Taipei in October

Have been to Taipei a few times already so wasn't that interested in going back again if it was just to go around Taipei, but my aunt from Vancouver wanted to go on a round-island tour of Taiwan, and we decided to go to Taipei a few days earlier to go around the city. Actually when I started researching I realised that there's a lot of that I don't remember or didn't pay attention to previously because I went with my parents or friends and they were the ones to plan everything. So it was actually really nice to go to Taipei this time. I got to try whatever I wanted... hahaha!

The visit coincided with the Occupy Central movement so traffic in Hong Kong was a bit disrupted.... Trams could not go through part of HK Island and when it was finally able to start operations again they didn't have room to turn the trams around, so we boarded one evening and the seats were backward.... don't know if you can tell from this photo. If you look at the buses next to the tram window, they are going forward, whereas our backs show because we were sitting with our back towards the front of the tram.

Another place that we visited in Hong Kong is Shanghai Street on Kowloon side. This place has a lot of tools used in the kitchen, my aunt was looking for molds to make mooncake. There are traditional wooden molds and also newer ones which are plastic and have a handle to push the mooncake out once ready.


DAY 1

Ok, back to the Taipei trip. Taoyuan International Airport is more modern than I remember.... my last memory is the summer of 2005 when I visited and I remember the airport being quite dark or dimly lit. This time it looks so modern! and airy. We took a bus from the airport to the city and then changed to a taxi to finish the rest of the trip to our hotel.

We spent I think 3 days and 2 nights in Taipei on our own. We made reservations at a small hotel - Via Hotel but it's actually very nice. The rooms look newly furnished and there's even a small lounge with lots of snacks and a laundry room. Perfect for those who are traveling for a few weeks like us.

The hotel is not like a big branded hotel, this one just occupies a few floors in a building so it was quite difficult to find. There's also no lobby on the ground floor, we had to go up to the 2nd floor or so to check-in. But apparently this is quite common in Taipei, lots of small boutique hotels are like this too.

After checking in and getting a quick nap in the hotel, we made our way to the nearest night market for dinner. I'm writing this in May 2015.... hahaha.... more than 6 months since the trip so I think we went to Ningxia night market.

I was really looking forward to trying out as many night markets as I could because I've heard so much about them and it seems like a must-try for all tourists..... for some reason all the other times I've been to Taipei before we never went to night markets.... We tried so many things - of course we tried the fried Oyster Pancakes (not that great... sorry! I just don't enjoy the texture of the paste), stinky tofu, salad boat sandwich, salt & pepper fried chicken and other stuff....

 above: frying up large batches of oyster pancakes

below left: oyster pancake smothered in sauce; below right: oyster soup (but it doesn't have any taste)

yummy lime jelly drink

 above left: char-grilled scallops; above right: rice paper wraps

below left: some kind of meat dumpling and stinky tofu; below right: assorted fruits

 

 above left& right : "salad boat" deep-fried bread

below: salad boat deep-fried bread stuffed with sausage, cucumber, guava and salad sweet mayo

We were at the night market around 6:00pm and I guess that's too early cuz some of the shop/booths were just preparing for the night's business. We walked around for a bit, and eventually it got quite busy. We tried everything we wanted and made our way back to the hotel. Rested for a bit and then around 8:00pm we went out again, this time heading to Ximending by subway (most of the time we were in Taipei we were on foot and subway, rarely used a taxi).

 above left: building in the back is The Red House

Ximending is an area well known for shopping, but I didn't take many photos cuz it's just photos of shops..... : D  Also in the area is the Red House, this building is significant because it has been through many eras (it was once a church - so that's why the building structure is as is, it was used during the Japanese occupation, now it's a theatre for performing arts and houses some interesting shops selling handmade goods and unique designers).

DAY 2

The next morning we went to a nearby shop for a typical Taiwanese breakfast - soy milk (dou jang), Chinese fried donut (you tiao), and Chinese pancake. Then we made our way to Longshan Temple in the Wanhua district.

Usually I don't care for buddhist temples because everytime I travel to China we end up going to temples. This one is similar in structure and design. But it was SUPER CROWDED! I think they were celebrating one of the deity's birthday. Anyways I took a quick walk around the crowded temple and then I saw a booth. At the booth you can write with a Chinese brush. I wrote two - one that is for fortune, and one for happiness and then the artists there would add to the card some lucky words and drawings. This is a meaningful and free souvenir!

above right: the black character on the left is "Fortune" (Fu), and the other is "Happiness" (Le), but I accidentally added an extra dot on top of the Fu, but "an extra dot" in Chinese has the same meaning as "a little more", so they were very nice and told me it's ok I made a mistake, it just means "a little more fortune"..... HAHA! so nice! 

Afterward we walked about two blocks down to an area call Bopiliao (bopi means peeling skin if you translate it literally). I thought this would be a haunted area with some interesting stories because of the name, but actually it's just old buildings that have been preserved and sometimes I think they use it for movie locations. They seem like they might be changing it into an art district as the empty rooms can be rented for gallery space. I think that would be really cool! But then it might mean that it becomes less accessible to tourists because some people might not go to these places if it's just art galleries.

 above: the district is now called Wanhua, however in the past it was also called Monga (below photo)

Or there might be A LOT more people visiting and crowded.... right now it's really nice because there were just a few small groups of tourists so we never got in each others way and we took quite a bit of time just snapping photos in the area. mmmmm reminds me of when I went to Macau with my cousin in 2010 and we just spend like an hour snapping photos of bubbles.....[Phebe! if you had come with us I'm sure we would have had a photoshoot here! hehe]

It was nearing lunch time when we left, we then made our way to Yongkang street, this is an area known for lots of food - most famous is the original Din Tai Fung store is still here. We went there but there was a 120 minutes wait time for a table, so we quickly decided to walk further into the district, there are other restaurants that serve Xiaolongbao and other dishes like Din Tai Fung and probably would taste good as well. We also saw lots of bingsha (shaved ice) places, and some shops selling salt & pepper fried chicken/pork/mushroom/you name it...., and there were some places for beef noodle soup.....Hahaha, we tried all of the above while in the area....

 above: this is "Cong zhua bing" it's like a paratha with egg and you can also add other stuffings like  sausage, ham, I forget what else... but there's lots. and this is YUMMY!

below: salt & pepper fried chicken with some basil (?) leaves makes it so fragrant! mmmmm...

on the way to Beitou, sunset skies....

By the time we finished our food tour it was already mid-afternoon but we hadn't planned anything else. So we made a quick decision and took the subway to Beitou, which is an area that's well know for their hot spring hotels. We were hoping to find a hot spring that we can soak our feet in. But the book we looked at was misleading.... hahaha.... there were no free hot springs in the park and the one that I did find was up on a mountain so hiking up was a pain! In the end we just ended up walking around and then made our way back to our hotel. We rested until late evening and then we went out to Shilin Market - this is the biggest night market in Taipei. But I actually didn't find much new stuff to try..... and it was SOOOOO Crowded, didn't want to walk through the crowd at all.... and once you started walking in the crowd you kind of had to go with the flow and it was near impossible to get out of the crowd.

above: we pass by this sign so many times and 

I knew it was advertising the massage store next to our building,

but only that night did I realise that this cute thing

was actually a foot.....

DAY 3

This was the last day we had on our own, and while I like seeing the touristy things, I also like to DO something when I travel.... so I try to find interesting museums or workshops. This time I found the Su Ho Paper Museum and you can make your own paper while there. The museum is very small if you're used to the government run huge science/art/history museums around the world, but this one is still very interesting. There's quite a bit of information about the history of paper, but because it's quite small I think that it's actually a good size museum especially if there are some people who might not enjoy spending 4 hours looking at paintings. This one you can look at their exhibit, but they also have a paper making workshop on their rooftop.

special exhibition while we were visiting

Rooftop workshop area, I want a place like this!

Paper Making Video (subtitles available)

We were the only people there that morning so it was like we had a private paper making workshop. The rooftop is really nice because it's simply furnished and you feel like there's a lot of space and the breeze in the wind. Actually we had so much fun making paper and taking photos and recording a video that we spent like 3 hours at the museum!

Afterwards, we went back to our hotel for lunch at a restaurant nearby. Then we had to make our way to Taoyuan city as that's where we met up with our tour group. As this tour group is for overseas Chinese from the USA and Canada, everyone was arriving at different times, so we had the evening to ourselves as well.

We heard about how hotpot is really good in Taipei, so we googles some hotpot places to try out. We also went to a Carrefour to search for a filter coffee that my aunt's friend asked her to buy - we didn't find it there in the end.

above right: carrefour is opened 24 hours!!!! My mom would be so happy if she was with us on the trip.

These 3 days were so full! But so much fun, I hope my aunt enjoyed the trip even though I probably pushed us too hard with so much walking. :P

Next post will be about our round-island tour.

Live a simple life