Hotwheels '69 Corvette ZL-1 Taiwan

I just tonight noticed the above Hotwheels toy car in the Japanese convenience store called Family Mart (全家) by my home in Manka (艋舺), Taiwan. Naturally, I picked one up for my daughter. Besides the flashy packaging, it was completely the same as when I was a kid. The weight is the same. The smooth spin of the wheels is the same. Plus it's made of metal, not plastic. I remember Hotwheels toy cars used to be around a buck (this was 1977). In Taiwan in 2009, they're NT$69 (two bucks and change).

People have been asking when I'll put up another post. I'm so busy with school right now that I can't imagine putting aside an hour for this thing. Tonight I had a few beers, so my sense of urgency on the thesis front is gone. When I get back to blogging (early July), this is what I'll be up to:

a) Interesting people and items I met collecting my thesis research
b) The historic area of Manka (艋舺), Taiwan. I've been collecting info. People have also been sending it to me - thanks for that.
c) How I'm paying NT$1700 a month (US$55) for security guards that do nothing but smoke, drink tea and occasionally piss me off. I'm really going to go to town on these guys one of these days.

Back to the toy cars:

The top of the package reads 007. I was trying to figure it out - when did James Bond have a '69 Corvette? I don't think he ever did. What on earth would James Bond want with an American car? Then it hit me: the goofy silver thing behind the label must be a Corvette too. James Bond was driving it when he had to swerve off a winding road to avoid hitting Eva Green, who played Vesper Lynd (for my money the hottest Bond girl ever) in Casino Royale (for my money the best flick in the Bond franchise). Besides killing people instead of just karate chopping them, it seems the newest James Bond also drives a Chevy.

Taipei Has Public Bike Transport

I noticed Taipei has a public bike system up and running around Taipei 101. We swipe our Go-cards and can then take a bike (see above pic). I'm not sure about the time limit. We can return them to one of several posts in the vicinity (there's a map). The area seems better spaced than a lot of Taiwan's older districts, so it should be pretty easy / safe for non-experienced riders to give it a go.

I've often wondered about Taiwan's bike laws - is it legal to ride on the sidewalks? The bikes do not come with helmets, so be careful. The city is now enforcing helmet laws. I think it's NT$600 a pop.

Ga La King

I took these pictures near Youth Park (青年公園) Sunday in Ga La, Taiwan. Every weekend the park fills families from all over Taipei. It probably has the best, and most, playgrounds in town. There's also a terrific circular sandpit. A market activity has sprung up around the kids, with vendors selling plastic shovels and buckets, balls, Frisbees, plastic baseball bats and all kinds of snacks. Every now and then, a cop will slowly wind through the park on a scooter to scatter the sellers, but they're back in an instant.

The shots above are of a traditional sausage stand on the sidewalk right outside the park. The pinball machines were antique, with nail grooves and steel ball bearings. For NT$5, diners can try to win something. We played three times, accumulating points that went toward a discount on NT$10 sausages. The boy next to my wife was so engrossed that he didn't notice the vendor had given him a broken sausage. Half the meat had fallen off. She rammed it back on the stick when nobody was looking.

BTW, I found out from a taxi driver that I live in Ga La King (Taiwanese language), not Manka. Manka is over by Lungshan Temple while Ga La King accounts for the neighborhood around Youth Park. According to the taxi driver, it was named for a benevolent gangster, who had many wives and who liked to eat clams, or ga la. When the gangster died, people in Ga La King put on black T-shirts and took part in a funeral procession through the neighborhood. When I told my wife, however, she wasn't going for it. She said it's simply Ga La. That's what they call now, and way back when her grandma was a girl.
I wrote about how teenagers had taken over the playgrounds of my previous neighborhood, Wenshan, Taiwan. We've moved, but there seems to be a trend. This guy must weigh 75 kilos, but he still wants to ride a plastic seahorse on a metal coil in Youth Park (青年公園). The instructions clearly read "maximum weight 30 kilograms". So I asked him what the appeal was - if people could see him now, they'd definitely think he was a wanker. He told me "no, it's a lot of fun". My two-year-old daughter seemed to agree. She immediately ran over to the adjacent seahorse and had a bit of a competition, to see who could get theirs going "back-forth" faster.

Try Minding Your Own Business

For some reason, this man was running the exhaust off his scooter down at Ma Chang Ting (馬場町) in Manka (艋舺), Taiwan this morning when I was taking off for my bike ride. I understand that I'm going to be labeled as a fusspot or gwei-mao (龜毛) by some for not minding my own business. Others will say as a "foreigner" I have no say in Taiwan's environment or anything other problem for that matter, but I'm going to post this anyway. I went over and asked the guy what he was hoping to achieve by polluting our country, to which I received a snappish "Gan ma? (幹嘛)?" or "What the f&^%?"

I'll be the first to admit I don't get mechanics. To me, running off your motor as a means of remedy when it has some serious exhaust problems does not fix it. Instead, it simply pollutes the neighborhood and makes everyone uncomfortable, "foreigners" and locals alike. The simple solution is to get the scooter fixed.

English Teachers in Taiwan

I get letters from people who want me to promote Taiwan or, more specifically, their Web sites, to prospective English teachers. I don't really know how to respond other than to say Taiwan really doesn't look like a good proposition. Here are the facts as I know them:

1. Taiwan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. There aren't enough kids to go around.

2. The market is over-saturated. There's a struggling English cram school on every block.

3. Taiwan has some pretty tough visa policies. An English teacher will be asked to undergo a physical annually in order to obtain a work visa. This work visa is quite restrictive. You'll become more or less an indentured servant to whatever school signs for you. They will hold the work visa over your head, constantly threatening to revoke it if you do not agree to work split shifts (early mornings and evenings, plus Saturdays). To add injury to insult, you'll probably be asked to pay for the work visa and even the physical, which includes a blood test and X-ray, out of your own pocket. If you ever want to break free, and embark on the process of getting permanent residence, you'll undoubtedly find the process maddening. You'll be subjected to all kinds of strange behavior and, basically, the whims of the bureaucrat processing it. You should also keep in mind that the total of Westerners that have ever obtained citizenship is less than a hundred.  

4. Taiwan has a new tax law for "foreigners", namely, they must surrender 20 percent of their income (a very high tax bracket for Taiwan) for the first six months of every year. Considering they will only earn somewhere around US$30,000, this would probably be pretty tough to bear. They should keep these points in mind: Locals in the same financial situation will only be asked to fork over six to 13 percent. Also, this seems to be a violation of Taiwan's constitution, which states in Chapter I, General Provisions, Article 5: "There shall be equality among the various racial groups in the Republic of China (Taiwan)."

Today, I received a letter from a recruiter asking me to put my blog (they must be desperate) behind his efforts. In all sincerity, I am the last guy he should ask. First, I haven't worked in the cram school racket for some time, so any positive comments by me on the matter would be disingenuous. Second, I have my visa through my Taiwanese wife, which is sort of like a Taiwan green card. Therefore, I'm more or less exempt from the visa BS anyone else coming from overseas would surely encounter.

Please note that the mandate of this blog is personal amusement, meaning a bit of history, day-to-day anecdotes and whatever else pops into my mind. Recruiters stay away. I am not interested in "sharing the belief that living and working abroad is a unique and amazing opportunity to travel and see the rest of the world." I am not interested in being part of a "recruitment process [that] provides candidates with as much information about living abroad as we can". I am in Taiwan for the long haul. I love being here and I couldn't leave if I felt otherwise. I am not interested in people looking to get their rocks off on stints overseas while they find themselves. In fact, this kind of voyeurism disturbs me.

Multipurpose Playground

In my last post, I talked about 14-year-olds taking over the playground by my home. I'd never been to the park during the daytime as I have to work. On a day off, however, I took my daughter out for a stroll. As evident from the above the pictures, the local laundromat has also put the grounds to use. Experiment: how far can you drop kick a mattress? That very same evening, we returned to the playground. This time, an old man was splayed across both slides smoking. We played around him for a while, until I asked him: "Why don't you get off the slides?" What gives with the Wenshan playgrounds? Really, I don't get it.

Strawberry Generation X in My Backyard

There are four parks within minutes from my home in Wenshan, Taiwan. They all have monkey bars, slides, rocking turtles and teenagers. For some reason, the teenagers in my neighborhood congregate in playgrounds. This is a concern for parents with infants as the older kids weave their bikes through wobbling toddlers, practice throwing fastballs with rocks at anything colorful that can serve as a target, slam dunk basketballs between the monkey bar grates and persist in all other kinds of stupid and dangerous stunts. They also litter cigarette butts and empty drink boxes on the ground where the smaller kids are playing. I really don't get why the playgrounds are so popular with teenagers, but every single one in my neighborhood comes with them.

I took the above shot a couple of Sundays ago. Notice how teenagers have taken over the jungle gym - the kids in the picture are 14 and 15 years old . I was telling myself I'd do something about it if my daughter tried to climb the stairs. Then another two-year-old beat her to it. He didn't get far as the kid with his ass hanging out dropped a couple of rungs, oblivious to the little boy he was impeding and about to land on, and continued with his attempts to impress the young ladies inside. When I went over and asked them if they were little kids, or if they weighed 30 kilograms or less like the sign said they needed to be, he became even more sarcastic than I was being and a bit hostile. "This is not a joke," I warned him. "Get lost." After the teenagers had returned the playground to the toddlers, a mom came over and thanked me. There was a nice wimpy-looking man nearby and his face was beet red. He was the little boy's father.

I go to this park almost every evening after I pick my daughter up from the babysitter's. The teenagers are always there. It has more or less the same crew; sometimes it swells to ten or even 15, and then there are some new faces. On occasion, the teenagers borrow my cell phone to call up more buddies to come over. I'm starting to get to know a few, like Andy, who's 14, and his chain-smoking girlfriend Amy. I once asked Andy if he had to study or something. He said he did from time to time. "Come on," I prodded, "you're not that diligent" and he agreed.

Actually, I'm finding when I talk to Andy and a few of his pals that I like them. I hear a lot of talk about how this generation, labeled the Strawberry Generation (actually they're post Strawberries as they were born from 1993-96 - Strawberries are the 1980s), is pretty useless. According to people my age (I'm 38), they're selfish, lazy, wasteful, unfilial and what have you. Taiwan's birthrate, which is less than one now combined with a high divorce rate, 35% and increasing last I heard, are the main culprits for spawning these non-Confucian mutants. Parents do one of the three: spoil them as they're only children, neglect them as they have to work 24/7 to keep up with the country's high cost of living or simply ignore them as they're divorced and back in the dating game. The tag Strawberry speaks to the character of this generation. It's easy to bruise.

The reason I think I might kind of like post Strawberries is they seem less inhibited, freer and a lot more fun. They can be pretty friendly, in a real way. I see this in Andy, the before-mentioned ringleader of the park invaders. He often comes over to talk to me, between smokes, and not just to bum my cell phone. He plays with my daughter and even scolds me for not teaching her better English.

When I mix new Taiwanese like my daughter (20% of Taiwanese babies have at least one "foreign" parent) in with the Strawberries and post-Strawberries, I can see that Taiwan is soon going to be a radically different place. That's more than OK by me. In a way, the presence of such a generation is "sweet" and satisfying, so long as it's not in my local playground.

No Hubbub about Pandas

We didn't think the pandas were on display yet. That's why we went to the zoo today, to enjoy it before all the hubbub. We also went because it's 10 minutes from our home and my daughter loves ostriches, hippos, monkeys, gray wolf and zebras, which she has started calling "zemas". We timed the pandas wrong; the circus is already up and running. Note: if you do want to visit the zoo and do not want to be counted as one among the fawning masses, make sure you say "I don't want one" the minute you swipe your MRT card to get in. I didn't know what was going on, so when the ticket checker thrust out her arm and abruptly said "Please wait", I did exactly that. A moment later I was holding a stub with the time 4:10 - 4:19 for a panda viewing. I wasn't asked if I wanted to see them, but I'm sure I'm being counted as one (three counting my wife and daughter) out in support of this scam.

The reason I find this so offputting is the pandas are named Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓). When you put the words together, you get 團圓 or reunification in English. To suggest that Taiwan and the PRC are being reunified is disingenuous, especially since the PRC didn't even exist until 54 years after China threw Taiwan to Japan. That's just part of it. In 1683, China tried to sell Taiwan back to the Dutch. Around the same time, the Emperor Kangshi said that Taiwan was nothing more than a blob of mud floating in the sea, a blob that would never be worthy of inclusion within the Center Kingdom. Historically speaking, the Taiwanese have never shown an interest in being a part of China either. The numbers speak for themselves: during 212 years of Ching rule, they revolted 159 times. When I showed my wife the stub, she gave her usual spit of disgust: "We don't want to see any damned pandas!" My wife blames President Ma for all of this and even calls him a traitor or a mole, like Matt Damon in The Deceased. Personally, I'm not one to take sides when it comes to politics. The last eight years have proven to me that no matter who's in power, I'm still going to be labeled as an outsider (I'm white) and have my rights limited for this reason.

I'm really not picking sides when it comes to President Ma and the previous administration. I can't stress this enough. After all, it was Chen who scapegoated "foreign" laborers as the reason for Taiwan's escalating unemployment rate, who went off on a xenophobic tirade about having an American grandson, who did nothing to overturn some pretty racial immigration laws, etc. But I am noticing a pattern with Ma, that perhaps my wife is right when she says he playing Matt Damon to a Jack Nicholson Beijing. In The Deceased, Matt Damon is groomed by Boston gangsters to infiltrate the police department. When he gets older, he goes through the police academy, enters the police department, moves up the chain of command. All the while he's feeding the gangster organization he truly works for anything they want. For me, this whole panda thing shows something about Ma's intentions.

Ma's maneuvers also remind of something I saw seven years ago, when I was at the 2002 Asian Championships for Women's Soccer at the old stadium on the corner of Dunhua and Nanking in Taipei. China was playing the Philippines and it wasn't a great game. She had already scored ten goals and was now controling the ball to run out the clock. I was there with a couple of American friends. We had a chest of beer, so we weren't about to leave even though the game was out of reach for the Filipinas. I remember there were some Taiwanese patriots in the stands waving Taiwan flags. A few had banners, reminding the Chinese about Tibet and Tianamen, and anything else they could think of. Suddenly, the cops showed up and started confiscating flags and banners. My friends and I were stunned. We couldn't imagine someone having their country's flag confiscated by their own police. So we started to shout down to some people directly below us who had a flag, giving them words of encouragement.

The police were making their way toward us and flag bearers were anxious. "Come sit with us," they pleaded. "The police will be afraid of you." That was a bit hard for us to believe. It probably would've been within the powers of the police to take our beer and write us up for public drunkeness. Plus our message to them was "Stand up for yourselves!" After the cops had made off with their flags, we walked down to find out what had transpired. It seems the cops weren't that happy about the task, but were acting on the orders of then Taipei Mayor, Mr. Ma.

At the end of the day, I can't understand why two pandas in Taiwan with a combined name that seems to undermine the country's sovereignty is not offensive but free speech, which is protected by Taiwan's constitution, or the Taiwan flag are.

My Cute Family to Receive Tawian Tax Vouchers

According to the explanation provided above, I'll be receiving a "tip" (the same word, I think, as they use in restaurants for good service) of NT$3600 this coming Sunday from Taiwan's government, which is in the process of "tidying up Taiwan's economy". I'm a bit surprised, as I didn't think I'd be getting a whiff of the money the government is doling out. But it seems all I have to do is show up with my ARC (Alien Resident Card) at an elementary school in Wanhua (萬華) and I can collect.

I'd heard that "foreign" spouses would be eligible, but when I mentioned this to local friends, it was explained that a "foreign" spouse meant a woman from Vietnam, Indonesia or China, not me. The tip has been called a tax credit or tax rebate by some, but as my American friend Craig has bitterly pointed out, many "foreigners" who pay taxes in Taiwan will not be included. He counts himself among the disenfranchised. He's been paying taxes in Taiwan for 21 years and won't get squat. My daughter, on the other hand, who has never paid taxes or for anything else in her life, will be making off like a bandit. My in-laws received a list of family members who'd be collecting come Sunday. The list included my wife's grandma, my father and mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, my niece, my wife and my daughter. Even though I am listed on the official family registration from which these names were drawn, I received a separate notice.

From what I can understand of this letter, I am encouraged to spend, not bank, this money on myself, my cute family or someone else that I love. Details on how I can collect are given in Vietnamese, Indonesian, English, Thai and Burmese. It's been a killer year. The cash will be nice to receive regardless of the terms.

Getting It Up the Yangtze

Back Up to Wulai

"In 1964, the Wulai Feng-ching Ch'u Kuan-li So or Administrative Office of the Wulai Scenic Area (AOWSA) in Wulai was founded. It is estimated the number of tourists coming to Wulai has averaged about 3,000 per day since the mid-1960s. Tourist revenues have become the most important economic resource in Wulai. Although the government has actively encouraged the Atayal residents to plant firs and mushrooms, the great majority of this indiginous group, especially the women, continue to depend on the tourist industry...." -Hsieh Shih-chung

When I read something like this, I wonder why the government doesn't encourage Taiwanese people to plant mushrooms and then work on the Atayal (泰雅) Aborigines to open shops and become prosperous. It's like when Chen was targeting Filipino and Indonesian workers, saying they were stealing labor jobs from Aborigines. He never said, "let them have them, because I'm going make sure every Aborigine goes to university to ensure he or she can make more than NT$16,000 per month, maybe less with forced days of unpaid leave off."

Anyway, Wulai (烏來), though crowded, is great place to visit especially if you're like me, even on a busy holiday like this (see above pic - I think there must have been three times the average for visitors, amazing for a town with a population around 2,000). First of all, it's right up the road from Wenshan (文山) where I live. Second, they've got a lot of cheap, tasty dishes. It's also in the mountains and the scenery is beautiful. Finally, they've got hot springs everywhere; it can be quite relaxing (although we ended up paying NT$1800 or US$60 for a 1.5-hour soak). The waters and fresh air are a nice way to recover from any new year-party hangover.

Normally in the Wulai (烏來), the shopkeepers will do anything to attract your attention. They'll wave at you, talk broken English or stick food samples on toothpicks in your way. This Indian restaurant was different. If it hadn't been for the Indian guy working the upside-down woks, where they heat up Indian springroll shells, I never would've noticed. According to the owner, an Indian man from the Punjab, they've been in business for a year. That means I've walked by this place on several occasions without taking the slightest notice.

Wulai is actually supposed to be Atayal (泰雅), the name given to Aborigines of similar traits and a shared language some 101 years ago by Japanese anthropologists. In truth, it's a hodgepodge. The last I heard, the town was 98+ percent Taiwanese owned. The Aborigines who work in the shops for the gratifiction of Aborigine-seeking tourists come from all over, though most of them do come from from a town just beyond river. The owners have asked them to bring stuff from home, to make the shops look more authentic. That's why you can seen pictures of Bunun (布農) Aborigines on the walls singing in religious ceremonies or clothes that might be Kavalan (噶瑪蘭). There's a really good variety.
I had this after the Indian spring rolls. It was supposed to boar meat, but when was the last time you saw a boar in Taiwan? Whatever it was, I couldn't complain. Fried with chilis and lots of onions, a serving only costs NT$100 (US$3) and really hits the spot. 
This line, which stretched out on to the bridge with Taiwan flags, was for sausages . (See the sign? They contain boar meat!). There were about ten stands selling sausages in Wulai, but this was the only place you had to wait for a half an hour to get one. I asked my wife what was so special about the sausages. She couldn't really be brought to believe that the sausages were that much better or worth a thirty-minute wait. She hadn't seen anything about this place on the news, etc. "The thing that is special," she explained, "is there are a lot of people waiting to get a sausage. If you stand in this line, you could get something other people can't and that makes you special. Plus, these people are bored." I didn't have anything to do either. That was why I was in Wulai. But I wasn't about to wait this long unless they were giving the things away. And even then, I 'd still probably decline. I do know that if I ever open a food stand, I'm going to get my friends to stand out front. Or, I'm going to organize 10 to 15 food stand owners, so that we take turns rotating from stand to stand to drum up business.

Sanur, Bali

We decided to get out of the cold weather of Taiwan. After digging around for direct flights to tropical locales (my little daughter doesn't do airport stopovers very well), we came up with Bali. This was my third trip to Indonesia and my first to Bali since 1991. Instead of heading to Kuta Beach, the natural choice for visitors, we chose the quieter Sanur. I think this was a terrific move, especially after visiting Kuta, our original choice, for a couple of hours last Thursday. Kuta has really gone downhill in the last 17 years, sliding into as my colleague described it, a kind of Fort Lauderdale for Australians. Even though high season is not yet in full gear, the beach in Kuta was more packed than Waikiki (I've never been to Florida, but I can just imagine). It was wall-to-wall noise, filth and inanity.

I've posted a pic of the beach in front of our Sanur hotel (the Sagara Village Hotel) for a bit of contrast. Needless to say, we couldn't get out of Kuta fast enough - back to our nice quiet patch of sand.
The Bintang, Bali Hai Draft and regular Bali Hai were all waiting patiently for our return. The Bintang goes, on average, for $11,000 rupiah (about 90 cents US.) You can expect to save $500 rupiah on Bali Hai Draft and Bali Hai regular.
The Stone Pillar (above) is said to be the oldest artifact yet to be dated in Bali. The language on the stone could be an ancient version of Javanese that is not widely understood anymore. Located in Sanur, it's an obscure site, even to locals.

When I told the taxi driver the address - just down the street - he was perplexed. Taking the address out of my hand, he stared at it and rubbed his head. Then, about five minutes later, we were pulling up in front of an alley about a meter wide. The driver got out and checked around to make sure the address was right. Then he said "This is it. In there" before collecting a $20,000 rupiah fee (about US$1.60).

The pillar is, well, unimpressive. The temple next door, which is half in ruins, seemed a lot more intriguing. I googled Stone Pillar just a few minutes ago, and this is what I got: http://www.baliblog.com/places-to-go/in-search-of-prasasti-blanjong.html
The sentiment on baliblog is about the same. It's an interesting post, with an exact date.

I think the driver thought he had scammed us, because he was still hanging around when we came out. He said: "Come on. I take you back now." I told him we'd shop our way back, but struck a deal for transport to Ubud the following day.

On our way up to Ubud (we stayed there for a couple of days), we started up a bit of a conversation. The driver was from a village around 30 minutes away, but took lodging in Sanur and returned to his wife and little child on weekends. His wife also worked, in a shop at Denpassar, so child-rearing was left to his 50-year-old unemployed father. "It's very hard here," he explained. "Harder and harder, and I'm just 26-year-old guy to say this. We make about US$100 a month." After I had translated to my wife, he turned and asked "Chinese?"

"No, Taiwanese."

"Same," he affirmed.

Knowing a bit about Bali's rocky relationship with Indonesia (or Java, where the government is) and understanding my Taiwanese wife could become agitated, I jabbed back: "Bali and Indonesia same?" The Balinese are still very, very upset with the 2002 and 2005 bombings, which were carried out by nutcases from Java, and they will differentiate themselves strongly. These individuals made a huge dent on tourism and affected the lives of, it is safe to say, one in two people on the island. I think the driver got my point. His reply was emphatic:

"No, not same! All Indonesia people? Better can't come here in Bali. Better not come."
*****
Returning from a visit to the rice terraces outside Ubud, we drove through into a "New Year" parade (Friday, November 28). There were about 100 revelers in the road, including women balancing loads on their heads and lots of kids. Our driver, Bayu, took a mysterious tone of voice and asked: "Do you want to see the 'white bird'?" I had an image of large statue of worship that was hauled out on special occasions, so I answered:

"Yes, we do."

Bayu turned the minivan off the main road and headed up a lovely, tree-lined lane. "There's 'white bird'," he announced finally, pointing up at the trees (see above pic). The trees were teeming with white birds. According to Bayu, these are the only trees in Ubud that they come to rest in. They do so at dusk.

Taiwan: Food, Finally!

I've never seen it as my duty as a good little "foreign" guest here in Taiwan to say that "everyone knows that Chinese food is the best food in the world". To tell the truth, I don't agree with this. You won't see me making top ten lists with Chinese food at number one. For me, Chinese food is too rich, too greasy, too (piping) hot and too hard to dig into. I'd much rather eat Greek, Italian, Cajun or Indian. I especially don't like expensive Chinese food, such as is served at feasts or wedding banquets. I simply nibble at these meals to be polite. And I absolutely detest anything with "herbal medicine" in it. I not only can't eat that stuff, but I can't even breathe it. There are exceptions of course like Szechuan food, which is spicy yet simple and Cantonese food, with its crunchy noodles and fun-to-eat dim sum offerings. Thus I am happy to see Taiwanese becoming more democratic in their tastes. Where I come from, it's more like "everyone knows Chinese food is quick and easy takeout. Make sure you have something to wash it down with." Nobody has it ranked number one.

My friend John was telling me the other day that the reason "foreign restaurants" are taking off in Taiwan is people here are afraid of Chinese ingredients, like everything has melamine in it. I don't see it that way. I think the population has become more worldly, more adventuresome and less susceptible to Sino-centric brainwashing. This bodes well for me, because boy do I like to eat. I threw some pics down below as further evidence of Taiwan's democratization.

Vietnamese spring rolls over noodles served at a the Pho Cafe, a nice little place near my office in Taipei. The owner, a friendly Cantonese fellow, comes from Vietnam.

I had this pita sandwich and spicy fries at a Middle Eastern restaurant called the Sababa Pita Bar www.sababapita.com, a restaurant in the newish Breeze Center, upstairs at the Taipei Train Station. I asked one of employees, I think his name was Eddie (an overseas Taiwanese from the Philippines) if they had a "foreign" cook hidden away in the back. He said "no", and that the owner was a Taiwanese woman. But he also told me that restaurant was a franchise. Sababa buys all of their sauces from the original branch, which is run by a Canadian. I'm guessing the Canadian, or his parents, come from some place cooler than Canada. This guy can really cook. Let's just hope the owner of this branch doesn't get it into her head that they don't really need to keep paying up, that she can do just as well on her own. When/if this happens, the Sababa Pita Bar can kiss its sales goodbye.
Moroccan eggplant, yogurt sauce, tomatoes, dill (I think), pita and drink for NT$180 (US$6).
Korean food in Hualien (花蓮), Taiwan: for the life of me, I couldn't remember eating this. It was in my Hualien pics file stored on my Mac, from the spring. I must've enjoyed it, because I love Korean food. Hualien has also started to go cosmopolitan. The tiny airport there serves international flights. And I do remember eating at a Chinese restaurant and having my order taken by a Russian in a chipao.
This jarred my memory. It was definitely Korean.