A late last night in Taipei.

Our departure: 9:30 AM from Taoyuan International Airport.
Our plan: to spend our last night in Taipei, hanging out, eating, catching a few hours sleep in a love hotel, then grabbing an early breakfast, and heading to the airport at 6AM.
Our results: a few hurdles, but it all worked out in the end...

21:00-- Having caught the HSR in Hsinchu, we arrive in Taipei early enough to catch the city still awake. We stow our luggage in the train station lockers, and take the MRT into the Ximen. In this hip shopping neighbourhood, we browse for shoes and cardigans, and join the crowds at Ay Chung for a bowl of noodles.

23:00-- After meeting up with a friend, we duck into a small restaurant for a small dinner. I opt for the braised chicken on rice.

24:00-- We walk to the nearby Red Theatre Square and order some drinks. Located behind the historic Red Theatre, the square is a night-time neighbourhood of gay bars, shops, and restaurants where friends gather at tables under lantern light.

2:00-- Saying goodbye to our friend, we head back to the area around the train station to find a love hotel. Since we don't need a full night's accomodation, a love hotel is perfect-- they're willing to rent a room out for only two or three hours (the name making sense yet?). We ask around at a few spots we know, but everyone is booked up. After scouring the neighbourhood, we're realizing our luck might have run out. We start to wonder if there are any 24-hour Starbucks in the city.

2:30-- Luckily, we'd noticed a few love hotels while we were wandering around Ximen, so we grabbed a cab and headed back there. It felt bizarre to be on the streets of Ximen so late at night-- the small lanes that had earlier been packed with crowds were now totally deserted. We took the elevator up to one love hotel, and the doors opened to a darkened cavern strewn with rubble-- we quickly pressed the 'door close' button, and headed back downstairs. Luckily the hotel nextdoor was still open, and we got a suspiciously cheap room for two hours. The room is tiny-- it feels as if it were built around the bed-- and the walls are lined with mirrors. Eek. We're exhuasted, so who cares.

4:15-- The alarm goes off, and against our protests we get out of bed and take a quick shower. One thing helping us wake up-- we're heading for a really good breakfast. We hop in a cab with a friendly driver, and after a little confusion, manage to explain to him where we want to go.

4:45-- He drops us off at Yungho Soy Bean Milk and Porridge King, which, luckily, is in fact open 24 hours. Unlike in the morning, the place is quiet-- a fraction of the usual staff, and only a few tables of students eating. We order two bowls of warm soy milk, a steamer of shaolingbao, a donut for Bordeaux, and some dan bin for me. Not a bad final meal in Taiwan.

5:15-- Finished, we catch a taxi to the train station, track down our luggage, and then walk to catch an airport bus. As we drive down to Taoyuan in the breaking light, we both doze off a little...

Keeping dry in Taipei.

Our rainy Sunday was not an isolated cloudburst; Cape Town is still trapped under a low ceiling of cloud cover and steady drizzle. But after living in Asia, really, this is nothing. No one does rain like Asia.

We had quite a few experiences of being trapped by a sudden downpour. Like the walk home from work in Bangkok, where Bordeaux and I had to just give up on the idea of trying to stay dry, and ran home, sloshing through knee-high puddles. Or when we were visiting Phnom Penh and got caught in a downpour; luckily we were trapped inside Chocolate, a little cafe selling delicious baked goods and warm lattes. Or the first day of our road trip in Northern Thailand, where less than half an hour out of Chiang Mai we had to pull over to seek cover.

Through all of these incedents, for whatever clever reason, Bordeaux and I were generally without an umbrella. Most often this meant we had to wait it out, or we just got soaked.

Once, however, this ended a little differently. We were in Taipei, and had just visited the National Palace Museum. And just as we were walking through their gardens, the sky opened up and it began to pour. We got trapped, rather unconveniently, under the eaves outside of the restrooms. The rain had no sign of stopping, and we could have been stuck there for much longer, but a Taiwanese couple spotted us, and handed us one of their umbrellas. We tried to co-ordinate getting to the next spot dry with them, where we could give them back their umbrella. But no, they explained, we could have the umbrella. I'd often experienced that people in Taiwan were friendlier than average, but this went beyond. And thanks to their generosity, we got home dry.