Jessie Visits

My good friend and one-time college neighbor, Jessie, and her friend Alyssa visited last week. It was lots of fun hanging out with them, though it reminded me how much I miss the company of folks back home. I especially liked taking them to Din Tai Fung, Celestial Peking Duck Restaurant, and all the other little places where I love to eat.

On the subway with Alyssa and my langauge partner, Miona.

It's so much fun introducing friends to something you know is both awesome and unobtainable back home.

There visit was almost exactly a month after Lily's, and I can tell my Chinese has improved a lot just in that four-week period.

On their last night we made an obligatory Modern Toilet run. Thankfully, we'd eaten dinner ahead of time, because the food was just as bad, if not worse, than I remember.


I'm completely miserable when it comes to directions, so we got off at Ximen MRT station and darted around frantically for 10 minutes searching for the restaurant.

I got a little strung out because I knew it was nearing closing time. I stopped a couple times to ask people to point me in the right direction. (In Chinese: "Can you please tell me where this address is?")

Finally I ran up to a short old man with betel-nut teeth standing outside a storefront.


The following took place in Chinese:


Me: PLEASE! Do you know where this address is?


Him: Is it a store?


Me: No it's a restaurant. It's the toilet restaurant.


Him: Toilet?


Me: Yes.


Him: Oh yes, the alley in front of us. Turn right. You'll see the big toilet outside, and you'll know you're there.


Me: THANK YOU, THANK YOU!


We were there in under a minute. Only when we were taking our seats did I have time to wonder what this old man must have thought of a big, frantic, white girl desperately searching for the toilet restaurant.

Bah. He probably gets it all the time.

Jessie and Alyssa at Modern Toilet. They're blogging about their trip through Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand, here.

Leslie Eats Where She Craps

This weekend I ate Sichuan-style hot pot out of a ceramic toilet bowl.

More Pictures: Modern Toilet, the restaurant

It went down at Modern Toilet, a restaurant franchise with a bathroom theme. To eat or to pee? Its website proclaims. And no, none of the patrons looked older than 32.

James and I dined with Panda and B, whom we'd never met. Panda and I became familiar through our blogs (read her telling of it here). She and her husband live outside Taipei, but were traveling to the big city for the day, so we decided to get together.

"I'm sure they'll be nice! They're from the Midwest!" I reassured James on our way to meet them.

On the other hand, I'd watched plenty To Catch a Predator. And I knew if these people offered lemonade and candy to lure us down some dark alley - Chris Hansen would not be able to save us.

But our new friends didn't disappoint (they even sounded like they were from the Midwest!). James and I haven't met many people and we've met only a few Americans. So it was refreshing to sit down with a couple who understood the importance of college football and giant margaritas at the favored Mexican joint. I can't take that kind of common ground for granted here.

As for Modern Toilet, well, that's best explained in pictures:

We paid twice the price for bland food. S'ok. We were there for the atmosphere.

Taking a sip from my commemorative urinal, mine for $30NT ($1 U.S.)!

New Friends

Shaved ice came on a dish shaped like the squat toilets I use in the subway.

I left my signature in the sink basin below the glass table top.

Girl throwing up gang signs at the end of the table? We don't know her.

During dinner we talked about the strange habit some people have here of asking to take pictures with us white folks. There are too many of us around to be very novel, especially in Taipei. And what does one do with such a picture? Stick it in the family album: "And look, there were some honkeys we saw there too..." Maybe it's a national inside joke. I really don't know.

Anyway, B was telling us how odd it was the other day when a stranger plopped her toddler on his lap and whipped out a camera when the girls at the table beside us asked to take pictures with them. So I asked them to take one on my camera too - proof I am so fabulous strangers want my picture.