Taipei - Day 3

Still dreaming about soymilk, I left the hotel vowing to eat the first interesting-looking thing I ran across for breakfast. A small outdoor cafe full of people slurping up delicious-smelling bowls of noodles (despite the heat!) was the winner. I figured, what the heck, 이열치열! (Fight fire with fire...)



















Yum. I hopped on the MRT to visit the Confucius Temple. Temples are so colorful here:






































After visiting several temples I noticed that people like to leave cans of Pringles as offerings. I wouldn't turn down a can of Pringles. Or a can of Spam:














I think this makes my list of top ten weird things I've seen in a vending machine:















Afterwards, I decided to spend the afternoon getting lost in the National Palace Museum. But my "tourist map" had a listing for a cake and pastry museum near the bus stop, so of course I had to check it out:















Only to be majorly disappointed. Not one delicious-looking pastry in sight. Just a room full of people eating bowls of soup. I thought I had the wrong place but a woman told me that I couldn't visit the "museum" then since it was too crowded at the moment. Then she gestured towards the aforementioned people inside, eating soup.

That's still a bit of a head-scratcher.

No matter, I took a detour through an alley market on my way back to the bus stop. This nice cold soymilk cheered me up:



















Unfortunately, pictures aren't allowed inside the National Palace Museum. That place is HUGE. I didn't even attempt to look at the other buildings beside the main one. After several hours of walking all around and trying not to get swallowed by huge tour groups, I treated myself to some tea at the top-floor restaurant:

Taipei - Day 2 continued

Why hello, hello! I've been so busy lately with menial tasks such as aging and getting my ducks in a row, but I figured I should hurry up and finish these Taipei posts before (hopefully, crossing my fingers) my life goes from sporadically stressful to insanely crazy. (Yes, I want my life to turn insanely crazy. I hope to be able to share with you why that is soon...)

So where were we? Oh right, life-changing soymilk. Thus fortified, I decided to see how far I could walk before caving and buying another cute MRT token. My intended destination was Taipei 101. At first I didn't think I'd be able to make it. I was still feeling the effects of the foot massage path and the weather was awfully hot. And it looked so far away:
But then it got closer:
And suddenly it was right under my nose!
I decided to splurge and bought a ticket to go to the top. Okay, the ticket wasn't horrifically expensive (around $13) but I think it's more than I spent on food for two days.
To get to the top you get to ride the world's fastest elevator:That speed means you go to the 89th floor in 36 seconds. A very uncomfortable 36 seconds.
It is difficult to get the entire building into one shot if you have a normal camera. Luckily there is a bamboo model:

Afterwards I decided to spare my poor feet and took the MRT to Din Tai Fung. Here is a man rolling dumplings:I felt slightly uncomfortable taking his picture, but after a large tour group came in I realized they put those windows in for this very purpose. Or I assumed so, seeing as nobody seemed to mind when people started pressing their noses up against the glass...
As I walked back to the MRT station I reveled in the fact that it was dark yet balmy. I still can't get used to climates where the weather is warm even after the sun has gone down. This inspired me to check out the Ximending area near my hotel. Walking around, I could have been back it Seoul. First, I only seemed to hear K-pop...the Wonder Girls, 소녀시대, Super Junior, 2NE1, and 2PM all seem to have fans in Taiwan...
Then, I saw this:
One thing I loved about walking around Taipei is that wherever you go you will probably stumble upon a temple...like this teeny tiny one sandwiched in between a clothing shop and a convenience store:
All of today's walking warranted a snack. Back to the night market! I've never been a huge fan of 팥빙수, a korean shaved ice and red bean dessert, but after trying the taiwanese version I realized why...sorry Korea, you've totally been getting it wrong!Mmmm...first is a huge pile of fluffy shaved ice, covered with condensed milk. Then you get to choose four toppings. I chose red beans, almond tofu, sweet rice cake, and oatmeal. Yup, oatmeal. It was just so weird-sounding I couldn't NOT try it.
I think I may have dreamt about soymilk and shaved ice that night. I know I was definitely thinking about the two when I woke up the next morning...

More pictures from day 2 here.

Taipei Day 2 - Morning

The hotel I stayed in had "chinese breakfast" - I conjured up all sorts of tasty possibilities, like congee. Instead, we had a bunch of dishes that were on the tad oily side and a heaven for flies/gnats. I poked the serving spoon into a dish of pickled vegetables and a swarm of surprised little buggers flew out. Yikes! So I decided to sample some of the other dishes. The braised gluten strips were particularly tasty:

After that grease-fest I decided a nice walk was in order. Wearing flipflops, sunglasses, and a tank top (woo hoo, warm weather!) I headed to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Although it is accessible by MRT, I was still operating in Korea-mode and assumed that two metro stops is a normal walking distance. Later in the day I would find this to be true. And also false.

On the way there you run into the back of the Presidential Office:

Or, according to my very cheap iPhone app, the "centre of powers."

And a random park:

From this park you can see the front of the Presidential Office:

Nearby is a very large public library:

And finally, Liberty Square! Through the middle arch you can see the CKS Memorial Hall.

To prove I was actually in Taipei and didn't just send my doppelganger, I attempted to take a selca. The wind made it a little difficult.

The swarm of people coming down the steps alerted me to the fact that I had just missed the changing of the guards. I wonder though, if my flipflops would have been considered "slippers":

So I cautiously took pictures from the opening:

By this time it was considerably hot. I decided to walk through Da'an Park on the way to lunch:

Here is a "foot massage path" - even while wearing shoes I found this pretty painful. I wimped out halfway through:

And finally lunch!

Er, so, unless any of the characters for numbers, "gold", "mountain", or "door" appear on a menu, I can't really read it. Luckily I had my friend 효천 say some things into my iPhone so that I could practice hearing/saying them before ordering. I chickened out at the last minute though, and just played the recordings to the very helpful man at the shop.

I was, however, able to request that my soymilk be cold. ("Bing!")

I've always been iffy on soymilk. I'll drink it, but it's always just been kind of meh to me. Until this soymilk. Oh my. I had to refrain from squealing "OH MY GOD THIS SOYMILK IS AMAZING!" lest the other shop patrons decided to lock up the crazy foreigner. Seriously, the minute I left this shop I began to wonder how long before I could find my next fix.

And this sandwich. Whoa. That's a fried donut stick (not sweet) inside a salty, flaky bread "roll" - yes, a BREAD sandwich. Understandably, I was in heaven.

Taipei - Day 1

So I just got back from my quick trip to Taipei. My tourist visa was about to run out so the easiest thing to do is take a quick 해외여행, come back to Korea, and get another 90 days stamped on my passport. Plus my friend 효천 is from Taiwan, I've never been, and I heard there were lots of good things to eat. Really, the decision was quite simple...

The flight from Seoul is only two and a half hours, so I automatically assumed we wouldn't be fed. Seeing as I'm becoming more and more Korean by the minute, I made myself some 김밥 for the plane using all my leftovers:
But it turns out Thai Airways likes to feed their passengers! Other airlines should take note.
Once I landed, I was alarmed to see the weather:Yikes. A lot warmer than Seoul.
$3 takes you from the airport to the Taipei Main Station in little under an hour. BART should take note. Then I transferred to the MRT to get to my hotel in Ximending, the 명동 of Taipei. The tokens are cute:
Some sights along the way:The Red House
A tiny temple (Tianhou Temple) in the middle of a busy commercial street.
Once checking in, I decided to walk to the nearby Longshan Temple:

Afterwards I wandered to a nearby night market and experienced dessert heaven. More pictures from my day here.

Dinner Party

Cooking for other people on a tiny two-burner stove can be tricky. There's definitely an art to getting the timing right. Also, both my frying pans don't really fit when put next to each other. But things run a lot more smoothly if you have friends willing to help assemble things while sitting on the floor:
Here Tomomi is rolling the "Vietnamese" rice rolls. Fresh mint was nowhere to be found however, so this is a korean 갈비 version with homemade 쌈장 as the dipping sauce.
Here Lydia is rolling the spam 김밥. I wanted to make musubi but didn't have the proper molds.
두부 김치 rounded out the meal. I fried the 삼겹살 ahead of time to save pan space. Big mistake. It just gets dried out when you reheat it with the kimchi.


That weekend is a little fuzzy, because even though this dinner was on a Friday night, I don't think the festivities ended until 5 am Sunday morning? ㅋㅋㅋ