Hello, Sunday. What a wonderful weekend it has been. I’ve been doing a lot of clubbing. I’ve gone out both last night and the night before. Not only that, but I really enjoyed seeing some of the great places around the town. I have not stayed in Ximending like I have the last few days. I ventured out to a different area. This time, my friend and I, we went to Songshan. Which is where you find a lot of the different, I would say, nightclubs and party places, because it’s notorious for that.
We went to this place called Abrazo. Abrazo club is a two-floor split kind of situation, but the majority of what it is—is a restaurant. Late at night, that’s when it turns into a club. They turn the lower level into a club where you go down the little rounded staircase, and it opens up into this beautiful big room. There’s lots of mirrors on the back. The music is just pumping. It’s not as tall as I’d like it to be, but it’s good enough.
The music there that night was more 40s, top 40 pop, very hip. A lot of the crowd, I would say, is somewhere in their early 20s, maybe 30s, but the crowd is very young. It’s not a place you’re going to find older people. It’s not that kind of place at all. Abrazo is the hot, new, young place that’s going on, and if you’re not there, well, I don’t know where you are.
Today after I went out to the club both nights, I think that I needed a chance to really roll back, so my friend that was here, I decided to go on a nice Sunday evening stroll with him, so we decided that where we’re going to go is we’re going to take ourselves to IKEA. I know, IKEA? IKEA…on a Sunday afternoon. What an interesting concept, but here in Taiwan, the IKEA is a little bit more diverse, and it has a little bit more, interesting things going on within the store than I have found that the one that I’ve been into before, here in the IKEA, people do come here for lunch.
I went there today, and it was packed. There were a lot of people there for lunch, and the funny thing is they come there for one specific thing. It’s like everybody got the meatball. The famous, I think it was famous, the IKEA meatball. It’s so cool to see that even in this weird part of the world, it’s such a unique kind of experience because a lot of families were there. A lot of people were there just shopping, getting their thing, buying their stuff, and then everybody, it seems like as soon as they finished checking out because the IKEA, the way that it’s situated, it’s after you’ve come out of the checkout that you’ll see the cafeteria, so after everyone’s bought all their food, that’s the next stop that they’re at.
They’re at the IKEA cafeteria to eat the meatballs. It wasn’t bad. I would give it a solid 6 out of 10 for that food.It was very good. It was a surprise. I don’t think that I would have ventured in there on my own if I wasn’t taken in there by a friend here, so it was a good experience overall. If you’re in Taiwan, why not? Go to IKEA for lunch. It was a very good experience, and it was delicious. It really was.
I’ve just spent the last few days going around trying to spend more time meeting friends here. I’ve made some decent friends. I’ve been fortunate enough to be welcomed, I would say, into the community that I am here in Ximen because a lot of the people here, even though they don’t speak English, they’re very friendly towards foreigners, and they want to help you. They want to try their best to guide you to where you need to go to if you’re asking for directions or anything like that. But it’s really quite friendly, and I would definitely suggest coming here.
All right, signing off for the night.
-Tall Black Nomad