#187 Ximen, Taipei is cool at night

Transcript

So I'm back in Shi-men to the neighborhood that my first Airbnb was at. But as a homecoming, I was waiting for a mystery beep in the distance to stop and it just won't stop. So it's like, alright, alright, I don't know what you are, but just go ahead and beep. It's not like a huge thing, as far as, you know, downsides to places go. It's not that big a deal, I guess, but that is hands down as just a visitor who doesn't have to delve deep into anything real about the country. You know, I'm just walking around soaking it in. The incessant beeping is my least favorite thing about Taiwan. It's quite, it's quite excessive. It's a loss.

Anyway, it's pretty cool to be back here. My Airbnb, it's like right across the bridge. It's not the same bridge I walked over before. It's a different bridge, but yeah, it takes me like half an hour to get here. And the one time I did walk over the bridge before and I found this one park. I'm like right by there. So I know that neighborhood just to touch, just a little teeny bit when I got over there. I'm like, oh, I kind of sort of know what's going on over here. And then it's cool to come back here. It took me a second to get my bearings because I came over on a different bridge, but then I walked past the convenience store where I chatted with a dude about China and Japan and their relationship to Taiwan. I was like, oh, there's that place. Around the corner is where I used to do the laundry and stuff, like cool. Alright, although getting to my Airbnb and then taking a nap and then coming over here, I was like, oh, cool. I know this neighborhood. There's the public park over there with a washroom.

But it's a little bit late. It's like quarter to nine. And the washroom is closed and I was like, oh, do I never knew that? Because my Airbnb was like a block and a half from there. But not anymore. Now I realize like, oh, I don't have a home base here anymore. So I'm kind of wrecking my brain. I've like, I never had to look for other places to pee. I'm not sure. I got one other idea. But then I realized like, I could just walk across the bridge to go home. But in the worst case scenario, it is a little uncomfortable walking across the bridges at night. They're not extremely high bridges. And the traffic going next to the walkway is just scooters. But still, I don't know. Dark water and a big river at night. It's a little, it's a little eerie. So I realized if it worse comes to worse and I just really need to piss and I have two hours from now and I never figured something out, I could just take the subway home. Use the washroom there.

When when? Yeah, I think my new Airbnb is going to work out pretty well. But it was kind of close. I think it was close to it not working out well. Where my idea, what I did was I found one of the more expensive places on Airbnb, but that had a monthly discount. So there were a bunch of places that were like $400, $500. But I found one that was $1,200 reduced to 600. And that's like cool. You know, it's still like a teeny touch more than those other ones, but staying at a place for a whole month. No problem. I think if I remember right to, yeah, the $400 one didn't have air conditioning. And that's just not, that's not an option. It's September now, but it's going to be a while before it stops being insanely hot. Oh man, she meant it's so cool. I'm not sure how often I will walk over here. I mean, who knows? Maybe I'll just get up in the morning and walk right over here every day. Or maybe I'll just take the train from near where I am.

But it's pretty good. Or maybe, I don't know, maybe it is because at night it is cool. I suppose there's that option too. I could always just get off the train early on the way home and pass through here as I go back over the spooky bridge. I don't know. It's just neat being next to it. You know, it was really neat being in this neighborhood, like literally walking out the door and just being here. But this is still close enough that I can just work it into my daily routine if I'm in the mood. It's cool. Yeah, this neighborhood is so fucking cool. Really is nice. I liked being out where I was because it had more access to mountainy type stuff monkeys and whatnot. But as far as inner city stuff, yeah, she meant it's the neighborhood. Like, by far, it's the coolest. But yeah, when I got to this place, I kind of get the feeling I think maybe, I don't know, I think the prices don't really, maybe they don't really matter that much. Like, the difference between $500 and $1200, I'm not sure how much it would make a difference. In this particular, 5:00 I mean, it's the small sample size, I guess. I don't know how things work all in all in this city. And I mean, it could be, maybe I'm like tricking myself here. Maybe I'm not staying even remotely a $1200 place. Yeah, maybe it is just a $600 place and they just expect people to stay for a month. But if you do want to stay shorter amounts of time, then you get charged. You get to pay for that.

But I think it worked out pretty well. So far, it seems that way because, basically, it reminded me a lot of when I was in jetjohn, South Korea. This place, it was like a, uh, just like a corridor, like a hallway with seven rooms and a little kitchen area. And that was it. Very much like the super old school hotel place I was at in jetjohn. But the difference, I guess, part of, part of, I guess, what does make this a premium property is it has its own little washroom and bathroom. And that's similar to when I was in Busan. It is bigger than the shower bathroom in Busan. But the big problem in Busan was that I was in an interior room and there was no outside window and no proper ventilation. So the place just got really musty and it was kind of driving me nuts after three weeks. Just smelling the musty smell all the time. I wore, I wore a mask like, like, I wore a pollution mask when I went to bed so I didn't smell the mustiness. It was pretty bad. And I have a feeling that that might happen here as well because these rooms were all like that as well. I saw a bunch of them as I was walking by today, took a glance into the ones that no one was in. And they seemed very much like that. And I did notice like the reviews for this property were a bit, uh, I'm just going by a Halloween place.

The reviews were a bit inconsistent about what the room was like and exactly what this place was. And it turns out that's because each specific room doesn't have its own Airbnb listing, they just put you wherever. But in my case, I think probably because it is, uh, you know, super heatwave summer when there's maybe less tourism. There were options. There was, you know, a few different rooms that were open right now. So she let me pick which one I wanted. So I picked the one at the end of the hall because it was a bit bigger. Oh, this place has a TV too. So I mean, it has little things, I guess, because none of my places so far I've had a TV. I'll probably turn on the TV once or twice just to flip through the channels, but you know, the TV doesn't mean much to me. But the important thing is because I was at the end of the hall. My room actually has a window in the bathroom. The bathroom has a window that opens right into an alleyway, direct air flow straight to the outside to rescue me from mustiness. And it's like sweet. You know, with that, I'm feeling good about this place. I even kind of like that it reminds me a little of jet-john as that feeling. You just walk into a concrete hallway. You know, it's like the hallway feels almost like you're in an alley between buildings. And then there's little rooms off of that. But instead of a communal shower, now I get my own shower.

But without mustiness problems, the best of both worlds. Now I guess my main concern is because there's always so far at each of my places there's been a cockroach sighting at each of them. So that's just the countdown. You know, the countdown has started. That's going to happen. And in the other places I was on the third floor both times. This time I'm on the first floor, which I've heard is, you know, worse, much worse for cockroach invasion. So we'll see. Keep your ears peeled. I predict that's coming in my future.

Oh, hey, whatever, dude. It's just part of how things are rent here. Oh, there's like a, yeah, it's like a Sunday night right now. There's a, yeah, a little bizarre here. I've never seen this before. People selling like homemade bracelets and stuff. Not really stuff for me. You know, your rings and what do you call like an ankle that you put on your wrist? How weird when there's just like words that you just can't remember. A wristlet?

But yeah, so far so good. It seems like this will be all right.

And I got, you know, a new general neighborhood to check. There are some additional mountains near there. And then, yeah, it's just close to a subway. I think it's a subway time. I'll probably head back to that last neighborhood I was at to do some more exploring there. Try to go up Yangminshan. Explore out here. And then I guess the other thing is 10:00 I did get a little brief drive to this place. And I couldn't think of what else to talk to the guy about besides the heat. The heat was the first thing on my mind. And he did say he's like, hey, if you do want to check out the rest of Taiwan, he claims that there's like some high-speed rail that I could get all the way to the other end of the country in like two hours. But he said, you know, fair warning, it will be hotter though. Even hotter than this. So I was like, hey, you never know. We'll see. We'll see. It does seem weird to just stay and Taipei the whole time. I've never done that. But, you know, I tend to try to move around a bit. But I don't know in Taiwan. We'll see. But I just also wanted to mention, I guess, about travel anxiety and how weird it is, how uncontrollable it is, how unpredictable just kind of comes out of nowhere. And in my case, it kind of is all or nothing. Like either I feel fine or I feel very terribly stressed. So obviously the last thing that happened was the typhoon on my way here made me very terribly stressed. And it's one of those things like in hindsight, once it was all over, it's like, yeah, that actually wasn't all that bad. It wasn't all that tricky to maneuver. So, you know, I can tell myself that all day, it doesn't change how I felt and how I was destined to feel. How I'll probably feel next time. You know, it would probably be a little better because at least I know more now about the process of if you overstay a visa or if you need to book an emergency flight or a dietic. But stress is stress. It just feels so stressful and it's just so awful. Like what can you do? And I had just a little taste of that last night. And I guess I was just surprised by how extremely distinct it is. Like I'm just feeling fine, everything's fine, and then boom, it's like I fell off a cliff and I'm stressed out. Because in this case, it was about the Airbnb where usually I find nowadays people are really good about about Airbnb locations and stuff. How to get there? How to get in? Almost like excessive where there's pictures and little maps and all kinds of stuff. Like the last place I was at had just like here's the string of pictures. Here's a little map of how to get to the door. Here's what the door looks like. Here's all this, here's all that. Whereas this place I was at today did not have that. The lady asked me the other day if I needed to get picked up from the station. And I was like, no, it's okay. Actually, I'm already in Taipei. I should be able to get there no problem. And then yesterday, just a double check, like I just sent her a message, like anything I need to know, you know, to get in, you know, the insinuation was like, because they're also like the there wasn't even a proper spot on the map. Through Airbnb, it was very unusual when you pick directions to the place. There's like three different ways to get directions. And one of them gave me coordinates and the other two just gave me the general area. Very weird. But I figured like, all right, I guess I got that. But anyway, the lady was like, all right, now there's nothing you need to know just let me know when you're here. And I was like, I'm all right, all right. But then I was laying in bed and that's when I suddenly realized like I don't actually know for sure where I'm going. And it just occurred to me that it hadn't occurred to me that I don't know what the building looks like. I'm so used to that now, like I'm sending a picture of here's what the building looks like. Here's the door you're looking for. It suddenly occurred to me. I didn't have that. And that's where yeah, I just suddenly felt that drop in my gut. I just felt the horrible like like you're falling into a, some reason it feels like a a small circular deep pool that is freezing cold and you just fall in and sink to the bottom. That's just like, yeah, it's just like, I don't really know what I'm doing tomorrow. So just to ease my mind before I could go to bed, I had to pull out the laptop and do some more research. And that's when I figured out like, how do I even know which building I'm supposedly going to? And that's when I determined like, okay, there's this one particular method that if I ask Airbnb for directions, it gives me an actual place. Nothing else is filled out, nothing else is there. How to check in is just an empty fucking blank spot. But then I started looking through reviews. And this lady who runs this place, she's been running places for like 10 years. All the reviews are great. All the reviews are how nice she was. You know, there were some complaints about being in a weird little room with no window and lack of inhalation and stuff, which I narrowly avoided. But as for her herself, it was all like, big sums up. So it's like, yeah, I mean, 15:00 these reviews stretch back for years and years and years. Obviously, this is going to be no problem. And I mean, this lady offered to like, pick me up at the, at the freaking metro station.

It's actually because I'm not getting picked up at the metro station that this is tricky, but she's obviously not just going to leave me abandoned. Like, it's obviously going to be fine. And that eased my mind enough and I went to bed. But I guess part of it too is just that I don't have a proper phone. Not only do I not have a phone number I can use to call, but I don't have a data plan. I got to use Wi-Fi. But I knew the Wi-Fi for the place I was heading to. So I figured, all right, I can go to this building and I should be able to get Wi-Fi by standing outside the building. And then I can message her. But when I got to that location, I couldn't pick up the Wi-Fi signal, but then I did pick it up, but then I did pick up a 7-Eleven Wi-Fi that kept going in and out, but it was good enough. So I messaged her and I was like, all right, I met this building, this 110, whatever, across from a 7-Eleven. I think I'm in the right spot. And she obviously knew what I was referring to because she must know this is what she put on the Airbnb listing. But yeah, it turns out all this obfuscation was deliberate. She just didn't want to have her actual property address listed on Airbnb for whatever reason. Again, I've never run into this before, because I was still a block and a half away from the real place. So she still had to send a guy to come pick me up. And he's the guy I talked to who told me I could go dance out for two hours. Very nice guy. He can give me a quick little two-minute ride.

I guess it's just a case of not knowing how the whole process is going to work. I probably should have just gotten picked up at a metro station, you know, just would have gone easier because that's just clearly her process. It's like that's what's going to happen, no matter what. Somebody's going to come have to pick you up and drive you to the place. But then, you know, they did that and then Lady was super nice and friendly and gave me the keys and I luckily got the one room that has a window to the outdoors and everything seems cool.

But yeah, just again, I mean, I guess it's very similar on a much smaller scale, but too why I was so stressed out about the typhoon is because with the typhoon, like I just didn't know what was going to happen about booking a new flight and I didn't know what was going to happen about overstaying my visa by a day. And I didn't know what was going to happen when I got to Busan and luckily I found that hotel that got a cool deal on a luxury hotel. Just not knowing what's going to happen is the what stresses me though. Fuck out, I hate it. It's amazing that I can travel at all how much I hate it. So this was just a tiny version of that. Like last night, I just could not go to sleep, not knowing what was going to happen. You know, I had to get up and sift through the Airbnb stuff and just see the, you know, it's like, here's literally dozens of good reviews stretching back to like 2016. Everything's going to be fine. There's no way if this was any kind of a problem. Somebody would have mentioned it and nobody has. So it's going to be fine. But yeah, I had to try to figure it out as best as I could. And I guess it's one of those things that I would so greatly prefer that this lady let you know more what the heck is going to happen. Just how is this process supposed to work? I don't know, I'd be tempted almost to mention it. I don't really leave bad reviews unless something is a real problem. I'm not sure if I ever even have. I think if I just really have problems with somebody, I just don't leave them a review usually.

Because again, it's always like, it's just nitpicky shit like this. Like I don't want to, I don't want to give somebody a negative seeming review because my little neurotic mind had some kind of problem.

So if I really feel that way, I just tend to stay out of it. But yeah, this is a great example of I was a little perturbed in the moment like I do wish this was clearer, but ultimately it really was no problem. And by the time I'm going to review this place, it'll be a month from now. I will be, I'm already completely away from giving a fuck and it's been a couple hours.

30 days from now, what kind of fucking maniac would keep that in mind and add it to the review? It's just, I guess one of those things, like it just works good enough. Everything is good enough. And I guess it's also a situation in my own making because I'm the guy who doesn't have the proper phone, you know.

It's because I'm sending myself out into the wild blue yonder, just hoping I can connect to some Wi-Fi. That's what makes this awkward. If you just have a normal phone, none of this would be a problem. 20:00 Yeah, this seems, now I'm realizing why nobody else mentioned it because nobody else has this problem. I'm just a fucking weirdo with a little bullshit cheap ass used phones that doesn't do anything.

But anyway, yeah, I do, I do so very much hate. Not knowing what's going on, but yeah, it truly is like all or nothing. Like, it was almost shocking how fast I went from everything feels fine to just like, boom, oh no. I feel real, real bad. I'm very stressed. All of a sudden, I didn't know where.

But then I managed to fight that off pretty well. But then yet today, I'm just thinking as I strolled across the bridge, heading back toward old she-man. And now that I'm here, I'm like, now I feel like the coolest cat ever. I've been here before. I know how this works. Back to the old hood. Like, I just feel fine. I don't feel, I don't know, it's like, shouldn't there be some middle ground? Shouldn't it be like a little bit anxious? And then that could build up or decrease as it needs to, but it doesn't. Either I don't feel it or all I can feel is the anxiety. There's just no middle ground at all. It's fucking weird. But I guess the good thing about it is that most of the time, I don't feel it. So it's a good deal overall. And there's no point in bargaining with alternate physiologies that you could possibly have, but don't have. I got what I got. I just got to deal with it and that's that. I have a hit the point where my rambling is barely making sense. I think so.

And you know, there hasn't even been any more beeping. And right now, as I'm walking around, there's no beeping. It's just that when there is beeping, I literally stood there for minutes. Minutes and minutes. Like, this beeping has to stop someday. So I can start doing my dumb podcast. And it just wouldn't, man. It just wouldn't stop. It's fucking so crazy. Once some bus or something or some truck starts beeping, it just never stops. But anyway. Add that to the list of top 10 most boring things that keep coming up over and over again on this podcast.

Alright, I'm just going to walk around for a while. Walk around all she meant. Soak it in. It is cool though, just knowing where I'm going. It's cool to explore a new neighborhood and learn new shit. But that's nice too, just to go back and be like, yeah, I know where this shit is. I know what's going on.

Both differently good.

Alright, well, here's that kind of cool little thing. Is that it's like I found a secret route. This feels like a video game too. Like, I know the secret shortcut. Sneaking around this corner. I would never know to do this if I hadn't come the other way. So first off, I did stop in the She-Man subway. And was like, oh, nice. Yeah, down here they have a washroom outside of. Sometimes the washrooms are inside the turnstiles of the metro stations. This one's outside. So I went down there. It's pretty deep underground. But I went down at a nice pee. And then I was like, alright, so I could take the train home. But it's actually a bit awkward because the She-Man line is on the blue line. So I'd have to go just a single stop to Taipei main. And then two or three stops to the orange line. And then three or four stops on the orange line to where I'm going. A lot of transferring. And it was actually really busy down there Sunday night, man. I don't know. It's surprisingly busy. Taking the train is unfortunately not like just an automatic fast travel, like in a video game. There's a payment to be made in standing amongst crowds of people and transfers. And I was like, yeah, fuck this. It's like to hike all the way back upstairs. It was like, I'm just going to walk home. Because it is really not very far across the bridge. But this way to the bridge is so fucking weird. I'm walking through it right now. It's actually just really eerie coming back this way. But obviously walking on the bridge is super not common. This is not what people do. Because when you get off of the walking part of the bridge, you're behind an underpass. Which, oh yeah, I can see now. Actually, maybe this would be the better way to approach it. I could sneak under this underpass where there's just some cars parked. And connect up to the street. Yeah, that'd be way better. That's what I'm going to do from now on.

Oh, hey, cockroach. Then I saw a bunch of cockroaches. The most I've ever seen together, like eight or nine of them all around just this hole in the pavement. 25:00 I was like, what the fuck is that? Do you guys just live in there? But anyway, you end up behind this on ramp. And it makes me think of the past way back in the day when they called Taiwan Garbage Island. It's like, oh yeah, I bet this is what everything you still look like. It's just behind here. No one's picking up the garbage. It's just garbagey and shitty and messy. Just like you'd expect behind any random fucking on ramp overpass thing anywhere. But it really stands out in Taiwan. Yeah, here's even just like a cushion from someone's like couch back here, like the back cushion. Oh, and look at this.

Stitch. Is that the guy's name? I know it's Lilo and Stitch, but I'm not sure which one's which. The blue guy. Just a gigantic, filthy stitch thing that somebody abandoned. And another cockroach. It's for the cockroaches to play with. But yeah, then you come, so you come down these stairs. You walk behind the on ramp with all the random trash. And then you have to sneak around a little corner where there's barely room as a pedestrian. And it's just this little road that is, I think it's a scooter-only road. I don't know. Actually, do they have scooter-only roads over there? Maybe there just was a shit ton of scooters. And then you cross the street with a traffic light and you're back into the general population. So it was pretty easy to do on the way over. But on the way back, I'm only able to do this because I know it's here now. You sneak around this weird little corner and then walk through this dim, dark alleyway next to the on ramp through all the garbage. And now I'm going up the stairs to the bridge. And then the view out across the water is pretty fucking beautiful. All these other on ramps and stuff. It's actually a pretty serious bridge system they got here. And yeah, now I'm on the bridge where it's a pretty narrow walkway. But again, it is just scooters. This one is a scooter-only road. So that's nice. It's not big, scary cars going past. Actually, the other bridge I was on, I remember there were buses and stuff. So that's a bonus to this bridge. Just scooters. And yeah, it's not high enough up to really make my fear of heights kick in. But just walking out across water at night. It's not comfortable. But anyway, I just thought I'd mention that this neat little secret hidden passage. It's like, oh shit, you can go through there and up around that thing and then walk across the bridge. Where unsurprisingly, no one else is here on foot.

But as I look back, there's that park, the park that circles around Taipei with all the cyclists and stuff. Very pretty, only in these little moments when all the traffic stops. It's nice, actually. It is pretty, I don't know. I should probably just put my big boy boots on and just say, yeah, fuck it. It's not that bad walking across the bridge. It's a little bit eerie, but it is pretty. It's also, yeah, it's nice. It's nice just to be out and see all the lights at the city. A lot nicer than standing crammed into a metro.

It's actually though. Yeah, just looking out. There's like these islands in the middle of the river. And they're just pitch black all dark. The lights are all quite far away because the next bridge is quite a ways away.

This is one of those little moments where I do suddenly start thinking about myself on a map. On a map of the world. And it's like, what the hell am I doing there? You know, I'm not supposed to be here. Not only am I way on the other side of the earth, not only am I in Taiwan. But I'm on this one little weird bridge in the middle of the night.

Just a line of scooters heading toward me on the one way scooter path. What the fuck are you doing there, son?

Man, though, that's one thing that really makes the world seem small. I was watching a music video. I don't remember the name of it off the top of my head. It's this woman who she goes by be a doobie. And she has this song called She Plays Base. That is like my favoriteist of her songs. She had like at that time a really 90s throwback vibe that was really cool. Super recommended. It's fucking awesome. So her newer stuff doesn't do it for me as much musically, but she just did a music video. Where it was just her in different areas of Japan. And one of them was that lake. I don't remember the lake's name off the top of my head. But it was before I went to Mount Takau. 30:00 I went to this lake and I was talking it up all big about how cool it was to walk around the lake. And it had these, you know, like the boats you can rent to paddle around in that look like big swans. And I was like, oh, fuck, look at that. I've been there.

And then I was watching a YouTube video the other day about if you remember way back, I found a couple of those alcohol vending machines. I looked that up on YouTube. And apparently, like the thing with those the ones I found is you're supposed to scan your ID in order to buy alcohol out of the machine. But apparently, if you just tried them, a lot of them just work. I never tried, but apparently they'll probably just sell you alcohol. So this guy was doing that. He was buying some booze from the machine. And then he went to go try it out. And he was sitting on this river bank and immediately, like the second I saw it, even though it's just a river bank. But I was like, oh, that's... It's a Kaishi station. That's where I went. And I just did a little snack food review. I remember that's where I had just like vinegar octopus from the new days. That looked like a Guar music video.

And that was actually the first day that I found the parks that led to Congo Falls. But I was like, hey, wait a fucking second. That's definitely where he is. And I rewound the video. I don't know where the alcohol vending machine was from. Obviously around there somewhere, but I never found that. But I confirmed it because he went to a 7-11 to get some mixer to mix with his booze. And it was the 7-11 right there by that station. And it just makes the world feel so small. When you can just be watching a video and just see something. And it's not even like, oh, I wonder if that's that place or that could possibly be near that place. You just see it. And in a millisecond, you just know, oh, I've been there. And I mean, in the case of the Biyadubi video, you know, it's still like a relatively obscure spot. She was at, you know, just a bunch of places around Japan. But it wasn't like a complete accident that she ended up there. You know, it's a big man-made lake. It has stuff like big swan boats, you know? It's a minor tourist attraction. But just the river bank by Musashi, it's Okashi. That's nowhere. That's so fucking random. And I was like, that's the place. That's the motherfucking place. I know that fucking place. And it just makes the world feel so tiny. It's like when you see people do geo-guessing stuff online. And they know how to guess what country they're in based on like what the soil looks like and stuff. And you know, it just makes you realize the world, the world's big, but it's not that big.

With even just a moderate amount of rambling around, you know? I've mostly just wandered around Canada, but there's huge swaths to Canada. Many provinces I've never even been to. A little teeny bit of the United States. A dollop of the Netherlands. And then I'm building up my Japan resume. And I took a pretty good bite at a South Korea. Now I'm working on Taipei. It's not that much stuff, but the amount of stuff that I've know now, the amount of just random places that I might see somewhere in a picture or a video or something and I'll just know what it is. I'll just know right away. Like, oh shit, that's that place. It's a weird feeling. But it's a very good feeling. It's a very nice feeling. You know, I was gonna like stretch this episode out to whatever I do next, but this is plenty, right? My return. My grand return to Shi-men Ting. Which I guess is the specific name of that one really cool neighborhood. Isn't just Shi-men. They call it Shi-men Ting. But that sounds weird to me. I'm just gonna keep calling it Shi-men.

But yeah, a new home base established. At least one new route across a bridge discovered. Not too bad. Not too bad.

Oh, just a second. I looked it up on my phone. It's not...

Via... what did I say? Via Dubi. It's Via Badoobi. V-E-A-B-A-D-O-O-V-E. Via Badoobi, she plays bass. Come on, lady. Get a real name. What does all that do?

Well, yeah, a great song. She plays bass. She plays bass.

Nothing matters. Cause we're both in space.

Pretty sure we could just stay.

G's O-G's. Here's a little additional bit from the next day. You can hear this Airbnb room not only has an air conditioner. There's a fan above the door. But there's also a fan in the ceiling that I don't have on right now. Maybe even louder than this. But yeah, sweet room, as far as air flow and millions of fans and coolness goes. But yeah, that's a good thing.

Cause even after walking around Shi-men all evening and getting back home pretty late, then my brain was just like, hey, cool, a new day or a new day at the new place, whatever. Anyway, the point is I stayed up all goddamn night, messed up my sleep schedule right out of the gates. Nice work. But I think that's kind of a good thing. Man, this is a good day. Just stay inside and do some editing or something. Cause it is 38 degrees. Real feel, you know, how it feels or whatever. One site says 44, but one of them. One of them said 47. 47. I don't know. We'll go with the 44. Cause it's been 44 before, but 47. Just seeing it scared the shit out of me. Like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Oh, there's some wind, I guess. Man, there's so much shit on here. I never paid attention to.

13 kilometers an hour from the North Northwest. Humidity, 48%, which they consider extremely humid.

Visibility 16 kilometers. Well, there's cloud, cloud cover 32%, cloud ceiling at 9,000 meters. The dew point, what does that mean? Oh, wow, the max UV index. I had no fucking idea what that means, but it's 9. Very high. I guess it's nice that they say very high. I don't know what this means.

Okay, well, after the sun goes down, obviously it goes to zero. See, it's going to drop to three or four. She's going to drop to seven quite soon, but right now it's at nine.

What does that mean? Max UV index. Like, how bad could it get?

So it's obviously how much ultraviolet radiation is coming from the sun.

Which is for a second, I thought it only went to 10, but just that after 10, the listing just goes 11 or more is extreme. Yeah, even where it is now at nine. So minimize sun exposure between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Just good advice in general.

The air quality is somewhere above 50 a.k.a. poor. Man, anyway, just what a shit show. What a fuck, fuck face of a day. Jesus Christ. I guess on the plus side, though, like walking around She-Man yesterday in the dark, like it was already night when I left the house. And yeah, didn't even have to put suntan lotion on. It was just dark. That was kind of nice. But yeah, bananas, man. It's like 12, 13 in the afternoon now. So yeah, good day to dick around with some editing and stuff. And yeah, I'll go do a little stroll around the neighborhood later in the afternoon, and since it gets dark, I like seven o'clock.

This is for the best. I don't know. It's just weird because they do feel kind of low-key. And it's like, I really should have gone to bed earlier. I mean, I went to bed at like 7 a.m. as that's ridiculous. But what is the value to getting up? I mean, geez, yeah, like if I got up, it's one thing actually because this happened to be quite a bit at the last place waking up around noon. And then by the time I get to where I'm going, it's like two in the afternoon and have a little hike and then whatever. But yeah, what would be the benefit of getting up early? Get up early and just hike around in the UV nightmare in the insane sun all day? That's not a good thing to do. That's a disaster. See, I think getting stuck in all the thunderstorms and just whatever. I don't know. I feel like maybe this has actually worked out pretty well. 40:00 That I've been so lazy and waking up so late in the day. I mean, who knows, even with my suntan lotion, I've been pretty diligent. I'm not burned or anything. My neck and my arms are a different color than my chest, but it's not terrible. I've been doing pretty good about it.

But there can't be any good way to do this, right? To be out in this insane shit. Man, yeah, more and more. It is like, yeah, I'm here already. It's fine. It's cool and it's interesting and it's neat in its own way. But man, July and August is just the wrong fucking time to come to hot places. It's the wrong fucking time. And now as we inch into September, yeah, it's, I mean, obviously the door doesn't just shut. It takes a while for this pendulum to swing. But I'll have to come back to Taiwan someday, not in the goddamn summer. I don't know because it's just ridiculous.

It is goddamn ridiculous. All these numbers are in fucking sane. So there's the weather update. Thank you for listening. See you next episode.