there are some places that you go to and say, "oh, nice". these places are interesting, fun, but something is lacking. after awhile, you tend to put the memories into one little corner of your brain, waiting to be resurfaced in response to a question with a simple "it was fun". but then, there are other places which are different. these places are equally fun and exciting, but there's something more to it than that. perhaps its the company. or perhaps just the place. but i think not. the place is different. but its more than that. it has a niche. for me, taipei is one of those countries. the culture there is uniquely taipei. its not chinese, its not american (although you can clearly see the influences), its simply taipei.
well i arrived in taipei in the early afternoon. we chugged our luggage into a cab, which is really convenient and incredibly cheap in taipei, and left for our hotel. we stayed at caesar park hotel. its a really nice place which was really convenient because it was so central. there was even a train station next to the hotel, which had lots of shopping and restaurants and other interesting things. regardless, we checked into the room (which was really surprisingly clean and large. we were lucky to get a corner room), and then headed out - for food.
i was starving by then. it was 3+ by then and i haven't eaten lunch yet. so we decided to just roam around the hotel to get our bearings. we just casualy walked along the streets around the area, taking in the sights. one of the first things that i noticed was that there was an insanely huge amount of americano in taipei. starbucks, mcd's, kfc, pizza and many many other chains were there. additionally, i think taipei is only one of the few countries that has cold stone. for those of you who haven't tried this (and what's wrong with you), cold stone is the original mix your ice-cream and mix-in palor. ok, i'm not 100% sure if its the first, but it damn hell is the best. the ice cream is incredibly creamy and tasty. its fantasically rich and smooth. the sizes are pretty large too. they come in "like it", "love it" and "gotta have it" sizes. most of us probably take the smallest one. but i'm seen chunky (excuse the lack of PC-ness) american chicks downing the large ass (no pun intended) size right out of the store. in the states the queue can get pretty insane on weekends. where people even queuse out of the palor in the freezing -20 degree winter. talk about brain freeze.
but anyway, as i was saying, there is a large amount of american-ness in taipei. even the guys dress hip-hop style, which turns out to be kind of hilarious when asian dudes wear jeans that fall off they're crotches and large chains that hang down their necks. so you really can see the influence. its quite interesting because i've never seen such a strong mix of chinese and american culture splattered side by side anywhere else.
so we passed by all the mickey d's and stuckbucks around the area, and we were so hungry that we just popped by into some random shop along the street selling beef noodles. it was pretty good considering the randomness of selection. the noodles were really thick, kind of like ban mian type, with chunks of beef and a great spicy chilli sauce to go along with it.
after, that, we continued walking along and we came across this shop with a insanely long queue. being the curious glutton that i am, i peeped over the crowds and saw that they were pulling buns out of a giant pot thingy (2nd pic at the far back). i asked one of the guys in my horribly broken chinese what they were and he replied "shen jian bao" as though i was some idiot. but i guess if you were making, say, i dunno, porridge or something and some guy comes and asks you what you were cooking, you'd look at him like he was form mars too. anyway, the guy at the fore of the 2nd pic is shoving all the ingredients (which consists of meat, an assortment of vegetables) into the bun then, when the ones in the cooker and nice and crisp, they take all of them out and put the new batch in. all the freshly cooked ones are immediately sold off to the throng of people waiting. they put it into little paper bags and you can eat it while walking around, although i seems to be the only one doing this. i bought 6. i figured that if i ended up liking it i sure as hell wouldn't want to wait there another 20 mins to get more. d started commenting on what a fat pig i was but i couldn't really hear her admist all the food. so i got my buns and i took a bite of it. it took a couple of seconds to register this new food into my slow brain, but after while i said, mmm.. pretty good. not fantastic, but not bad. i gave some to d but she doesn't like all those little vegetables pieces inside. all those spring onion thingys. yay. all the more for me. i like it when she doesn't eat food that i buy. it gives me an excuse to eat all the food myself instead of feeling guilty that i'm going to get fat.
one thing i forgot to mention. taipei is hot in summer. insansely hot. not like singapore hot. like dry to the bones scorching hot. then again heat is my kryptonite. so my perspective may be a little skewed. don't bother bringing jeans to taipei in summer. i wore shorts all day. and i was melting already. and this was in may. thank god i brought shorts. i almost didn't want to.
so all the heat and the food got to our little bodies, the insulin was setting in and the heat was tiring us out. we marched back to the hotel and took a nice nap. fresh and recharged, we went out at night to shilin market. the cab driver told us that shilin is made up of two places, the marketplace, and the food center. we decided to head to the shopping area first. ok fine, d made me. much to my delight there was lots of food there too.
shopping was really fun in shilin. we were packed like sardines though. crowded as hell. but it was great. i think the atmosphere wouldn't have been so lively without the crowds. they really brought out the animal shopper in you. pushing and shoving, what a wonderful place. in all seriousness the people really did make the place more lively. i'm sure you're been to shopping areas which were so secluded that it was boring. well shilin was not like that. the place is basically a whole area that is cordoned off. so you're just walking on the roads meat for cars and there's shops left and right. in the center of the roads there are little food stalls, like the one pictured above. the pretty things really caught my attention and i asked the old lady who was manning (why not womanning?) the store what she was peddling. she said that was bread (2nd look of retardation given). i said "oh", and proceeded to order some just to try. they were dirt cheap but they tasted that way too. ok it wasn't that bad. it was just like normal bread. apparently all the bright colors were just artificial coloring, and they didn't really correspond to any particular taste.
so we walked along more and then came across this tofu place. these two guys (how come they're stick thin when they eat deep fried tofu all day) were cooking their chou tofu aka stinky tofu. now i had stinky tofu when i was in LA. yeah i know what you're thinking. LA is no place for stinky tofu. and you're right. my friend who brought me there said the tofus weren't stinky enough. and they didn't taste as good either. to be honest, i don't really find the tofus that stinky. perhaps its coz i actually like the tofu. i guess its like durians. you don't really find if stinky if you actually like to eat the food. but to those who don't, it smells like rat's ass. but anyway stinky tofu kind of smells more like sour milk. it has a real sour piss smell to it. but the shop is crowded to the max! if you look carefully at the picture below, you can see that the shop actually has a seating area behind it, and patrons just flock to this place. apparently they order a plate of tofu with noodles or something. its really cheap and good. i wanted to order two packets, one for me and one for d (coz i know she won't finish it than i can eat it) but d insisted she didn't want any. damn. there goes my grand plan.
so in the end i trudged away with only one sad packet. its actually 10 pieces of tofu inside (i actually counted it) and they put it in a normal clear plastic bag. then they dump in some pickle like thingy. it looks like a lot of coleslaw but its actually a pile of pickled vegetables. and then they dump in their special chilli sauce. i walked a few steps from the shop and used my chopstix to pick a piece. INSANE. IN-FREAKING-SANE. i was blown away. it was so good. i swear. i know you can't fathom how tofu can be so good. i honestly didn't expect it to be so good either. but damn. that is whack! its so good i'm not even kidding. oh man. i exclaimed to d and immediately turned around to get more. d probably thought i dropped my wallet or something and had to rush back to go look for it. i bought two more packs and one without chilli for d. even she ended up trying it and liking it. but its nowhere near as good without the chilli. you've got to get it with the chilli.
additionally, we got this drink called "ah yu" (pictured below). i have absolutely no idea what i means. all i know is that they always sell it next to the frog's eggs drink. so everything i'm out, i just look for the neon picture of the frog then i can find the ah yu. well i do know that ah yu is a fruit that is indigenous to taiwan. its a jelly drink that has a lemon flavor to it. its really good and thrist quenching. i drank this practically everywhere i went in taipei. (okay, a little editing here. d read the post and now she's making a fuss coz she said that SHE saw the ah yu first and she wants to be credited for that. ok no credit for ah yu --> d) happy now? :P
a couple days later we decided to go back to shilin again. however, this time it was for the food. we went straight to the food center and a huge sign greeted us at the entrance:
for those of you who can't read chinese (like me), it apparently translates to really big-ass fried chicken cutlet. i presume it isn't so vulgar but thats about the jist of it. the queue is really long and as i was queueing up i could see those patrons who got their chicken walk back. and damn if it didn't look good. the smell was intoxicating. the goodness of fried chicken along with the ever so powerful seasoning made it something to remember. when i got to the front, i was as excited as a little boy on christmas morning (or matter of fact me on christmas morning). i could see tons of fried chicken pieces freshly fried and seasoned in a little paper bag. mmm.. you know you can buy those pseudo taiwanese chicken cutlets in singapore but it doesn't taste anywhere near the real thing. no way man. this is the best.
carrying our chicken, we walked into the food center it was huge. lots of food which i totally couldn't understand. all the signs are written in chinese and when you ask the vendors what they're selling they just tell you the name of it, which isn't really much help. like if you come to singapore and i tell you that i'm selling char kway teow you wouldn't know what it was either. so no help there. in the end we left with an assortment of goodies. some sausages, taiwanese oyster omlette and some other funky bread thing that was kinda weird.
ok, so i was expecting a little more from the taiwanese oyster omlette coz i heard so much about it. basically its like an oyster omlette in singapore except they don't chop it up into little pieces. instead, they leave it as one big omlette. additionally, they poured some goey sauce all over it which i thought made it taste really bad. so the only thing that was memorable was the cutlet. but it was really good.
we did lots of eating and stuff along the way. but most of the stuff that i wanted to highlight is aforementioned. additionally, midway through we got really sick of chinese food and we decided to visit the mickey d's. thank god for that americano. mcdonalds never tasted so good. we ordered practically everything on the menu. fish fillet, double cheeseburger, fries, nuggets, big mac. haha.. and more nuggets. i guess you can never leave the food you grew up with.
on the last night, we visited this teahouse place up in the mountains. apparently its where alot of taiwanese celebrities go to chill out. the view was amazing. it was so quite and serene in the middle of the night, totally no sound of city life. however on the way there, the cab driver got lost and we spent like an hour going up and down the mountains to look for the place. i ended up having to pay 60bucks SGD! insane. but it was really nice. we drank tea for a couple of hours and at the end, as we were paying at the cashier, the owner invited us to drink more tea with them. apparently all they do is farm tea and drink tea. so we drank with them and chit chatted about life there and stuff. its really interesting to see how happy some ppl are with a simple way of life. coming from a metropolitan city, it really makes you reflect on whats important in life. because sometimes it seems, happiness really is everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment