2020-01-10 Learning Chinese and Wasting Money - Taipei, Taiwan

Chinese Lesson

So it was pretty tricky communicating in Taiwan, so we tried out a Chinese lesson! It was a two hour session. We came to someone's house and sat on their floor, and began conversation practice.

It was pretty hard, especially with the guy's teaching style of "copy me” rather than "this is that”. Reading pinyin is pointless and confusing as it doesn't really represent the sounds accurately. The only real way to learn is to imitate! Also the tones are kinda... backwards to what I'm used to in Vietnamese.

We actually found more value in the conversation with the teacher about the state of politics and situation between the two Chinas.

In the end, it was still good value for money, at 15AUD per person. The actual quality of instruction could be greatly improved though.

Night Tour

At 72USD pp for a night market tour, we were hoping for some mind blowing experience.

We went to the Taipei 101 building

We went to Din Tai Fung, it was just okay, and we didn't get any special flavours, we were instead only told about them.

We were given 20 minutes to walk around the shops

We toured one of the temples. Turns out these are literally where the dragon balls are (on top of the temple roof)

We toured through the Snake Alley night market. By "tour”, I mean we just walked right through.

It was way overpriced at 72USD pp. No street food was included. Photos were taken poorly. Lots of time wasted in traffic. Tour guide repeated himself, forgetting that he's already gone through his script. We'll have to do a negative review, which sucks but hopefully they'll improve their tour in response for future tourists.

It was generally really unimpressive, and I just want my money (and hours) back.

After this poor experience we have cancelled all future booked activities and tours in Taipei and will be using all that money to just buy truckloads of street food.

Bubble Tea?

So Taiwan is the birthplace of bubble tea. They take it pretty seriously here.

$2 bubble tea not enough? Then why not go to the most popular, overpriced bubble tea shop in Taipei?

Not good enough? How about some... GOLD FOIL. So you can prove how wealthy you are in the form of bubble tea.

Huh? More? Here's a damn rose in your bubble tea!

What?! Your hands are cold from holding the tea? Here's a nice sleeve for your masterpiece.

Unfortunately it actually was overpriced (and over engineered), but at least I know how far you can go with bubble tea.

They knew they could, but they never really stopped to think if they should.

Other foods

First we smelt vomit in the streets and we knew we were in the right place for stinky tofu.

Grabbed some stinky tofu.

And rice flour noodles.

I think these were sweet potato balls. I can't actually remember anymore.