Trip - Part 2

After leaving the CKS house, we headed over to our hotel to check in for the evening. The hotel was nice enough, and had a killer view of this fascinating park across the way (more on this later).

Following dinner, some of us headed over to the night market, which is a Taiwanese phenomenon that everybody should experience at least once in their lives. Sooner or later, Melanie and I plan to head down and document a visit with photos for a blog post. While it is possible to express some of the experience in words, and perhaps still more in pictures, without the diverse smells, the dichotomy of delightful and alarming tastes, and the general sense of claustrophobia that go along with it, nothing short of a visit really captures the adventure.

We wandered around a bit, filling our already distended bellies well beyond their capacity, and still we pressed on. We found some stores with interesting merchandise that probably wouldn't go over so well in Western countries (no - that's not the actual buddhist symbol - white power!). We ended up playing one of those basket shooting games, where you're supposed to get as many buckets as possible in a preset amount of time. Glenn's brother challenged me to a match, and naturally beat me soundly. Afterward, we stepped back and let some of the local kids take their turn. Talk about embarassing - these kids made more basket in the first 30 seconds then either one of us made in our two games combined. I wish I had caught a video of this demonstration of mastery of a game - they just never missed!

Following our humbling, we moved on to a section where we played some carnival games, such as the ring toss, balloon shooting, etc.; Melanie won us all prizes with her deadeye accuracy (remind me to never piss this woman off - at least when she's armed). Pictured here are (left to right) Melanie, Vanessa (Glenn's girlfriend) Glenn, Glenn's brother's girlfriend, and Glenn's brother.

Truly, a good time was had by all.