the jimmymac attack!

I go to eat at the Banqiao night market often. Not because it is a great place to go but because it is only ten minutes walk from my apartment. If it was a pond or stream it would be a cesspool. It is a dirty, smelly, ugly place. Taipei has many night markets. It's very odd that in Taipei they call them, 'Tourist Night Markets'. 99.9% of the customers are local people. They are wonderful, interesting places to visit and shop and eat. They are mostly pedestrian shopping areas where cars and the ubiquitous motorcycles are not even allowed. However in Pan-chiao the market is plagued by the motorcycles. Imagine a shopping mall crowded with people where motor scooters are allowed to drive through. That is what it is like. In a very busy crowded place one must always step aside so the lazy, selfish motorcycle riders can drive through. They even drive right up to stalls to buy something without even getting off the bikes. And of course they are noisy and spouting fumes as well. It is madness.
Also at the Panciao night market garbage cans are few and far between. Litter is often just thrown on the ground. I do not like to litter but I sometimes just drop garbage on the ground while I am sitting in an 'outdoor restaurant'. Why? Because if I put it on the table the wind will soon blow it on to the ground anyway. And the staff don't seem to care about coming to pick it up. I stopped going to my favorite place in the Banqiao night market because it just got too disgusting. The 'restaurants' are mostly just folding tables with little cheap plastic stools to sit on. My favorite place had food that actually tasted good but when they hired a kid with very dirty hands to serve the food I could not take it any more. It was bad enough when someone would serve with a cigarette in their mouth. But you cannot say Banchiao has no character! and characters!
ps, I have deliberately spelled Banqiao in different ways. When in Rome do as the Romans do. In Taiwan they spell it many ways so I'm doing the same to show you. It's not four or five different places - its one place with five different ways to spell it. Even on a map you might see it spelled two different ways on the same map! What a place! New York, New York is so nice they named it twice. Banqiao, Banchiao, Banciao, Pan-chiao, Panciao is so mad they had to name it five times.