Day 8 -- Taiwanese Students and the Electronics market

Today we met up with the Taiwanese students, who were all excited to show us around. They brought us through a local Buddhist temple, followed by places only locals would know about, like small art galleries and shows. There were several interesting pieces, and we all had a good times seeing everything. The doorways were pretty low, and we kept having to duck as we went through the doors.

I can't find my pictures from inside. Will upload if I find them.

I like this better than those rubber strips they use in offices

I seem to remember these from somewhere... COUGH!

We then went to a local sort of convenience store, followed by a popular local restaurant. It was exactly the kind of thing you can only get from someone who knows the area. Unfortunately that’s where my part of this comes to an end. Because all of these places were local, they all only took cash, which I did not have enough of, as it turns out. We tried an atm or two, but none of them worked, so I ended up going back to my hotel to get more cash. Since I had no way of contacting everyone to meet up, I decided I would make this time to go to the Guang Hua Digital Plaza. It was pretty easy to find, and I bought a lot of very cheap electronics. The one I'm the most happy about is a small speaker set I can use to prop up my small laptop (the one I'm using to write this). The speakers I bought can get stampede-of-rhinos loud, compared to my PCs speakers which get about as loud as the scooting noise a chair makes on a smooth floor.

This was on the way

I didn't take any pictures of the markets simply because I had no time. Sufficed to say, they were just small outlets jammed full of electronics. Some were below ground, which was pretty cool. If you really want pictures: here.

I then took the subway to the appointed meeting place for dinner that I had an absolutely terrible time finding. I had an address, but the address was a 5 story building, so the restaurant inside took a while to find. It ended up being on the top floor, and was absolutely incredible. I had shrimp tempura, sushi, and several other things, along with incredible desert. The food was great, and it was all you can eat/drink, so we all sampled a ton of everything.

Our view

The whole gang!

As we were walking out of the restaurant, I stopped  briefly to pick up a little souvenir from a street vendor. When I turned around, everyone was gone. All I missed was the night market, which I'm told is very similar to a day market. I'm staying up all night tonight in preparation for the flight home. I went out for a while to look around and see what was open at 1:30, which was basically nothing. There was a camera shop open though, and I bought a spare battery for my camera.