must stop drinking (and eating)

Apparently, "let's meet up in Taipei" is code for "let's get together every night, stay out late, and eat and drink like crazy people".

This year, somehow everyone decided to fly to Taipei for the holidays. Several of us arrived around 8pm on the night of the 23rd, and after dropping off our bags and taking a quick shower, we promptly headed for BarCode, a bar/lounge near Taipei 101. Originally the plan was to check out Room 18 as well, but then we heard several reports that it was full of teenyboppers and we didn't want to be the sketchy old people in the 18+ club. The cocktails were really quite good, and not terribly expensive, I had a "Honey Berry Royale" which had berry juice, vodka, and champagne in it, which only cost about $10, and several people had a "Healthy Happy Sexy" drink (or some similarly badly named), which was excellent. Around midnight we thought about heading to a club before deciding we were starving and headed to a cheapo restaurant nearby. Good decision; the cover for the club would have been 800 NT (about $25) per person, and instead we ended up spending a total of $50 for ten people to have second dinner. The restaurant (one of many on that street) served porridge with tons of side dishes; my favorites were the Japanese tofu, the fatty pork, the marinated clams, and the pickled bean sprouts. I had no jetlag problems at all and felt into bed exhausted around 3am.

The next day, after a five-course Christmas dinner with my family at one of my favorite Western-style Taipei restaurants (亞里士), we headed to the Partyworld KTV in Shi Men Ding. Since there were ten or twelve of us again, and we had a F&B minimum of 100 NT ($3) per head, we ended up staying four hours and going through five pitchers of Taiwan Beer and a bunch of Smirnoff Ice. Several people headed off to Mint (club, basement of 101) afterwards, but I decided 2am was late enough, since I had to be up at 8am.

Today I woke up feeling full already, but we nevertheless stuffed ourselves silly in the basement of the Breeze Center, eating beef noodle soup, shredded beef wrapped in soft pancakes, ramen, Japanese fried vegetables, and of course, dao whei (soft tofu in ginger syrup), which I ordered with peanuts. Only five hours later, we had Peking duck and dim sum at Long Du (famous for their duck), before heading over to the Shi Lin Night Market. There, I ate a bag of egg puffs, pork jerky, and part of a fried pork dumpling, before conceding to the physical limitations of my stomach. We ended the evening playing silly carnival games for cheap prizes. I finally headed home around midnight, feeling old and tired, and walked in through my front door twenty minutes ago. I should probably go to sleep now.