#193 The Mystery of the Pee Smelling Boots

Transcript

Holy friggin' jeez! It's only scooters, step aside for the scooters. It's only raining at a normal rain amount right now, so it's like, shit, I better get outside while I can. Because this shit has been crazy, man. I don't know if this is a time of year thing. It's getting toward the end of September, or maybe this is just a random weather event. But basically, the Canadian way on the east coast where I grew up, the weather's really random. So you would get really heavy rainstorms, but the next day they'd be gone, you know, different weather every day. And on the west coast, on the other side of the mountains, the other side of the Thorockeys, you would get rain that lasted for days and days and days, but it wouldn't be heavy rain. It would just be this little piddly, misty, annoying rain. So this weather that has been happening here, it really is just like whether I have not experienced before, where it was a Saturday that this started. And that was kind of convenient that it was raining all day Saturday, because Saturday is usually the day that I do a little call home. So with the time differences and stuff, I can't really go out and do too much on those days anyway. Got to stay in the neighborhood. So I was like, no problem. But then the next day, the rain didn't stop if anything had got harder. And now we're two days beyond. And same thing, just crazy rain all day. And it's like, well, I could just, and I'm out of food. I have no food left. I haven't eaten anything today. I just had a coffee that I had pre-bought. And it's like, well, I can wait till it stops raining, but it might not. Luckily, it's like not raining too hard right now. So this is like reasonable. This is okay. But yesterday, this is what happened. I was just inside all day. And finally, it was getting pretty late into the night. And I had no food. And I had to go get something to eat. And it was raining like in a movie, like in a super dramatic scene in a movie when they have like machines set up to just pour down torrents of rain. It was an insane amount of rain. But what I learned through this, rain really is such a pain in the dick. I mean, it is kind of nice in a way. It's pretty, makes nice sounds being inside when it rains. That's all right. But having to go out into the rain, I mean, it's the worst. It just destroys your clothes and stuff. So I think it's funny that I was just talking about how much I love these boots I got in Seoul. How my boots are really fallen apart. They're reaching the end of their days, but they're so great. And I love them. And I wish I could get another pair of these boots. And it's just funny when I bring stuff up and then immediately something happens to flip reverse it. Where my boots got all wet. I guess I did go outside somewhere on Saturday because my boots were wet. So they were already damp and not drying on Sunday. And then Sunday was the torrential downpour. And I just got soaked. And just this case of the boots getting wet and not being able to properly dry. I mean, this happened on Jeju also. And, you know, they just smelled all-purpose kind of gross boot smell, you know. Not a great smell, but whatever. It happens. But this time, it was only with one of my boots. My right boot smells like cat pee. And it's just like permeated everything. I have little insoles in my boots to help with my flat feet. And I wear little, my feet have so many problems. I wear little little rubber rings around my big toes to keep them separated. So they don't keep them separated. So they don't form bunions. And all of that stuff smelled like cat pee. And my sock smelled like cat pee. And it's like, what the fuck? What? So I took the insoles out. And I took my little toe spacer. And I cleaned them all up. And it wasn't easy because it was like cat pee. It was very much like that. You just scrub and scrub and scrub. And this smell is just like not quite going away. But I basically got it. But the boot. And I guess while I'm out here today, I'll try to find some baking soda or something. See what I can do. But the boot is less than great smelling. And I just so confused. It's like, there's no cats around. There's no fucking way. I looked this up. I'm like, why does my boot smell like cat pee? What's going on? And I apparently, it happens. This came up quite easily. They did say like, well, first off, you know, you can't, uh, rule out the idea that a cat peed on your boots. But if there's no cats around and no, you know, that's not what happened. Apparently, when the compounds break down in certain kinds of boots, it smells like ammonia. 5:00 So apparently that is the kind of boot I got here where mixing it with the water and just that it's getting old. And like my boots are visibly old as fuck. Luckily, it's only the one boot, I guess. Yeah, maybe these boots aren't so great after all because they've been great otherwise, but I've never experienced this in my life. I've never heard of this in my life of your footwear developing an ammonia smell as they get old. That's a serious problem, man. That is significantly less pleasant than normal bad boot smells. That's fucking gross. It smells exactly like cat pee. It's like, what the fuck? But I got no choice. I gotta wear these goddamn things. I didn't put the insult back in. But it's just knowing like that this boot, luckily again, it's not getting too wet today. At least it's not getting, uh, the crazy downpour on it today. But like, I'm gonna have to quarantine this sock when I get home. It's gotta, like, not just go in my little mesh laundry bag. I'm gonna have to wrap it in a shirt just to like get out, get away, smell. I don't know. Just thought I'd mention that because I've never heard of this before in my life. Just in case this ever occurs to you, I guess, if you start noticing that your boot smells like cat pee. Apparently this is a thing. Apparently this is a thing that can happen. It's not enough. Maybe I can just deodorize blast this thing, but I'm starting to think this might be, it seems like a pretty clear sign that perhaps I should buy new boots because I definitely don't really want to get, like, go to an airport and get on a plane and stuff. Even if I get this mostly under control, I feel like even the lingering scent of cat pee style ammonia in a enclosed space. Yeah, now that I'm saying that out loud, I think there's no two ways about it. I got a month's still in Taipei. I got some time, but I need to buy new footwear. I can't be traveling with a pee boot. But anyway, that's a fucking weird thing that happened. Highly unpleasant and unexpected. I did finally see a cockroach, too. I was saying how the countdown to the cockroach. I saw really only one cockroach at my first place and one cockroach at my second place. Though the one at my second place, I saw multiple times over multiple days. That guy was a motherfucker. So here I've technically seen a cockroach, but the way the place is laid out, it's like a long hallway with seven rooms and I'm the seventh room way at the end. So at the front, near the entrance in the hallway, there was a big dead cockroach just laying there in the hall. So technically, I've seen a cockroach, but it doesn't seem that bad. I figure all the rain has probably got insects extra active and it was way at the other end of the place and it was already dead. So yeah, it doesn't quite feel like it totally counts. Like maybe I'm just tricking myself, but I feel like the sanctum of my room, I can still pretend to myself that it's impenetrable, that there's no way any cockroaches are getting in there. Technically though, technically, the cockroach countdown.

Has completed. Yeah, this level of rain isn't so bad, it might even be getting lesser, although I'm not gonna tempt fate. I'm not gonna hang out here too long, just in case. But yeah, supposedly, supposedly this rain snap is supposed to end tomorrow, so we'll see. But yeah, yikes.

Because I guess I kind of realized in Fukuoka, like it's better not to buy a bunch of stuff and have it stashed away in your room, because why bother? There's convenience stores everywhere, just go out and get whatever you want. But in this case, yeah, it just kept fucking me, because that's what I was doing. Like I'll just get enough for today, maybe have a little coffee in a snack in the morning or whatever. Whoops, now I'm starving to death, and it's like biblical downpour out there. And then that happened again. It's like shit.

But yeah, today's not too bad. It was just yesterday that it's like I really didn't really have an option besides learn just sitting in my room and starving or going out in the insanity.

But have I learned my lesson? No. No, I still don't want to buy a bunch of stuff and have it just laying around my room. I'm just going to trust that the downpour is over and that tomorrow things will get better. And I mean, it's not like again, things will get better. Look at some super disaster. I mean, I still only had to go outside for 10 minutes yesterday. There still are convenience stores everywhere. It's just the 10 minutes was enough to get mega fuck.

So there's the ammonia boot update. It does make things look pretty. The rain on the street 10:00 at night, classic, makes all the lights look super gorgeous. Very nice from inside, you know, that nice rain sound. Like, yeah, that ain't so bad. It's just going out, having to go outside. That's when you get fucked.

All right, it's the next day. The super duper rain is over, but the weather has kind of a ... they've revised the upcoming week to be like, okay, so the mega rain, the three days of almost endless rain, that's over, but it's still overcast. And there's a, you know, a pretty good chance of rain that then escalates to lightning and thunder. But really, none of this is too weird. I mean, now that I think back, unexpected intermittent rain has just kind of been the way it's been in Taiwan. It's just sort of, it seems to be just how the weather is. It was extremely extra weird these last three days that it was just so excessive. But yeah, this seems all right, you know, it's like, oh well, I guess I'll just head out and cross my fingers and hope I don't get rained on. I feel like that's just how it's going to be. And that's all right, it could be worse.

But yeah, because the rain totally fucked up my footwear and yeah, just the unexpected chemical breakdown, something weird happening with these boots I got where they have the ammonia smell. I'm glad to say that it's not. It turns out it's not really like capy, you know, at the height of it when my boots were super wet. It seemed very similar, but it's not like capy in the sense that capy just never goes away. You know, that smell is just eternal. It's like the bog of eternal stench. This is not that way. It's clearing up pretty well, pretty easily. So that's good, but it's unfortunate to know that next time my boots get rained on, it's probably just going to come back, you know. I think just getting new boots is the obvious answer. And I mean, the souls are coming off of them and stuff anyway. They're ready to go.

But this is just one of these cases where it's interesting in different countries where you don't realize what items are not common till you go try to get them and suddenly it's a big problem. You know, Deodorant in South Korea was a great example. It took me a very long time to find Deodorant. Finally found some at E-Mart, one brand, Naviyah. They only people that make Deodorant, one little section, because people in this part of the world just don't need Deodorant and they especially don't in Korea. Korea, as far as I understand, is the highest percentage of the population that has the gene that doesn't make their sweat smell bad. Also, I found out that if you have that particular gene, it also makes your earwax not waxy. Did I say this already? I know I talked about earwax because yeah, for the first time in my life, I have to actually buy Q-tips and look after my ears because they're just the humidity is making me produce too much earwax. Makes my ear canals all a cheap. Yeah, I don't think I mentioned this because I don't think I knew this at the time. That's people that have the gene that makes their sweat not smell bad. They also don't produce waxy earwax. They just produce flaky earwax, dry earwax. Thought that was interesting. Anyway, I'm glad I bought that seemed expensive at the time. I thought maybe I bought too much Deodorant in South Korea, but now I'm glad I got it because I don't know. I don't know what the situation is around here. I certainly don't remember seeing any deodorant anywhere. It's just better to have it. But yeah, today and last night, I was just looking for anything I could use to deodorize my boots, you know, in the meantime, till I get some new boots. So I went to 7-11, Family Mart, and even Ok Mart. And they all do have very similar stuff. There's like a little differences between the convenience stores, but it's basically the same. And that's the kind of thing that they just definitely don't have. I went to enough stores last night that it's like, nope, they just don't. It's a little different than I think in Japan, the convenience stores are a little more general purpose. I mean, they still have a lot of stuff at the convenience stores here. But I just feel like I bet you that's something you could get in a convenience store in Japan. 15:00 Maybe not at everyone, but if you go to different convenience stores in Japan, some of them are a bit bigger, and some of them have a bit more stuff. I feel like you could probably just get...

Baking soda or something, at the very least. But not around here. And then I went to, uh, what's the, uh, the drugstore called Watson's? I went to a Watson's, no love there. So today I was like, oh, let's just go to Daiso. Now, that doesn't really help me. My shoes are dry. They just smell weird. And they had these deodorizing balls. I don't know what the fuck this is. I've never seen this before in my life. These two little balls that look like, you know, they're just jauntily shaped like, uh, baseballs. And I don't know. I guess you just put them in your shoes and they sit in there. I didn't bother buying them because I'm like, I don't even know what the fuck that is. That seems very ineffective. Yeah, I was just like, I don't know. If not baking soda or sometimes in North America, you can get it. Sometimes you can get more sort of distinct deodorizing powder. Or then I thought maybe even just, uh, I don't know if a breeze. I got some of that in South Korea, like just a little, you know, individual, tiny size, squirt can of a breeze. But it's like, I don't know. I'll take a big one. I'll take whatever at this point. I'm like, I don't know. Just give me something. And there's just nothing. It's just not something I can find. It's just a little, little weird because it's like five different stores. Although, again, the convenience stores are all kind of the same. So maybe only three different stores. But just one of those things, this would not be an issue at North America. You could find deodorizing products all over the place. Not here. Not here. Haven't a weirdly hard time finding this shit. And again, whatever. Maybe it just doesn't matter. I really just got to buy new boots anyways. The who cares? Not going to get in too much of a twist trying to rescue these old boys.

So I've also just got my eyes on shoe stores, but I don't know. I got to figure out even, I don't know what, how they even measure shoe sizes and stuff here. But I was at the little, uh, the street where they just sell stuff on the street, the street market where I bought an electric fan early on when I got here. And I was moseying through there and I was like, yeah, some of these people have shoes and boots. That's kind of weird to just buy footwear off the street from some random person. But I would do it. I like this street market, but I could tell just walking along like I need not only quite large shoes in general. But I try to get extra large shoes because I want to make sure that there's toes space. Because again, my, uh, my big toes, I don't know why, but they just about a year ago just started attempting to develop abundance. My big toes just seem determined to push inward. So I got to wear spacers all the time. And as long as I wear spacers, I seem to be okay. But as soon as I don't wear them, I start getting pain in my toes. So I need space. I need toe box room, which is not always easy to find in shoes, but I just get real big shoes just so the, uh, even if there is a narrowing where the toes are, I can avoid that. And even in South Korea, I bought the biggest boots they had and they were still half a size smaller than what I was looking for, but they've been fine in that regard. But yeah, just walking around on the street, I could just tell that whatever these people were selling, like these shoes and boots, they're just not even close to big enough. They're just not even close. Gonna find a dedicated shoe store and they probably still will have limited options. Unless, I mean, who knows, like I did find that whole shoe district in Seoul, I'll look it up. Maybe there's a shoe district in Taipei, too, because that was pretty handy. Just a whole block that was all shoe stores. So I got these here boots that I'm still generally fond of despite the ammonia smell of the, as they break down and dissolve.

But yeah, what's this podcast for if not, uh, little pedestrian random observations. But yeah, just anything, anything to deodorize footwear is weirdly hard to find. Like at this point, it's feeling almost a little bizarre. You know, it's just like, I don't know, just give me something. Give me anything. I'll take it. And then Taipei provided like, okay, here you go. Here's two little tiny weird deodorizing balls that look like little baseballs. And I was like, okay, well, not that. What even is that? I mean, anything that's a spray, anything that's a powder. 20:00 Come on, come on, work with me here. But yeah, it's just not a thing. Or if it is, I guess it is like, you know, that it's quite regimented. What items are in, what store types? So I guess I just need the right store type. I mean, I guess I could just try to go to a literal grocery store for baking soda. But anyway, yeah, the joy of travel. Yeah, just never know. Yeah, just never know what thing you're taking for granted is not a thing around these parts.

Hi, Tiz the next day, having a nice little stroll through this, the new Taipei city park. I figured I should record while I'm here because it's relatively quiet where I'm heading back into traffic zone after this. There's like a big walking overpass. I got to go up to escape from this park. I don't actually know how to get out of the, see what side is that?

The west side of the park without the pedestrian overpass. Because there's big highway traffic all around. There is a shit ton of traffic over here, but it hasn't really been too big of a problem, which is nice.

Anyway, I was like, man, is this episode really just going to be about my pee smelling boots? I did come up with another plan. I've got a nice, a nice cool sounding coastal adventure that I figured out. Hopefully next episode will be about that. But I am having, man, I'm having a serious problem with my sleep schedule. I mean, it's been, it's been bizarre all around on this trip.

But yeah, I mean, I guess it's all degrees. Maybe it'll, I guess as the sun starts to go down sooner. Maybe that'll help, too. But like in my old Japan episodes where it's like, oh damn, you know, it's like 11.30 already. It's noon. Nowadays, I would kill the wake up at noon and feel relatively refreshed. That'd be great. I'm just up until seven in the morning until the sun comes up almost every night. And I just can't seem to help it. My sleep schedule is fucked. But on the plus side, because the weather's so weird and Taipei, there's plenty of days where I'm like, oh, no, I fucked up. But then it's like rainy as fuck anyway. And I'm like, oh, well, that's fine. I didn't miss anything.

But yeah, hopefully next episode, I'll hop off on adventure. This episode is literally just going to be about boots. Dumb little episode about boots. But for the boot update, my friend Brad, back in Canada, I told him like, hey, by the way, hopefully this is never a situation that happens to you. But just more completely unexpected bizarre circumstances that just happen while I'm out traveling. I got these boots, these boots that smell like capy when they get wet. He did a little additional research. And it seems that it's polyurethane is the culprit. As it breaks down and as it gets wet, that's what smells like ammonia. But I was really in no position to determine what kind of footwear I was buying or what it was made of. I mean, I don't know anything about anything. Maybe all boots and stuff are made of polyurethane. I don't fucking know. I don't even know what it is. You know, I couldn't even speak to the people I was buying it from. I just showed them what size I wanted. I wrote it down on my phone. I was ideally looking for the use centimeters in Korea. I was ideally looking for 295 millimeters or 29.5 centimeters. They didn't quite have that. They had 29 centimeters, which turns out that's pretty good. That's fine. Which then all the different shoe sizes and stuff. And I never remember what size shoes they need anyway. Between buying shoes I always forget. But it turns out 29 centimeters is size 11 in U.S. sizes. So yeah, I was going for 11.5 just so I'd have tons of toe room. I don't actually need shoes that big. But these seem fine. The size 11 still has enough toe room for my poor bun you need toes. But yeah, they basically just gave me the biggest boots that they had. And then she had to write on a calculator how much they were.

Just about $70. And I paid her and that was that. They're speaking of shoes. Someone has just walking up this walkway to this overpass. Somebody has tucked away a pair of shoes under here.

A pair of sneakers. But they're very tiny looking. As everything is here.

Being a big tall gangly loud. Not the greatest situation in Asia. Glad I haven't had to replace my jeans or anything. Maybe I could find some long enough, but it'd probably be a bit of a search. But yeah, I was just happy that I managed to go buy footwear at all because my old footwear was dissolving on my feet. And yeah, generally, even despite this ammonia thing, I just do like these boots. I was pretty happy with them all around. Next time I'm in Korea, if I need shoes, I don't know. It's not crazy to think I might buy these again. But it really is a problem that when they get wet, they couldn't smell worse. There's not many smells that'd be worse than this. But it does go away quite a bit. Like now that it's been a couple of days since they've been in the rain. You can hardly smell them at all. Like I was concerned about going to the airport with these things. And I think I'm still going to try to avoid that. But it's like, actually, as long as they don't directly get rained on, it would be fine, I think.

But this development is coinciding with the, the soles are clearly coming apart from the boot anyway. It is a good time to replace these.

So I've been doing a little shoe research in Taipei. There is a shoe district sort of. The one in Seoul is way bigger. The one I found here, it is over by main Taipei station near Shimen. And apparently it even has like a giant shoe. Like you can't miss this neighborhood. It's a giant shoe. That lets you know that you're here. But apparently it's like leather shoes is basically what they have there.

And then there's all the standard sports brands and hiking brands and whatever. But it seems like one of the main things people do for affordable footwear rant here is ABC Mart. So that's actually where I'm heading now. I'm heading to an ABC Mart just to check it out. But on the way here I stopped at a decathlon, which is like a, again, like sporty kind of hiking stuff. Basically sport check in Canada. I don't know if they have those in America as well. But that's what it is. Like a big store just full of sporty type camping type stuff. So I did a little research in there and they do generally go by US sizes here. Not the centimeters. And size 11 is easy to find. It's no problem to find a whole array of size 11s.

Nothing is a particularly great deal, but you know, whatever, not bad. Oh yeah, here random constructiony noise. Didn't take me that long to get through this park.

Man, the mountains and the distance are beautiful. Holy fuck. It's a really clear day today. And it's just like, shit, they look so good. They look so fucking good.

It is like a beautiful postcard in the sky. Remember, that's the feeling I had when I first moved to Vancouver because Vancouver also has a big mountain range. Unlike anything on the east coast. It's just gorgeous. It's so cool to leave your house and just see it. Oh fuck, I tried to move away from the construction and I'm moving toward more construction. This is the second building being constructed. Yikes. Anyway, lots of size 11 and size 11 is big enough. Good enough. That would do. But luckily, you know, I thought I might have to just bail out immediately on these boots because I'm like, I cannot wear shoes that smell like pee. But even without deodorizer, the smell is almost gone. If I can find some nice deodorizer stuff, I should be good to go. But obviously, the clock's ticking on this footwear. So lots of size 11, lots of options. That'll do. That's good enough. But then another thing I could do if I just want to grab something right before I leave the country just to travel with. I only found one size 11 and a half, which I would still take if I can get it because I just really don't want my toes to be crushed in. I want all the toe room in the world because bunions are terrifying. And I'm doing everything I can to not allow them to develop. So I only found one pair of sneakers that was 11 and a half. But they were only 20 bucks. You know, they're those classic, just sort of no name. Walmart style shoes that'll probably just literally melt off your feet in no time. But that could be good for traveling. Just to have something nice and light to get out of here.

And to go through the airports and stuff with. Like who cares if a pair of shoes only last three months if they cost fucking 20 bucks? I would like boots. I like big boots. But I'm not married to the idea. Oh, fuck, nowhere. Again, in my attempts to avoid construction, I think I've walked myself to a part where there's no pedestrian access at all. Yeah, there's like a highway on both sides of me. Anyway, whatever. There's the shoe update. If you want up to size 11, no problem. Lots of size 11s. After that, it gets tricky.

And even if you have polyurethane boots that smell like fucking ammonia when they get wet. Luckily, it does not linger the way cat pee does. It's not cat pee. It smells like it, but it's not functionally that way. So thank god for that. So yeah, I can just really take it easy with my shoe exploration. I don't have to desperately get rid of these immediately.

They're fine. They're no problem. But with this continuing up and down rain weather, the chances of my boots getting rained on again are very high. And we all know what's going to happen then. Alright, I'm going to go try to find ABC Mart. Check that out. It seems to be a pretty fucking big shoe store.

So let's go take a gander.

It's delightful. I found one of these little machines, where it just makes you a coffee in a little cup. It is Coca-Cola branded Georgia coffee. Not traditionally my favorite, but I don't think I found one of these machines at all. In Taiwan, this is my first time, even just vending machines in general are a little rare. It's delightful, although I had to choose between iced and hot. I'm not quite sure why I chose hot now that I'm holding it. I mean, it's still pretty hot out. I'm still pretty sweaty. I'm not quite sure why I did this. And now it's too hot to drink. There's actually kind of expensive, too. Now that I do the conversion in my brain, it's probably about two bucks. Things aren't really a great deal in Taiwan. Like, the way in Japan, I do feel like things are fairly inexpensive. And then in Korea, they felt pretty much on par with Canada. Things do seem a little more expensive in Taiwan. It's a little harder to figure out, because the conversion rate just doesn't line up well to Canadian. But I just love these machines. Love it. I love it. I was thinking about not drinking any more caffeine today, just again, to try to help with my staying up all night problem. But when I saw the machine, it's like, I gotta do it. All right, let's try it. I got a cafe mocha.

Nope, still burning my mouth. Still burning my mouth. Yeah, this is actually pretty cool. Well, I actually haven't found the ABC Mart technically, but I see on a sign. It says it's up on the second floor of this complex. I'm going to go back in and try. Yeah, this ABC Mart, west of the new Taipei metropolitan park, it's a whole complex that is mainly shoes. So I also found outlet stores for Adidas and Asics. Again, I don't really think I'm going to buy anything today. Now that my, the piece smell has calmed down.

I'm not in a huge hurry, but it's pretty cool that this is here beyond the ABC Mart. There is tons of options here. This is shoe central. Here's another little Coke machine, but it's got stuff in it I've never seen before. White gourd drink. I guess I've heard of a gourd, but I don't really know what that is. I wonder what that tastes like. I don't think I have enough coins left. Now while I made my choice, some kind of a, uh, air drink called Uha O-O-H-A. Uha got you all in check. And this other one, I don't even know what it is. It's got an awesome can though, but it has no English at all. But it's like this cool-looking silhouette, like from, uh, like a 60s magazine, coffee tea or me type of thing, where it's, uh, it's like a lady with an afro and bell bottoms and a cool scarf talking to, I guess, another lady who's got kind of flared pants and a long button up shirt. Actually, that could be a dude. It could be a very stylish dude. And they have this cool car. What the fuck is this drink? Damn it. I wonder if I can make some change. I just want to see what these drinks are. And then there's also a machine here that is just an empty container, but it's got helmets on the side. Oh yeah, and little cartoon bacteria and a guy's scalp. So this must be a machine that you put your scooter helmet in, and it washes your helmet. That's one thing. I wish I could find somewhere just to wash these boots. I never got a chance to try the little, uh, individual shoe-sized washing machines in Japan. It just never timed out that I ever needed them, and I don't believe I saw any in Korea or here. 35:00 But yeah, I feel like these boots could probably go for a wash. I wouldn't hurt, but I don't think I can put them in the, I don't think I should put them in the helmet machine.

That's surely an uncouth thing to do. All right, mocha. What you got for me, mocha?

Mmm. Yeah, why I got this hot, I have no idea, but it's very good, actually. It's the classic sort of problem that I always have with Georgia coffee or boss coffee is that not only are they very sweet, but it's a very generic sweet taste that I don't really like, that always reminds me of sugar crisps cereal. This doesn't have that. This is actually nicely better. This is very good. Unfortunately, I don't think any of these machines take bills. I was hoping maybe I could feed some bills in and then get it to spit out coins so that I could try out some of these weird drinks in the Coke machine, but oh well. Well, I suppose I can at least do a Google translate, figure out what the heck this crap is, because I mean, I guess white gourd, I don't know what it tastes like, but I know what that is. Oh, I've got you all in check, is definitely a peach flavor drink that make you break your neck. Wow, but I don't know what this super stylish drink is in the slightest. You know, even though this is an episode about nothing, and I didn't manage to go out on my adventure today, I like these episodes about nothing. It's like a laundry day, except now it's just a shoe shopping day, or I'm not even going to buy shoes.

Yeah, and the rest of these drinks, very obvious. Co-comminit-made monster.

Sprite. Aquarius, the dreaded sports drink that looks like water, and one that says water, but I'm quite sure if I translated that one more properly, it's actually yogurt water, although I've had that stuff before, it's kind of good.

Oh, okay, no biggie, it's Asam, ASSAM, and then it says milk tea. So that's all, just a milk tea, I know what those taste like, those are also mega sweet, but in a tasty way, I do like those once in a while. So yeah, I guess I don't need to try that one, nor the peach drink, but I guess I would get the white gourd if I was going to get anything, but it's 20, 20 new Taipei dollars, and I only have 18 in coins. So close, and yet so far. Oh, that's something. I haven't bought a ton of booze while I've been here, about a couple of just little peach or grape flavors, you know, three or four percent things, similar to the little things I would buy sometimes in Korea, but I've been more or less sticking to my guns of like after I got so drunk that I threw up like crazy all night in Chiba. No more big-time drinking for me, but I saw a can last night at a family mart that was, it was a Taiwanese brand, it's called like Taiwan Champion or something. It also said what? W-A-A-T, which is appropriate because it was a limited edition cheesecake flavored booze, and I was like, ah, right, well it says cheesecake, what can I do? I have to try that shit. And sometimes, you know, the artificial flavors, it's shocking how close they are, I was like, wow, even with the, you know, bean boozled, Bernie bots every flavor beans, it's like, wow, this really tastes like grass, you know, you can really make these flavors accurate. Not the case, not the case with cheesecake flavored booze, it was disgusting, it tasted like cooking sherry, but sweeter, like real sweet, just gross. I watered it down midway through, and then it was at least drinkable, but I gotta assume that's part of the, part of the strategy with cheesecake flavored booze, make it limited edition, they did only have one can left, I bought the last can, you want to make that limited, you want to sell it to every stupid idiot like me that just sees the word cheesecake and has to buy the item, you know, I love the little individual cheesecake in Japan, especially, or cheesecake flavored crackers, I don't know, I can't think of a cheesecake item I haven't enjoyed, except this, or cheesecake flavored booze, man, word to the wise, it's fucking gross.

But, you know, whatever, just paying for the adventure, the wild adventure.

Thumbs up to you, Georgia though, this is really good, and I just love that I finally found one of these machines, I really did miss that about the subways in, I was gonna say the major cities in South Korea, but even Jetchon had machines in the train station, that were those little tiny, little tiny coffees, this coffee's pretty small, but they're even smaller than this, and they were only 50 cents, I fucking loved that, that was one of my hands down, one of my favorite things about South Korea, the little tiny coffees, that shit was great, oh no, they did have them on 40:00 Jeju, that's right, because they had them by the waterfall, by the bus depot, by the waterfall, because I would usually get, instead of coffee in those cases, I would get the, oh man, what was it called? It was like this kind of tea that tasted like popcorn, and of course, whenever I found one of these machines at a train station in Fukuoka, or at an airport in Japan, I just love buying coffees from a machine that just plops out a little cup, a little individual cup when you drink it, it just feels like a time warp, till like the 1980s in North America when we used to, we used to do this all the time, oh there's nowhere to throw out my cup, that is the garbage situation is a little strange in Taiwan, it's not bad, it's not too tricky to find places to throw out your garbage, but yet still is a little bit weird, where like I feel like this machine should have somewhere to dispose of the cup that comes out of this machine, like the machine in Takau station in Tokyo, I remember I stopped and got a little strawberry drink out of that, and it had a disposal thing right there, or all those machines in South Korea always had like a tube, a big long tube next to them, a transparent tube filled with used cups, and you just drop your used cup in there. Taiwan, it's like, again some neighborhoods like Shiman, tons of garbage cans everywhere, other than that, who knows, it's pretty random, and there's still that situation where some of the convenience stores have garbage and some of them don't, and I mean they'll all take your garbage, you can just give your garbage to the attendant, but I always find that a little awkward, I tend to just kind of keep my garbage in my back pocket till I find somewhere that just has that public garbage can, I don't know why, why would I care about that, but I guess it doesn't come up that often anyway, because I don't usually sit in the convenience store and eat there, usually just I'm on the road, which I guess I never did actually determine that, I never looked it up, it's like I know in Japan, generally they tend to shy away from walking and eating, so I don't do that in Japan, I just stay at the convenience store and eat, I don't know here, come to think of it, I mean I do tend to just be walking down the street, chowing down on something, I don't know if I'm not supposed to do that, I don't know, that is one thing, I mean it's different, both in South Korea and Taiwan, I feel like South Korea and Taiwan don't feel the same, they both feel pretty different, but they both feel a lot more relaxed than Japan, as much as I like Japan, Japan has a, that just you feel that curtain over top of you, of social expectation, is just much stronger feeling to me, as an outsider who hardly knows what's going on, in any place that I go, things just feel more relaxed, and I've been thinking that in general about Taipei, I just really like it, I just feel very relaxed here, the time is going by very fast, and it just feels comfortable, it's like yeah I could easily see coming back here, it's that real nice middle ground of like it doesn't feel mega exciting or anything, it just feels good, it just feels comfy, where Japan is exciting to me, but I definitely don't feel like I fit in, and South Korea just feels, South Korea is just, it's just on every metric, no offense to South Korea, but I'm gonna say it, I think it's the weirdest of these countries that I've been to, like the fact that it does feel relaxed and it feels comfortable and it doesn't feel like anybody's being too judgy about what you're up to, and everything is just pretty cool, but at the same time it does feel like if you were to delve any deeper into that society, you'd be in for a very rigid time, it's like both things at once, it's a very strange feeling country, that again I really did come to like, I did come to enjoy it a lot, but I was thinking now that I've kind of made plans to hopefully be able to go back to Japan, and I was just thinking of that specific change from Yokohama, which I really liked, and then the very last day in Japan, I went specifically to Ome, to that trail that I love so much, the Ome Hiking Course, North of Ome Station, and just how fucking much I love it, how beautiful it is, just how great, and then the next day being in Seoul, and those first like couple of weeks in Seoul, where I just couldn't get a foothold at all, of like, how is this fun, what am I supposed to do? And then I started finding some mountains, and then I found Bukkansen, and even Bukkansen took many attempts just to even really properly approach that national park, and then everything got easier and easier from there, but man, yeah that was what a bucket of cold water in the face going from Japan to South Korea, really strange feeling, shift, whereas good old Taipei, jeez, I felt comfortable here literally from second one, 45:00 from talking to the guy at immigration in the airport, I felt unbelievably comfortable, and it's just been that way ever since, what a nice fucking place, ah the final swallow, oh and here's a garbage can, next to, it's actually a machine for parking, you're supposed to throw out your parking tickets here, or your little, your little chit, your voucher that says you paid for parking, I'm throwing my cup in there, hope that's not too uncouth, I don't know what else to do with it.