After meeting up with Julia and Ray at the station, we walked back to NOVA and the camera area. Julia bargained with a couple of the vendors and got Liz a good deal on a Fuji instant camera. Polaroid is dead, but Fuji is still making the instant film. Then, we stopped at a hair salon so Liz could get a haircut. The salon was pretty posh looking, but is in an area full of students and is dirt cheap. The haircut was about $8. We're told that the expensive haircuts ($100+) are in a different part of town.
Once Liz had her camera, we made our way up to Tienmou for the hot springs. We went to a restaurant on the side of the mountain 
Julia and Ray thought it might be easiest if we went for the set menus. The food was certainly more interesting that way, but maybe not best.
First up were salads. They were having a vegetarian course as they were on a Buddhist vegetarian diet for 30 days before the wedding. The left salad was ours (with the shrimp) and the right theirs (with the fruit).
The second dish was a beef dish that I've forgotten the name of. It was decent if unspectacular.
Third course: Black chicken soup. The chicken looked weird but tasted like chicken. It was the odd broth and the medicinal herbs that tasted weird. This was our first of, I think, three black chicken soup experiences.
Fourth and fifth courses: winter melon soup and shrimp balls (complete with mayo and sprinkles). The soup was not great. We didn't finish it. Liz really liked the shrimp balls. I, not being a fan of the mayonnaise, appreciated them a bit less.
Last course was a funky chicken dish that was pretty good.
Following our meal was 40 minutes in the hot springs. The room we got was basically a big bathtub with controls to turn on the springs. The experience was oddly relaxing. It was a bit weird at first, but after a few minutes, we began to relax a bit. We cleaned up and caught a taxi back to the MRT. We stopped for bubble tea across the street from the station and drank it out front as there are no drinks allowed on the MRT. This was my first bubble tea experience and a positive one to boot. I didn't get the funky things in my tea this time, but I would on all subsequent tea trips.
We were slow to get around on Saturday. We spent the morning eating the remainder of the bread that Julia left and drinking Dr. Brown Coffee and milk tea that I bought at the Family Mart down the street. 
Eventually we got it together and walked to the MRT station to check out the computer market there. As we're not really looking for computer parts, there wasn't a whole lot there. There are some other electronics, but not nearly as much as the NOVA tower.
We were starving and wandered by a bunch of small restaurants. Eventually, Liz decided we needed to get red bean paste cakes from a cart. Brilliant! While we were waiting, another vendor walked by with what looked like corn dogs. Liz dared me to eat one. I didn't feel like dealing with interrupting the guy's cell phone conversation, but Liz said she'd buy it if I ate it, so she did. And... it was a corn dog. Not a bad one, either. After that, we wandered through the vegetable market across the street before making our way to the train station for lunch, and to meet Julia and Ray.
Lunch was from the food court at the station. I ordered Szechuan beef with noodles. It also came with some seaweed soup, tofu and bitter melon (I think that's what it was). It was very good. It was in a broth rather than in a sauce as you usually see in the States. 
Liz ordered pho from a Vietnamese place.
We sat around most of the morning eating breakfast and drinking tea. We finally left around 1:00. We spent the day wandering around near the train station, looking at electronics, with a break in a coffee house. Later, we rode the MRT to the Breeze shopping center and went to Muji and Tokyo Hands, where Liz bought little containers and weird things.
They tell me that people in Taipei eat hamburgers for breakfast. This one came from the place downstairs (I forget the name). It was a peppered pork cutlet. Next to it are radish cakes.
The food court in the train station is enormous and also boasts a wine store featuring the entire 2008 Wine Spectator Top 100 in their front window. We walked through but didn't eat there. A couple of hours later, we ate lunch at the food court in the department store across the street.
I had a bowl of noodles, which was quite good but not as good as the beef noodle from across the street.
You can tell rush hour, because not only does the traffic get insane, but the police appear to direct the traffic. 
By the time we got to the Breeze, my insides were tearing themselves apart, probably from the airline food consumed the previous day. Eventually nausea subsided to hunger, but they were still fighting it out when we went to the food court. I ended up ordering the same fish katsu sandwich Liz did.
It had too much of the mayonnaise on it, but was otherwise ok. Not a stellar dinner, but it settled my system down and I felt much better the rest of the evening. 
We took the MRT back to our general area and walked back to our place on BaDe Rd. By the time we returned, the night market was in full swing.
I picked up a can of Kirin's winter beer (and an enormous bottle of water) at the 7-11. The can looks nice, but I can't recommend the beer. It tastes a little too much like Genesee for my liking.
We finally crashed pretty late after sitting up researching all of the gadgets we were looking at all day. Liz found some nice-looking cameras, but wanted to actually read reviews before buying anything. I forgot to check the going exchange rates before we left, and had to make sure my calculations were correct. So, today we will likely be off to buy photo gear. I anticipate starting at the Kuanghwa market. If the deals aren't as good as what we found yesterday, then we'll probably be back at the Nova and the camera area by the main station. By that time, Julia will probably be back from Tainan. I don't know what we'll do then. There was talk of going to Tienmou.
I wonder what's for lunch.
I switched templates. Not the best, but it will have to do now. I finally got fed up with the tiny column size of the old one. The size wasn't working with posting pictures from flickr, so it goes. This is only a temporary replacement. I will redesign the page at some point.
The other quick note is that all of the photos I'm posting are quick pictures from the new DSLR. They're converted from RAW format in the camera and uploaded with little more than a quick resize and maybe a crop in the GIMP. No sharpening or other processing has been done. While today we are spending the morning sitting around acclimating to the new environment, later on there will be little time for posting at all, much less performing any processing.
After arriving at the apartment where we're staying in Taipei, Julia took us to the closest night market to get something to eat. We walked through an alley across the street to get there. It reminds me of some of the street markets in London. As it was a weeknight, some of the stands were closing when we arrived around 11:30 (23:30 to you 24-hour clock types). The first place we stopped sold spicy fried chicken. I'm not sure what it was called, but it was basically popcorn chicken tossed in a chili spice mixture. 
We stopped at this Okonomiyaki stand for Okonomiyaki. It was pretty good. I'm not sure what all was in it besides tuna and shaved fish. 
We walked around a little more, but we were tired and everything was closing. We were cutting through a noodle shop to go back to the apartment and I mentioned I was still hungry. So, we stopped in the shop and Julia ordered us a bowl of beef noodle and spicy wontons. Both were excellent. 
The noodles were a bit slippery. I had some chopstick issues, but they were thick and chewy. Easily the best Chinese noodles I've had. The broth was flavorful with a hint of chili. The spicy wontons were regular wontons in a spicy sauce. They were very good, but allegedly in a couple days we will be going for the best ones in town.
As always, I am behind posting. I put some photos from the Miami Book Fair last weekend on flickr, but I haven't posted here yet. Similarly, I will attempt to upload photos as I take them on the trip to Taiwan. I'll upload them to flickr and then post here as I have time and internet connection to do so.
Yesterday was the big plane trip to Taipei. This is my first trans-Pacific flight. My previous longest plane trip was the flight to Budapest earlier this year. That was two legs: Fort Lauderdale to New York, then New York to Budapest. This was three legs: Fort Lauderdale to Detroit, Detroit to Tokyo, Tokyo to Taipei. It could have been worse, but it would have been nice had my seat not been broken on the long flight. 
This was in the airport in Tokyo. I don't think I've ever seen one of these at home. I can certainly think of a few times I've been down the pub and could have used this.
Instructions for the automatic faucet in the airport, in case you had trouble figuring it out.
Subscribe
Posts
Recently on twitter