day 18! ningxia night market, r underground metro mall, taipei central station

Slept in again :) I shall blame it on the bed. Michael had tentative plans with his friend Terry, who he'd recently found out was staying in Taipei for a while, and possibly with Justin. He kept asking me if I was interested in joining them, but due to lack of communication, decision making, and a very vague timeline on their part, wasn't able to tell me at all what they'd be doing. As I've mentioned to some of you already......I hate going by someone else's schedule. Particularly if that schedule is unknown. I have to sit around all day waiting for god knows what, but be ready to go at the drop of a hat? No thank you. I would rather just not go. :) I told him as much, and looked up a new night market to go explore by myself.

Ningxia night market! Super easy to find, there were two possible exit stations, and then a straight walk down the street til you see lots of people eating. The glowing lightposts helped.

The corridors (can you say that for the outdoors?) of the night market were particularly narrow, I guess because it was a smaller night market. You can see how packed people are here. The setup was sort of like Raohe, two narrow passageways lined on both sides with food stands. :)

There was almost no shopping to do at this night market, so I'm a bit hesitant to go back ^^; That said they did have a wide variety of foods, including some things I hadn't seen before at other night markets. The one recurring food was potstickers/dumplings? Pretty common to see in little restaurants/sit down places, but not something I'd seen at night market food stands before.

Since I was on my own and more of an observing than a doing mode, I didn't really pick anything up. I WAS starving but....without Michael there saying he wanted to try X or Y I dunno, I guess I sort of lacked the initiative  to go up and order. :) Plus, having to finish everything yourself is not as fun.

It also rained on and off, starting and stopping pretty suddenly. Pretty funny to watch cuz as soon as the rain hits, people melt from the streets like the parting of the red seas. The two outermost edges of the night market are actual stationary stands (like, the sit-down restaurant types), with eaves and coverings, so people just clung to the sides and waited for the rain to stop. Good to know that rain doesn't chase people away from night markets. :)

I eventually found a stand selling my favorite guabao. :D So I got yet another one to eat for dinner. ^^v

Nowhere to eat it so I started walking back to the station. There was an overpass that lets you cross streets without waiting for traffic to stop, that was pretty low traffic. So I climbed up there, enjoyed the view, and had my guabao :3 Kind of romantic actually. Well no it's the opposite of romantic, but that melancholy solitary feeling is sort of romantic to me.

When I got back to the station, there were signs for an R underground metro mall. I followed.

Cute little designer looking store. They seemed to be closing so I didn't go in.

A lot of stores here have like, garage doors?? Most of them have been decorated (I dunno by who) to be more colorful and lively. I really like it! Instead of getting graffiti'ed on, it adds to the.....childish hodgepodge feeling that you sometimes get in Taiwan. Like everything was impromptu and ad-hoc, and has slowly built upon itself for years. :)

A funny men's bathroom.

Another cute sign. :) I love amorphous happy monsters! The turnip siamese bunny twins are my favorite.

So most of the mall was shut down, I thought that it was closed for the day but it turns out that the leases had ended in February and everything was shut down for renovations. Reopening in May, I hope I can catch the grand re-opening!

Even with everything closed, there were still a few nice things to see. Plus the walk (with headphones in) was nice and therapeutic. This was a random part of the mall, probably where it connected to the next station. The malls run underground between station, this one (R) seemed particularly big, since it spanned 3 stations. They're really nice to go to on rainy days, to escape the wet, and also because they are air conditioned ^^v Unfortunately since this one was shut down it was not. :(

All those little dots on the pillars are actually these intricate ceramic butterflies.

Pretty. :)

Cute little kids shoes. Why are people so into angry birds here?? I don't get it.

After traversing the length of the mall, I found myself back at Taipei central station. There are a few underground malls shooting out from the station, I believe K, Y, and Z. Before, we'd usually started in K and maybe spread to Z a bit. When Michael and I were on our quest to find Momo's, we accidentally stumbled upon Y, thinking that the restaurant might be in there. Turns out it wasn't, but we found a bunch of anime themed/anime related stores there and said we'd go back at some point. It was like a mini Akihabara. :)

Since I had nothing to do, I headed to the Y underground mall.

Tons of cute figurines for sale here, all for pretty affordable prices I'd say. :)

I mean...inappropriately aged underdressed chicks and ridiculously large breasted weapon-bearing chicks for like $5 each?? What kind of monster would say no.  

There was a large life sized model in an open area, presumably for people to take pictures with. Apparently the Y mall is celebrating it's 40th birthday and this girl is the mascot adorning all of the celebratory announcement posters. And yes that little boy has his hand up her skirt.

ALSO found in Y mall is the exact opposite of babes in short skirts, Gunheaven.

Found another one of those booth/cubicle like stores. Those are fast becoming my favorites here! :D There's always some small trinket or treasure to find. This one had these amazingly adorable Alice in Wonderland designs!!!! Done by some local artist I believe. I sneakily spread a few out to take a pic of, but there were more that I missed. I love it...it's exactly what I like. :D I love Alice, I love the zombie/egg eyes, I love graphical text, I love the thick cartoony lines, but the pastel sort of way of coloring. I dunno. I just love stuff like this. So even though these little bags were really expensive (by Taiwan standards), I had to have one. Wonder if you guys can guess which one I picked? It was about $15, I was hoping to use it for a camera bag but it turned out to be a taaaad bit too small for that. Doh! Still happy with it though. :) Also found the artist online and on FB.

Kinect star wars game! :)

Another cubicle treasure trove store, a lot of them seem to have a "mini games" section. I got a strange lookin' card game, that I THINK is somewhat like kings cup???

Anyway at this point I called Michael to see where he was, and he said he and Justin wouldn't mind heading to Taipei central station. Met up with them and Terry joined us later. Since those boys are not at all interested in shopping, we ended up back at the claw machine place.

Michael wanted a gloomy bear claw. We won one. And then he wanted another. So....

Yerp. That's them with two claws. They also won ANOTHER gloomy bear hat (he already had one from a week ago).

I personally thought these were cuter. :3

So part of the reason it was so easy for us to get the claws is cuz this sweet little girl came by to help us.  I guess it's somewhat in the job description to do so (depending on management), but the people at this place are particularly nice, I think. :) And she was so cute and helpful!! I ended up chatting with her a bit while they made their many many many attempts to win bear parts for Michael. You can just feel that she's a very sweet and innocent person. :) I dunno, I really liked her. AND, I could tell we were friends cuz Taiwanese girls have this habit of being really touchy feely with each other?? They are always holding hands, putting their heads together, etc. At some point I was leaning against a machine, and she stood right next to me and sat back on it too. Like super close so our sides were touching. Normally I would sort of freak out since I don't like being touched, but since I knew that's how people do it here......it was sweet that she thought we were friends. ^^v Seriously though I'm not lesbo...

Anyway I asked for her name, told her we'd be back.

From Taipei central, we somehow decided to trek to Ximen (it's one stop over) to find more claw machines. /)_(\ ngggg.

But first, I demanded bing!!! I was soooo thirsty.

The walls of the place were pretty fun, people had written all over em.

"We" left our mark, in pink highlighter.

Raped a few more plushies with our claws, but things started shutting down so we went home.


Michael convinced/coerced/dragged me to the McDonalds near our station for food. I'm legitimately afraid for his health. I don't think he should come back to Taiwan anymore.

The McDonalds was nice and clean though, almost classy.

Esp with cute graphic art like this.

And that was the end of our day. :)