A Tale of Two Bars

As I write this another typhoon is raging outside, and this one is supposed to have winds near 118 mph. I actually hope there is no typhoon holiday because I have a 1.5 million piece shipment to get to Thailand tomorrow.

So Friday night I wanted to check out an underground rock place I had read about only to find it had moved. That meant I stopped by a watering hole about 7 min walk from my apartment. Here is the translated conversation between the owner, me, and the only other patron there:
Me: Hi do you have a menu? (Gives me menu) Do you have Taiwan beer? (No response)
Me: Do you have Taiwan beer?
Owner: Yes.
Me: Ok, get me a Taiwan beer (no response)
Me: Can you bring me a beer? (no response)
Me: Can I have a beer? (just looks at me)
Patron: Are you going to get him a beer? (owner finally brings me a beer)
Owner: Where do you live?

It was no wonder there was only one dude there. And to top it off the AC was almost non-existent in there. I will not be going back.

Then last night I decided to check out a bar in the university district called Club W (all you can drink bikini night!), what a name, then again Club Fever it’s not. However, when I got off of the subway there was no one outside the place so I decided to walk to another bar/club called 9% to see if that was any better. Now this was the place. I paid NT$600/US$18 and it was also all you can drink. There should be no questions as to if I took advantage of this state of affairs. The major downside to the place was the large number of dudes and generally smaller number of ladies.

Some of the highlights: meeting an Indian guy who loved to dance and/or grind up on the ladies all the while yelling “Woooo!” Talking to a random girl from Austria. Talking to a Taiwanese baseball player who had amazing English. Two very attractive women dancing on the bar. Some dude deciding I was his buddy since he heard me speak Chinese and then meeting all of his friends. As a side note, whenever I speak Chinese I suddenly become everyone’s friend.

The place closed at 4AM but this story doesn’t end there. It was raining pretty hard and there were a lot of people and not many cabs so I walked a few yards to 7-11 and sat down to wait. Well I ended up talking to some three girls and a guy who had just left as well and they wanted me to go to karaoke with them, why the hell not? When we get to the karaoke place who should I run into but my buddy and all of his friends from the club.

Well after singing some karaoke and drinking a bit (ok, a lot) more it was pretty good times. There was one crazy chick with some wild tattoos (“Live in the present” on her upper thigh) who was impressed that I could read Chinese when singing karaoke. The best part was they paid for everything. Even the cab ride back was paid by this other girl who was there. I was even happier since I got her number.