Friday night I went to meet a couple friends at Persian Heaven, which is a fantastic restaurant with middle eastern food, belly dancers (skinny Taiwanese belly dancers) and sheesha for dessert (if you don't know what sheesha is you need to look it up).
Wes had a friend visiting from the states and wanted to introduce her to us. Erica was introduced to us through much red wine and sheesha smoke. She seemed to enjoy it. An added bonus of this restaurant is that we know the owner and he sat, talked and smoked with us for a bit and gave us a discount on our not inconsiderable bill.
After dinner Tania and Wes insisted that we had to take Erica out to a club in Taipei. I was tired and not feeling it, but was dragged along regardless. We wound up going to Carnegie's which is a popular bar with foreigners and lets people dance on the bar. They even have rails they set up on it at night so the drunkards are less likely to fall and break themselves.
The world cup is going on so of course every bar in Taiwan that has a television is playing every game. This changes up the crowd a little at all the bars. More obnoxious sports fans who willingly wear stupid things on their heads and bodies in support of their teams. Most of the guys were fine, but there's always that one older guy who thinks he's going to get somewhere with every woman who enters the bar just because he's had a few and is now superman. By the way, this man has not showered recently and if he has he has a seriously unfortunate body odor issue.
By the time that man showed up I was feeling just fine. Wes felt it was necessary for all of us to do a shot of absinthe. That is an experience that everyone should have. Imagine eating some black licorice and then being punched in the throat. I tossed back the shot, swallowed and then couldn't breathe. Soon after the night got a little fuzzy and much happier. We were grooving to the music and generally just observing the crowd when this Taiwanese woman came up to me, got right in my face and told me that I was beautiful. It was completely unexpected and a really nice ego boost.
Soon after that the dance music stopped because one of the world cup soccer games was starting (at 2:30 in the am). The DJ quizzed the crowd to see if people wanted to dance or listen to the game. The dancers won out, but this is when the skeezy man came up to us. I grabbed Tania's hand and dragged her out of the bar to get us away from the man and that pretty effectively ended our evening out. After hanging out outside in the warm night air for a bit we all hopped in cabs and headed our respective ways.
So that was Friday night. Saturday I slept until noon (after a series of early a.m. texts sorting out the day) and then alternately cleaned my apartment and sat and watched t.v. shows or fiddled around on the computer. Around 5:00 I finally motivated myself to go for a swim. By the time I got done swimming and showering it was almost 7, which is apparently when I was supposed to meet my friends at the Danshui MRT so we could all go to the restaurant together. I thought we were meeting at 8. Oops. Fortunately it's not far away from me and I knew where the restaurant was.
Saturday was the celebration of Ella's birthday. She had been wanting a get together at her and her husband's place, but so many people were coming that they had to relocate to a restaurant. They chose a Japanese BBQ place that was excellent. You order what you want to eat and then grill it up at your table. Definitely going back to this place. The wait staff was awesome and the food was great.
After the restaurant we wandered en mass over to a hotel that has a chill little bar that actually has a pool table and foos ball table. Plus cheap drinks and several of the people in the crowd knew the manager and somehow managed to be given the last bottle of tequila in the bar (of which I did not partake, thank you very much). Generally it was just a nice night of talking with people and relaxing. The bar has a really nice outdoor patio area that was great for sitting on after the downpours.
That was another night that ended at 4am.
On to Sunday.
Once again I slept in until 12. I was supposed to meet Tania at the MRT at 1:30 (or so I thought). So I showered and was getting dressed and ready to head out the door when I noticed I had a text. The text is telling me that we had to be at the MRT at 1:10. It was ten to one at that point and there was no way in hell I would make it there in time. It takes me almost ten minutes just to walk to the MRT stop by my place let alone actually get on the MRT and ride to where I'm going. Getting a cab would take longer because the traffic was bumper to bumper for some reason. It turns out she is running late too and we end up on the same train. We get a cab to drive us up the mountain.
We are going horse back riding. So excited. We had planned to go the week before, but it was pouring out so we moved it to this weekend hoping it wouldn't be so wet so we could go trail riding. No such luck. It was once again pouring. The stable is located half way up the mountain and is surrounded by forest. They have a decent size covered riding area that has lots of soft dirt for padding when you fall off your horse. It turns out this is the only riding area they have. They aren't a trail riding stable, they are a training stable for jumping and show riding. They are also hellaciously expensive. One of Tania's student's parents either owns this place or is a partner and gave her two vouchers for 20 minutes of riding. Lucky me she took me with.
The stable is clean and the horses are obviously well cared for and in great condition. To maintain that level of care they charge 2,500 NT for 40 minutes of riding time. That's almost $80 US. The girls there that day obviously had a passion for riding and quickly determined that we knew nothing about riding. I know a little bit, but can definitely learn a lot more and am open to instruction. The coach who was helping me (she never told me her name) got me to sit correctly and hold the reins correctly and then decided I had to trot the rest of the time I was riding. My butt and legs were very sore for the next few days. It was fun though and I wish it wasn't so expensive or I would take lessons.
After the riding we were both hungry so we headed into Taipei to a restaurant called Bongo's. They serve Western style food and sell used books. I've been wanting to stock up my used book supply so that's where I dragged her. We had a nice relaxed late lunch and I bought 6 books. We then slogged through the rain over to our other job for the evening. It will be nice when the constant rain lets up in favor of blazing heat that makes you sweat just by looking at the sun.
So that was the weekend. Maybe I'll get back on a normal sleep schedule soon.
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