Taoyuan Nights

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate Banqiao under cover of dark and take photographs of confusing items.”

Banqiao is an area in the southwest of Taipei. There seems to be a reasonable amount of building work going on there just now, no doubt partly due to the High Speed Rail terminal that opened there, though it was already a major MRT/train/bus terminal anyway.

Why was I there? Well, it turns out there are two main types of train in Taiwan:

• Trains that insist on stopping at a whole bunch of stupid places when you’re in a hurry or needing the toilet.
• Trains that definitely don’t go to the place you want, and that add insult to injury by going past your intended destination really fast and not stopping for a good half hour.

Depending on the kind of inconvenience you’re hoping to have, you may have to pay some extra cash. In my case, I paid for the luxury of being driven past Inge station (my intended destination) at high speed, with no stops for 30-40km, after hopping onto an express train by mistake. Having arrived in Banqiao, I decided I might as well make the most of it and have a look round.

A street near the train station in Banqiao. By the looks of things,
Banqiao has some sort of giant birds that crap onto the road.

Would you like to buy a vulgarness?

How about a remote control?

A treat for your dog?

So THAT’S what JSC stands for.

Getting dark now. Crossing the road is becoming a bit more dangerous.

A groovy walkway right next to the train station.

The following day, I went back to see how Banqiao looked with a bit more light on it. But I’ll leave those photos for another day.