Taiwan: Weekend Update (Part 1 of 2)

Despite missing some tourist opportunities over the weekend, I did manage to have an active social life in Taipei thanks to a co-worker with local knowledge.

For the purposes of this story, we’ll just call him C. He doesn’t discuss much of his social life when on long trips to Taiwan, including staying in a different hotel. He’s been to Taipei dozens of times, and has a good network of local friends. Thanks to his hospitality I got to hang out with some really cool people.

There’s a few rules in international travel that make it easier to adjust to jet lag: adjust to local time immediately, get a good night’s sleep, eat light meals, avoid alcohol. This story breaks pretty much all of those rules, so it’s a poor example of how you should handle your next international trip.

My flight from LAX to Taipei arrived just after 8:00pm on Friday. I was a smart traveler and didn’t check any luggage, so I was off to the hotel in no time. By 9:30pm I was having a great seafood dinner with C and one of our company sales reps. We hit a sidewalk restaurant, cooking up fresh local seafood that looks like it hasn’t been out of the water long. Some of the best food in Taipei gets served in tiny restaurants that would make Gordon Ramsey have a stroke if he ever looked into their kitchens.

C has a lot of female friends in Taipei. Friday night’s post-dinner social gathering was at Carnegie’s in Taipei. Carnegie’s is a pretty happening place, an expat bar with a good numbers of locals in attendance … loud music, plenty of drinks & patrons dancing on the bar (it happens often enough that they install handrails).

Keep in mind this loud smoke-filled bar full of expats and locals isn’t my usual scene … but I tend to become a social chameleon when I travel, and this is a side of Taipei I haven’t seen. I might as well take the nightlife tour of a city I’ll be returning to as long as I have a career in the computer industry.

After a few cell phone calls C’s entourage had gathered … three local women and a model from Japan working in Taipei. C and the sales rep had met them before, but the language barrier and loud music made it hard to have any deep conversations. Folks drank, made merry and the evening progressed well. By 1:00am I was taking on the role of the Japanese model’s caretaker, since she was approaching an uncomfortable level of intoxication. Glasses of water magically appeared in place of Coronas, beer bottles were held hostage until full glasses of water were converted to empty glasses and she was slowly moving towards moderate intoxication.

Now that we had the Japanese girl walking, it was time for another stop on the Taipei tour. Unfortunately this one put us in a karaoke establishment. Think “Lost in Translation”but in Taipei, no Scarlett Johansen and no way in hell I’m singing. Karaoke is still fun to observe, much in the way Rock Band and Wii Sports serve a spectator sport in living rooms across America … or why people watch NASCAR for the chance to see a few high-speed car wrecks.

I continued my role as Japanese model caretaker as the early morning hours were greeted by off-key renditions of pop songs from around the globe. Somewhere around 3:00am we parted ways and one of Taipei’s many taxis returned me to my hotel. I had adjusted well to local time, because it really felt like I had stayed up till 3:00am … so I followed one travel rule in letter if not in spirit. The rest could be forgotten as I easily fell asleep.