Hi Folks!
Well, I'm in Taiwan now, and have been for 2 days.
My first thoughts are:
- It's cold.
- There's so many people.
- I'm tired.
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| Hi! |
Nah, first day was pretty busy. So we left for the airport and the flight and everything went pretty smoothly. Our flight was as night, so ofcourse, instead of properly sleeping, I decided to watch movies. =D. And ofcourse, they don't have anything awesome to watch/ I've probably overdosed on a lot of movies during the holidays, so I've seen all the 'new ones' they had. They had Pitch Perfect, Perks of a Wallflower, Looper, etc etc. I always overestimate my movie watching capabilities, so I ended watching half of Sparkle (starring Jordin Sparks and some other black people; not being racist), and half a movie with Jake Glyneehal in it, (I forgot what it was called, but it was about some young chap teaching an old man who just got left by his wife how to live). So yeah, I ended up dozing and switching to a different movie. I watched most of Pitch Perfect minus the barfing scenes and the very end. It was good to watch because it didn't require any thinking.
At the airport:
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| Me and cousin. |
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| A Magic fluffy bunny |
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| I don't remember the last time I could do this on an airplane. xD |
It was pretty funny because we bumped into my cousin's boyfriend at the airport. I knew he worked for an airlines, but it didn't click that he worked for the one we went on, even though he helped us buy our tickets. But yeah, originally I was put way back around 20E, but he put me in the front closer to my sister and my cousin. Turns out he put me in the very front, which was also the exit seat. I don't know if I liked it there. Like wow, the foot room was amazing because there was no one in front of you (durrr), but there was also the weird...pressure that IF something were you happen, it was your job to open the huge friggin door that had a bajillion signs on it saying 'this way', 'turn knob', 'danger, do not open if...'...etc. Oh, and one of the flight attendant chick's chairs was right in front of me, so it was kinda weird during take-off and landing as well. (like sitting on one of those buses with two way seats across from a stranger.)
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| Exit Seat |
I have to say though, the airplane food was very average. First one I had was fish, which was dry fried fish in some weird..sweet lemony sauce. Second I had was some breakfast egg thing, which tasted like watery egg cooked and blended with some stale plastic blender. The best part was the chocolate gourmet cookie on the bottom left of the picture here. Oh, and their croissant was really nice (from the breakfast). It was nice and warm and toasted; which balanced out the chilly airplane cabin.
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| Airplane Dinner |
The yellow stuff was weird and sweet and I have lost respect for China Airline food. =D
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| Fried Fish |
Taiwan Airport right when you get off the plane. It was pretty quiet, and the airport is really clean. I have to say that Taiwan security is really lenient-they had two fierce looking officer ladies at the exit who didn't even look at you or your luggage.
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| Welcome to Taiwan |
Our uncle picked us up. It was nice and early in the morning, although I was pretty hungry because the airplane food was so bad. We had a bit of the really famous Taiwanese cheese cake. It's not like Western cheesecake that is really heavy and sweet; it's more of a really light and fluffy and butter sponge cake encased in a thin chewy crust of not too salty cheese. Afterwards, I went upstairs and fell asleep for a bit, then we headed to Taipei for lunch with my grandparents and dad.
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| Taiwan's Famous Cheese Cake. |
We went to a Japanese Restaurant and their Aburi salmon was so good. The fish was fresh and really thick...and it just melted in your mouth, and wasn't overwhelmed by rice. Grandpa also ordered some beer and two things of sake (He's old, but he's like an alcoholic who doesn't get drunk). We also had this weird candied fish...I think the fish was emphasizing the fish eggs, but I didn't really like it. We also had some pork floss sushi which was nice and filling, seeing as my sister and I were both fairly hungry.
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| Thick, fresh nigiri |
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| Aburi salmon, so good. |
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| Candied fish egg fish. |
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| Tempura prawn. I don't think I got any because Erica at them all. |
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| Gramps and his sake |
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| Erica and Gramma |
Then afterwards, we went to some famous hair salon for Erica to get her hair permed and done. Her hair is pretty much the opposite of mine; curly and thick. It ended up taking 5 whole freaking hours. I was starving by the time she finished. Plus we had to catch an hour long train back home, so we were a bit pressured for time.
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| Korean Side Dishes |
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| Sojo |
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| Hot pot |
Then we went back home. So tired. Erica left for Europe early in the morning and I didn't hear her leave at all.
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Next day we came back out to Taipei. Staying at Aunties house. I went out with dad in the arvo to do some shopping and had snacks and dinner. I have to say, there is so much to Taiwanese shopping centers. Like the number of food shops in their basement levels probably is equivalent and greater in selection to those from back home. In addition, I believe the work ethic and presentation of product is overall at a much higher standard. And their food; they really don't skimp out on any fillings. Like for their red bean buns, the ratio of red bean to the cake is probably 3:1. And their bakeries have such nice presentation. And there are so many green colored breads; it's fantastic.
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| Charlie Brown! |
Green bread and lots of delicious buns. Thing is, I'm kinda scared to take photos of too many things because a lot of stores don't allow it, or give you dirty looks. ^^''
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| Bakery |
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| Delicious carbs. |
We went to the famous sort of electronics department store, and I bought a converter and an SD card reader for this blog's pictures. >D. We also stopped by and had the little 'car wheel cakes', which is pretty much a cake sort of outside, with red bean, or cream filling. (They call the cream 'butter', but in reality, it's like custard. )
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| Red Bean Bun |
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| Custard Bun |
I had an oyster pancake for an arvo food, and my dad had this really nice bean curd dessert. (I didn't get a picture of it because he dove in before I could get one xD) The oyster pancake is really famous in Taiwan; it's usually some sort of veggie, oyster, egg, and flour, which makes sort of chewy gooey delicious pancake in savoury sauce.
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| Arvo snack/lunch with dad. Oyster pancake |
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| Oyster pancake |
We went shopping for a bit, and I saw some really cool random things. I'm trying to refrain from spending too much at once; especially in such an expensive department store.
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| Cake shop in the basement food court. So many cute cakes. |
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Zomg.
Then you realise it says TEA. |
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Asahi Green tea drink. (Asahi is a beer brand by the way)
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| Shopping center at around 8pm |
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| Fresh raddish cake for sale |
I think in the basement levels of most shopping centers, there's usually a grocery of sorts? And in the one that we went to, there were so many free samples; everything from noodles, to soup, to raisins, to yogurt ice cream. I think since new years is approaching, there were some more special foods around as well-they somehow are able to grow their fruit to unnatural sizes. This is my hand next to one of their apples, so if you imagine an apple that size next to your hand, you might fathom how unnatural this is. And this is only the top of the apple; the apples were fairly tall as well. Although it was about 2200 or sth yuen for a carton of the apples, which probably isn't worth it in terms of weight.
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| Obese apples. |
They also had these really cool apples which had words on them. It didn't look like the words were cut into them; maybe they grew the apples with stencils on them or something? I'm not quite sure.
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| Awesome apples with writing...somehow silhouetted on them. |
Free samples!
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| Free samples everywhere. |
So my dad kept insisting that we try this 'famous' ramen shop in the food court. It had a really long line, and I think we waited for at least half an hour. It was funny, because there were two couples behind us that consisted of American males, so I was just eavesdropping on them. Oh, and there was also this random fight that broke out in the middle of the foodcourt. Well not so much as a fight, rather than a middle aged woman yelling at the top of her voice at her boyfriend or something. She was insisting that she didn't cut in line, and she was yelling to him 'Did you call me shameless??'.
Which...yelling at the top of your lungs in the middle of the foodcourt...might support his 'insult'.
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| Santouka, lining up in the food court |
This is weird. So the characters for the Ramen shop are 'mountain, head, fire'. However at the shop front, they put the characters back to front; even the Japanese hiragana characters for 'ramen' are back to front, but not mirrored (i.e. it's not simply to be viewed from the inside). Thus I'm wondering if it's some Japanese custom? I'll look more detailed in Japan to see if they do it too.
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| Santouka Ramen...going the wrong way? |
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| Basket for personal belongings under your chair |
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| Eating Ramen at Santouka |
So yeah, we had had ramen and my dad ordered this 'special egg'. The ramen tasted pretty much like hakataya, and the soup was pretty salty as well. I don't know if I would really come here again, as my favourite part of ramen is the soup; thus if the soup is too salty...
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| Shoryu Ramen |
The egg was pretty nice. The yolk was just cooked so it wasn't powdery, but it wasn't runny either.
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| Perfectly cooked egg yolk. |
Shalls update again soon! Laters~
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