I woke up with a bit of a cough today, though there wasn’t any phlegm or anything that usually accompanies a longer-term cough so hopefully it’s just a passing irritation. It annoyed me the entire day though.

Morning breakfast was sweet corn chinese omelet, radish cake, and what the store translated as “Job’s Tears Milk & Oat” — basically just a cup of oat milk. The whole meal was kind of bland. At least it was cheap?

I also tried one of those sandwiches that I had detailed at the end of yesterday’s post — speciflcally the New Orleans Roast Chicken with Vegetables. Mmm. It was good. It also had 7-Eleven specific branding at the bottom of the packaging so I do think that even though they’re obviously from the same “company”, they might actually have two entirely separate menus for the different convenience stores.

In the early afternoon, I watched with horror as the thermometer rose to 33 degrees Celsius again, but I was done my upkeep tasks for the day and so wanted to venture out anyway. 3 days ago I walked around 20k steps north to a night market, 2 days ago, I walked the same east, and yesterday I walked the same south. 4 days ago I had actually already gone west, but I had used the bus and then walked around some of the touristy areas there. Today, I went to complete the cycle by walking west, passing through or by both main areas that I had visited 4 days ago (Taipei Main Station Underground Mall and Ximending) in order to reach another night market.

Well it was more southwest than west, but close enough. My trail started west at least. The first interesting thing I came across was this little festival thing next to an MRT station. It was small, but reminded me of Edmonton. Like these little craft sales in Southgate Mall. I’m starting to yearn for home again.

Right behind that was a weird little.. thing

That picture was taken more or less level with the ground. Why all those weird ramps?

I came across a restaurant to have lunch in soon after that. The place I chose seemed to specialize in one main dish — Luosifen, or snail noodles. This was not actually the first time I had snail noodles, I had tried it about two years ago not far off from exactly to the day, but these ones were a lot less pungent or I’d have left the restaurant right away. Like breakfast though, it tasted kind of bland. I also ordered a tea type I had never tried before, pu’er tea, which is in the tall cup in the picture. It also tasted really bland. Maybe everything except New Orleans Roast Chicken tastes bland when I’m coughing.

The restaurant was notable though because the tables were very low, and instead of chairs, we had stools instead. There was still enough space, barely, so that I didn’t hit the table with my knees or anything, but I wonder if taller people would have trouble sitting at these.

After lunch, I forged on westwards. I found another playground, and ruefully noted that I have had a lot of playground and park pictures in the past few days.

I saw a couple walking their little cat on a leash. The poor cat was tiny and was somewhat struggling against the leash, or trying to go hyper and venture out further than the leash would allow it to. I felt bad for it.

I passed a couple streets and liked the designs on the street and the architecture of the buildings.

And I passed a cannabis shop, the first one I’ve seen all trip here. But I think it’s actually illegal here. So maybe it sells.. cannabis souvenirs? I don’t know. I didn’t check.

I stopped off at the Taiwan Main Station Underground Mall, specifically at the Sanmin shop there, to buy some plushie gifts for Kel, since I would be going to visit her on her birthday. She’s a big fan of Jinbesan, the blue whale from the San-X plushie line, but when I consulted her she apparently already had the one that was on sale there, so I got a few others from the same line that she did not have yet. I think she’s only expecting me to get one of them and not multiple ones so hopefully she does not read this before I arrive there since she’s really busy with work right now.

I had seen those plushies there when I went there four days ago, but had not purchased them at the time. I had checked a couple of other Sanmin stores in the ensuing days but they didn’t even sell these plushies, just stuff from other plushie lines (like Sumikkogurashi) that none of us care about. So I made it a point to return here to buy these at some point during my Taiwan stay, and that point was today.

They were pretty expensive, totalling up to 2,885 NTD (about $120 CAD) for the 3 of them in total, but because I spent over some hidden threshold or other, I received a 10% discount, so the final price I paid was 2,598 NTD ($110 CAD or so). They tried to get me to spend 700 NTD more, because spending 3,600 NTD (or was it 3,500?) at once would upgrade my 10% discount into a 15% one, but they failed to explain the 10% discount at the time so I thought it was a 0% discount until I spent at least 3,600 NTD. I still didn’t think the math worked out though, since 3,600 NTD less 15% was still 3,060 NTD, and I’d still be paying a couple hundred more NTD overall for extra discounted items that I didn’t really want. And that’s assuming I somehow found an item that exactly equalled that discount threshold. With the 10% applied on the purchase that I was going to make already, that’s even more of a gap. I would basically have had the “opportunity” to buy a $30 CAD item for $20 CAD.

They were kind of insistent and even asked a passerby who understood English to explain it to me because I didn’t know a few words of their explanation and they thought I didn’t get it at all. I did though, and said as much to the guy, and then pretended that my luggage had limited space so I couldn’t buy anything else, heh.

The underground mall itself was crowded, likely because it was a Saturday. It was far more crowded than it was when I visited on Tuesday, easily by 10x or more.

I also found a Frieren photo spot that I didn’t notice the last time.

More people meant none of the cosmetic barkers targetted me today, so that was nice. I also got to watch people playing some of these claw machines:

And wow, were they scams! They’re purposely stacked up so the items are on the verge of falling into the reward chute, but what the machines actually do is that when the claw goes down and picks up the item, and then retracts to the top again, it “throws” the item toward the far back right corner of the claw machine with a quick flicking motion as the claws open on purpose before closing again. I saw multiple machines do this, especially the ones whose claws are slanted to face the far back corner, like the one in the right claw machine above.

I saw multiple people walk by, look at the tempting machine, place one 10 yen coin in to try to grab an item, then leave in disgust after the claw “threw” the item further in. I’m sure they’re rigged to actually work properly every 5-10 tries or so, but I’m glad that I never tried any of the tempting-looking claw machines stacked high with loot that I saw over the past week.

I stopped into several 7-Eleven and Familymarts throughout the day to continue my sandwich research from yesterday, but only one Familymart yielded new results today. I’m adding this picture and its new sandwiches to the list at the bottom of yesterday’s blog post though.

The two newly-discovered flavours were Teriyaki Chicken and Ham Cheese & Egg. Commas, please.

I reached my first secondary goal not long after this. This was Dihua Street, supposedly a place with interesting local specialty shops like fabric and medicinal shops. And that’s exactly what I found there.