How you doing?

It's Doug, and I'm coming to you from Taipei, Taiwan, and there is a storm a-brewin'.

In this video today, I want to hit the streets and give you guys my first impressions, my raw, unfiltered impressions of what it's like here in Taiwan in 2024.

And then tomorrow, I'm going to be meeting up with the tourism board of Taipei City and going to show you all of the highlights of this city, from the hotels to the restaurants, the things to do, the So, yesterday, I flew here from Istanbul, Turkey, and then from the airport, I took a train right to this station here in the center of Taipei, Taipei Main Station.

Now, a lot of people say apparently that it looks like a pizza hut.

I think it's meant to be like a modern take on a traditional Chinese building.

Either way, I think it looks pretty cool.

It brought me right here to the center of the city.

You know, it's interesting because if you're an avid viewer of the channel, then you will know that I went to mainland China earlier this year, and I have a whole series of videos from over there.

You can go check them out at the playlist at the top of the screen if you haven't seen those yet.

But now, coming here to Taiwan, it's also Chinese, and similar, but at the same time, totally different.

So it's going to be interesting to compare and contrast the two.

Is Taiwan a country, or is it part of China?

That's a big question, and if I've learned anything in my four years on YouTube, it's that I shouldn't really answer those questions here, because it'll make people very angry.

So I'll let you come to your own conclusions.

However, one thing I can say for sure about Taiwan is that it functions as a de facto independent country.

They have their own currency, their own government, their own military.

So it is de facto functioning as an independent country.

If you don't know how Taiwan came to be like this, well, a very brief history lesson.

Back in the 1940s, there was a civil war in China.

The communists versus the nationalists.

The nationalists fled over here to Taiwan and started this system, and the communists stayed over on the mainland, and they have the People's Republic of China.

Here's the Republic of China.

There's the People's Republic of China, the communist one.

And obviously, you know, you hear about it in the news a lot.

Alright, so that is that.

Enough talking.

I'm very hungry, and I'm back in Asia, so it's time to eat another bowl of beef noodles.

I found a good spot.

Let's go check it out.

Alright, that was delicious, and look at that.

The sun is out now.

One thing I'm very happy about is that the third wave coffee scene here in Taipei seems to be alive and well.

I've already been to a couple great coffee shops.

However, one thing to be aware of is that they might not always have their menus in English like the one that I just went to.

I had to screenshot and translate everything on their QR code menu, which is why I'm very happy to have great internet connectivity throughout my entire trip, thanks to Olafly.

Recently, Olafly has become my go-to eSIM provider for everywhere that I travel to.

Now, what is an eSIM, you might ask?

Well, an eSIM is basically a digital SIM card, so you don't need that plastic little chip to put in your phone anymore when you go to a new country.

No, no, no.

Now you can just download it online and have it all ready to go right when you get to the country.

Okay, cool, but there are a lot of eSIM providers out there.

So over 190 destinations around the world, and in over 140 of those destinations, they offer unlimited data.

And that leads me to the second reason, which is Olafly's unlimited data plans.

You see, with a lot of other SIM providers, you have to choose how many gigabytes you need, and like, you never really know how much data you're going to need until you get to a country and see how their Wi-Fi is, or when you're going to actually need data when you're out and about.

It's so much easier to just get an unlimited plan, then you know you're going to be covered.

And the third reason why I love Olafly is that it is so easy and simple to use.

You just go to their website, olafly.com, you enter the country that you are going to be visiting, enter the number of days that you're going to be staying there, and the best part is you can download it and install it on your phone and have it all ready to go, so that right when your plane touches down in your destination, you can flip on the service and you will have internet immediately.

If you want to give Olafly a try on your next trip, then click the link down in the description below, and for a I'm in an area called Ximending, and it's like a walking area.

There's a lot of shops around, little restaurants, cafes, dessert places, all that good stuff.

It's totally closed off to cars, so the streets are just filled with people.

And apparently it comes alive at night, so I'm going to stick around a little bit and see what that's like.

But I've already seen a bunch of street performers, got jugglers, acrobatics, hula hoops, a ton of cool stuff.

So it seems like a very lively area, and very close to the center of Taipei.

There are a lot of these little like toy arcades around, and you'll see a lot of machines like this, which reminds me of like my childhood in the U.S., or even like little ones with the capsules inside, and you just pay like a coin and get a little time.

Here right outside the walking streets, you've got these flags.

They say Taiwan's self-determination establish a sovereign state.

And interestingly, the flag is also a rainbow, and you can see here on the street is also a rainbow paint.

There's Taipei.

Another interesting fact about Taiwan is that gay marriage was legalized here in 2019.

So that puts it in quite a different place than a lot of other countries in the region.

Apparently this area is one of the hot spots for LGBT life here in Taipei.

Overall, what's my first impression of Taiwan?

It's interesting.

It almost reminds me a little bit of Hong Kong.

I haven't been there in a long time, but it reminds me of Hong Kong because it's clearly Chinese, but it's like easier for a foreigner to tackle.

Like if you saw my videos from mainland China from earlier this year, then you'll remember I talked a lot about how it's not an easy place necessarily for a foreigner to travel.

I love traveling there.

I really really enjoyed it, and once you learn a few things, it becomes a bit easier.

But like everything works differently.

There's a different system for everything from payments to ordering taxis to getting food.

Everything is different.

Social media doesn't work there.

The internet is weird.

Maps, like you have to use all different apps.

Whereas here, all of those difficulties and kind of things that make traveling in China complicated don't exist here.

It's like all of the stuff that you're used to coming from a western country or really any other country works here.

Okay, another cool thing here.

Apparently this is boba being handmade.

So these are the little chewy pearls that go at the bottom of bubble tea, and I had no idea that they look like this.

And then apparently they get cooked here and turned into that dark brown gelatinous little gummy that goes in the bottom of the drink.

So you can see she starts out with this dough, then rolls it into little sticks, then puts it in this thing, and it separates into these little dots.

And they've also got the automatic one doing it over there.

I guess one person still does it the old-fashioned way.

Maybe just for show, but still cool.

It's very interesting.

Like there's only a few examples, I think, in the world of a civilization being split into two different systems, but both continuing on in real time.

And you can go and observe both systems and see like how they came from the same culture, but now they're different but also so similar in ways.

Like it's, I mean, an extreme example would be North and South Korea, but then here you have mainland China and Taiwan, like the same civilization that has kind of branched into two separate directions, one communist, one capitalist.

It's just fascinating to be able to visit both of them and see the similarities and the differences.

One of the great joys of visiting East Asia is checking out a convenience store.

Let's see what we can find in here.

You can see they've got all sorts of hot food, and it's like better quality than in the West, and people can heat up their food.

And sometimes there's even like a seating area.

Let's see what kind of drinks we got here.

Check this out.

We've got Cow Bay Fizz.

What is it?

Milk?

No.

It's a 9.99% alcoholic beer.

Cow Bay Fizz.

All right, I am hiding out under the overhang here because the rain has returned with a vengeance, but I got a couple cool drinks to try out from 7-Eleven.

The first is Pocari Sweat.

I've seen this all over Asia, like all over the place, and for some reason I've never tried it.

Maybe it has something to do with the name being sweat.

It's about time I try it.

And the other one is a Taiwan specialty, asparagus juice.

Very excited.

First up, we're gonna start with the sweat.

I'm just gonna give it a sip.

Oh, it's very good.

Good sweat.

No, actually, it's like a rehydration drink.

It's like a Gatorade, basically.

And it tastes kind of like lemon-lime Gatorade.

Very tasty.

Don't be scared away by the name sweat.

No real sweat inside.

Okay, and the second drink that I picked up, perhaps even more intimidating than drinking sweat, is asparagus juice.

On the side of the carton is a picture of a sexy lady on the beach, so I don't know if that's supposed to entice you to drink the asparagus juice or what, but I'm in.

Asparagus juice, first sip.

Hmm, definitely a weird one.

It smells like asparagus and it tastes like asparagus, but really sweet.

I think there's a lot of sugar added to this.

I don't hate it, don't love it either.

I prefer the sweat over the asparagus juice.

All righty guys, it has been raining for a while now, but it's finally let up and I stopped off to get a little snack that I just happened to walk upon.

It's basically like a burger.

This guy is making burgers, but in like a pancake crepe kind of thing.

So I've never seen it before, but it's pretty cool.

He just cracks the egg and then adds whatever meat you want.

I think I got pork, I just pointed to something.

And some real innovation that I haven't seen before, the guy had his phone just mounted to his cart, just playing tiktoks, just letting it run.

Just running, huh?

Yeah.

Very nice.

Okay, so I got mine here, and it's like burning my hand, it's so hot I think I'm gonna burn my face off, but let's give it a bite and see how it is.

Mmm.

Now that is a good street food.

Check that out.

You got pork, you got like the pancake thing around it, and egg inside, and I put ketchup on it.

That is good.

Pretty big, it feels heavy, and pretty affordable too.

It was 70 Taiwanese dollar, which is like a little over two US dollars.

Quick, easy meal or snack on the street here in Taipei.

And the night market here has totally come alive.

Lots of people everywhere, lots of lights, it feels like a mini Times Square.

But this is really just scratching the surface, this is my first impressions video.

Stay tuned, because the next video coming from Taipei that I'm going to start filming tomorrow is going to be way bigger, a deep dive into all things Taipei.

You're not going to want to miss it.

So get subscribed to the channel if you're not already.

But other than that, thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next one.

Bye-bye.