Taiwan Trip Day 3 Part 1
July 1st, 2007Working on the site design by the way, feel free to comment.
After breakfast, we bought some movie vouchers from a drug? store. What some places will do is buy large amounts of tickets to take advantage of the group discount, and then resell them to people at a higher price, but one still lower than going directly to the theater. Interesting.
Seems like an odd place to buy tickets eh?
We then traveled to the Beitou area, where the the Guandu temple is. The Guandu temple is built into the side of a mountain and faces a river, which I found pretty cool. The inside of the temple was very intricately designed.
We went through a tunnel that led to a small courtyard. The tunnel had statue representations of some buddhas/deities along the sides.
We continued up the mountain temple for a bit and rested before heading back down. The Guandu temple was a lot less populated than the Longshan temple, and prolly mostly due to accessibility reasons. The Longshan temple was nestled in a densely populated area, while this temple is… well, in a mountain. What I also learned is that volunteers maintain these temples and make sure everything is in working order. I would have thought that these places be government subsidized, but I think each temple has to find the means to support itself.
Red lanterns! Yay!
Here’s a decent wide shot of the river area:
We went to Danshui to grab something to eat. The area of Danshui is known for it’s seafood dishes and was also lined with small game stands and other sources of entertainment. We walked along the river, taking in the sights.
A massage parlor. I would not want to be massaged by this man. Seems a bit creepy.
Forgot to take a picture, but with my suggestion, we stopped by at a balloon-popping stand and played a round. With our collective efforts, we were able to win this fabulous panda hammer:
After our victory, we went to a local restaurant, 阿給老店 (a gei lao dian) to take in some of the local flavor. We had some 阿給 and 貢丸湯.
貢丸湯 is the bowl of white fish meat balls in the clear broth. A bit chewier than a sausage meatball, and wasn’t as fishy tasting as I would have imagined it to be. The 阿給 was interesting. From what I still remember, (this was over a month ago!) the 阿給 is a tofu skin (don’t know if it was fried or anything) stuffed with noodles and some fish thing. The sauce was slightly spicy and sweet, and went well with the dish. Both were good. I’d definitely try the 阿給 again.
After the restaurant, we picked up a few of these cripsy rolls. I believe they were stuffed with shrimp and pork. Two sauces were available that you would apply yourself, one on the spicier side, the other a garlicky soy one. Muy yum. Didn’t linger in the area much longer, as we needed to head back to Tianmu.
Snoopy land!
When we arrived back in Tianmu, we went over to the movie theater to redeem our tickets. In Taiwan, you get assigned seats so that you don’t have to fight to grab your friends a seat. So even if you get to the theater late, if you’ve already bought the tickets, you and your friends don’t have to worry about seats. Quite nifty. I like the Taiwan system better.
Went to a Japanese drink/dessert shop afterwards. Bought a green tea drink. It was really green. Came with a scoop of ice cream on top. Taste wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Not bad though. Afterwards, we roamed a park in Tianmu for a little while. We didn’t stay too long, as the temperature was pretty high and there wasn’t much cover from the sun.
More later, end part 1
Technorati Tags: Taiwan, taipei, movies, theater, tea, food, seafood, guandu, temple, danshui, beitou, chinese
July 7th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
forgot you had this site. enjoyed reading through your adventures in taiwan