The Bed Saga

I wish I had photos....

I love our sagas (less so during the sagas!).... We arrived in Taiwan on August 3, and had a bed in our apartment waiting for us. It was an old beat up box with a dirty mattress on top. Perfectly fine as long as the sheets were on and quite comfortable. But, it had to be returned by Oct.10. Great - lots of time to find a bed, right?

Problem 1: No car. We had our scooter, but it's 10 years old and putts around, so we couldn't go far.

Problem 2: No furniture stores nearby.

Good thing 1: The Kohlers had an extra bed frame which they kindly gave to us.

Problem 3: No tools to put the bed together. This one was easily solved with borrowed tools.

So, by the end of September, we now had one bed frame and two empty bedrooms.

Problem 4: Someone told us that there was a foam factory. So we went there one rainy afternoon, only to discover that it was closed for the day.

Good thing 2: We got a car!!

Problem 5: We went back to the foam factory, and discovered that there is much more to foam than anyone can ever imagine. Questions we were asked (and you have to realize this was all in Chinese, and our foam-related vocabulary is apparently lacking!):

- How big do you want it?
- How thick do you want it?
- How dense do you want it? (uh...I don't know...)
- Do you want memory foam? foam with holes? and various other types of foams that I don't know how to translate....
- Do you want a foam mat that goes on top of your foam mattress? (WHAT?!)
- Do you want a cover for your foam mattress?
- What kind of cover do you want? (By now, I am completely at a loss, and just begging her to tell me a price.)

So, apparently, whatever we said yes to turned out to be 5000 - 6000 NT (~$150 - 200 Cdn), which seemed a bit too much for us when an Ikea mattress only costs about 4000 NT. So we were back to square one, but armed with a much greater knowledge of foam.

Good thing 3: We go to Ikea and buy a bed frame and two mattresses.

Problem 6: The mattresses are supposed to be delivered before 7pm. Both of us had appointments from 7:30pm - 10pm. The beds were not there by 7:30pm. We end up almost memorizing the delivery guy's cell phone number (yes, at least in Taiwan, you CAN contact your delivery people!).

Problem 7: Mattresses arrive, Kris attempts to put the bed together. He gets to the end, and there's one giant piece missing. We look everywhere for it. It turns out you had to buy it separately.

Good thing 4: The Griffins surprise us with the purchase (all set up in our apartment) when we return from our October holiday.

Problem 8: We had purchased the missing piece in Taipei and carried the heavy piece all the way back on the train.

Good thing 5: We returned the missing piece.

And they all lived happily ever after!