. 

One of the really cool things about the observation deck is that they have made the building’s tuned mass damper part of the public exhibit, so you can actually see the “Super Big Wind Dampener” in all of its 5 meter diameter, 660 metric ton glory. 

It wasn’t perceptibly moving when I was there, but they do have a pretty cool video of it serving its purpose during a typhoon. – click on “Wind Damper Functioning Film” – sorry, it’s all flash and there’s no way to directly link to it. 

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.