The Night Markets

If there is one thing and one place you must visit during your stay in Taiwan is the night Market. Let’s get something straight, something that everybody kept telling me and I kept reading in blogs and articles and refused to believe myself, but it is very true; Taiwanese Night Markets are a lot to take in for the newcomer. What can I tell you, they are busy, packed, noisy and in a simple explanation a fucking overload for all your senses. You will immediately notice the amount of people, the brightness and colorfulness of all the stalls, the pungent smells (both good and bad), music and people shouting, and the lack of personal space. But come on, you came here to experience everything, so, now that you have overcome the smells and personal space issue (which in my case were the hardest thing, because noise and lights are alright in my book), take a deep fucking breath and just dive in this fantastic ocean of new things and possibilities.

The parking lot of a Night Market 

Slippers & Geta; the rise and fall of a style.

Silly me, when I arrived in Taiwan after being in Spain and the UK for the most part of the winter, I was wearing a Coat, a Vest, a Scarf, Gloves and my trusty Doc Martens… The moment I step down the plane, I immediately thought: - Fuck! Oh yeah! It’s a tropical Island. So I took off my coat and gloves. One minute later the heat was crazy, I took off the vest. By the time I was leaving my shit at the hotel I was fucking sweating my soul  out.

So, yes, I needed to ditch my Doc Martens in order to get something that would help cope the heat that will only get worse and worse as summer approaches. 

So I heard about this place with the colourful slippers I've seen a lot of the locals wear everywhere. Apparently at some point when plastic started being popular around these parts of the world there was a company making the Iconic Blue and White plastic flip-flops many locals can recognise as something everybody has worn at some point in their lives. A few years ago, this same company started producing many different colourful variations of the same flip-flops, and they were a hit, so I thought: -Let's get myself some of them slippers!

They are sturdy, comfortable and indeed, very fucking colourful, and the best part? Well that's got to be the price, you will leave the establishment with a  shinny pair of new slippers and it will only set you back 100 NTD, oh yeah, around 2.5 EUR.

The Plastic Slippers