KTV for Matthew's Goodbye

All good things must come to and end, and Matthew's time in Taiwan is no different. His final visa is finally almost up and he has decided to take leave and visit his friends in China. Of course, we had to celebrate and hang out with our friends one last time. Some of my co-workers had decided that hitting up the KTV (karaoke) bar in Erlin was just what he needed, especially considering we had never been to one in Taiwan before; apparently it is a must do.

Erlin has a few karaoke bars, but one of them is bigger and more popular than the rest. Matthew had been to one in Ottawa before, and I had been to one in Malaysia before. Neither of us had experience something quite like this. It has a small entrance but that is deceiving, it's a huge complex with door after door of private rooms. Inside the private rooms, there are plush seating and we even had our own private bathroom. There's a huge projector screen and massive speakers. There is a touch screen computer where you select your songs and you can even call for a waiter to come take your order for food and drinks. Matthew was playing around with the screen and accidentally called the poor boy. All of the command buttons are listed in Chinese, but they had a pretty decent selection of English songs as well. Considering the size of little old Erlin, this place was quite impressive.

We didn't all get there at the same time, Matthew and I were a bit late. We walked through the doors and were instantly lost. We saw room #509, 515, etc. We had no idea which room our friends were in, and no one was answering their phone. A few minutes later another friend comes through the entrance and she tells us to go into one of the rooms in front of us. As soon as we walked in, I thought we had to wrong room, no one was there and three people had said they were in the room waiting for us. Our friend, Fiona, just starts eating all the food on the table and about ten minutes later another friend shows up, also having arrived late. She suddenly tells us we're in the wrong room and I couldn't contain myself, I just could't stop laughing. I had asked Fiona if she was sure this was the right room, because maybe she shouldn't eat the food on the table. It turns out, it wasn't the right room and she had eaten the leftover food of a group that had left or had gone off for a break. I won't lie, I was pretty disgusted by that. But in the end, we found the right room.

There were some problems with song selection as my co-workers tend to know more Chinese songs and we obviously only knew the English songs, and Matthew doesn't know many songs period, but he tried his best.

 Our friends had stopped at local street vendors to pick up a ton of snacks for the night of KTV.

It was a good night that ended with a sore throat and pounding ears. We wouldn't be seeing them again together as the Chinese New Year holiday was around the corner and most people would be going home to spend time with their families, Matthew would soon be leaving for China, and my mother was about to arrive for her visit to Taiwan.