Ghostbusters

Had a bit of a random weekend in Taipei. On Friday night I stayed home as I was feeling a little tired and was suffering from sunburn and itchy bug bites compliments of my trip to Vietnam. Was back to normal by Saturday though so decided to join some friends at a pool party being held at one of the hotels. I don't think I've ever been to an organized pool party before, but it was fun and oh so nice to take a dip in the cold water given the heat and humidity of the city. After that we stopped by my flatmate's bar for a bit, then a few of us headed to Room 18 for a long night of dancing. As I've mentioned before, the clubs here are packed on weekends. I've never seen more people in one room than I've seen crammed into the hip-hop side of Room 18. And with cover costing $20 a pop, the owner must be raking it in. Maybe I should stay here and open a club...

Sunday I got up in time to have lunch with my flatmates. It was the day of the Dragon Boat Festival which is when Taiwanese people traditionally eat zongzi, steamed glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves. My flatmate Katrina had gotten some from her mom so we had that for lunch while Katrina and Vivid filled me in on some of the Chinese legends related to zongzi and the dragon boats. They also explained to me that the bundles of herbs I would see tied to our doors and many others were there to keep the ghosts away. Keeping ghosts away is a big thing in Chinese culture.

After lunch I headed to Daiji River Park to check out the dragon boat races. Honestly, it wasn't too exciting and I was surprised how slowly the boats moved given that there are about 20 people paddling. But they have short narrow oars that don't move much water, hence the slow speeds. One of these days maybe they'll change the oars and it'll be more exciting to watch. But it was good to see once.

On Monday I was supposed to go hiking with a friend from the office, but that got canceled due to thundershowers. So instead Katrina and I headed to the National Museum of History to check out a special exhibition of the works of the French painter Jean François Millet, on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Then it was home to eat some ice cream and relax before starting my last week of work in Taipei.