It's the Little Things...

In Hong Kong, Allison said the place was like Chinatown in Toronto, writ large.

Taiwan, on the other hand, was more different to her. It was all in the little things:



Whereas we might have dandelions or purple loosestrife growing in the neglected ditches alongside roads or barren dirt around vacant lots, in Taiwan, they have... banana trees. O.O



Lay's potato chips. You can see the translated flavor on the bag, "Original". The Chinese translation above it is much more descriptive. It says, "American classic original flavor". In Taiwan, just being American is a selling point. :)



No selling points needed here. :)

Allison said what's interesting is that, even if the bottles were completely unlabeled, she'd still know what it was. How's that for global marketing?

Not Your Average Motel

There's really no suitable translation in English for the type of hotel we stayed at in Taiwan. It was part motel, part hotel, part Las Vegas sensory overload.

It was motel-ish in the sense that every room includes a garage for you to park your car. The door to the room is inside the garage much in the same way many houses have garage entrances.

It was hotel-ish in the sense that the rooms are not cramped and cheap the way we might image motels to be.

And it was Vegas-ish in the sense that... well, check it out for yourself:



This was our room as seen looking left-center from the front door. Neon track lighting in the floor and ceiling and there in the right of the picture, a hot tub built right into the bathroom floor. You can see a TV in the wall at around knee-height.

If you look carefully, there's a black rectangle in the wall behind the curtain behind the big TV. That's the door into a private sauna.



This is the living area and bar. In terms of orientation, this is to the right of the first picture. (The chair in the very left of this picture with my -- *ahem* -- pants on it is at the very right of the top picture.)



And here's the vanity, which was to the right of the hot tub. In the right of this picture is the door to the washroom in which there's yet another TV.

I'd estimate the total size of the room to be about 1,000 sq. ft. Total TV count: 3.

Viva Las Vegas, baby! :)