Korean Job Discussion Forums

[shawner88]

I'm not going for an E-2. I really want to see the other place foreign teachers are. Anyone know which bars I should go to to talk to other teachers? I guess I should post over on the taiwan board and look there.

[buddy bradley]

Two reasons to go to Taiwan are:

- The bin lang girls.

- Tattoos. I had a gangster who was missing his left hand do a chop on my forearm. Good guy.

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

[FUBAR]

[Tiger Beer]

[shawner88]

Thanks, Tiger. I reserved my ticket yesterday. I'll be going January 30-Febr 1, good flight schedule, much better than to Japan. Leave at 2:00 Friday and come back 5 on Sunday. 320,000 won. Anyone else wanna go?

[Joe Thanks]

[Mosley]

Not for a visa & only 2 days? Yes! Go! See the 2/28 Peace Park & the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. There's a night market & the Martyr's Shrine is worth a (propagandistic) look. Taipei is great for a weekend(not saying I'd want to live there!).

[captain kirk]

Absolutely there Shawner88 Taiwan is worth going to. But Joe Thanks is right in that you'll just be in the capitol only having a couple of days and a lot of the really natural/indigenously Taiwanese stuff that would really surprise you is outside the capitol in the countryside and in the small cities, in the mountains and on the coast, and so on.
Maybe the big discussion board you're thinking of is tealit.com
Since you don't have much time the big things, which a person busy working in Taipei would gravitate to anyway, like everybody else on the weekends, are downtown, around the Mitsukoshi building which is across from Taipei Main station (which is a the central downtown subway stop). There's a big dept. store beside the Mitsukoshi tower (called the Asiaworld dept. store? can't remember). Get on the escalator inside the white first floor which is cosmetics and that. And on the second or third floor you can't miss this HUGE book store with a HUGE selection of English books. Maybe shopping for English books isn't a priority but it's something to do. This book store is unique in that it encourages you to browse, just sit down on the floor or on a bench and read the books. That's ENCOURAGED. As a result, and this sounds funny, it's kind of a 'pick-up joint'. I'm not kidding. It's kind of cool. You'll notice browsers noticing you out of the corner of their eye and they're NOT thinking about books so much after all. It's kind of hilarious.
Then you can go next door to the Mitsukoshi building and pay ten dollars or whatever it is and take the express elevator up to the hundredth floor or whatever it is and see, on a clear day, all of Taipei and the sea in the distance. You can sit on a vibrating chair up there which has rollers which PUSH up and down the length of your back. And have a drink up there to toast being up so high, if you like. The views feature labelled photos beside the windows, pinpointing the details of the panorama and naming them.
A poster has already mentioned ROXY and other clubs. It's been awhile but they are trance-like clubs with fog and trance music, black lights and you'll feel quite like the vampire surrounded by nymphs.
If you want, you can go to Yangminshan for some nature. That's a national park around the Peitou subway stop. There's a tourist information booth in the Taipei Main Station, a HUGE building across from Mitsukoshi. You can ask them how to get a bus up to the park. With limited time, though, you might want to pass on that, but if you're desperate to see the subtropical natural 'bush' then that's the closest place.
My favourite place was the jade market. If you have a Taiwan lonely planet it's in there, with the Chinese for it to show the taxi driver. It's a couple of bucks by taxi from Taipei main station. A subway station is closer to it than Taipei Main Station. Ask the tourist info booth at the station which is on the ground floor. The jade market is totally worth going to. It is under a raised highway, and is a large area of hundreds of tables, like a fleamarket. You don't have to spend a lot of money to pick up some mysterious looking jade amulets and all varietys of semi-precious stone baubles, little things, trinkets, souvenirs. A lot of it is from China. I'd spend three dollars on one thing, tops. At tables which were splattered with, and overflowing with, heaps of various style of carvings. A popular shape is a disc with a hole in the centre. But the varieties in the jade/agate make each one different.
I have the exact subway stop at home, if you want to PM me for it.

[shawner88]

Wow Kirk...thanks a million. Those are some great ideas and thanks for taking the time to help me.

[buddy bradley]

Good point Kirk - the jade market is great for something different. Expect to get pushed around when it gets busy, and watch your wallet.

[ratslash]

probably now. you will get taipei which will just be the same as seoul, a big stinking city. then were do you go in your 2 days?

[Joe Thanks]

forumosa is the message board. tealit stinks.


Joe

[captain kirk]

I thought of some more things you could do in your two days in Taipei, possibly, if you like.
Danshui is the end of the line and there's a Spannish fort out there from the colonial days. I've never been there but always wanted to 'get around to it'. It would give you a long subway ride which is MOSTLY skytrain so you'd good a LONG look at passing city and suburban scenery. The fort is from the 1600's or so, I think. It's at the sea.
The other thing is at Shilin subway stop. When you get off the subway at Shihlin stop you can ask what bus to take to get to the Palace Museum. It's the closest subway stop to that museum. When Chang Kai Shek left China he crated hordes of China's National art collection. So in Taiwan you can, at the Palace Museum, see more Chinese art of the highest order from way back when and over the ages there than in China. It's one of the reasons China wants Taiwan back. This museum is very big. It's less hassle just to subway to Shilin and take a cab instead of the bus; four bucks. The Taiwan Lonely Planet has a lot of pages devoted to the Palace Museum. It's definately worth going to. The gift shop has beautiful reproductions of Asian brushwork silk paintings, masterpieces, for three dollars. They look 'like the real thing', almost. (new paragraph) There's a shop in Shilin you might want to check out. It's not famous I don't think, but it sells something really special. I found it by accident one day. When you are leaving Shilin station go left. There's a curve in the main road and it's the direction in which there are more shops. To the right it's more straight, and doesn't look like there are the same amount of shops. Cross the street. It's a knife shop. In the shop window are glass shelves containing knives. I don't know if you've seen the traditional Korean style 'peasant knife'. The blade bows out along the back, unsharpened edge, and closes into a horn handle. It's a crescent shape with the blade straight. There's a brass ring to hang on a robe cord since there were no pockets. I'm not particularly into knives, and this is not a fighting knife. It's a pocket knife. They come in various sizes. The thing about these knives, said the seller and maker who runs the shop, is that they've been made by three generations, I think it was. And are made of 'tungsten, laminated steel', I think he said. The blade is bright and VERY sharp. Taiwan was occupied by the Japanese for a long while and I wonder if that has anything to do with the high quality of these knives. I gave one to my Dad and have one myself. I got the standard one/size which closed is about four inches and open is eight. I still have it after I bought it four years ago. It's sharper than any quality knife like a Gerber, Schrade, etc. The handle is an ebony colour plastic. Considering the quality of the knife I wondered when I bought it why they used that as a handle material, though it's a plastic that is dense and has a polish. But the sharpness of the blade and the way it holds an edge is outstanding, really. That end of the road curves into lots of shops including NIKE and so on. And the knife shop is close to the subway, you don't have to walk far. I've never seen a pocketknife with a blade like this before or since. IF you saw Kill Bill you can pretend you're going to Okinawa 'to get a blade', even if it's 'only a pocketknife'. The standard size costs about forty bucks. Maybe, if you go, you can ask the owner more about the three generations in the making of them, and so on.

[shawner88]

I'm thankful for your ideas, Kirk. I sent you a PM to thank you. Anyone else out there who wants to check out Taiwan, let me know. Friday Jan 30-Febr 1. If you tell your boss now, you can get that Friday off. The more the merrier. Let's check out that spot the other teachers at.