we got up and were in the hotel until around noon. we left our bags with the hotel lobby staff and walked around some. we ended up stopping at a place and i had fried rice. it was good. we then walked over to a starbucks to figure out what we were doing. once again, it was cold and wet. most of the stuff to do in taichung was outdoors, and as a group we were generally tired and cold and unsure what to do. so after some discussion we decided to head back to taipei. i wanted to try and find a battery for my phone though, so we walked a couple of blocks and went into three small stores before we found one that had my battery. i bought it, then we headed back to the hotel. we got our bags and took a taxi to the high speed rail station. we got on the rail and headed to taipei. the only very exciting bit was i took the opportunity to use the bathroom, meaning i was pissing at ~160mph on the ground. not everyone can say that.
we got back to taipei and candy went her separate way and tim and ash and i headed back to ash’s apartment. later tim and ash wanted to go to a mexican food place, so we ended up going to tequila sunrise. the rice was pretty crappy but the beans were okay. i got the flauta and enchilada, and a strawberry margarita. the margarita had tequila in it, but the flavor overall wasn’t quite right. the flauta was pan-fried instead of deep-fried, but it was pretty good. except for tamales, i figure an enchilada is probably one of the easier items to mess up. this was a pretty good approximation. tim and ash kept telling me not to be too harsh, because they never get to have mexican food so it’s not fair for me to compare this to authentic tex-mex in their presence. a female friend of ash’s named esther met us at tequila sunrise after we’d finished eating, so ash and i split a fried ice cream. the ice cream was strawberry, but the deep-fried corn-flake-based shell seemed right.
from tequila sunrise we took a taxi to 45’s. except for tim, who was cold and tired and didn’t feel like being out anymore — he went back to the apartment. ash and esther and i hung out at 45’s, and esther gave ash/me a japanese desert her family makes (i guess they own a shop that makes this kind of stuff). it’s like a flattened ball of rice paste with flour or powdered sugar on the outside, then on the inside is a gooey, pasty filling made of something and green tea powder or something. it was okay, but i couldn’t get myself to eat the whole thing. esther left, then we were joined by a black american guy named devon that ash knows. he’s also pretty familiar with the underbelly of taiwan. we talked for some time, then we all headed over to roxy99. this time i didn’t really end up talking to anyone, and overall it wasn’t too fun or interesting. when we left we walked by some place where there were three slavic looking young people, two girls and a guy, and the guy — who looked like the russian boxer in the rocky movie — kept clocking me. every time i looked over at him he was staring laser beams into me. not sure what that was about. we headed home.
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failure is not an option. it's a requirement.