After a lazy morning, ate some 水餃 “water dumplings,” for lunch. Some had corn on the inside, which was interesting.

Visited the Eslite bookstore, a pretty large store located in a shopping center near the Taipei 101.

I forget if if was the same shopping center, but I noticed a large gathering of women nearby a hair salon.

Then some guy appeared, and he led into the salon as the girls started peppering him with camera flashes. Seemed like a minor celebrity, as the crowd wasn’t THAT big. Or it might have been just some random guy, which would have been hilarious. I bet if I had a person escorting me inside, I might’ve produced the same effect.

We returned to the ever present Taipei 101, to get a better look at the shops rather than see the observation deck.

Expensive grocery store in basement.

The area around the 101 is filled with 2 floors worth of other stores and shopping centers, and pedestrian bridges link all of them together. A little ways out, there’s a movie theater and some other shiny buildings.

While in the area, I also happened to receive my first and last tissue advertisement in Taiwan. Exciting, no? From what I know, companies/events have people hand out small bags of tissues with an advertisement insert. It’s a win-win situation. Companies can spread the word, and we can wipe up our bodily fluids.

I’ve seen this advertisement quite often. I can read a good deal of the characters, but can’t make out any reasonable meaning to them. Anyway, look at the guy. Keeps money away from wife and at the same time, food away from child. What a terrible person. Yet, they are all smiling. Why?

We then left to go meet up with the rest of Daphu’s extended family on her mum’s side. We left together and went to a fancy chicken soup restaurant for dinner. Chicken soup? Fancy? Yeah, it was pretty fancy.

Chicken soup is the main entree and you pick what type you want. While the actual soup stays the same, there were different additions. The ones that I remember were, shark fins, bamboo shoots, and some spongey thing that Daphu had. You also pick either toasted rice or noodles to go with the soup.

Besides the soup, you also select smaller entrees for your meal. Don’t remember if I specially ordered it, but I recieved some egg roll things in a peanut sauce. It was yummy.

Daphu got some veggie stuff. Bamboo shoots and… Yeah.

Everyone at the table was also given a cup of cooked battered shrimp in a sweet sauce. At first I thought we were getting some weird pastry. It tasted very much like a pastry, except for the shrimp. It was interesting, and not at all bad. The sprinkles were a nice touch.

We were given our soups on top of a small individual gas burner, which were neatly hidden beneath the table surface. The soup below was Daphu’s with the chicken in the center and the spongey stuff around it. Whatever the spongey thing was, it drew in the flavor of the chicken quite well and it was a yummy spongey thing.

I was also given a plate of beef and tomatoes, with some baby bok choy. There wasn’t really anything special to say about it. It wasn’t bad, but wasn’t spectacular either.

Some slightly bitter greens. Went well with the soup. You can see some of my doodling on the placemat. I get fidgety.

The chicken soup was very rich in flavor, and pretty thick. The chicken itself was tender and fully cooked through. The flame below kept the soup hot at all times, which was an added bonus. I enjoyed every last drop. Since the restaurant specializes in it, they definitely knew what they were doing.

After the meal, everyone was given some herb tea in some nifty personal tea-steeping cups. I’m not big on herb teas usually, but it was a nice way to end the meal.

Daphu’s family left but her aunt stayed with us to show us around a bit more during the night. We went to the Breeze center, a large shopping center, for a little while as Daphu’s aunt had an errand to run.

There were nearly 14000 people inside. Wow. This is just one shopping center too.

Afterwards, we rolled over to the Raohe Night Market. (There’s too many ways to write it – gah) Smaller than the Shilin Night Market, and located in a different part of Taipei. In terms of everything else, it was pretty much the same as the Shilin Night Market. Similar foods and items were for sale.

You know how America has dollar stores? Well Taiwan has 10NT (~30 cents US) stores. I bought some measuring spoons for my apartment back in the states for a cool 10 NT.

What about the other pages?

A douhua stand, with all the toppings laid out.

Ah. The highlight of my night market experience. Carrot juice. I was able to get some freshly prepared over at the Raohe market. For those of you who’ve never had carrot juice before, you’ve been missing out on one of life’s great pleasures. Carrots aren’t too cheap in the States, so you might not find it worth the effort and money to get a cup of juice, but if you do – ho boy. Carrots aren’t exactly the juiciest of items to grind down, so you know when you get a tall cup of that deep orange liquid, you savor every drop.

Good stuff. Don’t settle for Jamba Juice’s carrot juice. They mix other not-so-yummy stuff with the carrots. And it’s gotta be fresh. Canned stuff is a no no.

Was getting late, so we waved off Daphu’s aunt, and taxi’d back home. Another delicious day.

count: 59

Technorati Tags: Taiwan, Taipei, eslite, taipei, 101, breeze, center, chicken, soup, raohe, night, market, carrot

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese “pancake” made with assorted ingredients on the inside. It is fried on a flat grill, or a teppan. It is seasoned with some green stuff, some brown stuff, and a thicker type of worchestershire sauce. A server prepared our okonomiyaki for us with some soba noodles. It was tasty.

Monjayaki is another Japanese pan-fried batter dish. The batter is left much more watery than okonomiyaki. Instead of being fried all at once, it is eaten(scraped) off the grill directly a bit at a time with a small spatula. Also tasty.

After taking the time to destroy our meals, we went to the Guang Hua market. A small farmer’s market preceded the Guang Hua market, which we quickly passed by.

The Guang Hua market, for the most part, is a collection of electronics stores/vendors that are housed in a large building or in simpler terms, Johnny’s wet dream. The building was seperated into multiple “rows”, so that in order to access a different row, you would need to leave the building and enter again at the appropriate entrance. The air conditioning was a welcome change to the hot Taiwan sun outside.

The stores typically specialized in a certain product, like cell phones, music, computers, or games. Between those, the stores were pretty similar to each other, and while I bet they all had something to differentiate themselves by, we didn’t really stick around long enough to find out what. What the market may have lacked in variety, they certainly made up with quantity. (And they had quite a variety. So… whoaaaaa) I haven’t really been up to date with compy parts and music players, so I couldn’t tell if they were cheaper than the US, although I’m sure they were.

Manga!

Passed by a peculiar sticker.

After making the rounds and enjoying the cool A/C, we ferried over to go see the Terracotta soldiers that were in a culture(?) museum.

Or at least we thought we were, until we saw that line. As we had no idea whether this line was the right one or not, Daphu ninja’d her way in to find out the details. Mission successful, she returned to tell us that this was indeed the correct line, but we needed to get into another line so that we could first buy tickets. Gah. The line we were standing in was moving rather fast, making us wonder if the people were simply moving past the exhibits without a chance to scrutinize the soldiers’ nostrils. The price was high and the wait was long enough where we didn’t want just a quick walkthrough, so we did the next best thing.

(Thought they were in China? Well they are, but apparently, half of them are in Taiwan as well. I didn’t know that before.)

We took pictures to say that we “saw” the terracotta soldiers. There were a few soldiers on the outside of the museum, so we amused ourselves accordingly. Win. We then walked a little way across the street, where the Chiang Kaishek Memorial Hall stood.

Unfortunately, the memorial was undergoing some renovations at the time, and we didn’t go in. However, the surrounding area was pretty and we took a small rest from our walking. The structures alone were worth seeing. If you’re wondering about the people in the photos, some small sporting event just ended before we arrived, and they were leaving.

More later.

Technorati Tags: okonomiyaki, monjayaki, chiang, kaishek, terra, cotta, taiwan, taipei, guang, hua, food