That’s why I love forumosa. Learn something new every day!
Guy
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Yup remember that but vague, I went on it. I had a vespa scooter too, it was trash.
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I wanted to get one, but everybody kept telling me not to. 
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On my first trip here, I was here about a month.
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Also there’s a well-known night market there, so Nanjichang is a pretty well known location. You’re not a Taipei guy though right? Then we could forgive you.
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They had this awful gear changing on the handle bar, cannot remember which side. It was awkward and the bike handled pot holes even small ones badly. I got a motorcycle instead. but it was a little too fast; enough said about that.
I ended up with a Wild Wolf. Still a piece of crap, but whatever.
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You cannot beat the name though.
I had a Sanyang 125 I shared with a roomie. One day the brakes failed and I went sailing through the Linsen-Jinan intersection after the light changed. Lucky!
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Both brakes? 
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Yeah, my room mate had one too, they were quite fast for Taipei’s really congested streets back then. I had some close calls too. I remember not wearing helmets. Madness! However, different times and values. High risk taking was almost normal.
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One was probably already failed 
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Youth is wasted on the young. 
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At my age now I could not have handled the Taiwan back then. There were some older western guys here in the 1980s, a few Vietnam vets. Life was hard for them, but they still chose.here rather than living in the US.
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I’m not a night market guy. But I’m happy to learn something more about the history of this city. 
Guy
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I got curious and wanted to find the exact location of the airport and found this. The runway seems to run parallel to Xindian river.
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In what way was life hard for them? Care to elaborate?
The late 90’s was really the cusp of big changes in Taipei and what is now NTC. Only one MRT line was running, the Brown Zoo line. Everything else was buses (still NT$15), scooters, cars, taxis, thus the air pollution was much worse. No Costco, RT Mart, Carrefour, etc., just Wellcome and if you wanted foreign food products you had to hike up to Tienmu for the small shops that carried them (Wellman’s for those that remember). No Starbucks or Mr. Brown or anything like that. One coffee chain, Douters, sold awful coffee that tasted like hot water with a brown crayon dipped in it. McD’s was one of the few sources for brewed coffee as tea houses still ruled. Pizza Hut and Domino’s were the only place for pizza, no pizza restaurants, which are all over now. Packs of stray dogs were prevalent on the streets. When you walked by a military office guards were posted outside who cocked their rifles as you passed. Shing Kong Mitsukoshi Tower was the tallest building in Taipei with an observatory, and the Hsinyi area was just developing, though already the most modern. Far fewer parks then. Exactly one bank chain had ATMs with English interfaces. Taipei Main Station was much older inside, like an old bowling alley. A beverage vending machine there offered Taiwan Beer as one choice among tea and water. Odd as it may sound they are fond memories for me. It was still more the wild west then. Taipei has changed quite a lot.
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Yeah, so like that in the 80s but even more so. There were no ATM’s the first time I visited, 2 McDonalds, no AC (it was very hot without it), the only way to make an international call was at the telephone office, residency visas were almost impossible to get unless you were very rich , western food very hard to get, no air con on the buses of course, no metro, way less people who could speak English, so as to answer your other question I would guess life would be tough for a sixty year old here at that time. I still remember the skin parasites I would get. But I was young, to be a sixty year old here then with no family, not knowing the language…cannot have been easy.
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