9%

On Saturday night we went "clubbin", as requested by the lovely Nareesa, to celebrate her birthday. Before we headed into Taipei, we went to a local stir-fry restaurant with Kris, one of the Taiwanese teachers at our school. We'd walked past this restaurant a million times and it is always busy so we knew it would be good. Chris can actually read the menu (woo!), so he ordered us some chicken, veggie, pork and ostrich dishes and then decided to order something for us to try that would be unusual. We thought the ostrich was unusual enough, but then a hot pot full of pig blood arrived to win the title of strangest dish at the table.


What's your favorite animal? A lion? A giraffe? Penguins? Now imagine eating a penguin stirfry. Here's my look of guilt after eating ostrich, my very favorite animal. It just tasted like beef, but it felt like shame.


We took a cab to a bar in Taipei called 9%. The reason we chose this place? It's all-you-can-drink for approx $15CAN! It was amazing- when you finish your beer or cocktail you just hand it to the bartender and it is replaced by a new drink. Why don't we have this in Canada? The club wasn't too busy when we first arrived, but by 11:00 it was bumpin', and during the downtime when we first arrived Christine had the opportunity to make a new foreigner friend who was waiting for "a hot girl". I'm pretty sure Mel has some bruises on her legs from all the times Christine kicked her to try and save her from the conversation.


Clearly, we went to 9% on the wrong night, because December 12 is "Big Boobs Night"! Where they're going to find big boobs in Taiwan is still a mystery to me, but maybe we'll go check it out to see.

There was probably 10 guys at the bar for every 1 girl, so the girls I was with wound up being highly desirable individuals. Nobody was dancing, but we had gotten booted from our table by a group that had reservations for the table so we went to the dancefloor. The girls bobbed their heads a bit and danced slightly and by the end of the song the dance floor was packed. Ah, the power of those exotic foreigners! Over the next couple of hours the girls were shadowed by a never-ending mob of persistant admirers who couldn't take a hint. I had to tell one guy that they were lesbians so he'd leave them alone, but even that didn't seem to work!


The above photo is "illegal", apparantly. After an hour or so of dancing, some girls jumped up on the bar and did some sexy dances, and then more and more girls were brought up and fed alcohol while dancing, stripping down and making out. It was awesome! But when I took a picture a bouncer came over and gave me a pretty pissed off look and told me that it's illegal to take pictures of his trampy dancers. Jerk! Also after this, the bartenders did some sort of juggling show with bottles of alcohol that were lit on fire. I made sure not to take any pictures though, in case that was illegal too.


We'll call this the "after" photo, most likely taken at some pause between the millionth Lady Gaga song that they played.


We got back to Sinjhuang at about 4:30, and after something may or may not have happened in the bushes in front of our school...


...we stumbled home through what appeared to be some kind of newspaper-packing business that seems to be running on our street in the middle of the night. All in all, it was a classy and very fun evening filled with new friends, new foods, spilt drinks and soiled bushes.

Can't wait for Big Boobs Night!