1/1/16,
“Auld Lang Syne”
Aboard Eva
Air 868, En route HKG-TPE
It seems
that I am always in transit on the first of the year. Whether it was driving home from Quebec in
2013, flying from Vienna to Istanbul in 2014, at sea in Antarctica in 2015, or,
now, flying from Hong Kong to Taipei in 2016, January 1st, for
better or worse, has become a transit day.
I suppose that next year I will be flying from Sydney to Queensland on
the first.
“Auld Lang Syne” translates
to “Old long since” or the “the good old days.”
It is an appropriate theme to ring in the New Year, celebrating the time
gone by and getting ready to make new memories. Each year has its own feel, and I am very excited to see what the flavor
of 2016 will be. It is an Olympic year,
so that will obviously dominate my personal activities, while the election
dominates the national news cycle. Much
will happen this year, and I’m looking forward to it, starting with my time in Taipei.
I’m not even sure how to categorize where I
am going. The local government, refers
to it as the “Republic of China,” the sole legitimate government for all of
China. The government in Beijing, on the
other hand, refers to it as “Taiwan,” a province of China that has home rule,
much like Hong Kong and Macau. Neither,
ironically, refers to it as a separate country, but I count it as the 197
country when I list countries. 194 UN
Member-States, 2 Permanent Observer States (Holy See and Palestine), and Taiwan
makes 197. If I count it separately,
it’ll be my 60th country, and I am inclined to do so, just listing
it as “Taipei, Taiwan.”
Alright, how did
I ring in the New Year? I was dead
tired, almost passing out before I left the hotel. For once, celebrating New Year’s felt like an
obligation, not a privilege. I couldn’t
not do it, but I heard myself telling myself something like, “Just stay up for
another 3 hours, then smoke your cigar, then you can go to bed.” That wasn’t me. I wanted to celebrate until 4 AM and get
stupid drunk and wake up with one of the worst hangovers of my life. I’m still young enough to enjoy celebrating
New Year’s that way, so why the fuck was I so tired?
I made my way to the restaurant, and I
ordered a few dishes, a barbequed pork appetizer, some roasted pigeon, wagyu
beef main course, white rice, Diet Coke, and a Tsing Tsao beer. The meal was quite delicious, but I felt that
I was too tired to enjoy it properly. I
will waive my custom of omitting monetary amounts here, because there is no
other way to explain this. When my bill
came, I looked at the bottom line. In
HKD, it was, I shit you not, $1000.0 exactly.
This was not a prix fixe. All of
my dishes, plus the 10% service charge, somehow came out to be exactly
$1000. What are the odds of
that?!?
After dinner, I headed to the
plaza by the Legislative Council Complex, which was positively lit. It was the place to be. I was no longer tired. I was rearing to go. I had lit up a Por Larranga Asia Pacific
exclusive that I got at the cigar shop, and I was still smoking it when I got
to the plaza around 11 PM. I texted back
and forth with my friend a bit, and she had sent me a link to a movie trailer,
which I was unable to load on either WiFi or 3G. Then my texts stopped working, and I spent
most of the next half hour trying to fix it.
“Are you by yourself?” I heard a soft voice ask. I had finished my cigar by this point. I looked up.
I figured she wanted to use some of the space near me. Yes, I was by myself. Actually, she was inviting me to join her
group. Sure, why not. Besides, she was not uncomely. Was she looking for someone for a New Year’s
kiss? The other four people in her
group, an Italian family, were coupled.
I went to join them, my broken text messages no longer important. We chatted until midnight.
Then came the fireworks. I did my routine. In case my reader was wondering, my only New
Year’s kiss came from my bottle of Vueve Cliquot and my Davidoff Year of the
Monkey. I took my ceremonial
pictures. I texted my friends. I started singing “Auld Lang Syne.” They asked what I was singing. I was the only one singing it. Neither Hong Kongers nor Italians sing that
song, apparently. I kept singing. Then I started to worry again about my broken
text messages. I think trying to fix it
sobered me up, since I didn’t feel drunk enough. I only sang “Auld Lang Syne” a few
times. I wasn’t wishing strangers a
Happy New Year. I didn’t feel stupid
drunk.
Once the fireworks stopped, I
stopped feeling it anymore. It certainly
wasn’t like the last three years. But,
fuck it. I was in Hong Kong on New
Year’s. It was 2016. Did it really matter if I didn’t thoroughly
enjoy it in the moment, the same way I enjoyed it in previous years? No, what mattered was that was there, that I
will remember the fireworks over the harbor all my life. I stumbled back to my hotel and passed out as
soon as I was done with the cigar. I
slept fitfully, responses to my New Year’s greetings coming in from the East
Coast intermittently, waking me up each time.
I wasn’t hungry when I woke
up, and I did my preliminary packing.
There was no touristy stuff to do today, just a last ditch effort to
find my flag pin. I won’t go into the
details. I took a taxi to the other side,
lit up a Romeo y Julieta, continued the conversation with my friend, this time
talking Tolkien instead of SW, and found the flag pin. I got a taxi back to my hotel, the sixth taxi
in line because two of them waved me away and three had no idea where the hotel
was. How is that possible? Even the taxi driver I took was shocked. I finished packing. Oh, fun fact.
The dress shirts that I got laundered last night, the bill for the
laundry was more than the price of the shirts.
I headed down, settled my account, and took a taxi to the airport. The toll for the tunnel was outrageous, and I
didn’t have enough banknotes to pay the guy.
Fortunately, I had enough coins to make do. By this point, I still hadn’t eaten anything,
nor had any coffee, and that, along with the heartburn was really starting to
catch up with me. I had to check my bag,
which was disappointing, and then I went to the pharmacy in the airport. They had heartburn pills, actual pills, not
the chewable tablets.
Between security
and immigration and the trek to the gate, I had no time to get food, let alone
write an entry. I got on the plane and
asked for some water to take the pills.
The heartburn was getting really bad at this point. I really just
needed the new pills to kick in and caffeine.
I got a Diet Coke with my meal (chicken and rice) and some coffee. That helped.
By the time I was done with all that, I was starting to feel back to
normal again, just tired. If I can get
to Taipei before dark, I’ll take a few ceremonial pictures, maybe even look for
the souvenir shops. Otherwise, it can
wait until morning, and I’ll just pass out, though I do want to have dinner at
Taiwan’s best restaurant, whatever that may be.
After lunch, I got my laptop and sat back down in my seat, where I
proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close, as we will soon be
making our descent.
Taipei, Republic
of China (Taiwan)
Coruscant
was definitely the right metaphor. As
overwhelming as Hong Kong was, even more so is Taipei. While my night out in Taipei cannot beat
dinner with Vanessa and her parents, it definitely does beat out my morning in
Quebec and my night in Ephesus. The
commonality, of course, is the smoking of the 2012 Christmas Pipe, which, other
than in 2014, I have smoked on January 1st of every year since I
received it. Will I be smoking it a year
from today in Sydney?
Okay, so Taipei is
unlike any other city I have ever visited, and I like it much better than
Beijing and Hong Kong. It is hard to
describe the scope of it, and pictures don’t even do it justice. It makes New York seem small. The buildings are bigger, the streets wider
and more crowded, and the distances further apart. It even has the most recent former tallest
building in the world, which will be my sole activity for tomorrow before I fly
to Seoul.
After I closed, we landed very
shortly, and I made my way through border control, collected my bag, got some
Taiwanese money from an ATM, and took a taxi to the hotel. Sunset was at 5:15 PM, and were estimated to
get to the hotel around 4:15 PM. That would
give me just enough time to check in to the hotel, get settled in, change into
civilian clothes, and be at the Legislative Yuan before sunset.
As we were driving, I looked up the best
restaurants in Taipei. Only looking at
local cuisine, I got a fancy Chinese restaurant listed, followed by three
restaurants with the same name, three different branches. It was called Din Tai Fang, and apparently it
is global chain with dozens of shops around the world, famous for their soup
dumplings. The original is here in
Taipei, only a few clicks past the Legislative Yuan. The fancy restaurant was the opposite
direction, by Taipei 101, and it closed at 10 PM.
I came up with a plan. I would light up a cigar, take my ceremonial
pictures at the Legislative Yuan, continue to Din Tai Fang, ditch the cigar,
have some soup dumplings, take a taxi back to the hotel, relax for an hour or
so, then go to the fancy Chinese restaurant for a proper dinner. I could be back at my hotel by 11 PM, asleep
by 1 AM. My reader should know well
enough that these kind of things never work out as planned. It is now past 1 AM. I checked into the hotel and asked where to
find souvenir shops. No one had any
idea. They suggested I check the
shopping mall in the basement of the train station outside. Yeah, right.
The shops there were open until 9 PM, so I could just check on my way to
dinner, as I was chasing daylight when I left my hotel to head to the
Legislative Yuan. I got there a few
minutes after sunset, which was fine for the pictures, took my pictures, lit up
an Hoyo de Monterrey and started walking towards Din Tai Fang. The weather was very pleasant, and I was much
enjoying the tropical clime and the city as a whole, it being less overwhelming
the further I got away from center city.
It was more like Manhattan at this point. I ditched my cigar right before I got to Din
Tai Fang. Then I saw it.
It was like going to the original
Starbucks. There was a huge-ass fucking
line. No, not a line, a crowd of people
with tickets waiting for their table to be called. I was told that the wait was going to be, I
shit you not, 100 minutes, as in an hour and 40 minutes. I would take my food to go. That would be 15-20 minutes. Fine.
I was pretty hungry at this point, and it felt like a waste to go
through all this trouble just for a few dumplings. I also got some shrimp fried rice and a Diet
Coke. 20 minutes later, they brought me
a bag with my food, and I took a taxi back to the hotel.
I ate the food in my room, and I don’t know
if I was just starving or if it was actually that good, but the food was
seriously delicious. I ate every bite,
even trying the rice vinegar on a few dumplings. I then lied down for about an hour to rest before
heading out again. It was 8:30 PM when I
left the hotel, and I wasn’t sure how to play it, so I took everything I would
need anticipating being out of the hotel for the rest of the evening. The shopping mall, of course, had nothing,
but I got a recommendation. The Shilin
Night Market would have souvenirs. I
looked it up. Yes, that would be
perfect. They were also famed for their
food vendors, but I couldn’t eat the earlier meal, the meal at the fancy Chinese
restaurant, and at the street vendors.
It would just be too much.
I
checked the location. It was too far. There was no time to go before dinner. Hmm.
Would I skip the dinner and go straight to the night market? I didn’t want to jeopardize the Official
meal, especially if I’m going to consider Taiwan my 60th
country. Fortunately, it’s not called a
night market for nothing. All the
vendors would be open until at least 11 PM, most past midnight. Perfect.
I took a taxi to the restaurant, which turned out to be on the 31st
Floor of the W hotel. I got there at
9:23 PM. I was told at the front desk it
was too late. I thought the restaurant
closed at 10 PM? Yes, but last order is
at 9:30 PM. Okay, that gave me 7
minutes. I’d order right away. Over his protests, I want upstairs
anyway. Last order was actually at 9:45
PM, and I just ordered a Diet Coke, a pork dish, and white rice. I barely had an appetite, but the food was
good, and it counted for my Official meal.
That was 60 countries down, 137 to go.
I then headed to the Night Market, and that, too, was completely
overwhelming, but not entirely foreign to me, having visited the great bazaars
and shuuks of the Middle East. If any
place would have what I needed, it would be this. Otherwise, Taipei 101 tomorrow would be only
hope. The food vendors had such
interesting choices, and the prices were so cheap, too, unlike that bland,
overpriced pork dish I had had, but I can’t count a street vendor as an
Official meal, though I considered what I call the “New York exception.”
It was moot at this point, as I had already
had the meal, but the New York exception simply states that a standing/walking
meal can be considered the Official meal if having such a meal is considered
part of the local culture, such as eating a hot dog “under the umbrella” from a
street vendor in New York or getting a slice of pizza to go. This would certainly fit into that
exception. I found a souvenir shop with
flag pins and keychains. Perfect. I kept walking, thoroughly enjoying myself at
this point. I saw another stand with all
sorts of pins, including flag pins from various country. It then struck me that all this stuff was “Made
in Taiwan.” Whenever I previously saw
that label, I never imagined I’d actually be here someday. I got another ROC flag pin. I then get this fried dough thing from a
vendor, which was good. Before long, I
made my way out onto the street again and took a taxi back to the hotel.
I rested my eyes for a bit before getting out
of bed. The weather was nice enough to
smoke outside, but the view was much better from upstairs. I got all situated in my chair by the window,
where I proceeded to light up my 2012 Christmas pipe and write this entry,
which I will now close. Tomorrow, I head
to Seoul, which will be my last port of call for this trip. Soon enough, I’ll be back in New York. And, I just realized I don’t even have a
hotel in Seoul yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment