Taiwan: Day 5

Our first day in Taipei began a bit late since none of us got to bed until after 3 AM. John went out and picked up breakfast at a nearby food stand. We had steamed vegetable and pork buns, fried pork potstickers, fried bread dough that we dipped into soy milk, and fruit. To drink, he bought soy milk and fried rice milk (which was an odd brown color). Scott liked both of them; I thought they merely tasted all right (but I don't like cow's milk either).


Fried Dumplings, Stuffed Buns, Fried Dough

Soy Milk and Fried Rice Milk

Vegetable and Pork Buns

After breakfast, we headed to Yangmingshan. This is a national park of mountains/hills and trials on the northeast edge of Taipei. It is very close to the Chinese Culture University where John and Julie work and live. Chiang Kai-Shek named the area after his favorite philosopher, Wang Yang-Ming. The park occupies about 44 square miles. The highest peak in the area is not very high at all, only about 3,675 feet - Yangmingshan looks like a gorgeous collection of large hills. The park is known for its hot springs, hiking trails, and venomous snakes.






We spent several hours walking on trails through the park. The cherry blossoms had started blooming, although it will be much prettier in a month or two. The park was also filled with azalea plants. I easily could have stayed much longer at the park. We only saw a very small portion of it. At certain points in the park, vendors set up stands with various snack items. Scott and I split a roasted purple yam - very tasty and very hot. I took pictures of some of the other offerings - fried, shredded yam pancakes, boiled sausages and fish balls, tea-soaked eggs, and corn on the cob.


Purple Yam

Fried, Shredded Yam Pancakes




We drove over to a nearby calla lily farm in Yangmingshan for lunch. We ate outside on a terrace overlooking fields of calla lilies. John and Julie helped us pick another fabulous lunch: wild boar w/mountain vegetables (tasty but a bit fatty), mountain fern vegetables (very good), fried pineapple shrimp (very sweet, like American Chinese food), fried tofu w/dipping sauce (hard to mess this up), yam soup (delicious - gingery and sweet).


Wild Boar with Mountain Vegetables

Mountain Fern Vegetable

The Fern We Ate Growing in the Garden

Pineapple Shrimp

Fried Tofu

Yam Soup





One of many Calla Lilies

Julie, John, Scott, and Me at the Calla Lily Farm

After lunch, we walked along the road by the farm which was filled with vendors hawking snacks, flowers, etc. We bought a box of strawberry mochi. Mochi is a tradition Japanese snack of glutinous rice flour made into a dough and often filled with bean pastes. Our mochi was filled with a fresh strawberry wrapped around red bean paste. Delicious. The vendor was also selling cups of fresh strawberries topped with sweetened condensed milk.


Strawberry-Filled Mochi

Vendor Cutting Up Strawberries

Vendor Making Strawberry-Filled Mochi

Leaving Yangmingshan, we drove to the Grand Hotel to take a few pictures of the exterior and lobby. Built in 1973, the Grand Hotel is on a hill overlooking Taipei City. It has the world's largest classical Chinese roof. The view from the hill was gorgeous, as was the hotel itself. The lobby was decorated for Chinese New Years, with many lanterns and glowing cows. Scott had wanted to stay here for a night at one point, but he was surprised to discover that it got a lot of poor reviews on Trip Advisor.


The Grand Hotel

Cow in the Grand Hotel Lobby

Next we drove into downtown Taipei to the Jade Market. Taipei has a well-known weekend jade market, but we went to a daily one located in a covered warehouse on a street corner. It was filled with probably a hundred individual vendors each wanting to sell you their jade items. Unfortunately, the market closed at 6 and we got there at 5:30, so our time was limited. I had a vision of what I wanted to buy, so quickly skimmed the tables to find it. Right around 6, I found a piece of jade that fit the necklace I envisioned. John and Julie spent about 10 minutes haggling with the seller. In Taiwan, shoppers bargain for everything. John is especially talented at it. He managed to get the price significantly reduced. We were very fortunate to have them with us. I'm sure we would have been massively ripped off if we had traveled without native speakers.

Our next destination was the Shilin Night Market. Taipei is known for its night markets. These are large shopping areas with cheap goods (both in price and quality), carnival games, and lots of snack foods. They typically open around 4pm, are most crowded between 8pm-11pm and close around 1am or 2am. Shilin is the largest and most famous market in Taipei City. It is located in several large buildings that resemble what you'd see at a fair. The surrounding stores stay open throughout the night and are essentially part of the night market as well. The market was unbelievable crowded. It is always busy, but many people had obviously taken advantage of the holiday week to visit the night market. It was too crowded to really look at anything in the buildings. The four of us had to hold onto one another as we wormed our way through the crowds. It was a solid wall of people. We found a table at one of the food stalls and decided to sit down for dinner. We had warm fried noodles with ham and cold noodles. We also had a dish with rice noodles. The Shilin Night Market is known for its cuttlefish stew and oyster omelet. We didn't try either. I was curious about the cuttlefish stew, but it didn't look fabulous. I'd tried the oyster omelet in Tainan and didn't like the ketchup-based sauce. With dinner, Scott had a mango-milk bubble tea and I had mango juice. For dessert, we had fried yam balls. Very tasty. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures at the Night Market. It was just too crazy.

After dinner, we escaped from the crowded building and walked through the adjacent shopping streets. In the middle of the streets, obstructing the walkways, were vendors selling clothing, food, and trinkets all set up on wheeled racks. Julie told me that these vendors did not have licenses and would have to leave quickly if the police came. Sure enough, ten minutes later dozens of people wheeled long clothing racks and food stands into an alley to avoid the inspectors. It was a funny sight.

We left Shilin and drove to Miramar, a shopping mall in a recently re-developed area of Taipei filled with hi-tech companies. The shopping mall is home to the Miramar Ferris Wheel, one of the largest ferris wheels in Taiwan. It reminded me of the London Eye. Scott and I took a ride on the wheel. It took about 10 minutes to go around. It was fun...we could see lots of city lights, but since it was dark it was hard to distinguish anything. After finishing the ferris wheel, we headed back to John and Julie's apartment. We stopped at a convenience store to buy some frozen buns for breakfast. Nearby was a McDonalds. I went into the restaurant to see if it had any unique features. It was essentially the same as any other McDonalds. Scott said that the McDonalds in Japan used to have a teriyaki burger that was good, but they apparently don't make those anymore. It's always fun to see McDonalds around the world.

Taiwan Day 6: Taipei

Our last day in Taiwan was as jam packed as the rest of our trip. We had another delicious breakfast at John and Julie's apartment. We ate pork buns that Julie had purchased the night before at a convenience store in the freezer department. I wish they had the selection of filled buns in the U.S. that they do in Taiwan. We also had guava juice, wax apples, tangerines, and custard apples/Buddha's head, my favorite fruit (although the passionfruit I had at lunch (see below) is almost as good but tastes entirely different).


L-R: Pork Buns, Tangerines, Asian Pears, Custard Apple/Buddha's Head, Jujubes, Wax Apples

We headed to the National Palace Museum for the English-speaking group tour at 10 AM. The National Palace Museum holds many items from the Sung, Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing dynasties. The items were sent from China to Taiwan in 1948 when the political instability caused by the Communists made the museum's directors fear for the items' safety. The items range in date from thousands of years old to 100-200 years old. It is clear that the ancient Chinese were far more advanced than Westerners by looking at the items. One interesting item was a cauldron made around 1000 B.C. In the basin is about 500 characters; they have been very useful to scholars as an example of ancient writing. Also interesting is the Tsung-Chou Bell, made around 1000 B.C. It is a large bell with no ball inside. It was rung by hitting it with some external mallet. It also has numerous knobs on the front which was apparently used to produce different sounds. Our guide said that the bell can produce two different sounds. Modern scholars have been unable to reproduce a bell that can make the same sounds. During the Ch'ing dyansty (1644-1911), jade was carved into a piece of bok choy cabbage with two grasshoppers on to. It is believed that the piece was carved as a dowry gift for Consort Chin to symbolize her purity and offer blessings for many children. Scott's favorite piece in the museum's collection is the Carved Olive-Stone Boat. In 1737, Ch'en Tsu-Chang used a tiny olive pit, not more than an inch and a half long to carve a boat. The boat is unbelievably detailed, with eight detailed people carved onto the boat. Also, the entire text of a poem with more than 300 characters is carved onto the olive pit in miniscule print. A magnifying glass is provded to look at the olive pit. We stayed at the museum for about 2 hours. We easily could have stayed there all day and not seen everything, but there was much else we wanted to do.


Mao-Kung Ting Cauldron (Picture From NPM)

Tsung-Chou Bell (Picture From NPM)

Jade Bok Choy & Insects (Picture From NPM)

Carved Olive Pit (Picture From NPM)

Front of National Palace Museum


We left the museum and drove into downtown Taipei. This is a thoroughly urban area with many tall buildings. It is filled with fancy department stores. We walked through a Japanese department store, Mitsukoshi, that seemed to fill an entire block, although I'm sure it wasn't really that large. We headed toward the restaurant where John had made reservations for lunch. Jogoya is a buffet restaurant with numerous locations around Taiwan; this one located in a mall near Taipei 101. It has a vast array of Chinese and Japanese food. Like most buffets, I doubt the dishes were the quintessential versions of Chinese cuisine, but I thought the food tasted very good. Most importantly, it enabled me to try a lot of different varieties of food. I liked nearly all the dishes. The following are pictures of most of the food we ate.


L-R: Lamp Chop w/Black Pepper Sauce, Southeast Asian Pork, Miso Baked Fish, Thai Style Scallops, Pumpkin Seafood Tofu Stew (Delicious), Garlic Crab, Burning Paste Shrimp

L-R: Fried Shrimp Roll, Turnip Cake, Fried Chinese Yam, Fried Gold Durian (a smelly fruit), Salmon Nigiri

Crab Soup - Really good.

Fried Shrimp Balls - Cute, but not much flavor

Grilled Bamboo - Kind of bitter

Hand Roll w/Shrimp & Asparagus

Tuna Sashimi, Salmon Sashimi, Tomatoes, Pickled Fruit

Pork Filled Dumplings

Clay Pot w/Pork, Beef, and Squid

Open-Mouthed Sea Bass - Very good

Dessert: Chocolate Fondue w/ Marshmallows, Fruit, Macadamia Nut & Chocolate Ice Cream, Japanese Pancake W/ Cream & Red Bean Paste Filling (Yum!); Passionfruit; Rock Chocolate (Chocolate w/cornflakes, I think)

Passion Fruit - Delicious!

At the fondue area, they offered three items to dip in the chocolate: marshmallows, red grapes, and cherry tomatoes! Of all the different dishes I saw at Jogoya, the only thing that I could not get my head around was dipping cherry tomatoes in chocolate. Fish chin, I happily ate...but I could not eat cherry tomatoes and chocolate. It may actually taste good, but the two just don't seem to go together.

After our enormous lunch we walked over to the mall at the base of Taipei 101. On the way, I was excited to see a large sign for Coldstone Creamery. I went inside to see if it was any different. Other than featuring less chocolate-themed ice cream creations, it was basically the same. Even the offered toppings were the same. There was also a cute Snoopy Metlife ferris wheel and a replica of the Statue of Liberty. The Taipei 101 mall was lots of fun. We spent a few hours looking around. It was largely filled with designer shops that were prohibitively expensive. There was Tiffany's, DKNY, D&G, Prada, Gucci, Escada, Louis Vuitton, etc. I think clothes were more expensive there than in the U.S. (based on a comparison of a shirt from Armani Exchange). They also had a large English/Chinese bookstore that I happily looked around. We spent so much time in the mall both because I love looking at expensive clothes and purses (and books of course), but also because Scott wanted to wait until dark to go to the observatory.








Taipei 101

After dark, we ascended to the 89th floor of Taipei 101 to see the sights of Taipei in the interior observatory. Taipei 101 is a 101-floor skyscraper opened in 2004. It is currently the tallest building in the world, but will be eclipsed by a 141-floor building in Dubai in September 2009. It was the first building to be taller than a half-kilometer. Its height is listed as 1,667 feet (Comparison: There are 5,280 feet in a mile). It is designed to resist wind gusts of 60 miles/second and the strongest earthquake in a 2,500 year pattern. The building has a 728 ton tuned mass damper suspended from the 88th floor to the 92 floor designed to offset building movements caused by wind gusts. It is the largest damper in the world. Taipei 101 capitalizes on the damper by having its own mascot, the "Damper Baby." The elevator to the observatory is the fastest in the world. It took us from the 5th floor to the 89th floor in only 37 seconds. We spent a lot of time walking around the observatory listening to free audio guides that told us about the sights of Taipei that we were seeing. I was sad that we couldn't really see the city due to the darkness.










The Mass Tuned Damper

Me and Julie with the Damper Baby

Scott and John with the Damper Baby


To leave the observatory, we had to pass through numerous shops, selling food gifts and jewelry. We fell prey. Scott bought several boxes of cakes to take to work - they had samples of all the different flavors - quite good. And I found a gorgeous necklace of pink coral with a little jade. Taiwan is apparently known for its coral - the shop made sure we were aware of this. I was just happy to find a pretty necklace that ended up being inexpensive with the exchange rate and a little bargaining by John. After spending a long time in the jewelry shops, we headed back down to the main floors and left Taipei 101.

It was getting late by this point, but I really wanted to do one more thing in Taiwan - go to a big grocery store. So we went to one of their large supermarkets called Carrefour. Essentially a combination of a grocery store and a Walmart, this had everything a household could need. We bought a few pairs of house shoes and sandals for about $3 US each. Scott found a backpack for about $5 US. I also found a packet of chopsticks as well as a portable pair of chopsticks that I can fold up in put in my lunchbox for less than $2 each. We did not get to the grocery store portion of the supermarket until just before it closed at 11 PM, so many things had been removed, but I saw the vast array of fruits and vegetables in the produce section. Not surprisingly, they also had a much larger selection of fish than any store in the U.S. After finishing our shopping, we headed back to Julie and John's apartment for the night.