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Friday, Taipei (4/07/2000)
The weather turned out pretty good on Friday, so we finally
got the chance to take the TRTS to the Taipei Zoo, south of the Mucha stop. The
zoo is fairly small, but was designed by the same people who designed the San
Diego Zoo. They also share something else of distinction; they are two of the
very few zoos outside of Australia that have koalas. 
The koalas are immensely popular and Taipei is koala-crazy
-- Stuffed toy koalas, hats, shirts and signs are everywhere. Even one of the
TRTS trains is painted with a koala motif.
One little problem as with everywhere we seemed to go in
Taipei this trip: it was field trip day and the zoo is swarming with children.
There were hundreds of them. They even overwhelmed Chu-Wan. "Tai duo
xiaopengyou" ("too many children"), she said
The crowd around the wu wei shou ("Tailless bears",
the Chinese name for koalas) was ugly; however, the koalas were cute. The
viewing area was supposed to be a line that filed past the koala enclosure, but
the crowd fought for position at the front of the viewing area. They would lean
up against the "No Flash Photography" signs and flash pictures of the koalas
and when the security guard would tell them to stop flashing pictures, they
would angrily shout back at him.
Taken as individuals are small groups, the Taiwanese are
very friendly people, but in crowds, they turn nasty rapidly. Fortunately, I
was too tall for them to obstruct my view, and too big to be moved
According to the signs, koalas spend 78% of their time
sleeping, but by my reckoning, they spend 100% of their time sleeping. So
elusive and popular are waking koalas that they are under constant video
surveillance, with monitors stationed around the zoo. That way, in case one of
them moves, people all over the zoo can see it.
During our time at the zoo, they didn't move.
The rest of the zoo was pretty typical. Near the lion cage,
Chu-Wan received a call on the cell phone she's been carrying around. She spoke
in Chinese for a while and hung up.
I then asked her, "When are we going to dinner with your
mother to a Mongolian BBQ?"
She was shocked and asked me how I knew that we were having
just such a dinner that evening with her mom. (By this point, I was used to not
being informed where I was going to eat until it was time for me to go.)
This time, I understood the conversation on the phone.
Actually, that's not true, I understood only key words, such as "mother", "eat
food", "evening" and "Mongolian BBQ." I just pieced it all together into an
educated guess.
The look on Chu-Wan's face made it worth the effort.
Saturday, Taipei
(4/08/2000)
This was our last day before leaving Taipei for an
around-the-island roadtrip. My prospects for Western food on the trip were
uncertain at best and so my stated goal for the day was to eat at Papa
Giovanni's. I had recently seen an ad for Papa Giovanni's and decided I needed
to try it. It was an Italian restaurant run, supposedly, by ex-patriot
Italians, serving authentic Italian food.
I must admit, it wasn't bad, but a bit expensive. I didn't
care. The salad had oil and basalmic vinegar dressing! Oh! The joy! This is
because in Taiwan I had only ever seen two types of dressing: Thousand Island,
which is omnipresent and, on very rare occasions, Ranch - neither of which I
particularly care for. I ate every scrap of salad and tried (unsuccessfully) to
figure out how to take the dressing settled in the bottom of the bowl home.
The main course was lasagna, and I wasn't disappointed. It
was good, although, like all "Italian" cheeses in Taiwan, the color was a
little more yellow that normal.
One shock that only my father could appreciate, there were
peas in my lasagna. What kind of mind could conceive of such a thing?!
Nonetheless, unlike a certain bowl of chili with peas in it that I refused to
eat at a restaurant in California as a child, I ate the whole lasagna. (I did
pick the peas out, though - that's just wrong.) |
