Bathrooms in Brothels

I spent my first free day in Taipei touring the Longshan Temple and Huaxi Market Street area (known to expats as "Snake Alley"). For these past few days I've been doing whatever Meghan wanted to do, as she only had three days, and I'll be here for a month. The Temple was filled with locals coming to pitch their wishes to Buddha for the Chinese New Year.
Snake Alley proved daunting, with turtles heads being cut off and snakes skinned on the spot in the name of your next meal.


The title of this post comes from us using a bathroom at what looked like a restaurant and only discovering it to be a brothel (evidenced by the multiple clocks, room keys, shady ladies and the hole punched in the wall.
After moving from hotel to hostel and threatening a couchsurf, I'm now at the house of Ben, a Canadian friend of mine from Bangladesh last summer. He's just moved here with his girlfriend and another friend to teach English for a year. They're sifting through the job market now, so I'm hearing the commentary and learning many pointers.

I've been exploring through friends (some Taipei students from ALV camp!) and couchsurfers. there really is no "alone" anymore in this world!