Last day in Taiwan

We went to a night market in Taipei for dinner last night. It was interesting -- lots of different food vendors, and lots of little and medium shops and stalls selling all kinds of stuff. Also very crowded -- at least to me -- I was told Saturday night would be crowded and that it wasn't actually too crowded. It did result in more challenging food situations, though. :)

This trip has been a bit unusual for me in that there have been co-workers around. Usually I'm off to a customer site alone, but this trip was for a Blackberry team and there's been other Blackberry employees here for this trip. And, all of them are from China (mainland) originally, so they speak and read Chinese. This has helped to navigate food a bit. Though, still, I get translations such as "pork" and "fish" without much further information about what/how/what other stuff might be in a dish. I've definitely eaten stuff that I don't know what it is/was. More so than I usually do, or usually am comfortable doing.

The others are here for longer them me -- 2weeks to 3 months. They are headed out to be tourists with a local as a guide today. I decided to not go along, as I fly home this evening, and want to rest a bit. To have a more quiet day before the long, tiring, flight home.

Another oddity from last night...

Pretty girls, scantily clad, in well-lit plastic road-side stands. What?

Apparently, they are selling betel nut fruit (Pinang), which is a mildly stimulant seed of the Betel palm.

Very odd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinang_xi_shi

TPE -> YYZ -> YOW

Or, at least, that is the plan. I'm on the last flight out of YYZ with a 2-hour lay-over. It should be ok, and I'd definitely rather not be stuck overnight in Toronto.

Taoyuan airport has free wifi. I approve of this, even though the landing page is utterly unreadable to me. :)

I picked up something at the duty-free. I asked for something "uniquely from Taiwan", and apparently have a liquor/liqueur made from tea and rice. I have no idea what it will be like -- but it should be interesting to taste, at least.

I've also been remarkably un-jetlagged this trip. In fact, I haven't really noticed any, other than that I've been sleeping about an hour more at night than I would normally. Perhaps my arrival strategy worked pretty well. Unfortunately, I can't reproduce it on the way home, as I have a night rather than morning arrival and I find it easier to stay up when tired than to sleep when not tired. So, I may be a bit wrecked next week.

Well, at least it has intermittently working wifi. We'll see how it goes...