"Long ago, in days of yore. It all began with a god named Thor. There were vikings, and boats, and plans for a furniture store. Ikea~ Ikea~"

Invoking the spirit of Joco, Ikea was a substitute for my Christmas dinner. Friend April had a buy one get one free coupon, so, score! Which, was really kind of necessary. I'm writing this to you on a new laptop, because my old one gave up the ghost. The LCD is going bad, and honestly, it's not worth the money to fix. After paying for school, and saving up for my Philippines trip, I am quite poor at the moment. I'm not going to starve or anything, and I still have savings in an American account, but I need to tighten the belt a little. My goal is to survive on $100 NT a day excluding weekends. That's a bit over $3 US, which is doable but a bit stifling. In the meantime I have a new Lenovo, which so far is nice - especially the keyboard. So comfortable!

So for a cheap next day we headed out to Longshan Temple to see an exhibition on Taiwanese Comfort Women. It's a pretty sad story, the whole Japanese thing during WWII. Anyway the whole exhibition was pretty much just 1 room, so after 5 minutes that was about it. We then wandered around Wanhua District, which had an old street I had never seen before. They had this weird museum that had an eclectic mix of exhibits, ranging from the first western doctors to visit Taiwan, to boats the aboriginals used. I've definitely never seen it on any sort of tourist guide before, but it was quite fun. The exhibits were pretty hands on, clearly designed for kids.

I've said in the past that Neihu is my favorite district of Taipei, but I am officially revising my statement - Wanhua is the best district. It's the "poor part of town", but by far has the most character and feels the most "Asian". If I could go back 1 year, I'd tell myself to live in Wanhua.

After that we went along the new MRT stations and ate at a small Korean restaurant. I'm really not a fan of Korean food. This was not bad, and cheap, but I dunno... Korean food. Meh. We also picked up a U-Bike, which are the bike rental stations popping up all over the city. It's free for 30 minutes, which is nice, but they "lock" you out for 15 minutes after getting one. This is so people don't just keep returning and renting again to reset the timer, which makes sense - I abused that all the time in China. However, they should have a 1 minute grace period or something. We had several incidents of one having a flat tire, or the brakes not working, stuff like that. Then you're basically screwed for 15 minutes, which is kind of annoying.

So that brings us to today, and my current exploration. One of the goals on my list was to visit the end of the Pingxi Line. I did, and well, there's not too much there. The end is a small town called Qingtong, and they do have an old street with a few scattered odds and ends. I snapped a pic or two, and then hoofed it to 1 stop back up the line, Pingxi itself. It's quite picturesque, with slightly more food to choose from. I walked around for a bit and ate at a small noodle shop I'm sure doesn't get many tourists. But the guy made some of the best fried noodles I've had in Taiwan, so that's good. Wandering a bit more I came across a temple, but this one had a weird cave next to it. At the mouth of the cave was a little shrine, and a tunnel going back into darkness. There was a light switch, but it didn't work. So armed with my cell phone torch, I went to explore this cave system. It's a pretty straight shot, but branching off are small rooms just full of tables and chairs. Did I mention there is absolutely zero light, it is completely silent, and no people anywhere around? Pretty creepy place. It'd be a lot of fun to go there on a busy weekend, hide in some corner, and wait for some tourist to come across it. Jump out and scream, and they'd probably need a new change of pants. I'll put some pictures of Pingxi here, along with the inside of the cave. This was the best I could do with the camera flash, because really, it was pitch black.

So, lets update my list. The only things left to do in Taiwan are:

1) Visit Yilan
2) Go to that small BBQ shop next to home
3) Visit that club with a line running to the Taiwan brewery
4) Complete all the puzzles in the children's park

I might cross off 2 and 3. The BBQ place looks nice enough but is only special because it's next door to me. And the Taiwan Brewery club... it sounds okay, but it is Taiwan Beer after all - you can only polish a turd so much.