The Asian Village Town

‘This looks familiar’ is what I was thinking when our van pulled up to our apartments. Located about 45 minutes from downtown and the majority of the venues, the Asian Games village is an exact knock-off of the media housing we stayed in for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Literally they copied practically everything from the ultra tiny rock hard beds, to the tiny bathrooms, to the kitchenless kitchen. There happens to be three different balconies though with some pretty good views. I am sharing an apartment with Ronald as we each have our own bedroom (I got the one the size of a closet) but we share a common area and a bathroom. Our goal today is to find some sort of way to make the beds softer. They are so hard and absolutely no spring at all. It’s like sleeping on a box spring.

There seems to be about 20 media apartment buildings in this area here, similar to Beijing. There is a gym, laundry and a bar. The Main Press Centre is located about a minute away which is nice. However, unlike the Olympics, the editors, (myself, Justin and Simone) will be working at the various venues.

The strangest thing about the media village is that beer is free. They give you a card and you swipe it at a vending machine and sometimes, one or two or even three beers pop out. It’s pretty crappy Taiwanese beer but the price is right. Supposedly you get six free ones a day, but looking around last night, some of the people from other agencies must have had way more than that.

Today starts the first round of previews leading up to the start of the games on Saturday. I have to work a preliminary soccer game this afternoon about an hour from the media village. It will be interesting to see what kind of setup they have for media. It’s all been up in the air as far as wireless internet or places to plug in. Hopefully before the game we can find some sort of way to access internet in our apartment, a way to make the bed softer. Other than that we seem to be pretty set.



The unfinished kitchen that we turned into a closet



Ronald sitting in his palatial bedroom

Look at how muich smaller mine is