Taiwan 5: Andrew 1

Back in Taipei, we went back to our original hotel.  As mentioned earlier, right outside the hotel is an awesome looking shopping area.  I took a nighttime picture this time.



Here are the dragons decorating the entrance to our floor.



Something we noticed in Jiufen, was that every once in a while we would hear a Beethoven song.  We heard it again with Andrew, and he eexplained that the garbage trucks play Beethoven when they pick up garbage.  Weird.

The final two days of Taiwan would be with Andrew.  I believe I wrote about him earlier.  He was a childhood friend who lived in Taiwan and then Beijing, and would visit every summer and we would go to camp together(where we met).  I lost track of him around college.

This day, when we walked out of our hotel, we saw demonstrations happening.



The only news I was able to find was that it was the 30th anniversary of when martial law had been lifted.  Andrew explained that it was people who supported reunification with China.

We went to Andrew's apartment and got to see his awesome music recording room.  It had soundproofing, 6 guitars or so, a huge monitor, and many speakers.  I wish I had taken a picture of it.  We then took a taxi to the National Chiang Kai-sheck Memorial Hall area.  There was a miniatures art exhibit there.



Both Stephanie and Andrew were fascinated with one of the pictures.





As we were walking out, we caught Taiwanese soldiers taking down the flag for the day.  While we were watching, I caught a guy carrying his cat through the area.  The cat was content somehow.



He took us out to dinner at a local joint that he liked and picked out some dishes and we tried a bit of everything.



As we walked out, I told the woman that was up front that the food was amazing.  Andrew translated for me and her face lit up and she thanked me.

It was getting late, but we decided to do karaoke.  Karaoke is big in Taiwan.  How big, you ask?  So big that an entire building is dedicated to it.  Each floor has a number of individual private rooms and bigger areas.  Yet, even though it was a Sunday night, we had to wait in order for a room to open.  We got a buzzer, like you would get while waiting in a restaurant.  Once inside, you were given a menu, with a surprising amount of choices for food and drinks.   You have your own machine and multiple microphones.



Here is the building filled with karaoke on every floor: