#167 Exploring Amazing Taipei

Transcript

That's a dude just doing karaoke on the street and behind my Airbnb. Just set up as a little karaoke box and I don't know, I guess he's taking donations. He seems alright. I'm having such a hard time getting a handle on what even is this neighborhood that I am in. I'm just not sure. I was checking out the murals across the street from my place. It turns out that the movie theater I saw last time is right by my Airbnb. And is this another one? Wow, there's another movie theater like two blocks down the street. And I was going to say one of the murals I saw. There's a bunch of cool stuff, but one of them, this huge mural that takes up the whole side of a building, had ultra-magnet at the bottom of classic Transformers fame. As well as a bunch of other stuff. This one has statues, the Hulk Buster. I wonder if this is the same as the one I saw in Busan. In Busan, at the park, they had a bunch of superhero statues. But yeah, it's like, I don't know, is this life size? I come up to about this Hulk Buster's belly button. Maybe a little higher than that.

It's at least one and a half me. Yeah, that's probably right because it has to have a person in it still. Batman, Superman, Ninja Turtle, miscellaneous. Actually, that might be, I think that's one of the new Transformers. Yeah, Transformers the last night I have not seen that film. Oh, and there's the, they have all four of the Ninja Turtles. Just statues, chilling outside the movie theater. That's fucking weird, man. I thought it was almost like surprising to find one movie theater. But two of them right next to each other. Nice, they keep on movies alive and fucking Taiwan. And yeah, there's a lot of little crane machine game type places. None of the like huge ones like Gigo in Japan. They're all pretty small, but at least they exist because those are very rare in Korea. I haven't really noticed much for coffee besides Starbucks, but maybe it's just, I don't know what I'm looking for. That's just the only, that's just the only logo that I know. It'd be sweet if they had a DIA, but just that is a crazy, you know, they have a lot of Japanese branches of stuff. You know, they have a lot of Japanese franchises here, but I did a Google Maps search just in case. How insane would that be? But not my favorite Korean coffee is not here. Yeah, definitely tons of like, oh, I saw a, like a spray painted airbrushed, whatever mural thing of that monster from Pan's Labyrinth puts his, the backs of his hands against his face and has eyeballs on his palms. Any other tons of like, just hip hop style graffiti stuff going on, wherever I am, whatever this neighborhood is. So anyway, yeah, still day two, I'm still just soaking it in, just walking around trying to get any sense of anything. Oh, garbage cans here, that's good, because my land lady, I was looking through her stuff and she just said, you know, she's like, hey, get ready your own garbage and don't flush your toilet paper. And there are garbage cans on the adjacent street. And I was like, what does that mean? I just assumed maybe it was like a little alley or something that maybe had like a dumpster for the building or something like that. But I walked around the little hood and I didn't see shit. And then luckily, I just found a random garbage can to toss my bag of garbage. So I guess, I don't know, there might be a more official method. But I think that's, I think I'm going back to the sneaky life. I'm just sneakily throwing away garbage, because I did notice that at the family mart yesterday, there wasn't any garbage that I could see at that family mart. Usually you're at least safe to be your family mart stuff at that store and throw stuff away at that store. Maybe that was an unusual one, we'll see. But anyway, I'm just going to develop a network, find places to serotoniously throw away my garbage. And I found out I'm kind of glad actually that I bought the sort of excessive amount of fragrance fucking perfumed garbage bags that I bought. Because what I found is like the best technique. I mean, I had this fantasy of just never using the toilet in my room because you're not allowed to flush toilet paper. But it's just not realistic when you're just inside. And it's nature calls. It's just like, I fuck it. I'm not going all the way outdoors. But yeah, I found that after you use your toilet paper, just toss it in the 5:00 little garbage bag. And then immediately just tie that garbage bag up and just put it in the next garbage bag. So it's like, I don't have to take out a whole bag of garbage every time I use the toilet. But I'm not just letting a garbage bag fill up with my gross toilet paper, you know, each, each round of toilet paper is quarantined in its own little bag. And then all those bags, you know, just put that bag in the next bag and then put that bag in the next bag. I can't, I can't really see that happening more than a couple of times in a day. That's probably the extent of it. But it's, yeah, simple little technique that I'm like, I like this, this works. This isn't so bad. This makes the, because it's just so awful. Not being able to flush toilet paper, come on. But I found a way that I can not break the rules and not destroy the toilet. It is a really old building. So, you know, maybe, maybe it just really isn't able to accept toilet paper.

Oh, this is like a street performer guy, but he's dressed like he's ledger Joker. Yeah, this is, I guess there's that at the very least. I mean, there's definitely a vibe of shoes and hip-hop culture and music in general, but this is definitely movie town. No question about that. A lot of anime banners too.

But yeah, whatever this neighborhood is, I mean, lots of movie stuff.

In fact, I see a marquee down the street here. I'll just walk toward it. Who knows? Does it more movies? Could be. Yeah, I noticed who some of the anime stuff that I saw yesterday.

I looked up a bit of it and it seems to be, I don't know, it might be Taiwanese specific. It's like anime games and stuff, but they're like phone games. Cosmetic. There's a new fucking chain I never heard of. But yeah, it's like, you know, a little like strategy RPG on your phone that then when you recruit a new hot babe, you get to see a cool little cutscene of her with her boobs jiggling. Like, Brown Dust 2 was one of them.

Because I was kind of thinking about that. Like, it's cool that Taiwan is so into anime, but I was thinking like, oh, it'd be cool if they had their own anime though. And I guess maybe they kind of do, but in the mobile phone arena, you know, that's where you can seemingly get stuff that I certainly never heard of before.

There's a Uniqlo. Someone dropped a bunch of coins. Imagine if I was spaking all this. Imagine if I just dropped in the sound of coins falling. Why would I do that right there?

Random music. Pass or buy saying stuff. Yeah, this would be so much work to build this this little ambience sound scape. This field recording.

Yeah, this would be a nightmare to develop this sound. Okay, no, this thing I'm walking toward, Cop Mart. I mean, it's weird. It looks like a movie theater, but the monsters, Verono, Molly, Skull Panda, Demo. There's a sign for Skull Panda that looks like a Marvel commercial, but I think it's a candy store. There's kind of a line. People trying to go in. And there's an upstairs. Okay, there's little toys, little figures.

Maybe that's what Cop Mart sells. They look really cool.

They kind of look like Asian garbage pails. They're like a little bit weird looking, a little off.

Again, I don't know. I walk right up to the place. I walk right by. I still don't quite know what it is or what they do. It's fucking awesome. This neighborhood is cool as fucks. 10:00 Anyway, yeah, I'm just gonna walk around. So get in. See if I can possibly get a handle on what the fuck's going on. And if I don't, who cares? That's fine. I don't need to understand. It's kind of cool not to understand. Taiwan number one souvenir. It's definitely a cock shape. I think it was like, I think it was, I don't know. It's a souvenir though. I think it's like food, like a little bean bun thing shaped like a penis, but that wouldn't be a souvenir if you eat it. But if it's made out of plastic, then it's just a dildo. Yeah, anyway. Anyway, whatever.

It's nice seeing too. Like I just saw a guy who, I don't know if it's cosplay exactly because I don't recognize the character. He's got like a purple wig and butterfly wings.

But just to see cosplayers or to see people dressed up in general. In Korea, sometimes people would be dressed especially cool, but not really like cosplay. There's a couple of people with guy fox masks. All right, now I'm coming out of this area. I mean, it's like opening up. It's widening into more of a normal neighborhood. So maybe, oh jeez, Canadian content. Come on, you could at least play sorry. Sorry is kind of a good song. But maybe that helps explain a bit. That one area, I mean, maybe that is kind of like a, not a fair, but you know, like there are restraints like that in Seoul as well and Busan, where they're just kind of like a, like a little market, like an especially packed-in area full of cool stuff. Yeah, because now, can you believe how often the music is changing? This is out of control. It just keeps guys only changing. But yeah, now I've come to a big intersection. And this looks more like a normal city now. Much bigger, wider, more open. So that's kind of cool, like maybe I'm just inside a particularly packed-in cool little movie-shoes music food market. I'll take it, man. It's a good place to be.

All right, now that I'm out of the super packed neighborhood, in a way, I kind of, man, I really started off in a good spot where I came out of the subway after the airport right into that mall that was like video game anime Grand Central. And then I only walked a little bit to get to the neighborhood I'm in that is the cool packed-in sweet street fare type of neighborhood. So now that I've been walking through the normal city of Taipei, here you know, the more conventional part, still tons of 7-elevens and family-marts and I still haven't been able to clock if there's a third chain. I don't know like, well there's a store here in the corner called Highlight. Ahead of me that has a light blue and pink band.

And the logo is inside a heart. Yeah, this looks like a convenience store, so I keep my eyes peeled. Maybe highlight is the thing, or maybe if you're not one of the big two, it's just a bunch of random stuff. But I'm surprised to only see the two, you know, I'm just so used to. In Japan, it would be losses, and then the rest. In Korea, it was 7-Eleven. Nice to see you. Very extremely balanced ratio in Korea. So yeah, that there's only two around here, as unusual, so I keep my eye peeled. But now that I'm in the city proper, it is having a bit of that feeling I had in Seoul, where I said it felt like an American city. You know, I would have just thought maybe I was in like an Asia town part of a big city in America, of Chicago or something. Not that I've ever been to Chicago. Philadelphia, Boston.

Not quite New York. I guess that's what's kind of surprising here. I still get that America feeling. And Taipei is smaller than Seoul by a lot. I think it's like less than 3 million people to live here. I'd have to check where Seoul is like 10 or 11. But this feels New Yorkish. Specifically, I mean, I could be at a date. It's been a while. But it's reminding me of the neighborhood near where the Empire State Building is. And I think a lot of it is awnings. There's awnings. 15:00 By pretty much every building. And also, it's getting a little overcast. And I think I felt a pitter-patter of rain. I think that's why I think there's awnings everywhere to help with rain, because it was raining on and off yesterday too. Obviously, I get delayed coming here because of a typhoon. So it's good to have awnings. But that's where I'm not sure if New York actually is like this. At the time I was there, 2008-2009, they were doing construction on the Empire State Building. So I always think of walking by it. You would walk under an awning. But I think so. I mean, I've pretty recently watched just one of those on YouTube videos. People just walking around videos. I watched one of a big rainstorm in Manhattan. And I do feel like the guy was undercover for a lot of it. But yeah, I'm definitely. I'm getting a Manhattan-y vibe. Very much so.

Oh shit, McDonald's. But it's Saturday. It's fucking busy in there. There's somebody dressed up in like a Kawaii pink wig, cute mesh outfit. Except it was an older dude. See, they seem pretty relaxed around here.

Yeah, I'm still a little curious about the McDonald's Squid Burger. Oh, here it is. There's the sign. No English here, though. I had to go to the menu to see it. Okay, well, there we go. There's a free one. Okay, well, I'm in here now. Let's see. Am I gonna order something? If I do, though. Oh, yeah, this is a place. Okay, I can maybe do this. Oh, we're only taking takeaway orders right now. Fair enough. All right, promotion. So there's the Korean double-deak squid burger for $124. And the Japanese pork cutlet squid burger. Or you can get both for $450 as a super pack. All right, let's try the Japanese pork cutlet squid burger. Let's get a combo.

I had $27 for fries. Oh, $43 for large fries. See what I mean? Like, it literally says $43. I still don't know what that fucking means. In my brain, I just don't know. Oh, no. How about an ice latte for $75? Why not? Add on chicken nuggets for $59. Is that a good deal? Oh, a bubble milk tea McFlurry for $69. And to order. So my order is $311.

I don't even feel a beyond. Feels like standing still. Put ions and ions, staring dead on the air. The whiteness. Oh, we can do is try. I shut it down. I shut it down. No, this might not work. I don't know if it's going to take my card because it's Las Pida holds the card against the thing, which I don't know. This contact is payment. I just don't know if my card can do that. But if I slide the card in, it doesn't work.

However, you can just print out a receipt and go pay in cash, pay at the counter. Try this one more time. But yeah, it's so busy in here that this doesn't work. That is fine. I am not going to do this today. Okay, it's high enough for me to go pay at the counter. But anyway, that's fine. We got to look at the menu and the crazy prices. At some point. But I think I don't think I'm going to be falling into that routine. You know, it's because the convenience stores in South Korea were just giving me such a tough time. That I fell into the habit of going to Burger King and fucking McDonald's. Then later on Jeju, I found a KFC that would take my little card. You know, it's more fast food than I have ever eaten in my life that I fucking South Korea. So I do not intend for that to happen here. Because even if all I eat here at the convenience stores, again, I got a salmon roe onigiri. You know, just shit like that. If that's all I eat, that's fine, man. That's more or less real food.

All I had in Korea was I did look up the name. Gimbap. Gimbap, I think. Shit. Why even bother looking up the name if you're not going to remember? But you know, they had those kind of sort of like a Mackie roll thing.

But like that's really all they had. Here, there's a bunch of different options. So I think I'm back to being a convenience store man. But at some point, I don't know, I guess. I guess I don't know how long the promo lasts. If I walk by him McDonald's and they don't have the Squid Burger anymore, I'm going to be disappointed. So I'll keep an eye on it. I guess if I go by him McDonald's, that's not crazy busy. I mean, it's Saturday afternoon. It couldn't be worse than today.

I'll try to make the experiment happen at some point. Yeah, even I just noticed there's a place clearly like a Vietnamese place across from me, but I'll line up out the door. Yeah, just the weekend. The weekend sucks, man. The weekend's not the time to do anything. So here's a 7-11. That's what I'll be doing.

So I stopped in 7-11, got some stuff, and my bill was $350. That came out too. I think I converted it after like a bit over 14, like 15 bucks. I feel like I'm going to be able to get a handle on this at some point. It is weird right now.

But it's coming together. And they had a thing I noticed the lady in line in front of me. They had a little game on the register. I forgot about this because this didn't really happen. This last trip to Japan. But when I went in 2019, though, we're always these little weird games at the convenience store. Get a little ticket and do a little thing. Maybe you get a discount or maybe you get a free whatever. I don't really know the details because I never knew how they worked. And I was always just trying to beg off, like, can I please not? And the person would have just insist sometimes. Like, oh, there's a, no, there's a thing. This is like this ballot and this goes in this box. And I'm like, I just, please, I don't care. I don't care. I don't understand how it works and I don't care. You can't give me anything I care about. Let me free. Let me be free.

So this was a way smaller version of that of like when I got there and bought my stuff. The little thing popped up. Like when the lady did it, this was like a touch screen thing on the display where it shows how much you've got to pay. You press this like four little screens and she pressed start on one and then she was pressing different buttons like it was a rhythm game or something. And I don't know. I don't know how it works or I mean, presumably she knew how it worked and that did something. The guy, you know, showed me the thing and insisted that I press the thing. So I just pressed the start and I just let it roll. And I assume it did nothing. I just, I don't know. These little games. I forgot all about that. But I never like line up to get free samples of stuff. I just, I just don't care. I don't give a fuck and I don't understand. But anyway, so that's going on here too.

Oh, here's the coffee geek place that I walked by last night. Now it's daytime. And it's so little. There's like three seats in there and then four seats outside. But I was thinking that even I was kind of weird yesterday that that place was still open. Why the heck was it still open that late at night? I guess people are, I mean, it's kind of cool like this, this bar at the bottom of my building. It doesn't even open till nine. But apparently even the coffee shops just late night coffee.

Is there something else I wanted to say? Oh, yeah, that's right. I was like, why didn't I even turn on this recorder? I think my brain is still a little frazzled. I'm still catching up on sleep from my airport adventures. I did scan the QR code in my place where on the third floor is like the shrine to somebody or other and a QR code you could scan. But then I scanned the QR code and it just took me to the Facebook page, the photography page of the guy Brendan who runs the bar at the bottom. So whatever this, this stuff is like, I guess it's not I was thinking he seems so cool and level headed. I was like, okay, he seems like the cool guy who runs the cool bar. Maybe the lady who owns the building is into some kind of super meditation guru guy.

But then the QR code took me to Brendan's photography page and the way the inside of the building, it's all like red lights and blue lights and it's all cool and there's cool shit everywhere. And it was all just, yeah, pictures he'd taken of people around that building. So the whole design of the whole place is definitely him and whatever, whatever's going on, I guess it's him. But whatever he seems cool, I'm still generally confused. I generally don't know what's going on, but it's just a cool property. It is a really cool building.

It's kind of overcast today. It's not crazy hot. I've gotten away without paying the extra $4 for air conditioning so far. I think I'm going to get away with it again today, but it is supposed to be hot the whole time I'm here. So we'll see. It's really, I mean, you know, so what? For bucks for air conditioning to not die in a heatwave. It's obviously worth it. But it is just weird to think of it as tacking that onto the price of the Airbnb. It's like, oh, all of a sudden. Again, what am I talking about? $4 a day. Who the fuck cares? I just had to lay down tons of money for emergency flights and stuff. I guess, though, that's the thing. Is this like constant, you know, awareness of money? I guess it's handy four times like this, like that I had to lay down a bunch of money for flights. And then I didn't have to lay down the money for that hotel, the fancy hotel in Busan, but I'm glad I did. It was worth it. And I guess it's nice because like all the other times I've been a little mindful or I've stayed at an especially cheap, weird Airbnb or I just haven't blown money on something. Then it pays off at times like that because like, yeah, I just had to spend a big whack of money. But if you look at it in total, like the general way I look at it is if I can travel for about the same price as it would cost me to pay rent back home in Canada, then I'm doing fine. I'm doing all right. It's lucky enough to not have to go to a job. I'd be spending that money either way, so why not spend it somewhere interesting. And it is always the flight part that's the hardest other than that. It's not that tough to be frugal while you travel. But yeah, I think if you looked at the totality of this, if you added it all up, I'm not saying it's been a cheap trip, obviously it's not. But just life is not cheap. If I stayed back in Canada, I don't think I'd be much better off. I'd have a little more in the savings account, but not a ton more and just think of all the experiences I've had, you know, like that's how I try to look at it. So if you look at it that way, even this big speed bump of having a flight canceled and having to reroute stuff and whatever, in the grand scheme of things, I can definitely absorb that. I've definitely nickel and dimeed my way through this spuck in adventure enough times and enough little ways to counterbalance that.

But I also realized I think I went through a time change, the time changed when I was in the airport in China. I don't know now that I'm in Taiwan, because I just realized like today's the day I always phone home and I got some stories now. I got some stories for this week, but I actually don't know. I'm either an hour later or an hour early, so I guess I should go inside and figure it out.

You This is pretty cool. I just had the thought today that it's not necessarily that I don't want to pay the $4 to turn on the air conditioning in my room. It's like $4 isn't that big deal. But it is kind of awkward. It's like a whole to-do. I'm supposed to message the Airbnb lady. Then I got to go downstairs while the bar is open and pay the guy who runs the bar because he runs the building. But like today, I saw that it was supposed to be like a heat wave warning. It was supposed to be 36 degrees feels like 44, which I think that would be the hottest day that I've been on this trip. And probably one of the hottest days of my whole life. I looked up at a curiosity. What's the hottest it ever got on record in my home province of New Brunswick, Canada? The hottest it ever got was 39 degrees in 1935. In my lifetime, I don't know if I've ever experienced 36 degree heat. Maybe. I feel like I had some times on the west coaster. It was crazy hot. But that would be a lot and feels like 44. That's where I was like, I got right. I guess I'm paying tonight. But I got out here and it's a bit overcast and it's not bad. This is not even close to the worst day. This is a fine normal day. This is just a normal hot day. It says they cool. I got away with it again, but I mean we'll see. I got time to go. So then it occurred to me. Why don't I buy a fan? I don't know. I just get a little like USB fan or something. That would fucking do the trick. But I don't know where to buy anything yet. You know, I'm still new to this country. So I was like, I don't know. Maybe I can find an electronic store or something. I don't know.

I don't know what's going on around here. But luckily I walk by this little street fair where it's like the entire street is just people with stuff laid out. And somebody had nice little purple, light purple. I see, I see. Move.

Hand fan that just runs off of a AA battery, which it had in it, but I also have rechargeable double-a's because this very recorder takes AA batteries. So that's like cool. Perfect, you know, like the greatest thing about this. I don't even quite know how I'm going to use it because you gotta hold it. I'll have to like prop it up and something. Find some way to stand it up and just point it at my bed at night while I lay there sweating on the fucking top of the sheets. There's a blanket that I cannot imagine I will ever use. Just point it at myself. I think that'll help a lot. So I was just pleased that I just found one on the street. I don't have to find a store. I don't have to go in. I don't have to deal with all this stuff. So I asked the lady how much it was and I don't know any of the words. So I don't know. So I just pulled out the $100 bill and just asked that she was busy doing something immediately. The second after I talked to her, she was her attention was somewhere else, but the guy who was with her. I was like, how many of these? And he held up a hand for two. So I took out two, handed them two or was like, awesome, thank you. And then as I started to walk away, they were like, oh, hold on. And she was reaching for change. So I was like, no, no, just please, please, keep the change. That's all you. Because it is just a little plastic piece of crap. And I just had to do a little, the little conversion just to make sure on my little app. I was like, that's about eight bucks, right? And it's like, yeah, that's about eight bucks. Each hundred dollar new Taiwanese dollar bill is about four dollars in a bit in Canadian. So yeah, probably this thing was like, it was obviously more than four, but less than eight. So probably five bucks. But I was like, yeah, no, have the eight, man. I don't care. I do not need the change. You kind of rescued me. The fact that you just had this laying on on a carpet in the street. That is exactly what I fucking wanted. That is worse.

A three dollar tip. Easy. So that's sweet. I got that covered. But then the other thing that I only just noticed today, but I've been noticing it a lot all of a sudden. I guess I just suddenly wandered into the right part of town. As I walked by some places that were kind of like massage type places with some ladies standing out front. And the lady did the sort of subtle gesture. She was very subtle about it. But then I noticed there was another lady standing just down the block from her.

And I was like, oh, the massage that I think how Bill Hicks described it was a massage that wanders subtly, but wisely. You know, I know, I know Jack and shit about how all this stuff works. I remember the first time I ever kind of came into contact with prostitution was when I worked at the coffee shop on Davie and Granville. Oh, geez, here's more down the street for me now. This is almost awkward. I'm going to go to the crosswalk and I'm going to cross over to the other side. But yeah, I worked at this coffee shop, the graveyard shift, blends coffee at Davie and Granville. And since it was right downtown, there was actually, it was kind of like higher class kind of fancy pants. I don't know, is there a politically correct term? Ladies of the night, walkers of the streets. And after they were done for the night, since I was there till 7 a.m., they'd come in and buy like hot chocolate and cookies and stuff. And I just kind of chat with them. You know, just be cool. But especially at that point, I was like 23, 24 years old. I guess I was still a virgin at that point, actually. I was just about to get my first girlfriend. So it certainly did sort of grip my mind in the back of my mind. Like, whoa, these ladies sell sex. Wow, but I'm just selling them hot chocolate and cookies, hanging out and chatting with them for a bit.

Yeah, it's a part of the world that because, I mean, I guess when I have jobs, then I feel bad about spending my own money because my jobs are always order line minimum wage. So I'm always like, jeez, I'm just always poor. And then once I transition to this current lifestyle of just basically getting early inheritance money, well, and then I guess actual inheritance money when my poor dad passed away, it's still a similar situation where technically, technically I could throw around money, but I would still feel, I feel more guilty about it. I would feel terrible.

If I'm going to be just a trust fund piece of trash, which I am, at least I can keep it cheap. I can take cheap flights. I can get cheap Airbnb's. I can splurge once in a while on a hand 35:00 fan, but other than that, just basically buy food and nothing else. And just try not to take advantage of the lucky life that I have, you know, try not to push it. I would never in a million years.

I just don't know how like, is that thing of even if I never told anybody and nobody ever knew, and I actually don't think there's anything wrong with paying for or selling sex, I think it's fine.

But I would feel weird about it. And I would always know, that's where like even just stuff like this podcast, I mean, you know, whatever you think of this podcast, you must kind of like, if you're still here after all this time. But I mean, there's certainly people that think my podcast are boring or they're self-indulgent or whatever. But the only reason I even have the gumption to just yammer about my life and whatever comes to mind is just because I got a clear conscience and a, you know, I just, I think people underestimate when they do stuff that is sort of, you know, they do stuff that's sort of sus. Even if nobody knows, they know, you know, you yourself know, you're subconscious knows. And it changes what's available to you. It changes how freely you can behave and it changes how freely you can talk about things and how freely you can discuss things. Whether I'm interesting or not is a different story. Maybe I'm the most boring person in the world. But the only reason I have the just like, that I don't have any anxiety about just saying whatever's on my mind is because I know I'm coming from a good place and I'm well-meaning and deep down, I haven't done anything that bad in the world. If I had murdered somebody or something, I just wouldn't be doing a podcast, you know, I would be a much quieter person. Now again, like I said, I don't think there's anything wrong with prostitution, it's not like stealing, it's not like murdering, it's nothing like that. But with my weird, Catholic guilt upbringing, it's just confusing. It's just complicated in my mind. I just don't know what I think about it. But I guess I don't trust myself. If I trusted myself to just be a nice polite patron, you know, that'd be one thing. But I just have such a bad relationship with, I'm not going to say sex because sex is okay when I have girlfriends and stuff. It's really just porn. I have a bad relationship with porn. And there's plenty, plenty of, you know, like if the, in the world before the internet, that was the best thing about it is that porn was just a lot more subdued and a lot harder to get. And the whole situation was, if you're an addict, a lot easier to handle. And I just, I just don't trust myself to not treat a person like a piece of porn. You know, like I feel like if I just started paying women for sex, it would just escalate, where that's how porn works. Oh, I gotta see that the crazier porn, more and more porn, chase the dragon, but it's whatever. It's just you and some flickery lights on your computer screen. It's really not hurting anybody. I just don't at all trust myself for that pattern not to happen with real people. And then I would feel terrible about myself. And it would just fuck up my whole life real bad. You know, I wouldn't trust myself anymore. My whole subconscious would be torn asunder. It would not be a good scene. But also, I think if I was independently wealthy in the sense that it wasn't money that I inherited or money that I feel like I need to be careful with, like what if I just won the lottery? What if the lottery gave me a hundred million dollars and I just didn't care about the money and it meant nothing? Oh, man. Oh, I just don't think that would be healthy for me. I think I would absolutely pay one of these ladies to give me a fancy massage that wandered subtly but wisely. And then I would do it every day. And I would do it twice a day. And then I would do it three times a day. And it would just be a spiral of depression and awfulness that it would require me much therapy to unravel. It was just like, oh, but anyway, the point is I saw those first two ladies and I was like, oh, that's interesting. That's not really something I noticed in any of these other countries, even Canada. Even in Canada is quite rare. There used to be neighborhoods in Vancouver and Toronto, but they, but it really doesn't work that way anymore. I don't know. Maybe it's all just gone online. But there used to be like the neighborhoods, like downtown Vancouver or it doesn't matter where they are, but that's where my coffee shop was. And they're not there anymore. Toronto, I mean, if you're from Toronto, you probably remember the Hooker Harvest. It hasn't been that in a long time. But yeah, after I saw that first 40:00 sign, then just after I bought this little, this little fan, I have some coins now that I still haven't sorted out what the coins are in their values yet. But I was like, oh, I've got coins now. There's a drink machine here. Maybe I'll just try to get a bottle of water.

Somebody just playing Tetris on the street. A whole Tetris machine. Oh, it's an arcade. I should remember where this is. Because yeah, there's a lot of claw machines and stuff, but I haven't walked by a proper arcade yet. A lot of Tetris. Wow. And it's all older people. Maybe it's just a Tetris arcade. Looks like the arcade is somewhere in the vicinity of the Longshan Temple. L-U-N-G-S-H-A-N Temple. But my little blue dot is very slow to update in this country. So that's the last time I took out my phone. I don't actually know where I am now, but it's somewhere near there.

Cool. Yeah, I stopped at the machine. Yeah, oh, it's right there we go. My blue dot came in. Yeah, very close. Very close to Lungshan Temple. A little bit north of there. Yeah, I stopped at this machine and I was just looking through it and it's like, oh yeah, I think they do have water. And then another lady went by. This one was even hotter with like super-explosed cleavage. And she started kind of motioning toward me and then down the street again I saw yet another similarly hot lady and as I got, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna go. I'll just get water from somewhere else. And yeah, that particular street with the street market where I bought my little fan, a whole bunch of nice charming ladies who may or may not touch you in wise places. And then yeah, like I was saying, just walking down this street, just a little ways up from the arcade, across the street. But yeah, it's something that, well like for instance, this is how oblivious I was to it in Japan. There was this neighborhood. I don't remember the name of it off the top of my head. I think I started with an O. But it was quite near Ikebu, and I just remember I walked around there one night. And it was just a beautiful neighborhood that looked really pretty at night. And I guess I wasn't in that neighborhood for long. I started at that neighborhood and I, I just walked from there and walked off into the night. But I was looking it up during COVID. Once I realized there's all these walking videos on YouTube, I was like, can I find someone walking that neighborhood at night? And I did. And I recognized some of the places. And I was like, ah, that's so great. And then I saw in the comments people talking about how, oh yes, this is my favorite neighborhood to pick up ladies of the night. And I was like, what? And I started looking it up. And there's like forums and websites and stuff where people talk about how to pay for prostitution in different countries and the different terms and how the functions of stuff work. And yeah, he adds a whole fucking, if it's your hobby, I guess, people get big into it. It's like people that are into a...

model fucking tanks and stuff. If your hobby is paying for prostitutes in other countries, you can get in pretty deep with the information. But I was like, really? That neighborhood? And then I went back and looked closer at the YouTube video because people had like time stamps. Like, oh, there's a lady. There's a lady. And I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, there is. I never noticed that at all. But maybe it's just more subtle in Japan. I mean, I definitely saw some people in Kabukucho that were definitely selling sex, but I think again, I maybe only knew that because I already knew that because that neighborhood's already famous. I guess it was a lot less obvious in Japan. Anyway, it's very, very super obvious here in Taipei. And yeah, I think it's just... I think it's just best all around. If I just divert my eyes and walk a different way. Because my little monkey brain, my little lizard brain would love that. Oh my god, he would love that.

But I just know myself too well. I just know... I wish I had a better attitude about sex. I wish I did. I wish I had a healthier relationship with it. I wish I could just pay for prostitutes and it would just be a nice, fun thing to do. And it would be a fun transaction. But I just know it would just be a slippery slope where I would become this awful person of like, can I just pay you a little more to degrade you in this way? Or pay you a little more to degrade you in this way? And again, the only reason I can even say these things out loud and be this open about it is because I don't do it. If I ever did it, you can bet dollars to donuts I would never talk about this subject. It would just be a dark little spot on my soul. And who knows how many other things it would make me clam up about. And who knows how much it would lock down my mind, you know? Yeah, geez, I could see it clear as day. 45:00 I would treat somebody bad because I would just be taking them for granted. Like, I'm just using you as an object and I'm paying money. And then by treating them bad, I would feel bad. And it would be something I would probably never quite recover from. Like, I would just be a different person. And I think that happens to a lot of people with just a lot of different things. When they do stuff they're ashamed about in life, they just have to lock it down. And then they're just not an open person anymore. And they're not an exuberant person. And they're not a person that'll just let their mind run free because they're ashamed. So I mean in some ways, you know, I don't know what came first, the chicken in the egg. Do I feel this way because of my Catholic upbringing or was my Catholic upbringing onto something? You know, did my Catholic upbringing know that there is a very large potential to spiritually wreck yourself here and just don't do it? But then beyond all of that philosophy. Again, it's my monkey brain. It's my lizard brain. The ultimate barrier that keeps me safe from myself is that I just cannot waste money. I'm willing to spend the money in the way that I am to try to travel in a careful, reasonable way. But if I just started splurging out on stuff, like drinking and drugs and ladies, like again, just the shame, the shame that my family worked for all this money. And I'm just throwing it away for my little desires that I can't keep a handle on. I would feel terrible about that.