Taiwan Part 3, plus more Hong Kong

Once again, I feel the need to finish the posts on a long-ago vacation because I want to post about a new one. I'm currently in Berlin and I'll try to write up a few posts on it in the next few days. For now, let me finish describing (to the best of my memory) the last few days of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Sunday started off just as miserably hot as Saturday, so walking around outside was very unpleasant. Nonetheless, Dana was a gracious host and took me around the city. Our first stop was the neighborhood of Ximending, a shopping district very popular with young people. The area is pretty much entirely pedestrian-only, which makes it a great place to stroll around.

We grabbed some yummy lunch in the form of a spicy variant of the popular local beef noodle soup:

After a few more hours of wandering around the neighborhood and stopping in various stores, we built our appetite up enough for more food, this time at a very famous restaurant named "Modern Toilet," which is themed around...toilets. You sit on toilets (with the seat down) and eat on tables mounted to bathtubs.

The food is served in various bathroom-themed vessels:

We spent the rest of the night shopping in a big underground mall (I forget the name, but I believe it is connected to the main train station) and eventually getting some delicious Taiwanese shaved ice. In the morning before my flight, we managed to drag ourselves out into the heat again to get a traditional Taiwanese breakfast, consisting of a donut-like thing, a savory pancake, and condensed milk.


My flight back to Hong Kong was unfortunately delayed several hours, so I didn't quite get the sightseeing time that I wanted. When I finally arrived, i checked into my "hotel." I'm hesitant to admit this because I know some people will be very concerned, but I stayed in the infamous Chungking Mansions, a densely packed complex with lots of hostels and guesthouses. The room was incredibly cheap and the place is in an excellent location, and these days the complex is actually very safe (and also I really like the movie Chungking Express). My room was comically tiny. It's hard to get a sense in this picture, but it was basically a closet with just enough room for a bed.

The bathroom was similarly small, with the shower head mounted over the toilet rather than having its own designated area. I was pretty pleased with my experience overall, though I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is even mildly claustrophobic. After dropping my stuff off, I hopped on the ferry over to the south part of the city, which gave me some awesome views of the city at night.

I walked over to the Causeway Bay neighborhood, where I was able to once again taste the amazing deliciousness that is Ichiran tonkotsu ramen:

It tasted just as good as it did in Japan. One of these days they need to actually open an American location like they keep promising! After dinner, I was able to squeeze in a little bit of nightlife and hit up a local craft brewery in the Central area, called Tipping Point. It was surprisingly good! I finally called it a night and headed back to my room to grab a little bit of sleep before my flight back to the States.

It was a really fun trip overall, especially due to Dana's willingness to be my guide around Taipei. I'll never forget the delicious food I had in both cities, and hopefully I'll get the chance to go back sometime (perhaps when it's not miserably hot and humid). Stay tuned for some posts about Berlin!