Friday13thApril07

Today I was invited to a special lunch that had been organised for all the exchange students at Ming Chuan University. 1 Scot, 1 American, 1 Thai and heaps of Koreans. It was pretty nice. Lots of food and a really nice welcome (even if we have been here for a month and a half already) from the dean of the International College.

I had been looking forward to my afternoon all week. A trip to Taipei to visit a friend and a chance to sample some of the night-life. I'm not a big drinker in Scotland, but I do enjoy a wee something from time to time and kinda miss the drinking culture. I don't mean alcoholic, just the social drinking thing we have going on in Scotland, whether it be for tea, coffee or wine, socialising over beverages is something I enjoy but isn't common practice here.

I wanted to check out some camera stuff first so we met up later on after she had finished work. It was pretty late before we actually got organised, but things come more alive at night here where it's common practice for shops to be open twelve till ten, instead of nine till five, so it didn't matter. We had dinner then headed to a bar near Taipei 101. It was so cool. The lighting, décor, everything was so relaxed but pretty classy, although we didn't feel out of place. I guess it's testament to the people and culture here, it's so much less judgemental and more laid back. The waitresses were all models and it's apparently one of the best places to play 'guess who's a transvestite' (it's mildly terrifying cos you seriously can't tell, the women are beautiful men, and the men are beautiful women.) Every table came with it's own set of crayons to draw on the table cloth (I may have gone a little overboard on the old doodles, restraint is not possible in some situations.)

We then left their and headed to the cinema around midnight to see 300. It was the only thing on that we both recognised but didn't no what it was about. First fifteen minutes in I was dreading a testosterone filled war movie, thankfully it happened to be a very good one with lots of beautiful... colours.