Prepping
After taking a long shower to soothe the tired body (as well as dirt – the tour was a bit dusty at the end), and spraying some Tiger Balm muscle pain relief on my legs and feet, I plopped to bed with my bedside laptop and notepad in hand. I have to do some brief prep. Not that much, but doesn’t hurt to be ready.
I had two things I pegged for June 15 – the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Taipei 101, both were all inside Taipei. I had no intention to do more. I was tired from two tours, and I’d rather just be a casual tourist this time.
Fortunately, Taipei is a very accessible city. Buses have well-defined stops, trains are modern, contactless tapping payment is a norm, and many of the city’s prided attractions and sights are all easy to access via public transport. With regards to how to get to the two places, I won’t have much difficulty.
With regards to order and timing, I prioritized the memorial hall in the early morning, and Taipei 101 in the afternoon closer to evening. That way, I can have a fuss-free lunch in between, go back to the hotel for a quick recharge and shower, and resume. As with my motive, a chill day.
I pulled up Google Maps on the screen. From the hotel to the memorial hall, I was to take a bus stop near the hotel and it was to drop me off near the south entrance, just across a street. Cool. I pencilled in 2-3 hours for the place. 3 should be the max. If I came in at 9, I could leave near lunchtime. So, for lunch… that’s the undecided. I pulled up the maps again. From CKS Memorial Hall back to the hotel, I looked at the bus routes. Each stop could be a potential lunch spot. But I was also a bit apprehensive.
See, the tours were easy lunch pickings. For June 13, our tour’s lunch spot was Jiufen. A place not foreign to tourists, every store spoke decent English, every store had English menus when asked. As I said before, tourist-friendly. For June 14, our tour guide had us referred to a local area restaurant, and while the servers spoke very little English (thankfully the menu had some translation), he helped us navigate that difficulty and the transaction was fuss-free. City Taipei was a whole another beast, now that I decided to do rawdogged touring.
So I inspected lots of the restaurants in the path between the memorial hall and my hotel. I checked which ones fit my budget, which ones had English menus, which ones accept Visa, which ones had been frequented by other tourists, and most of all, the ones likely to have seats at lunchtime. That took a while as well. Especially that I had to be picky as I didn’t want to splurge on calories that much. Eventually I settled on a few options near the Taipei Main Station, as it was the most convenient place. There’s malls around it, so I was not going to be starved of options. But also my bigger worry was that I haven’t dealt yet with any metro lunch/dinner time rush here.
In Singapore, I usually had my lunch at 1.30PM deliberately to avoid the 12PM crowd. For dinner, I usually do at 7.30PM also to avoid most of the dinner crowds. A later lunch/dinner time meant less things to pick for food in either nasi padang and economic rice options, but the big advantage is a less busier atmosphere, faster lines (or more often, no lines at all), and an abundance of available tables/seats. No waiting, no bothering. I can just eat and keep my seat for long without guilt. I have yet to deal with that in Taipei. I prefer getting to my meal quick, and I’m no fan of queuing for long periods of time without a satisfying reward at the end. With that in mind, I also marked going back to Ximending as my fallback for either lunch or dinner.
After that was penciled in, drowsiness came like a calming wave. I left the TV on in low volume (again, just set to Discovery Channel), turned off the lights, and let the sleepiness come when it comes while I watched TV. Not much worries. No rush in the morning either. After two straight days of very walk-heavy tours, I looked forward to just one chill day of two itineraries.
Oh, how wrong I was. I just didn’t know it yet.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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