Let it be known throughout the land for all to hear: I never want to hear Wham's "Last Christmas" ever again. This may seem like a perfectly normal thing to wish for, but this is especially true when each and every department store you walk through is playing its very own version of said song, each cover more flimsily assembled than the last. This happens to be part of how I spent my time away in Hong Kong these holidays and just so happens that this is particularly difficult to convey in my usual photo plus text format. I just wish I had recorded it, like I did when I went to see the sun rise at five in the freaking morning in Taiwan.
Ooh, lens flare! Or is that just dust?
There's nothing better to break the monotony/peaceful calm of a sunrise by informing the visitors about the many goods on sale over a megaphone. This bizzare treatment of tourists must be some sort of tradition amongst the Taiwanese. In a completely isolated incident our tour group was hoarded into one of those tourist traps where they take you to a shop and sit you in front of this man who claims that eating ground up pearl powder can cure any ailment, or consuming deer foetus soup gives you the ability to fly, or counting the number of strokes in your name can mean the difference between life and death.
I wasn't kidding about the deer foetus.
Unfortunately for us, we fell for the last one. Well kind of. This place specialised in selling jade products to ward off bad spirits or draw them in, I can't remember which. The nice man took our names and applied his numerology magic to them and concluded that mum needed some good luck by exchanging money for a little piece of jade. At this point in order to welcome in the good spirits he starts shouting some incantation real loud and clapping his hands to the point where the other shop staff joined in. This led to the rest of our tour group (previously unaware of our transaction), doing what you would normally do in such crowd mentality situations and join in the applause. This was easily the most embarassing yet wonderful experience I took from Taiwan, one I shall hopefully cherish forever.
Taipei 101, temporarily the world's tallest building and home to the most ridiculously upmarket and unaffordable shopping strip I have ever seen.
I wish I had time to talk about all the crazy things I saw, like the septic collection truck that plays "Fur Elise". Kids are really into some weird stuff over there. But then I would have to go on and on and on... I wish I wrote all this stuff as I was on the road...