Getting around in the big city.
So I don’t think that we really appreciated the way that not speaking or reading the language would affect us on a day to day basis. Really, for the most part, getting around Taipei is really easy with just English. Most transit signs have romanized words, and since we went with the 30 day unlimited data plans for $30, google maps and the metro app gets us where we need to go. Negotiating the MRT has been so great for us, we are thinking of organizing this site by metro line. Perhaps more on this later.
However, trying to eat has been more of a challenge than expected. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of places that either have English translations on the menu, or employees who speak enough English to help you out. They tend to be the more spendy places though. Before coming to Taipei, we had looked at plenty of sites that said that most everyone eats out here, and that food can be found that is about $3 to $5 US per person.
Making it work for less than $5 per person
So this is what we thought we would find on every street corner. Fulfilling if unfamiliar fare that we could tweet, blog, snap, or insta- whatever to share and record all the great little cheap eats in the area. Not exactly busted, but once the boots are on the pavement, things are really quite different.
Many places have picture menus, so you can always point to a picture and then raise a finger and people will figure it out. Many of the cheaper places just have a listing of items in characters and a number following. Not super easy to point to and say: “one of those please.”
We have heard that what happens to a lot of fresh off the boat foreigners is that they end up eating all of their meals at the local 7-11. Convenience stores are raised to a whole new level here, more on that later. What you end up doing is frequenting mall food courts or places that have their plates immortalized in plastic, or great pictures, or a sampling of what is available in glass cases. The train station was a great place for $1 steamed buns for us:
$1 Steamed buns in to go bag
There are small shops all over town that will sell cheap fantastic food, but we are still working on how to figure out how to order from them. We are getting some good options, just found a place that sells 6 freshly steamed potstickers for $0.94.
Oh yeah, postickers are amazing here.