The lady with the pumelos told us that we should take the MRT (subway) over to the night market. We were cool with that, but her directions regarding getting to the MRT station were vague to say the least. We started out anyway figuring that worst case scenario, we'd grab a cab and it'd be no different than if we'd gotten one of the dozens parked outside the flower market.
We walked and walked and walked some more and then while Steve and I stopped at an ATM (and nearly had accidents in our pants when we saw the amounts pop up on the screen - not thinking that we're talking about NT (30:1), seeing $1000, $3000, $5000, or $10000 as options was NOT normal!!! Then we had a good laugh about it.) Eric, who speaks a little Mandarin, busied himself going into the 7-11 (shocking that we could find one...you could seriously throw a stone and hit one anywhere in Taipei - and sometimes you could be at one 7-11 and throw a stone and hit another one, but they're handy to have around, so I'm not complaining!) and got directions to the station.
We got to the station just fine but realized that we didn't know which Subway line to take. Two teenagers approached us and asked if we needed some help. We were grateful and they got us on the right track.
Next we needed to know how to calculate what fare to buy. We needed to take the blue line into Taipei central and then the red line out to Jiantan station to get to the Shilin night market. Fortunately for us another teenager could see our dismay (and we were quite obviously making multiple trips to the route map and the fare machine and pointing a lot and probably looking far more than confused) and asked if we needed help. We learned that it would only be $25NT each to take the MRT, so we bought tickets and away we went.
The process is pretty cool. You put your money in the fare machine and it spits out a blue token. Then you scan the token at the turnstile and you're in. When you get off on the other side, you deposit the token into the turnstile to get out again. We got on the blue line just fine and headed to the main station. Then I thought I knew the right direction to head on the red line and we got on it. I was WRONG. So we got off at the next stop and got back on the red line going in the opposite direction (and looked like those idiots you see taking a freeway off ramp only to use the on ramp at the other side of the exit) and then we were fine. We got off the MRT and could pretty easily find the night market.
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