#195 Exploring Queen's Head, Yehliu, Taipei

Transcript

Well, definitely late summer and early fall. I mean, I guess I've only been here this one year, so I can't say for sure, but it seems pretty evident that this is a rainy time in Taiwan. Lots of rain. Today, when I left the house, it was raining a little bit. I left the house. Fucking Canadian accent managed. It's not going anywhere. But it wasn't raining very hard, and it stopped now. I've taken a little subway ride, and now it's all right. And yeah, the upcoming week looks much worse. Because not only is it potential rain, but apparently it could be like the edges of a typhoon hidden. So yeah, it was a typhoon that delayed me for two days when I first came to Taiwan. Got me caught overnight in an airport in Shanghai. Which, I mean, that's the kind of thing I don't think I'll ever have rose-colored glasses about, you know, crap like staying overnight, sleeping on the floor. Or in an airport in an uncomfortable authoritarian country. But it does feel better than it did at the time. It's like, well, it's memorable. You know, I can really visualize the spot where I slept on the floor in the big, fairly empty concourse to in the morning. Like, I can, I'll remember that. That's first fucking sure. So that's something. But anyway, typhoon activities returning, apparently. So yeah, this seems like my best choice.

I have a chance to go do something before things potentially get crazy. So I'm going to go to Queen's Head. I'm waiting for the 953 shuttle bus from some university that I'm walking through right now just to get away from the traffic. Got like 20 minutes till the bus arrives. So it should be all right. But to tie into last episode, where I finally went up the tall mountain, the 1100 foot mountain in Taipei, turns out that's technically the highest I've ever been. And the grouse grind, the grouse mountain in British Columbia is the 1000 meters. And it was a lot tougher. It's really steep. It's just like a straight up walk. Much, much harder. The walk I did the other day was not that tough. But technically, it's the highest I've ever been on the planet earth, you know, outside of being in an airplane. But that's weird too, because it's really conceptual. I mean, that was when it was just so foggy. I couldn't see anything. It did not feel like I was up in the air. Except in an abstract way. But technically, technically, that's the new champ 1100 meters. It's the highest mountain I've been on.

And that thing in the grouse mountain, I mean, that was years ago. I went up that. That one feels different because that's just one of the rare Canadian mountains that doesn't happen very often.

And actually, I don't know. 1000 meters was its highest point, but honestly, I guess I don't know if I actually did go to the highest point. Anyway, whatever. And yeah, good old pronunciation. So that mountain, I mean, you know, I should really try to look these things up ahead of time. So I'm not saying the wrong name over and over.

But to be fair, I did come up with that plan on the fly last episode. And I didn't even know the name of the mountain. I just knew it started with a queue.

So the mountain's name, it's Q-I-X-I-N-G. So I knew that the X was a shes sound. So I guess I was saying, kixing, kixing. But it turns out the Q is, so it's chishing, or chishing.

I'm probably still saying that wrong, you know, doing my best, but basically, chishing. And I was thinking, like, man, how do you get chi out of a queue? Like, it's not even close phonetically. And I was thinking how, you know, in Japan, when they write stuff out, it's actually really accurate. You just say it how it's written, and that's it. And it's oftentimes a odd Japanese-ified version of an English word, but it is, you say it the way it's written. And then Korea didn't seem too different. Not that I picked up a lot of words, but just, you know, like Busan instead of Busan. All right, remember one of my Korean friends in Vancouver always pronounced vanilla as banella. And, you know, I was saying jetchian, but it's jetchan, you know, little stuff. With Chinese, it does seem like it's pretty random. You really need to know what the sound is supposed to be. If you just try to say it in a North American English kind of way, it's not going to come out even close to right. But that's definitely not unique to Asian languages at all, because I was thinking how when I was in the Netherlands, if you just say a Dutch word in a North American way, sometimes you'll get away with it, but oftentimes people really won't know what you're talking about. Even simple words. Zewid is south, but they don't say Zewid. It's like jot or something, you know, it's like it's pretty different.

So I guess I just got to try to remember if I see a Q, it's a Chis sound.

But also, when you think about English, what the fuck is up with Q anyway? Why do we have Q? Q is just a K. Sometimes it's just a hard C. We have so many different ways to make this one sound. I don't know when Q is ever necessary. I'm pretty sure you could remove Q from our alphabet entirely. So it's kind of weird for me to say like, the Q is pronounced different. Well, good. It should be. At least Q has a fucking use when it is pronounced differently from a K. We just pronounced the sounds the same, so it's totally pointless.

But yeah, coming down at night was actually quite a problem. I would definitely recommend against that because by the time I got to the bottom, it was getting really dark. And it's one of those cases of just reverse engineering a route is so much harder than you expect because to get to that entrance to the mountain, I had to go through a walkway, a pedestrian walkway under a road that then went up some steps. But I don't even know what it looks like from the reverse angle. I didn't even think to turn around and look at it as I exited to have a visual idea of what I was looking for on the way back. So when I came back and I got to like the information lodge at the bottom and I was in a slightly different area than I was originally, you know, just somewhere on that campus I got turned around. And in the dark, especially with no one around, I couldn't find that little walkway for the life of me. So I just ended up taking a different path and it wasn't too bad. I mean, I probably only got derailed for about 20 minutes where I had to walk along a little, a little pedestrian walkway. But because it didn't go under the road, I had to kind of go along the road and it got fully dark and then I'm pulling out my phone and frogs start appearing and they're bouncing away from my flashlight. And I got to be careful not to step on them and they kept leading me toward the entrance, the entrance gate to Yangminshan. And it just wouldn't like it didn't, I guess because in the daytime, it's just a nice little walk. It's like, who cares, the exact distance. It's only 20 minutes. But because it didn't have, if even, maybe less than 20 minutes, it felt long as it was dark. But since it didn't have distances, I just, I went through like by the fourth sign, I was starting to get annoyed. I was like, where is the entrance? When are we getting to the fireworks factory? Stop telling me you're pointing me to the entrance. Just get me to the entrance. What is this? Anyway, oh and just because of the geography around there too, like then there's a part where it kind of, the valley opened up and I could see down and see Taipei proper and see all the lights of the city and it was super beautiful. But I'm like, what is this though? What the fuck? It's really started to feel like now I'm just going fully the wrong way. I don't know what the fuck's happening. But when I finally connected back up to the main road, then it was nice because it was the same as coming down from the other big mountains where it's just so well lit. The main roads are so well lit that that was really no problem. Walk back to the bustypo. No significant issue. But yeah, coming back in the dark fucked me up pretty good. And then when I got there, I mean nighttime is just a whole different world, especially for these like, you know, I took a tiny bus that only comes once in a while that didn't have that many people. I don't know if it even runs at night at all, you know, like hiking is over. So at the bustypo, there was like nobody there except me and one lady. And just a random big full-size bus showed up that just said it was going to an MRT station. And she was getting on that one. So I'm like, whatever, good enough, let's get on. And handily, that's where the bus originates. And I was going all the way to the end to the MRT station because we were the only two people on it at that point. But a little ways down, we stopped at a university. And it was just so many people lined up that they filled the entire bus like everything. There's 100% just packed full of people. So at least I could just sit there and let it happen around me. You know, I didn't have to get off midway through. That helped a lot. But yeah, it was just through the main road. There's like the one big sick road on Google Maps that goes all the way up there. It's the one I walked down the first time I was in that area. So I had rode it and it took forever. And it was kind of unpleasant, but ultimately connected to an MRT. Once I got to the subway station, I was feeling pretty good. I was like, yeah, Taipei is cool. I like it here. Even when you're up by the mountains, it's quite easy to get around. And all the trains, it's quite good. They had getting from the bottom of the mountain just to the bus. It's significantly tougher than I expected. Kind of fucked me up. But all right, I should stop the hammering because 20 minutes sounds like a long bus wait, but it can add up fast. And I got to make sure I don't miss this bus. This is going to be a long ride, unfortunately. This is going to be a long fucking ride. Where am I anyway?

National Taipei University of, and my little map, that's all it says, whatever.

Oh, here we go. National Taipei University of Technology at Zhong Xiao. Again, I'm sure I'm saying wrong.

And I'm heading all the way to the East Coast. So yeah, I feel like this bus ride, I don't know. Could be, is it like 90 minutes? Hopefully, it's not that long. But hey, whatever. We'll see.

All right, I'm on the 953 Express bus. And everybody emptied out of this thing at the university. Me and three old ladies got on. So I'm sitting at the back of the bus all by myself. So I guess we'll see how express it is and how many people it picks up on the way. But for now, I can yammer to myself. And yeah, just figure out where to pass the time a little on this potentially long bus ride. It is nice, like I always say. I mean, I know it's a basic thing everyone has, but that I somehow traveled around in 2019 without the GPS blue dot Google map thing on my phone.

It's nice now that I can pull it out and just see where I'm at. You know, just see where my dots at. Yeah, where my dots at, but I'll wait till I get way further on before I do that. If we're now just looking out the window, just watching Taipei go by. And this bus only beeps when it turns. So that's not so bad. I can edit out those beeps.

But yeah, this place, the Queens head, it's called and it looks pretty cool now that I'm aware of it. You can just on the map. It's just there's the coastline, which it did make me think with all the rain and stuff. This will probably not be a plan, but how I loved walking around the coast of Jeju. I'm looking at Queens head and it's clearly it's the moneymail and it's the part that shuts out into the ocean.

So I don't know if the rest of the coast is walkable. Maybe not. There's a highway that goes right along it and the little bit that I went to the coast before up in the north and of the subway system didn't seem especially accessible. You know, it helped a lot on Jeju that there was the Ola trail set up. But I was thinking like, man, could I just walk around the coast of Taipei? That would be cool. Get back to my coastal walk and I do love that shit. But I don't know how accessible that is around here. I don't even know if I could actually like these buses. I mean, there are buses, but this Queens head is obviously easier to get to. Getting to random spots on the coastline. I don't know how easy that would be. It crossed my mind just all I'm saying.

But yeah, this was a very, very weird, weird, you know, spacious way that I learned about this thing. Because I mean, I could, I guess, just look up like, hey, top 10 tourist things to do in Taipei. Sometimes those lists aren't the worst. You know, you might find a thing or two you didn't expect. But I remember even like when I lived in New York was the first time I really did that. Because I was not getting along so well with New York. And I was like, hmm, you know, people say this is the greatest city in the world. What am I missing here? Let's look up top 10, whatever's in New York. And yeah, it just wasn't that good. None of it was that impressive. And that's when I started to realize like, maybe it's better to just wander around and find your own stuff. And then if you do stumble upon a famous thing, it'll still kind of feel pretty cool because you found it yourself. And even if you find nothing, just whatever you do on your own, I don't know. I find those days tend to be memorable and tend to be cool. Where if I go out of my way to go to a tourist thing, the chances that me carrying are not great.

Still though, maybe I should do that because it probably would have alerted me to something like this. So I probably should just, you know, just do my due diligence. Just at least take a gander at the top 10, top 20. Just see if anything. Because I guess that's the thing. It'll lead you to a lot of, oh, you can go see the symphony here or whatever. But natural stuff like this, you know, is awesome. It's cool. There's only so many areas where, you know, there's a weird, uh, pokey part of the land that goes out into the sea. That's a all special and beautiful. You know, like, that's the kind of thing I don't want to miss. That would be the kind of thing if I see it on YouTube. But you're from now, I'll be like, oh, fuck, I'm a fool. I missed that. I got to go back. I mean, I'm going to go back to Taipei anyway, but I'd be like, when I go back to Taipei. But anyway, how I learned about this one is I was on YouTube. And, you know, YouTube is definitely, uh, an echo chamber. You know, if you search nothing but funny dog videos, you'll get a lot of funny dog videos. So it is probably not coincidence that I was scrolling through stuff. And I saw a scantily clad lady walking around. There's these videos that are, I was going to say, I'm sure that you've seen them. But maybe you haven't. Maybe you look up funny dog videos. But it's this whole array of videos of, like, hot women who, like, go camping and stuff, you know, or they just go see some sites or they just travel around. And it's like, hey, look at my cleavage.

By the way, here's how you put up a tent. It's fucking weird. Many of them are trying to funnel you into an only fans, but not always. And in those cases, I kind of don't know what's going on.

I'm up on a bridge now, but there's, uh, there's barriers on the side to block sound. So I can't really see around me. I don't know. Okay, it looks like it's not even a bridge over water. It's like a land bridge.

Yeah, because I guess I don't think I'll be going near any water on my way here. I'm just kind of circling around the bottom of the national park.

Yeah, there are. This is overpass central. I do think Taipei. I've seen a lot of overpasses in my life, but I think this is the highest density of overpasses I've ever seen. There are so many of them. And it's not the worst. I mean, it makes navigation a little bad on foot. It obviously makes noise a little bad when you're near them, but it's kind of weirdly pretty, too.

It's only mess me up here and again. And it's kind of visually cool looking, especially at night. Oh, okay, to my right, there's the good old Taipei 101. Man, that building is a godsend.

I can always tell where I am because of the 101. It's looking pretty hazy today, but the air quality is actually good today. I think that is just the impending typhoony weather.

The air quality has actually been like, in the green, has been fully good for quite some time now. We can have two weeks. Or at least I presume that's true. It's been good enough that I haven't checked every day anymore, you know. In Korea, it's like, alright, let's check. Not optional. But at least in the summertime here in Taipei, there were some bad days. But yeah, it's been such a stretch that I've just been like, yeah, it looks good to me. And then every time I do check, it's always green.

But okay, I was getting into my base nature. So yeah, I was scrolling through YouTube and I just saw one of these, like, lady in a low-cut dress. Super cleavage. Walking through some tourist area, you know, again, what I consider a standard YouTube video. But I saw that in the description, it said Taipei. And I'm like, well, that's a win-win, you know.

This video is only like two minutes long. It's got a hot lady on the thumbnail and it's about Taipei. I can't imagine why I wouldn't click on this. And yeah, that's how I learned about the Queen's Head. She was walking around and I was like, this place is fucking gorgeous. What the fuck is this? And then I did a little googling and I was like, oh shit, look at that. Thank you, Booby lady. Thank you on every possible level. You've enriched my life today, ma'am.

So yeah, then I looked it up and that university stop I was at is very near the orange line. The orange line is where my Airbnb is, but of course all the lines connect up, you know, it's not hard to get there no matter what. This 953 Express, I mean, yes, so far. We went up on that, I guess that overpass we were on was to get us onto a highway because yeah, we're on a highway now. Great big truck next to me. We haven't made a single stop. I don't know where we ever would make a stop. And it's just me and the three old ladies and a bus driver. Can't fucking beat that shit.

So yeah, I don't know, that's kind of funny that that is like it's it's kind of a legitimate way to learn about famous spots, you know. You can pick your poison. Like, hey, would I like a an English vlogger? An English speaking vlogger to take me around and show me the sights cool. Maybe I'm more comfortable with a different language. Let's find a Chinese speaker, you know, who goes to the areas of Taipei. Hey, you know what? What if I'm a pervert? What if I'm just a big old pervert? I just like boobies. Oh, here's a booby lady. She's taking me around at the sights of Taipei.

But yeah, that's what led me here today. Oh, now I'm going by a river. Yeah, I mean, I'll stop the hammer now because you know, obviously sound quality.

You know, bus is not the best. There's the old Taipei 101. I'm still still going by it. It's gonna take a little while to pass by. Yeah, I'm kind of glad though I caught this express because there was an express and a normal bus. And yeah, I mean this highway traffic is still not the fastest in the world. 20:00 But obviously it's way faster that it's not stopping. It can't even stop. There's nowhere to stop. We're just on the highway. This is a big bonus, I guess. This is a bonus to going to the big, famous thing is that if I just pick a random spot, there's no motherfucking express bus that's going to take me and three old ladies all the way there. Only a place with touristic intentions is going to do that. It's good to do sometimes. Nice thing to do.

But all right, let's quit this Yammer and let's fade out and let's fade back in at the famed Queen's Head.

All right, I made it to the Queen's Head, Yellow U Geopark. How close was that to anything? Y-E-H-L-E-U Geopark. And the Queen's Head, I'm just seeing on a picture here, it is a rock formation that looks like a Queen's Head, like an ancient Egyptian Empress's Head or something. It didn't occur to me that this was actually like fancy pants like this. I got to get a ticket and stuff. So the ticket was 120 new Taiwanese dollars, so that's like five bucks Canadian. I got like an hour and a half before this place closes, so that works out pretty good.

It's very windy, which I feel like is usually in eastern Canada, that means the weather is a change in. So this could be that creepy typhoony stuff coming. Or it could just be windy because I'm on the coast, I don't know. But I think I made the right choice, coming here today. On case, the rest of the week is a write-off. But yeah, the ride here was really nice actually. So it had those little barricades at first, just top noise, but those went away. And then the view on the highway was actually pretty nice, just lots of mountains and there's so many buildings dotted around the mountains. And all the trees and stuff. And then about halfway through, instead of a highway, it just became more of normal driving through normal neighborhoods. And we only picked up a couple more people on the way. Took a little over an hour. And yeah, it's one of those things I'm sure if I had to make the commute every day, it would get boring. But it's way better than like a long subway ride where you're just trapped in a little capsule. This one was nice. You know, just got to look out the window. It went by really fast. It says just like, ah, look at all this stuff. How great. Soak in the views. It's pretty busy now that I'm here and I have no idea where I'm going, but I'm assuming it'll just funnel me through. I'll just follow whoever else is here. Funnel me through to see the things.

Here's the cute princess. This is not the queen's head. It's a smaller one. Yeah, they're just like these big rock formations that just kind of pop up out of the ground.

Kind of cool. Definitely the coastal area here on the way here felt a lot like a lot of Jeju, you know, just coastal folk doing their coastal work. But that's kind of a nice vibe.

Oh, the queen's head too. Here's the second one.

Dude, a long-term weathering in erosion. The appearance of queen's head, the symbol of Yubibla, it's gradually wearing down.

Oh, this is a fiberglass replica. Interesting. So this is, I guess, because the original queen's head has fallen apart. So they've preserved a version. Good thinking. Good and hard.

But yeah, the idea of walking along the coastline, just from seeing this little bit that I've seen, I don't think so. I don't think that's going to happen because it's very rugged, very rugged coast, which makes sense because the national park with the big mountains really does butt up directly against the ocean. There's really no room. It's just ocean and immediately the national park with the big mountains. So it makes sense that it's going to be steep and brutal. I don't think that's happening. Oh, yeah, this is pretty nice. Now we just opened up to the coast. Can just see out into the ocean.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's neat that they have weird little formations and stuff, but whatever. It's just nice to be at a nice wide open ocean area, just to get the view.

Let's see down the coast. Yeah, I kind of missed this because I mean, I was doing this kind of stuff every day on Jeju for two months.

And it was van der Baugh. I kind of missed this ocean feel of the waves crashing, the intense wind.

It's very nice. Very fucking nice. Got to love being by the shore. I love mountains, obviously. But if I could pick only one, be next to a mountain or be next to the shore, I don't know man, that's a hard choice because the mountains are so perfect for exercise. The mountains are more useful to a healthy lifestyle, but just visually and just the way that it feels I love being by the coastline feels so good. Wow, yeah, now I'm on a platform looking down. There's a lot of people here. I don't know which one is the Queen's head, I'm sure they'll let me know. But there's a whole bunch of these. They're just like rock formations that, you know, everything is eroded around them, so they're just jutting up from the ground, but they have like a narrower base and then they flare out at the top.

Most of them do not look like a head, but I guess some of them do. They're pretty big too, like just judging by people. They're bigger than a person.

These things are like 12 feet tall. Cool man, this is cool. All right, I'm going to wander around, take some fucking pictures.

Wow, it was fucking windy as fuck when I was like out exposed by the ocean, which I guess, you know, because we're jutting out into the sea.

I mean, we're like in the sea, right? You know, I guess it makes sense that it's going to be windy anywhere, but it was so fucking crazy windy. Like I was trying to take pictures of these formations and I couldn't hold my spindly little fucking bird arms fucking steady. Like I literally couldn't hold my phone fully steady. It was so windy. It's crazy. It's like a wind tunnel. Now I'm a little further on and I guess that thing I saw before of the cute princess. That was also a recreation mix sense. Why would those, yeah, those formations wouldn't be in there at the entrance. They're out here on the flats.

But I'm at the proper Queen's Head and y'all of a sudden it's gotten ridiculous. You know, there's like a walkway and a long line of people lining up to take pictures with the Queen's Head. So that's okay. I'm Queen's Head adjacent. This will be fine. I guess I should take a picture, but it actually, because if you don't see it from the right angle, it doesn't look like I'm from the side. So it just looks like just looks like a blotch. But yeah, I'm not going to wait in line. I'm not going to wait in line for my picky pick. That's okay. I'm just soaking in the overall vibes. And yeah, it's kind of cool. These little weird formations and the rocks and stuff. But it does remind me of Jeju of like enterprising folk that have access to, you know, a natural phenomenon of some stripe be it a waterfall or those cool columnar pillars. And they're like, hey, let's charge a couple bucks. Hey, Marge, a couple bucks. But yeah, the overall coastline is also plenty cool. Just looking at these big cliff sides and all the greenery growing on them and stuff.

It's definitely the, it's the overall vibe that's cool. I don't, I don't need no Queen's Head. Get out of here, Queen's Head. I'm not standing in a fucking line.

I didn't even know you existed earlier today. I thought maybe the whole area was just called the Queen's Head. Oh, yeah, back out into, yes. I mean, there's limited, as I've always said, this podcast is fucking weird to begin with. Possibly limited value to me describing these things when you could just go on YouTube and watch somebody do a walk through the whole goddamn place.

But especially today, this kind of wind, this ain't the time, the fairies shoe over this way. Well, I'll write. I'll see what you are, fairies shoe. I mean, it seems like they did just walk around and look at all these rocks. It's like looking at clouds, right? It's like, what could we possibly say that these look like? Oh, there's one over here that's like a hole through it. People are taking pictures with. Could that be a fairies shoe? Sure, why not?

But yeah, pretty cool. It isn't quite the same as, I don't know. I mean, again, this probably just speaks more to my weird personality. I'm like, wow, this hiking trail, right by Shin Dn Station. You just go to the station and you can go hike. I recommend that fully, you know, where this, this is cool and all. But I do feel more like, hey, why not? Why not? If you're around anyway, you can take a shuttle bus here, spend five bucks, come see some cool stuff. Why not?

But it is a bit more of a why not vibe instead of a, like, wow, vibe. But it's not bad, it's not bad.

But yeah, this is silly, it's hell, man. This is so fucking windy. There's no point. No point in trying to podcast here. No time for love, Dr. Jones. Turn this shit off.

Wee the wind. So yeah, it's actually a pretty small area. I think I saw what there is to see. I didn't see the Queen's Head from close-up or from the exact proper angle, but that's fine. Or actually, I guess the Princess Head, I don't know, who cares, whatever. There's like, gotta be at least a hundred of those little random things. You know, they just pick the couple that sort of look like a thing.

But they're all good. There is a further path, like a bigger mountain that goes out into the water, even further. And there is like a walkway, like a wooden walkway and stairs and stuff, but it's cordoned off now. So I don't know what the story with that is, but I mean, it's fucking crazy weather and shit today anyway. It's probably not even a safe idea to go up there. It's quite a bit higher. And this wind is like literally so bad that I just get blown to the side while walking. It's crazy. Maybe that's why it's, because it's just like that police tape, you know, just temporary, really cordoned off. But just like this podcast, you might be better served, just going on YouTube. I'll do that too. I'll just go on YouTube. I'll just go find someone do a walkthrough of it, take a gander.

And yeah, I really don't think there's much else to do around these parts because it does just become rugged coastline on one side and full on fishing concern on the other side. But I think that's okay. I mean, it's a little weird to take the bus out here and then wander around for an hour and then just head straight back. But I also really don't want to be figuring out the bus and trying to catch the bus in the dark. It's just very unpleasant trying to sort out buses in the dark because it's such a different world. The nighttime is just, the nighttime is such a different vibe. It just saw eerie and instead of looking at the window and being like, oh, look at all these sights. You look at the window and you just see, you know, nighttime lights. It's pretty but creepy also. So yeah, I feel like the old queen's head. It's right in the center, right in the middle of the balance of like, yeah, I think this was worth it. This was cool. But it was mostly worth it.

Just going through the spinning turnstile and exit. It was mostly worth it just to see the coast, you know, just to be in the coast and feel that spray on your face and see all the big cliff sides and stuff here. And then the actual geopark is like, yeah, why not? I mean, since I'm here anyway. Why not? Have some shackles. Let me go look at this motherfucker. Wow, even the place where you pay to park your parking is shaped like the queen's head. It does like, I mean, this shape that they use everywhere. Like if you do see this thing from the exact right angle, it does look like a profile of a head.

But I mean, as far as natural wonders go, it's pretty low on the fucking list. Oh, and here's the little, now here's where you can buy touristy stuff for a squid on a stick and whatnot. Let's just wander through here.

I did just drink a big one of the, there's a 7-Eleven at the near where the bus dropped me off. They've got the delicious big carton of green tea with yogurt drink. Guzzled that down, delicious, because I hadn't had anything to drink before I got on the bus. So maybe I'll just hang out here long enough just till I got a pee again. Just like to time it out as good as possible. Well, actually, I think the bus, though, that shuttle only comes like every hour. So I'll go see when the bus is coming and then time it out to get one nice final pee before I sit on the bus again. But yeah, let's talk about something completely inappropriate to finish things off. This is the beauty of, I did see a couple of fellow North Americans or whiteies at the very least earlier. But I'm pretty much the only one here now, so I feel like I can just talk about whatever I want. It's fine, no one knows what I'm fucking talking about. So when I first got to Taipei, I was mentioning that how much freer it felt in mainland China, you know, just everything was very open and comfortable. 35:00 And then I was like, oh yeah, you know, now that I think about it, I have in passing seen some kind of Taiwanese porn. You know, just like once or twice, it's very rare thing. But that that even exists is telling, because you can really kind of, you can really tell about societies based on their porn. Like what's allowed and what isn't. You know, Japan does some pretty weird porn, they seem pretty open, but at the same time they censor genitalia. You know, it's like open and incredibly censored at the same time. Korean porn pretty much doesn't exist, it's just these comic books that are also censored and are just drawings. So it's like, oh well, they're doing what they can. They're making what they can, but that's all they're allowed to make. Chinese porn, forget about it, just doesn't exist, not a thing.

So you know, you really can kind of get a gauge of like the openness of a society based on their naughty works.

So out of curiosity, I went and looked into it a little more. Like what is the deal with Taiwanese porn? Because Korea, like I said, really doesn't have any. China definitely doesn't have any.

What was that that I saw? It's like a little surprising that there would be Taiwanese porn. And it's really weird. I don't have any definitive information. I don't really understand what's going on. But I think this is interesting. Cover your precious ears, I guess, if you don't want to hear about porn at all. But it seems like Taiwanese porn is very nascent, very new, very fairly rare and like mostly very amateurish. There's really only one kind of major company called Javid.

And even day, it's like, yeah, you know, it still sort of feels more like a higher end only fans than like a production. But what I really found interesting, so the way Japan censors genitalia, that kind of gives them some weird leeway. Where most of the time Japanese porn is just normal porn, but they do censor it. But they do have the option because they're censoring people's dicks that they could strap a fake dick on there. They do use fake, fake ejaculate is common in all kinds of porn all over the place.

But yeah, there have been the occasional Japanese porn where, you know, someone's been able to catch them out and be like, that's clearly a fake dick. That's not that guy's real dick. But if it's all being blurred out with a mosaic, like whatever, who fucking cares, right?

So I looked up some of this Taiwanese porn and they were doing that to the end degree. And it was like kind of interesting because it's like, wow, is this like, like maybe you're not allowed to make porn. So you just go as far as you possibly can. Because it was just like this fucking, I don't know, three cheerleader chicks come in and the dudes are like, wow, cool, let's fucking make out. But it was very openly, like they weren't trying to hide it. It was just like the guys kind of pretending to bang these chicks whose clothes were still on. And if there was a dick, it was a full plastic, very obviously fake dick. And the girls had like band aids or whatever over their nipples, like they just, it just wasn't technically, there was no nudity. It was just like acting sexual. And I was like, man, that is fucking fascinating. Is that like, do they have to do that? Is that all that they're allowed to do? How fucking, how strange, how bizarre, but in a weird way, how kind of creative.

However, then I dug in some more and I found some like forum posts and stuff and people were like, what is the deal with this? Because sometimes they just don't do that. It's always censored, they always like censored the genitalia ultimately. But there's other Taiwanese porn where it's like clearly just like Japanese style, it's just, just people fucking. There's the nipples, there's the guys real dick, blur it up, send it out into the world.

So they have like, it's fairly easy to find, pretty common to find this like mega censored kind of play porn. Where it's just like, let's just make humpy motions, like we're just goofing around. Let's use a plastic peepee.

But then there's other ones where they just don't do that at all. So it doesn't seem to be a necessity of the law. It's just like an artistic choice. They're just like, let's just do this.

Wow, only three minutes, darn it. I came over to the bus stop just to see the time assuming it would be a long wait. I actually know what it's all right because there's, I guess this time of day, there's more. There's a bus in three minutes but there's one in 11 minutes. I'm going to go back now to the washroom. 40:00 I'm going to miss the three minute bus because that'll be the perfect amount of time to go back to the washroom by the parking lot and stuff. Have a nice pee, catch the 11 bus because yeah, I just want to make sure it is a pretty long bus ride back. Kind of a fun, cool, nice view filled bus ride. It'll be a lot less fun if I get a pee out this goddamn yogurt tea.

So anyway, yeah, I have no conclusions about that. I don't know what's going on with the hide and seek fucking Taiwanese porn. It's either the most censored porn I've ever seen or it's just kind of in line with Japan and they just, I don't know, they do both. Very odd. I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means at all. But I thought that was interesting. What an odd thing. Man, a lot of stray dogs in the parking lot here.

Like, six dogs just chilling in this parking lot.

It's nice that the stray dogs seem very friendly. Because yeah, there's a, I mean, I wouldn't say there's a lot of them. They're not just like all over the place. But when you do find one, it's like a pack. When you do find one, you're going to find ten. There's probably a bunch of dogs around here that I don't even see.

But all right, there's my little adventure to the queen's head. That was a random thing. Thank you, booby lady on YouTube for telling me about this. Ultimately, yeah, it turns out this would have been, this would have been all right. If I had missed out on this, it's like, well, I guess that's fine. I don't think this one would have played on my mind too hard. But while I'm here, it's a pretty easy thing to come do. Kind of glad I did it. And especially, see how this weather. Very fucking suspect. Very eerie.

I have a feeling I got some time coming up ahead of me where, oh man, okay. The lady just, I'm not quite sure why. The lady just put like a barricade up in front of the washroom. Usually, there, it usually is ladies cleaning the washrooms. That happens a lot in Asia. Even for the men's washroom, it's just understood. Like, I don't worry about it. It's just somebody here to clean the bathroom.

But they usually just do it. I've never, they don't usually close the whole bathroom. Could it be that just everything's wrapping up for the day? 420, I mean, it's possible. But anyway, I missed the washroom. And now I got to hop back to the bus stop. So I can catch that bus. I think I'll make it. I think it's all right. But anyway, we turn this fucking stupid thing off. There's my random adventure for the day. My random factoids about Taiwanese adult entertainment. If the weather is to be believed, there might not be an update for a few days. Or it'll be an update of like, holy fuck, I'm getting rained on like crazy. And my boot smells like ammonia again. Oh, actually, that's a good, that's good thinking. I should go buy some supplies.