New Year's Eve

Let's recap: it's 12:35pm on January 1st, and I am just now sitting down to write my blog from December 31st. Why, you may ask? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that I got in from the New Years' festivities around 5 hours ago, and I do actually like to sleep on occasion. And it's pretty much official: I'll never be able to top this year's New Year's Eve.

Last night, Karina and I were debating whether we wanted to stay in our hostel and enjoy the view or go out and explore the *real* celebration five blocks away. We chose the latter.

...after we explored the roof, that is.

The door was unlocked, after all!

And that turned out to be the best decision EVER. We wandered over around 7:30pm, so, like 4 1/2 hours until the big event--and the place was practically deserted. Seriously. While places like NYC start packing 'em in--and, for that matter, start closing streets and sending out extra patrols--several days early, when we got there mere hours away it was less crowded than the 4th of July in Harrisburg, Oregon! More people total, of course, but spread out over a much larger space, and overall INFINITELY fewer people than we were imagining.


So, after, you know, traipsing within pretty good sight distance of all the headliner musicians performing next to City Hall (the only time we really had to pay attention to where we were walking, and that only for about 5 minutes), where we stayed for a couple of songs--including this one, which I've heard before and love but only knew as "O A" until just now, thanks to Karina, we made a brief stop at a massive bookstore. Where I found--wait for it--A MINT MOCHA!



Seriously, major discovery. In the States, mint mochas are my exclusive holiday drink; here, I have never seen one for sale, in any store, ever. Until yesterday when, conveniently, I was in need of a constant inflow of caffeine!

Hello, old friend...

Eventually, around 8 or 8:30, we settled down into a primo spot facing Taipei 101, where we bought a deck of cards from a hawker and waited for Brittany, Rachel, and Tom to show up to join us. Over the next couple of hours, we played cards and watched the spaces around us gradually fill up until, at around 11pm, when Rachel and I left for a bit and tried to come back, we were practically stepping on people and had people telling us there were no spots left, despite our reassurances that our friends were holding our spot.

A little behind our actual seats, which were maybe 3 blocks from the building itself

 

The crowd behind us.

And then came the fireworks. I'll let them speak for themselves:
(I can't get it to link to Rachel's video, which is much better than the one below--try clicking here)

It was fabulous. 202 seconds of explosions; it pretty much looked like the building itself should crumble into nothingness though, obviously, it didn't. I honestly can't imagine ever topping this New Year's celebration; even a trip to Times Square might not cut it. It was THAT wonderful.

Then we joined the several thousand people in the streets walking to the next-nearest MRT stop--they closed the closest for traffic purposes--and were treated to a city on the move through deserted streets for a good couple miles, I'd say. The streets weren't technically closed, I don't think, just practically: it's pretty hard to drive when your lane is pulsing with thousands of people walking.

We couldn't even SEE Taipei 101 at this point, which was at least one MRT stop away...

After walking past three separate MRT stops, all of which were so crowded we gave up immediately, we began the even more difficult process of hailing a cab--two actually, since Tom, Karina and I were headed to KTV, while Rachel and Brittany were headed out to their host's home in YanMingShan.

The latter seemed all but impossible. I have NEVER seen so many cabs with their lights off; even when one was available, they asked where you were going and turned down four out of every five requests and, considering how far out of the city Rachel and Brittany were aiming, they were turned down every time. After walking to YET ANOTHER stop and watching some foreigners get in a screaming match with a taxi driver (embarrassing for everyone, including us), we finally found a cab that would take Brittany and Rachel, and Tom, Karina and myself grabbed a second one to take us to KTV.

The rest of the night was spent at KTV, enjoying the "musical" stylings of Tom's amazing friends, and occasionally being coerced into joining. Since most of the songs were in Chinese, it usually wasn't an option, but I'd join in on the 1-in-6 characters I could recognize (我, 你, 天, 不, 大, 太, 的, etc), and whenever an English song came on the microphone was thrust into my hands, so I sang along to Coldplay, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift, too.

Next thing we knew, it was 6am, and our reserved time was up. We hopped a cab back to our hostel and collapsed around 6:45; the plan was to leave at noon so we wouldn't have to pay another day, but when I got up at 11:30 to shower, I discovered that it was self-serve check-out, so when Karina slept through her alarm I let her and came out to the main room to blog.

So that was our New Year's Eve! It more than filled in for the lack of celebration at Christmas by being the single most eventful New Year's Eve of my life--bar none, past or future.