Before leaving for our late afternoon train to Taichung, we spent the day exploring more of Taipei. When people said that Taiwan would be sickly hot and humid in the summer, they were not joking or exaggerating. I don’t think I’ve ever been more grateful for a shower in the evening than the days we’ve spent here. Every day, my face has felt like an oil spill, and you could probably stick paper all over my body and have them stay still all day, too.

While at Huashan 1914 Creative Park, we noticed a very long queue for some little tent. We found out that the tent was housing a temporary Sailor Moon pop-up store. Chris thought this was especially funny – “Asians,” he muttered. Then, to make the situation even funnier, right behind the Sailor Moon tent was a truck set up for free Jim Beam cocktails – whiskey cocktails, ALCOHOL – and there was NO line at all! I was confused for a second and figured it was free, but I asked just to be sure. The man standing at the truck said it was a promotion and confirmed that all the drinks were free. So of course we took two and laughed over the fact that everyone wanted to wait in line to buy Sailor Moon products, but not a single person other than the two of us wanted to grab a free whiskey cocktail. The juxtaposition of these two situations just showed the values of the Taiwanese people right there. We clearly value alcohol over Sailor Moon.