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:



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.



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.




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.



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:



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.

Group Poll

So they sell these shirts in my hostel:



From what I can tell, the idea is to wear the shirt then fold it into the envelope on the front. From there, you can mail it to loved ones.

And then they can smell you even when you're far away.

So, loved ones, how do we feel about this as a group?

You Flyin' Solo? 'Atta Girl!

Cheers to that American guy who pointed me in the direction of the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial today just after he gave me the title for this post. It was just after lunch when I made the decision that interesting soft beverages were definitely going to be a theme. It's hot out, I'm apparently not supposed to drink tap water for the first few weeks and it's a whole world of new flavours to discover!



The green one had little chunks of aloe in it but tasted oddly like the under-ripe sour grapes that used to grow in my grandparents' backyard in Scarborough except they'd added enough sugar to make the whole thing tolerable. The orange one was unsweetened iced-tea! Available for mass consumption! This single beverage lead to me to a re-evaluation of this whole food blog in Asia concept. As much as it seemed cool, my palette hasn't developed in the right way to do reasonable reviews of food. I'm going to try sort of an honest reactions thing, but if it gets boring then I'll just give an itinerary of everything I'm doing and leave this whole place for my mother to read and leave it at that.

That being said, lunch was fantastic.



After being pointed in the direction of "the best beef noodle place" and told to order the sixth thing over ("dry beef noodle") I walked in, sat down, and was presented with a little ordering sheet in Mandarin. Well, I counted to six and put a check beside it. The woman gave me a confused look to which I gave a smile meant to communicate "I don't really care what it is, just some lunch, this place smells nice". A woman joined me at the table; she schooled me in the proper spoon-chopsticks-slurping method of eating and we exchanged companionable smiles. She finished before me and went over to a table of school boys; in English, one of them asked me where I was from and told me she'd paid for my lunch! Really? I'm starting to like this place.

Also recommended:

A beer and build your own deep fry with an Australian:



The other two beers were Corona and Budweiser!

So, this was cool, you take everything, put it in a basket, and then it gets deep fried and sauced for you:





That being said, I find liver difficult to take. Fermented tofu, however! Yes! It's tofu that doesn't taste like nothing. It has sort of a similar effect to adding a ton of mushrooms to a pasta dish.

Adriana and Airplane Food

Let's start by saying they feed you a lot. All of my flights were booked through Air Canada; I'm not sure if this is indicative of some sort of North American diet excess or if it's just that eating is a really good way to kill time during about thirteen hours of flying and nineteen hours of travelling. The same did not apply to alcohol. I had three drinks over the course of ten hours from Vancouver to Seoul and my flight attendant started giving me prudish looks and suggesting I have water (three drinks! ten hours! I'm a nervous flyer, even with the added effects of air travel this doesn't exactly lead to a sloppy drunk). But that last hop with Thai air? They gave you wine with dinner and followed it up with a complimentary whiskey. For a two hour flight! I like them more, even if they don't have little touch screens on the back of every chair.

But let's get this started!



My first meal I was given a choice between beef with noodles and chicken pasta. I opted for the pasta, I'm not sure why I thought this sounded safer. Both looked questionable at best. Those pickled veggies weren't all bad, though. And chocolate brownie is always a good idea - surprisingly moist. The chicken was not as chalky as I would have expected.

The second meal came only about three and a half hours after the first - this time I opted for the Asian option:



No dessert! Just fresh fruit, as I ate it I wondered if that nurse at the travel clinic would be mad at me for eating the fresh fruit as I was told not to (seriously, no fresh fruits and veggies my whole time in Asia? I can't wait to break this rule today!). Pork with rice, again the meat was surprisingly tender. Too bad it was in some seriously gummy rice with an overly sweet sauce. Too much salt does not even begin to describe it....

But wait! There's more! Even more!



This came about two hours after the last meal. You've had Mr. Noodles before, right?

After a couple of hours in the airport in Seoul (in which I consumed a pocari sweat, sort of like gatorade but in a can and not nauseatingly sweet) I got onto my second and final flight to Taipei. As soon as we're at cruising altitude we get fed (for a two hour flight? sweet!).



They also had a seafood option but I was horrified at the thought of plain seafood. So more pork for me! This was definitely yummier (not that I was at all hungry at this point, but I was bored!) That little coffee cake stuck to my teeth and tasted of generic sugar. Not as sugary as the brownie from my first flight. Also, it came with kimchi. I had one bite but I find it overly spicy. Does anyone have kimchi eating advice? Also, this bun was warm, with hard butter; definitely preferable to the cold bun with whipped butter served on both air Canada flights.

Alas, I forgot to bring my camera down for breakfast at the Holiday Inn this morning, but I will tell you it involved hot dogs, steamed eggs, and miso soup.

And now, Adriana vs. public transit. Wish me luck, maybe I'll stop for a snack on the way...

Hello and Goodbye

Welcome to any and all who wish to read my travel tales (okay, it will probably mostly be about food); I've just gotten off a ten hour flight and have another plane to board in an hour. In my present state, I feel it's safer to leave you in more capable hands:

If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?

-Richard Bach (from Jonathan Livingston Seagull)