The S2k and the Ant

Another post….. This time I went to Taiwan and China in 2023….

Landed in Taiwan in 2023 with the family, it was late and the only place that was open was this place selling fried stuff aka “pop corn chicken” the favorite of boba goers in SoCal….

I was staying in Xi Men Ding aka the Shibuya of Taipei, to an extent….

Fried Chicken With Basil, yeah.

Big ass “Fried Chicken Steak”

Caught this sweet lexus LM. Easy $100k+ car in Asia

Followed by a mid Itasha Civic. At first glance the cars rolling on the streets of taiwan are okayyyy at best in execution.

Armed with Jet Lag the next morning I paid about a $1 something and got a Scallion cake thing from this dude. Came with Egg and all.

Breakfast spot. Got Soy Milk

Toyota Hilux is good

Taiwan is heavily influenced by Japanese culture and Gatchapon Machines are all over…. this one had a cool RX7 figure. Familiar stores, like 7-11, Saizeriya, Sushiro, Donki, are all present.

I spotted this in a taxi cab. Porsche 996 GT3RS, something we never got in the USA officially…

I hitup a night market in Taibei….

sausage casing stuffed with sticky rice with a glizzy inside. Pretty good

I got the stinky tofu too…

Freshly made shao bing… these had meat inside

Sweet Suzuki Jimny… They are starting to roll in now, but I wish we had them earlier.

Took my wife surfing…. Got this as a rental car. It was okay…

The countryside of Taiwan was really beautiful.

Taking a picture of the plate because a lot of places require your plate number to pay for parking….

Another night market, except this one was in Keelung, if you are to visit Taiwan, go to this nightmarket and skip Shilin.

I love the traditional vibes of Taiwan… please don’t change.

Next day I was on the freeway and passed this Subaru GC8…. Taiwan did get the turbo Gc8 in LHD unlike the USA. They are usually 4 doors and have this ugly molding on the side. This particular car looks like it must have some work and said advertised components.

This face is closer to our USA spec 1998 Subaru 2.5rs…. They got “JDM” clear corners.

It looks like he is rocking some later model STi rims…

GC8 with Taibei 101 in the background

Blurry picture of an Toyota Alphard in downtown Taibei

Caught this GF wagon pulling into a parking spot near my hotel….

Just a middle aged man showing up for work…

Next Leg of the trip I went to visit Family in Beijing China…..

Green plates means EV and they are a lot of them…. I caught this car as an “uber”. they don’t really have uber in China anymore it’s a company called Didi Da Che.

“BRIDE” moped

fmy “uber” was driving this it felt like a barebones EV

At the mall near where I was staying there are a ton of Chinese made EVs on display…. not gonna lie they were all pretty nice.

Interior felt better than my Tesla….

Very nice 3 row EV van..

This brand is called Nio

Lidar bump

cool purple interior.

Huawei car

got some Tea from Heytea… at the time it was super popular…

There key selling point is using fresh as fruits in their drinks… like a drink full of peeled grapes….

across was the moutai flavored ice cream… aka alcohol flavored

grape drink with with lots of real grape slices…

They got a Tim Hortons in China…..

This restaurant went for the full jdm theme with rep train ticket machines….

This place had good mangosteen drinks…. mangosteen costs a fortune in the USA…

Hong Qi EV

BYD EV

a Maxus?

China has so many EV Brands it’s hard to keep track, mind you this was 2023… imagine now.

I went to a mall to kill time. The malls in China are massive, like absolutely massive, and the shear amount of them in tier 1 cities like Beijing is insane…..I went to a cafe that had random ass animals…. like this lama.

And this Goat.

They got the standard variety cats

And this Wesel?

Outside of San Li Tun aka the fashion hotspot of Beijing… was this EV car

The green plate is for EVs

They got the Toytota Velfire in China…. another easy $100k + car…

Went to Tian Jin.. a quick train ride from Beijing.

This place has their famous dumplings

Cool land cruiser

Man People in Tian Jin love their land cruisers

USDM JDM culture reach is far and wide… like this “stance” toyota van with a “no good racing” sticker

My dinners in China always seem to look like this

House Tea

got drank

The next day I went to get the “alcohol” flavored latte… it was pretty good

Family time over.

Myself on the flight to Japan…..