#170 The McDonald's squid burger is delicious

Transcript

Alright, still walking around Taipei, which is what I'll be doing for the foreseeable. Just picked a direction. I saw a mountain way in the distance. So I was like, I'll just walk in that direction. And I can't see it anymore. And I believe it's like a cross or river. I think it may be sometime before I get around to any mountain stuff. I'm just going to be a city cat for now. And I don't know if I said this already.

But I was here when I was noticing how many scooters there are, and I said it was like 30% scooters. I am upgrading that. It's like, is it 50% scooters? Maybe. Maybe. There is just a lot of scooters in this town. Not just driving by me, but I'm just walking by constant lines of park scooters. Oh, this is cool. There's a little...

Shrine looking building down this alleyway. Although since I'm still sorting stuff out, I don't know. I don't know if there are shrines and temples or how that works. I guess there's something. I saw one of them yesterday that was like a, you know, had its own marking on Google Maps, big fancy pants, whatever. I'll learn about all this stuff.

Yeah, it's so fun to just just walk and just to not know at all where you're going or where anything is, and not even to have a destination or any plan. It's almost kind of good in a way, I guess, because like I kind of make, I make my days a little harder than they need to be, where like in Japan, because this whole trip and this whole podcast was all predicated on going back to Japan after four years.

So I just felt like I had to do something every day. And then in Korea, I loosened up a lot, but once I got to Jeju, then it was, I'm going to walk around the entire island. And it was super cool, and I'm glad I did it, but that's still, it adds to, you know, not that there's a lot of stress to this lifestyle, but there doesn't need to really be any. It's just like, oh, I got to get to it. I got to get back to my walk. I got to get back to my exploring. I got to get back to whatever. It's kind of nice to just be like, whatever, man, really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if I go anywhere. It doesn't matter if I record a podcast. Obviously none of that matters.

I mean, obviously none of that matters fundamentally, but it like extra double doesn't matter. It's just a new place, whatever. Just soak it in a little. So I guess I just kind of, my only vague plan is because I let my habit of going to a coffee shop and doing writing completely disappear while I was in Jeju. It's like, I should just, you know, get that going again. But that is one difference, man. Even though I had my particular types of coffee shops that were my favorite in South Korea, there was no lack of options if I was willing to go in and fight my way. I was ordering in person. I think South Korea had more coffee shops per capita than anywhere I've ever seen in my life. Definitely not the case here. There's a Starbucks quite close to my Airbnb. And I think maybe I'll just have to make that the routine. For now, just go there every day. Maybe it's not the most interesting option in the world, but I really get nothing against Starbucks. And I've been walking for a while and I have not seen. No, I saw one other coffee shop. And I guess I've seen some little miscellaneous tea shops, but a lot of them are just like a little shop with maybe a cedar too along the street under the awning. The awning thing has kept up. There are awnings everywhere in Taipei, everywhere that I've gone. I thought it was for rain, but I guess probably also for sun. Today it's very good against the sun. But yeah, as far as a sort of conventional coffee chain, where you just go in and get a coffee and sit there all day, ala Starbucks, those seem to be pretty rare.

But again, how many do you need? I only really need one and there is one by my Airbnb, so fuck it.

And yeah, what little I know about things feeling Chinese. Definitely there's no question.

No question about the Chineseness, the lady at the 7-Eleven this morning said, Ni Hao to me, which I learned Ni Hao and as a teenager from Remna one half. Shampoo, the character shampoo, she always said Ni Hao. There's actually a lot of Chinese stuff in Remna. He was in China when he fell in the magic pond that transformed him and his dad.

And girl type Remna always wears a Chinese dress. But yeah, just to look at stuff in the vibe is very much a Chinatown type of vibe. 5:00 But very clean. That was the thing that I definitely noticed in... I remember that Chinatown in Yokohama stood out to me because it was so clean. Because most Chinatowns in North America, they're a mess. They're all disheveled.

And that's definitely not the case here. You know, there's that general Asia feeling of just the weather. You know, weatherbeaten. Things are a little worn because of weather. But man, yeah, streets are clean. In fact, I guess with the streets thing, I'm also really lucky that my Airbnb is right at that little outdoor market zone that has garbage cans because that's literally it. I've never seen a garbage can anywhere else, even once, including the convenience stores. This is like an extra level. In Japan, the convenience stores have garbages and usually washrooms. In South Korea, they had garbages usually, but rarely a washroom. And here, they rarely have either. I've actually never seen a garbage in a convenience store and I rarely see washrooms. Public washrooms or washrooms in convenience stores. I guess we'll see how that serves me. If I can find my way back to that mall, I was at on my first day here with all the anime stuff. I guess I'll see if there's any garbage cans in there, but yeah, I don't know. Just got a pocket full of garbage and it's just weird that even if I go to another convenience store, that's normally where I would transfer the garbage. Not going to happen. I'm extremely lucky that my neighborhood just has garbage cans. But yeah, there is that cause and effect thing of, you know, like how Japan doesn't have public garbage cans and they also don't have public garbage. Which causes which? What's going on here? You know, it's a similar thing here. These streets are mega clean, mega clean. No garbage. Like when I got the soul, I was very surprised to see so much just garbage built up around the corners of buildings or in alleyways or just things blowing around because that's so unlike Japan. Taipei is much more the Japan style in many ways. It's such an interesting mix of Chinese and Japanese feeling.

But yeah, just those little day to day stuff. I'm still sorting all that out. Where's the coffee shops? Where's the garbage cans? Where's the washrooms? Just for my basic wandering.

It's just a few things that I need and I don't yet know how they work. Oh yeah, there's the mountain. Yeah, it's far away. Whatever that mountain is, it is not close.

But man, I also love, I love just finding stuff. It doesn't happen very often. But yeah, how I just never buy anything because my book bag is basically full already. It was more or less full when I left Canada and it just has the stuff that I need and that's that. So I can't really buy stuff. I bought a couple little charge keys, Eurocamp, things from gotcha machines and that's about it. So I rarely get new stuff, but it's so nice when I do find something that I need. Yesterday at the street market, I found a little fan that I needed. Very much needed.

But there have been a couple of times now. Maybe literally only two, but I've literally found the thing that I need on the ground. So this very recorder. I used to just cram it in my little day bag, but it has it has a wind screen on it that's like a little troll hair and it kept getting caught in the zipper of my day bag. So I just needed a little pouch to put this thing in. And then I found one that probably a kid I assume dropped in a mall in Yokosuka because yeah, it's almost Christmassy. It's red and it's got little white pine trees and little white snowflakes and then stitched into it or a little cat, a little blue cat and a little yellow cat.

And it's always a bit weird when there's just something on the ground. I mean, this is nothing. It's a little thing that probably costs 30 cents. But you just, you're never totally sure like maybe a kid would come back for this. Maybe they'd yank to their parents. I dropped my little bag and they'd come back and get it. Or maybe they won't. Maybe it's just gone forever. Maybe it's just, oh, I guess there's three times because yeah, I also found gloves on Mount Takau. So similar thing. It's like, do I take these? Are these abandoned? Am I picking up garbage by taking this? Or am I stealing a thing that somebody was going to come back for? And ultimately, I just assume people aren't coming back for this stuff. Things just fall out of your pockets, out of your stuff. They just fall on the ground and they're gone. So if I can pick it up and use it, well, I mean, hey bonus, right? And this little pouch, it's such a weird design that I thought like I'll just use this temporarily till I find a cooler one somewhere. 10:00 But it's the perfect size for this recorder and now that I've had it for seven or eight months. Now it's my bag. Now I love it just because I got used to it. It's just like, ah, that's my little pouch. My pouch from every recorder.

But that just happened again. I just found a thing that is so perfect. Like this is the kind of thing I would have just gone and bought. But I guess I didn't even really realize this was an item you could buy. And I don't know where to go to get it.

But whenever I go to a convenience store, you know, it's so nice here now where I'm back to the Japan feeling. Like the convenience stores here are smaller than in Japan and they do have less stuff. But in general, it's that Japan feeling. If I can just grab whatever, just grab a different random thing, just try different stuff, and then just have a delightful time eating it. It's much more in line with Japan as opposed to South Korea where I was always struggling. You know, I always was begrudgingly buying stuff from the convenience stores. The popsicle game is 10 out of 10 in South Korea, but other than that, and coffee, coffee and popsicles, but other than that, I tried not to eat at convenience stores. Now I'm back to like, yeah, I'll just eat my meals at convenience stores. It's fucking great. And then, you know, I try to get some extra stuff just so if I need to snack on something late at night, I don't have to try to go to bed hungry, you know. So I've got a bag. I've got a plastic bag from GS25 from Korea. So that's kind of cool that I've got stashed away a little plastic bag from a chain that doesn't exist here. It's like, I wonder how long this will last. How long can I hold on to this thing? But it's not going to last much longer. It's getting pretty raggedy. And just now, on the ground, I assume I probably fell off one of these scooters, and these millions of scooters that go by.

I'm passing under the Taipei Bridge, apparently, the Taipei Bridge Car Park.

But it's this little teeny tiny bag, little teeny one, little drawstring bag that is like smaller than my palm.

And I saw these around South Korea quite a bit, and they usually have charcoal in them. Activated charcoal because it absorbs odors and moisture and stuff that people would just place them around Airbnb rooms and things. But I picked this one up, and yeah, it's still like it clearly just fell off somebody's something.

Totally brand new looking, although again, the streets here are so clean. Maybe it had been laying there for a while.

But I picked this up, and it was soft. I'm like, what is this? So I just open the little drawstring, and it's just a bag inside here.

It just opens up into quite a large bag. The tag says standard. Maybe that's the brand. But yeah, it's just like, oh man, this is perfect. It just opens up into a bag.

When I have my little evening groceries, I can just pop them in here, and it tucks away so small, because the plastic bag is actually kind of a pain.

I've just got to crinkle that plastic bag stuck in my day bag, and it's just sort of just kind of in the way of all my other stuff. There's just no good place to put it. So this thing's even smaller, and it's like a real bag, and it's just cool. It's just so awesome. It's just a teeny little thing, I don't know. I feel like back in Canada, they'd probably charge you like $8 for this, but around here it's probably like two or three bucks. And again, I was just like, you know, I could just leave it on the ground in case someone comes back, but whatever, it's just dumb little thing. They can easily replace this if they need another one, and likely they'd have no idea where it went, where it fell. They're not coming back for it. And I am going to use it, so I just think that's so neat. It's just like, because I kind of live under that philosophy in general, of don't be at the cutting edge. You know, don't get the brand new phone, don't get the brand new this, the brand new that, if you live behind the curve, there's just all kinds of technology that's a little bit older, or just used stuff that's still fine. You know, my weather resistant jacket I got used in Montreal for, I don't know, I think it was like $30 or something for this awesome expensive jacket. I've got a Google Pixel phone, but it's a Google Pixel 2. Who knows what they're up to now? Probably fucking who knows? Not too though. And I got it mega cheap, because it's older, and it had a little, it was like a display model at a store, so it has a little Google logo. Very gently burned into the screen that you can only see on a pure white background. So I got this phone for like, I don't know, it was like $60 Canadian. Like the world is full of awesome tech, and you can have all the cool stuff for very cheap. If you just hang back a little bit, just hang back a little. 15:00 But then, this is like the most literal version of that. I mean, I guess this isn't technically something a person didn't want, they obviously dropped it. But through whatever means, it's now gone from their life, and I'll just pick it up. I'll just pick it up right off the ground and be like, holy crap, that's exactly what I need. Don't mind if I do, thank you, world.

God, this is like the most boring podcast in the world, but I think this type of shit is so interesting. This is what I love, I love this little bag, and this just makes it even better then. Again, I'd be fine with going to buy one of these, I just didn't even know this was a thing. I'm not a big shopper, I'm not browsing stores a lot.

But yeah, not only did I not know this existed, and I don't know where to go to buy one, but that makes this double great, is I was taught about this by finding it on the ground. I threw it on the ground, I'm an adult.

Anyway, I'll stop yammering about it now, but I just think that's awesome. I'm so jazzed. I'm so pleased. Many I'm on the other side of the bridge now. Just walking, walking, walking. And yeah, still, second verse same as the first. Scooters everywhere. Oh, that's an actual Yamaha score. So that helps explain why there's so many scooters there specifically. Still awnings, like literally awnings, in front of like every building. Every block is largely covered by an awning. Which is nice, like I still got my suntan lotion, I had some leftover from Korea. I put it on. But yeah, I really needed it mainly because walking around Jeju, I was in direct sunlight all day and I was dying. Around here, yeah, you can really stay out of the direct sun as long as you're in the city. And yeah, I still have not seen, not only not seen a Starbucks, have not seen a Starbucks equivalent anywhere. It seems like coffee is maybe not a big deal in Taipei. Coffee shop culture is maybe not a big deal in Taipei. So maybe this, oh, I'll get my riding habit back on track by going to a coffee shop every day. Maybe that'll be a little tougher than I thought.

But again, there's one. There's one right by me. How many do you need? And there's a lot of these claw machine places too. Which is kind of cool because yeah, they are relatively common in Japan, but they're still mainly in like Ikebukuro and Akihabara places like that. Here they're, I mean, it's still a relatively big store. Obviously, it's not like a gigantic ego store, but there's probably like 20 claw machines in here. And again, it's like a lot of anime stuff, from a hero academia, good old one piece, dragon ball, hello kitty. Yeah, just purely Japanese stuff, but cool, man, just cool.

Well, I found some more garbage cans. I guess you just got to look for a very major street. I'm on whatever the major street is heading to the main MRT station, which is the one I got off of when I came from the airport that went straight into the underground mall. I'm almost there, head back, head back to the cool underground mall. Hopefully, literally cool because it's a bit hot out here. Still feel though like I'm getting pretty lucky with the weather. All these heat warnings in the weather and all these claims of like feels like 40 degrees all this crap. I mean, I think I'm getting used to being this hot to some degree, but it's just not. It's just not hot like that. It's just not. I've had some of those days out here on my trips where it's just insane.

And so far, nothing in Taiwan has been insane. But yeah, still not a lot of garbage cans, but some. Anyway, it's just a flood. A fucking flood of scooters. And yeah, even though the normal traffic is pretty aggressive, yeah, the scooters, they're really, really ready to blur every line.

And I really think maybe 50% is not enough. I guess I'll just stop trying to put a number on it. But let's say that the scooter traffic is at least 50%. It's just like, man, there's so, so many of them. 20:00 I mean, I guess maybe I shouldn't be so surprised because I guess it was like this in some ways in the Netherlands. I mean, in the Netherlands, the bicycle traffic is absolutely the dominant traffic. No question. It way, way, way outstripped the cars everywhere that I had been.

So the scooter saturation here is not as high as the bicycle saturation in the Netherlands, but I guess it's similar in the sense that, yeah, I don't know, I guess this is just how processes work in big cities. When you get a couple million people together, once something starts trending a certain way, it can really, really become evident. Because I guess to be fair, like if you didn't come from a car country, if such a thing even exists, I don't know, maybe if you teleported to North America from the past, I guess, you would feel this same way about just normal traffic. Like, holy fuck, there's cars everywhere. It's incredible how many cars there are. So the only reason this is standing out to me is just because it's a different kind of vehicle. And even though there were quite a few scooters in South Korea, yeah, I've never seen anything. I've never seen the likes of this.

Because it's always kind of weird when you first get to a place, like the first night I was here, I was like, holy shit, that's a lot of scooters. But I was like, I don't know, maybe it's some kind of scooter convention coming through town. Who knows, man, maybe they've all just converged in for the weekend. Scooter lovers association or something. So now that it's been a couple days, it's like, nope. If anything, because it was a little bit rainy that night, there were fewer scooters that night. There's a lot more coming.

Hey, I found another Starbucks. It's a little north of the main MRT station. At first, it looked huge because it's at the corner of a building and it goes up to the second floor, but it is just the very corner. So the bottom was packed, there was a lineup. Who knows what the upstairs was like, but it's like, yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Maybe I'll just stick to that one by my house. But I also just passed by a little, I finally, I've been walking around for like, almost two hours. I found a place called Louisa Coffee. It was a little busy, but that exists. That's a thing that is like a basically going sit down by a latte looking coffee chain. Maybe chain, I don't know. Maybe that's the only one that exists. But yeah, definitely, that's going to be a case of, I'm going to have to make a mental map of where the coffee shops are and guard that information to my last, because they are going to be few and far between. But I just walked by some construction guys on, I don't know what it's called, a cherry picker. I mean, that can't be the real name. It sounds so colloquial. But you know, a thing where you get in a little, you get in a little tub, a metal container and then the arm lifts you way up and you go work on a building. But anyway, there's these two construction guys and one of them was shirtless and he had a full boot of tattoo on his back. He was kind of like the boot of himself. He's pretty chubby guy, but it was beautiful. And I don't know, it's just cool that you can just work construction around here and take your shirt off because it's hot. You don't have to stand on ceremony. And yeah, I mean, that was the tattoo man, because it reminds me a bit of that guy with the cool tattoo I saw on Jeju. And then there were some construction guys that blocked down just spraying sparks everywhere. So it's like, ooh, I think I'll move to the other side walk. I'll just stay head of your way.

There's a guy wearing a CM puncture. Best in the world. You just content wrestling.

But yeah, it's kind of cool that mix of following rules and also not being too concerned about the rules. Like it's just kind of cool to see a construction guy doesn't have to wear a shirt because he's hot and sweaty and he's doing physical work. Why should he have to wear a shirt? But then I also noticed all of these millions of scooters, everyone's wearing a helmet.

And maybe it's a little weird to even notice that. Maybe it's like, yeah, well, of course, why wouldn't they be wearing a helmet? But I guess helmets always stand out to me a bit because when I was growing up in Eastern Canada, I went through the transition process. When I was a kid, 25:00 nobody gave a sweet fuck about wearing a helmet. So I remember when I was a teenager, when the law came down, the you need to wear helmets. And I kind of resisted at first, because those helmets aren't cool. So people just weren't wearing helmets, but then you know, you start hearing around town. Like, did you hear they're giving out fines now if you don't wear a helmet? And remarkably quickly, you know, within maybe a couple of years, everybody was wearing a helmet. You know, maybe it doesn't take that much necessarily to get people into line. And now that I'm older and wiser, I'm like, yeah, of course, you're supposed to wear a helmet. How fucking insane that we used to not wear helmets. What the hell is wrong with us? Speaking of pro wrestling, I kind of feel like pro wrestlers should wear helmets. Like, if I had my own pro wrestling company, I would make it like lucha underground, like lucha style, where everybody wears a mask. But I would do it like power ranger style, like your mask would be a helmet. So people are not getting concussions in my company. And if you just normalize that, especially in something like pro wrestling, because it's all fake anyway, it's all about the story. Just say, this is the story we're telling. This is the kind of league we are. Everybody here is a power ranger type person. It's part of the story that they wear these helmets. Plus, you should be wearing a fucking helmet. But yeah, that mixed though. Of yeah, everybody's following the rules. Everybody is wearing the helmet. But at the same time, if it's a rule that doesn't matter, like you're a construction guy who's sweating to death. Pop that shirt off, baby. Show me that fucking tattoo. I don't want to see that shit. Oh, and I think I finally made it. Here we go, Taipei City Mall. I finally made it to an entrance to the underground mall. I don't know though, it is just an open air entrance down. I don't remember if it was air conditioned last time. I guess if I didn't notice, that's a good thing. I didn't notice that it was hot. Yeah, weather's still not so bad in general, but a couple hours of walking around in the heat. I'm ready to be underground now.

Oh, yeah, it is just an open doorway into here, but I don't know if you could hear that, but whoosh. I just walked under a big whoosh of air conditioning right at the open doorway, and yeah, now that I'm in here. Oh, yeah, it's definitely air conditioned. This is awesome. I'm hanging out in here for a while. I wonder where does this place start? I was trying to get to like the beginning, but I missed the beginning because I'm in the middle. Although I'm just assuming it goes north south, maybe it goes east west, I'm not sure. I don't know.

But yeah, now that I think about it, I noticed this last night too. There are a couple of places the especially big name franchises, like McDonald's, where they literally are just blasting air conditioning out of their awning out front. So I guess as their sliding doors open and close, you know, it keeps the temperature in the restaurant from from getting messed up because the direct area outside the doors is also cool, but it is it's pretty impressive. And just that to flex of look at the money we have, that as you walk past that store and you walk under the awning, all of a sudden you've been walking around all night and everything's been hot. You walk past the McDonald's and oh, like the literal sidewalk outside is cool for just that one like half a block and a third of a block. And then as soon as you get past it, it's hot again. And it just definitely plants that idea in your head of like, oh, mighty, mighty McDonald's. Oh my god, just walking past it feels good. Walking around down here, I just want to tear it the things that I see, but it's it'll so put this this podcast. I mean obviously it is not coming out in real time. But I just thought poster for like, oh, Pickman 4. I didn't realize Pickman 4 was coming out, but by the time I put out this podcast, Pickman 4 will probably be old news. So there's really no point just walking around going like, oh, here's all these games from last year that they're advertising. Oh, it feels good though. It feels nice being down here. Man, if there was a coffee shop down here, I'd be all right with that. I don't think there is, but hey, that's a good excuse to walk all the way down the length of it and then walk all the way up the other side. Just to see, just in case.

Oh, just stepped out of McDonald's. The McDonald's is actually surprisingly disheveled, where I was saying about how the air conditioning from stores, the air conditioning actually sucked in McDonald's. The next store next to it is just a Giordano, cool pants. That's just a clothing store. It's got a nice blast. And like shoe stores? Yeah, here's an Adidas store. Let's see. Let me walk by. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, that feels good. Yeah, the McDonald's was surprisingly weak and luckily, it was four floors high. But the second floor, some lady was just passed out in the corner, just sleeping on a table and it made the whole part smell like pee. So I mean, obviously, obviously, that's a sad thing. I don't mean to criticize this poor lady who smells like pee. I'm just surprised, is all that everybody's just kind of like, all right, I guess that's fine. In the South Korean fast food restaurants, I feel like they would crack the whip a little more. Or even just, you know, there was just, um, or even just there were, you know, just trays left all around with people's stuff. The staff wasn't like on top of cleaning things up. The whole place was just kind of like, oh, yeah, this is like the, uh, again, yeah, the disheveled version of McDonald's. It's kind of unexpected. But yeah, I just had to try this Katsu Squid Burger thing. So I tried to use my card again and it didn't work because you can't insert the card. You just have to hold it against the reader. So I got the little ticket that just said go pay at the counter. But I thought while I was at the counter before I paid cash because it is a little tricky how the notes that come out of the machine, whenever you got a break one, each one is worth like $43 Canadian. It's, uh, it's a big note to break. I was like, hey, can I just try my credit card one time because at the machine at the front, you could actually slide it in, but it still didn't work. So it's like, I write fair enough. So I guess I'm living a cash-based life while I'm here, which is no big problem, but I just, I feel lucky that my card actually worked at the family mart in the Shanghai airport because I only stop in there a couple of times just to buy a couple little snacky snacks, but it would have been a way worse time if I hadn't been able to buy any food while I was there. And it seems like that easily could have been the case because yeah, my card, I guess I should say my card, it's not like a proper credit card. It's a debit card that you can use as a visa. And for the most part, it works. But yeah, every once in a while, it just does not, it just does not work. And that seems to be the experience so far, the little bit that I've tried to use it in Taipei.

But yeah, I don't intend for McDonald's to be a big part of my routine, it's like it was in South Korea. But that was actually really cool. I am glad I went that one time because like, that was the, the most regional feeling, regional McDonald's stuff I think I've ever had because, you know, there's always like the stuff that's a little different. Well, I mean, in Atlanta, Canada, we even had McLopster for a while, which I guess that's actually pretty different, but that was, that's quite rare. I don't know if they still do that. But like the Bulgogi burger, for example, in South Korea, is extremely similar to just the morning sausage, just now in a burger form with the sweet sauce, stuff like that, like slight differences. Where this thing was really different, this squid burger, it was squid katsu together, or you could get squid and just beef patties. So I ate it as two halves, basically, because I've become a guy who I just use a little plastic fork. I'm a guy who does not touch fast food with my hands if I can help it, it just makes my life a lot better, because you cannot get that fucking smell off your fingers. So I basically split it into two burgers and ate them separate. So the katsu half was, you know, pretty good, but just like a little breaded pork thing, though the ad in the McDonald's was like, from Hokkaido, all this stuff, like, yeah, maybe. But the squid burger, I mean, that's what it was, it was a squid burger. Again, it's just like breaded and deep fried, but yeah, I'm eating this thing and it's like, wow, yeah, look at that. It's just squid in here and it tastes like squid and it was like, it was fucking good. I was really impressed by that. That didn't feel like McDonald's at all. That felt like, wow, this is extremely different. And then I got, as a dessert thing, a taro bubble tea McFlurry. And again, you know, like different flavors of McFlurry's are just like, whatever, just put some different stuff in the ice cream. But taro bubble tea, I mean, that's what it was, that's what it tasted like. And I was like, this is great. It's the most I didn't feel like I was at McDonald's while being at McDonald's. It was really cool. It's almost worth going back. I guess if they have like a new weird item, I'll try that. But I don't know, squid burger, man. It's not bad.

But yeah, since I got that fancy pants burger, upsized my fries, got them McFlurry, and then the total was 311 dollars. And I'm still just so, I just can't wrap my head around it, you know? I just don't know what stuff comes out to. And I was thinking like, uh, because I did kind of go premium as much as you can at McDonald's with all this stuff. Did I just spend like 30 bucks? I just don't know. I had to pull up my stupid little app because my brain still just not able to to do anything with these calculations. And no, it was like 13 dollars. That's a totally, totally normal McDonald's price. But yeah, it's going to take me a while to start to figure this out. It's nice though with the coins. I noticed there at McDonald's, they had a donation box. And when I was at 711 this morning, they had one too.

Because basically, all the way down to the 5 cent coins, it seems that there's not a lot of drink machines on the street, but they pop up once in a while. And even though on the front, it says it only goes down to the 10 cent coin, it does take the 5 cent coin as well. So I don't know if it takes the one, the little penny style coin. And you can buy a bottle of water for like 20, but I don't really want to feed 20 of these things into the machine, even if it would take them. So that's good. Down to the, the nickel, down to the 5 cents, I can just use those on drink machines and stuff. And the little teeny ones, the little pennies, I can just put those in donation boxes. Just to get rid of them because I've already got a stack that I just left to back at my Airbnb because I don't want to fill up my pockets with these coins. Unfortunately, the prices don't come out to a nice even. Like that's where we actually got rid of pennies in Canada. We just don't do that anymore. And I noticed a lot of the prices around here are like 48, 49. And it's like, oh man, just make it 50. It's just easier. I don't want these little coins back. The smallest denomination coin is an annoying and useless in every country I've ever been to in my whole life. So yeah, I do kind of like the Canada got rid of them. Canada too, I mean, we still have sales tax. So while our prices all end up weird anyway, and we just round it to the nearest 5 cents. But yeah, around here where the price is the price, it's like, oh man, just even out those prices. But it's the classic, you know, the 99 cent thing. Oh, this product's only 29 cents instead of 30. So it looks cheaper than the other one. It's like just fucking charge 30, bitch. I don't want this penny. Nobody wants it.

Shoestore, walking by a shoe store. Oh, feel that. Feel that. Oh, that feels good. Feels real good.

Hey, I found 1 7 11 that had a garbage in it. And I didn't notice till someone else put something in the garbage. So maybe they're sneakily around and I'm not noticing. I don't know, I keep my eyes peeled. But, I mean, I was just, you know, buying a bunch of crap. And I've got the coins that I could have evened this price out, you know, to, to not get a bunch of change back. But when I've got a big whack of stuff and there's people lined up behind me, and I see the number and it's like, I can't even like, I would, I just, because I'm still at that point where I would have to take the coins out and examine each one because I don't know what they look like and what the denominations are. Kind of vaguely I do. Big ones are 50. There's a 10 and a 5. Then there's a middle one and it's like, is it 20? Is it 25? Like North America? Is it something else? I don't know. So my brain just locked up and I just gave the lady all dollar dollar bills and got, just got more coins back. But I think that's not the worst way to go. I think if I'm buying kind of a big whack of stuff, just whatever. Just pay with the, with the bills, get back the coins. And I think my best bet to get rid of these coins is smaller purchases. Like if I pop in tomorrow morning and just get an Onigiri and a coffee, just, you know, a couple little items and then just pay for those with the appropriate coins. Or I did poke my head in the Starbucks and again because the prices are so, it's like 100 is under 200 for a coffee, 185 or whatever. So maybe pop into the Starbucks, you know, just pay with the, with coins, you know, get rid of my coins that way. I think 40:00 that might be a good idea. Coins for small purchases, bills for big purchases. Until hopefully, if I've been here for a while, it'll be a little easier for me to wrap my head around what's going on. But also I found so far my front runner for a cool local thing where in the South Korean convenience stores, it was the plum popsicles. They were so good and they weren't even expensive. It was like buy one, get one free for 2001, like a couple of dollars. So they come out to like a dollar each and yeah, they were plum flavored popsicles with little pieces of plum inside. Those were wonderful. Plums are really good flavor that we just don't do in North America because it's sweet but it's not super sweet and it's sour but it's not super sour. It's man, it's really good. So this new thing, I don't think it rivals the plum popsicle but it's still really good in that it's just sort of different than what we would have in North America. In this case, it's an ice cream bar. I found it 7-Eleven. I found one last night and I just had a second one right now and it just confirmed to me like oh yeah, that thing's the money melon. It's an ice cream bar that's coconut flavored but it's very subtle coconut flavoring because I think strong coconut would just be you know easily overwhelming. This just has a milky gentle coconutness to it and little pieces of fruit inside which I don't know what types of fruit I don't know what they are but it's just real nice. Real nice subtle little ice cream bar and they do have deals but I don't even remotely know how it works because again it's just like a the diagram, the big long complicated diagram. You got to figure out, you got to hold up your ice cream bar up to this fucking okay this batch of ice cream and popsicles matches with this deal and then these over here is this other deal and I don't even know what the deals are and I haven't had great luck so far with my phone doing google translate. I haven't used it too much but it was definitely definitely worked better in Korea than it does here. Korean font is just very simple, very clean and clear. Chinese not so much. Simple if I Chinese traditional must be fucking wild. But I just decided like you know what I don't care. I mean it was kind of worth jumping through the hoops in South Korea because I was walking around Den Island you know I was outside all day walking. It was worthwhile to have a bunch of popsicles and a bunch of ice cream bars and just you know to fuel me along on my journey. Here whatever dude I don't need the buy one get one for you buy two go I'm free. I who gives a fuck. How about I just buy an occasional ice cream bar and just pay for it like a normal person. So that's my plan.

And yeah so far I haven't noticed a lot of that stuff. It was super duper evident in South Korea like so many buy two get one free especially and then occasionally a buy one get one free or then with the popsicles like buy five get half off all of them stuff like that. That's just yeah not a thing here in that way so so good I'll just fucking say never mind and I'll just buy whatever I want to buy in individual amounts and not fucking worry about it.

Alright, it's the next day. I checked my little Airbnb listing about Laundry. They said, take a left, then take the next left, and there's Laundry. There it is. A nice convenient bending machine here, too. Good way to get rid of my tiny coins. Yeah, look at this, even little juice boxes that are only 12. New Taiwan dollars, bottle of water for 20.