29 September 2010

Immediate Impressions

The first thing I noticed about Taipei was how wonderful it smelled. I'm in a ludicrously densely populated sub-tropical city and all that's running through my head is my nose automatically scrunching at the thought of London, New York, or Toronto in the summer. Here, a typical street smells of Buddhist incense and amazing food. The temples are even more incredible - offerings of flowers and fruit (and the occasional bag of doritos) and sticks of incense nearly as thick as my wrist. The first temple I visited was Longsham.

More interestingly, though, was that after I went I somehow got sucked into participating (read: cat whisker face paint) in a "Taiwan heritage cat festival". The origins of which remain unclear; however, I did end up seeing an exhibit explaining some of Taipei's history with some cool old photos (the killing of all political dissidents during the Chang Kai Shek era was never mentioned, just the building of infrastructure). Here is a picture of teenaged ballet students putting on a show for the festival:

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After some culture shock at an outdoor market (live chicken getting its head chopped off!), I got taken out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Ximen where they serve you on your knees. Oh, wait. More culture shock! Thankfully, my hosts were very supportive of my food porn project. Also, I learned that the way to eat pork from a hotpot is to dip it in raw egg with your chopsticks and then put the whole slimy, fatty bite in your mouth. Awesome.

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The next day I worked up an appetite hiking Elephant Mountain with a hostel buddy and making friends with some local college students, it was time to eat!

Luckily, this time we had a local to take us to the most famous restaurant in Taiwan. Their specialty is steamed dumplings with broth already inside! So there's some delicious salty-chewy meat and broth all in one delicious bite. Word to the wise: no matter how much you want to just gobble them up, give them a minute or you'll just burn your tongue. Also, they were served with a small dish of pickled ginger; add some soy sauce and rice vinegar then dip for the full effect. It's definitely interesting trying to get all of this into my palette at once.

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After that it was time for dessert! Head over the the Shida night market for some fresh mango served over ice and brown sugar with a scoop of mango ice cream on top.

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The fruit is sweeter than the ice cream! And the Chinese character for brown sugar is black sugar! There's not too much else to say, how could this not be good?

But, since we were lucky enough to have a local guide for the evening, we were told that we shouldn't stop eating:

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This is not a chicken pie. It's just really basic fried chicken. The batter is pretty thick, but it's spicier than you would get in Canada. Overall, really good if a little greasy. But when is fried chicken not good?

Today was less exiting food-wise but I did get to take the gondola to MaoKong today!

And so now, a question to whoever might be reading this (and is able to work commenting features!) do you want the booze post or the dessert post next? In the mean time, feel free to head over to my flickr stream for the ol' digital camera dump.

4 comments:

  1. Given the topic of your last post, I laughed a bit when I read the first sentence of this one! Now I think you should buy one of those t-shirts and just kind of wave it around Taipei to soak up the scents and then send it back to Toronto...forget how you smell, I want to know what you're smelling over there!

    The dumplings and mango were my favourites--they truly look yummy! I want to hear about dessert next.

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  2. Pictures of you. With cat whiskers.
    Or it didn't happen. :)

    I want the dessert post, too. We can wait for the booze until you pile up more stories, and then you can pick the craziest, most hilarious one to share with us. Cool?

    So nice to see your Flickr stream -- even at this early stage in the trip. Did you see which one I commented on?

    Great, detailed reporting Adriana! Looking forward to the next one.

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  3. Perceptive, Cat. My clothes all smell of incense. I can't wait until I have my own apartment and I can just start burning it all the time at home, too. It certainly makes showering seem futile.

    I suppose I'll sacrifice myself and get on the dessert train with some gusto the next few days. Oh, darn.

    And thanks to my two most diligent commenters, I need all the love from home I can get. It's a little odd being this alone.

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  4. Hey hey, Vivi here :) Going to stalk your blog from now on, I hope mine shows correctly.

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