Where to, Gumshoe? – Page 14 – Follow us through our day to day travels and adventures

Taipei (Day 18): Tamsui Day

March 18, 2016

Today we planned on spending the day in Tamsui to visit Uncle Albert. Tamsui/Danshui/Danshuei (different spellings) is a seaside city located north of Taipei. It takes about 35 minutes from Taipei on the MRT to get there. The cost of going there from our MRT station (Daan) was 44 NT = $1.75 CAD, which is the most expensive MRT ride we’ve taken so far. Ideally, Tamsui is a good place to visit when it’s sunny since a lot of attractions are along the waterfront. We had scheduled to visit Uncle Albert on Friday because the forecast had been for sun today, but the forecast changed to rain and even some thunder.

When we arrived at the station, Uncle Albert was waiting for us outside the gates. He led us down a street filled with food stalls and various snack vendors (“Tamsui Old Street”). As soon as we entered, we ordered fried chicken nuggets and UFO stuffed waffles (taiyakis). The fried chicken nuggets were from this place called J&G Fried Chicken (since 1973), the chicken was just fried so it was moist and perfectly seasoned with a bit of spice (Tim: I asked for less spicy).

Uncle Albert wanted to take us to a place on that street that served a traditional Tamsui dish. He ordered “a-gei” (bean curd outer skin with vermicelli inside) and fish ball soup.

After we finished eating some snacks, we continued to walk in Tamsui’s “old town”. By now, the rain was starting to pick up and it became a downpour, my sister even bought a poncho for 30 NT = $1.20 CAD. Uncle Albert walked with us to Tamsui Presbyterian Church and then left us to get his car.

The Tamsui Presbyterian Church was founded by Canadian missionary, Dr. Mackay, the first missionary to serve northern Taiwan. Not only is Dr. Mackay an important figure in the Tamsui area but he is important to Tim’s family. Tim’s Great Grandfather was the Pastor at that church. As we waited for Uncle Albert to come back with his car, we went to a historical building next to the church where Dr. Mackay had run a dental practice. It is now a small museum and shop. The store attendants there gave us some tea and cookies as they explained more about Dr. Mackay.

After we spent some time around the church, Uncle Albert picked us up and drove us around to see other Tamsui sites – including Fort Santo Domingo and Fisherman’s Wharf (where they have the “Love Bridge”). The rain wasn’t coming down as hard as earlier so we got out and walked over the bridge and around the waterfront.

For dinner we headed to a mall close to the Tamsui MRT station. Uncle Albert picked “Thai Town” – which has multiple locations in Taiwan. It was a nice restaurant on the 10th (top floor) of the mall that overlooked the water. All the seats in the restaurant had a window view. If only it were a sunny day, the seating at the restaurant would have been awesome. The food and service were good – the prices were similar to back home ($10-$15 range per dish)

After dinner, we said our goodbyes to Uncle Albert and thanked him for being such a great Tamsui guide. We decided to head back to the market street to buy “iron eggs” which originated from Tamsui. They are small chicken eggs that have been cooked down continuously until they’re the size of a quail egg. We decided to walk around a bit more and buy some snacks for later and for my sister to bring home. Nate had fallen asleep so my sister was free to actually look around. On top of the iron eggs to try tomorrow, we got more fruit (Noel loves the guava here), dried plums, this seaweed snack, mochis, and Mister Donut donuts at the MRT station.

Our conversation at the mochi stand was funny, my sister wanted to know what all the flavours were so she asked Tim to help her. Tim asked in Mandarin what the flavours were and the guy listed the six flavours fairly quickly. My sister asked for clarification from Tim on what one of the flavours was, Tim forgot and asked the guy to say the flavours again. When he repeated the flavour Tim wasn’t quite sure, he asked the guy to explain again. Then the guy just said “that one’s taro, black sesame, and green tea”. We all had a good laugh because we were struggling to figure out some of the flavours and the whole time the guy knew the names of the fillings in English.

We were all looking forward to going back to the apartment and having a chill night – Netflix and trying out the donuts. The donuts were different than any other donut I’ve had before, it was a bit chewy (almost like they used a bit of mochi flour in them). They are apparently known for their “pon de ring” donuts so we tried a strawberry, plain, peanut & chocolate and a double chocolate donut.

Tomorrow, we’ll probably do a bit of shopping and walking around the Zhongxiao Fuxing area. For dinner, we are meeting Auntie Sandra and family! They are in Taipei for the weekend from Hong Kong so it’ll be nice to see them.

Our step count for today is 14,000.

Taipei (Day 17): First Full Day and Night

March 17, 2016

It was the first day that was forecasted to have sun (a little peaked out but at least it was a lot warmer – around 26 degrees today), so we decided to take Nate to the Taipei Zoo. Noel was feeling back to normal, but Nate was still having a hard time adjusting.

The Taipei Zoo is on the south end of the brown (Wenhu) MRT line and about 7 stops away from our apartment. We headed out to the zoo around 10am. We heard the zoo was a great place to bring kids and they have pandas – which are their main “attraction”. The entrance fee to the zoo is only 60 NT ($2.40 CAD) for adults and Nate was free.

When we walked in, there were a lot of groups of school children on field trips, all with different coloured sweat pant track suits (school uniforms). The zoo grounds were great, and we were all very impressed by the variety of animals and the way the park was laid out. They had a good selection of food stands and stores (Family Mart, 7-Eleven, McDonald’s to name a few) sprinkled around the park that had the exact same prices as they would have outside the zoo. The zoo is surrounded by lush mountains which gave it a very “zoo like” feel.

There are a lot more pictures of animals that we saw, but I think everyone gets the idea. I just kept hearing they had pandas (two), but I was surprised at how many other animals they had. Nate fell asleep half way through the zoo, so it was really just for the adults at this point. We walked around the whole zoo and enjoyed it!

If we had more time and it was a nicer day (visibility wise), we would have considered taking the Maokong gondola up the mountain – the gondola base is right beside the zoo.

We left the zoo around 4:30pm, and headed to Lin Dong Fang for beef noodles. This was the place Tim and I had previously gone to our first week in Taipei, and it’s still my favourite one (so far). Nate was sound asleep so we thought it would be a good chance to go to a not so child friendly restaurant. He slept through loud traffic and a jack hammer (there’s construction beside our apartment) but as soon it was dead quiet in the restaurant, he wakes up!

We got back to the apartment around 6pm, and planned to go to the Shilin Night Market (the largest one in Taipei) to meet up with Tim’s cousin, Karen, who is also in Taipei for the week. I first met Karen during our trip to Taipei in 2013, and she has since moved back to the U.S. (Austin, Texas) and is just here for less than a week. It was great getting to see her for even a short period of time here.

The Shilin Night Market is huge and a bit overwhelming. There’s a lot of shopping, food stalls and carnival games to play. It was my sister and Noel’s first Taiwan night market, so we for sure had to get fried chicken cutlet and stinky tofu. We also had ai-yu jelly drink, a cranberry lemon juice that Karen bought for us (this was really refreshing), “big sausage wrapped in little sausage” (outside sausage is sticky rice), and bought some Taiwanese fruits at the end.

We got back to the apartment close to midnight – we were all exhausted, especially my sister who had to carry had a 30 pound toddler strapped to her for 4 hours. I don’t know how she does it, she’s superwoman!

Steps today was 30,000 ! No wonder we were pooped.

Taipei (Day 16): Hello, Pigeon

March 16, 2016

This morning started much like yesterday – early in the morning except this time I went back to bed after initially waking up at 6am. Everyone got ready to leave the apartment around 10:30am. Today’s weather was a bit better than yesterday’s – it was still overcast but at least it wasn’t really raining and if it was raining it was just a fine mist.

We decided to go to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall – ticking off another Taipei attraction off the list for our visitors. Once we arrived, Nate immediately wanted to walk around the square himself. He was much happier today than yesterday. To be fair, I wasn’t too happy yesterday at the museum either so I understand his frustrations (Tim: always good to compare the state of your mood with a 1.5 year old). We took our time and walked around and up the stairs to the CKS statue. The Frozen exhibit was still set up and will run until April – it’s unfortunate that the exhibit is there as it’s a bit of an eye sore.

After we took our pictures, we headed towards Yong Kang Street in search of lunch. This street is about a 8-10 minute walk from the CKS Memorial. As we went up the street, we decided to try beef noodles at 品山西刀削麵之家 (Taiwan Yi Pin Ramen and Sliced Noodle) that was on CNN’s list of best Taiwan beef noodles and has won a bunch of beef noodle awards (which most restaurants have as well). This beef noodle specializes in their tomato beef broth, which is unique, but I prefer the beef noodles from Lin Dong Fang. We’ll have to take them there another day.

We also stopped to get another Taiyaki snack to share and a bubble tea to go. We’re averaging one and half a bubble tea per day.

We made our way back to the apartment so Nate and Noel (think he caught something) could rest this afternoon. My sister and I headed back out to buy groceries at Jason’s (a Singaporean based grocery store). They had a good selection of local and international items. We mainly picked up groceries for Nate’s lunches and dinners.

After Nate went down for the night, my sister, Tim, and I went to a restaurant close by, called Ya Meile. It was a place we got take out from yesterday for Noel. The lady recognized us and was probably wondering why Tim was always bringing his non-Taiwanese friends (as she called us) to this place. We ordered 2 bowls of meat sauce dried noodles, pot-stickers, pan-fried dumplings, boiled dumplings, green onion pancake with egg inside, and a congee (for Noel). All this food came out to $10 CAD.

After dinner we went to 50 Lan to grab some bubble tea to bring back to the apartment. We spent the rest of the night watching Netflix and relaxing.

We’re planning on going to the Taipei Zoo tomorrow since the weather is supposed to be sunny – we haven’t seen sun in Taiwan for over a week!

Our steps for today was 12,200.

Changing Input Source on Chinese (Mandarin) TVs

So, say you’re travelling in Taiwan, and you’ve got yourself a Roku Stick, (Chromecast, Fire TV, Miracast Dongle, etc), and you’ve finally (blindly) plugged it into the back of the wall mounted flatscreen TV in your hotel room, and now you just want to change the input source for the TV so you can start watching things from the device you just (struggled) to plug in, but you’re faced with controls on the TV and Remote Control that are all in Mandarin, and don’t have the familiar arrow-pointing-into-a-curved-rectangle icon that you’re used to. Well, you could do what I did and hit every single button until you find the one that changes the input source (and in the mean time, accidentally change a bunch of other settings on the TV), or you can read on below to see what button to press.

Look for a button labeled with these characters on the TV or Remote

輸入選擇
Pronounciation: shūrù xuǎnzé
Translation: input select

Sometimes it’s just 輸入 which means “input”. Rotate through the HDMI inputs until whatever you’ve plugged into the TV shows up, and enjoy!

Taxis vs Transit vs Walking

To travel is to move from one place to another, and when faced with getting from point A to point B, Kait and I do what most people do these days… we use Google Maps.

People move around in different ways, and when it comes to travelling, how you move around can really define what type of traveller you are, and what your “style” of travel is. When travelling long distances from one city to another (or one continent to another), you can go by plane, boat, train, or automobile (or Hyperloop in a decade?). What I’m talking about now though is at a smaller scale. How do you get around once you’re at your “destination”? What’s your preferred mode of travel?

Private tours with drivers
Tour groups on highway coaches
Renting or driving your own car around
Taxis/Uber
Public Transit
Hitch-hiking
Cycling
Walking

Chances are you use some combination of the above, but what your preferences are and the distribution of your usage define your travel style.

So far on this trip (and in general when we travel), our choices are really defined by the directions provided by Google Maps: Drive, Transit, (Cycle) or Walk.

Driving
Without a car, driving for us basically means taking a taxi. Driving almost always provides the fastest option, but it’s also the most costly. When we travel, we usually take it easy and try not to make ourselves feel rushed. So driving is usually the first option to get eliminated.

Taking Pubic Transit
Most transit options that Google Maps covers are either buses or rapid transit (e.g. Subways, Metros, etc). For me, they couldn’t be more different. I love rapid transit but despise buses. Either way, transit is more cost effective than driving, and is our top choice when we need to travel longer distances. I love seeing and using the rapid transit systems around the world. It’s one of my favourite things about a city. They’re a great way to see (creep on) locals out and about, they don’t make me car sick like (stupid) buses, and they’re efficient at moving lots of people in densely populated areas. If it takes us longer than a hour to walk (yes, an hour… even if it’s uphill to the mid-levels in HK with luggage), then we’ll probably take transit.

Walking
My favourite mode of travelling around town is walking. You get a real feel for a city when you’re walking. You see the streets, you see the people, you experience the climate (good or bad), and you have every opportunity to stop and smell the roses. When you walk, you can go off the beaten path. When you walk, you get to experience the wonders of bipedal gait. You never stumble across a great discovery when you take a cab, and the areas surrounding transit hubs rarely offer any treasures, but when you walk, you open yourself up to the unexpected and to unique discoveries. Most of my favourite memories (and meals) when travelling have been because I walked. Although a personal choice, I highly recommend walking as much as you can when you travel.

Fitbit (the authority on this apparently when I did a Google search) recommends 10,000 steps a day. That’s a pretty difficult goal if you drive to work at a 9-5 and don’t do anything active in the evenings. That’s not a very difficult benchmark to reach if your travelling and your primary mode of transportation is walking. With that in mind, Kait and I set a goal of trying to reach 20,000 steps a day. She’s been including our step counts in her daily posts, and we’ll look at sharing more (like distances and maps) in the future.

Taipei (Day 15): Rain, Rain, Go Away

March 15, 2016

Since more than half the people in the apartment are jet lagged, I woke up at 6:30am too. Nate was in a good mood this morning but you can tell his internal clock is very confused. Hopefully he can adjust in the next couple of days so he will be in a better mood.

Once Tim woke up, he went with Noel to Yong He Soy Milk King to get breakfast. I think my sister and Noel learned early on that those egg wrapped rice rolls are really filling and that they should just be shared. My sister cooked Nate one of the organic eggs for breakfast – he loves his eggs!

When we looked out the window, it was raining and it didn’t look like it was going to let up any time soon. We wanted to try to keep most of our activities indoors since it was raining and it wasn’t that warm (around 15 degrees again today). As most of our planned Taipei activities are outdoors, we decided to do the one sightseeing activity that kept us the driest -that being the National Palace Museum.

The National Palace Museum is a museum that has mainly Chinese arts and artifacts – even more than what is at the Forbidden City in China. This is because during the Sino-Japanese Wars, the Nationalist Government in China decided to pack up all the most valuable artifacts in the Forbidden City and hide them in storage to keep them away from the Japanese. After World War II, as the Chinese Civil War resumed (and the nationalists were losing), Chiang-Ki Shek decided to move all the (already packed up) artifacts to Taiwan. Now, the museum houses around 700,000 ancient Chinese artifacts, of which approximately 1% is on display at any given time in 3 month exhibitions.

I had visited the museum in 2013, during my first time in Taiwan. I had seen the highlights of the museum – the jadeite cabbage and the stone that looks like a piece of pork (Tim: my favourite!), but I didn’t remember the rest of the museum too well (I was half asleep when I visited after a long flight) (Tim: Any it’s hard for things to look familiar when many of the exhibits are rotated out for new exhibits). I knew that the museum gets really busy with tour groups from China but I didn’t know how busy it would get.

We got to the museum around 10am, and were met with the hoards of tour groups and schools on field trips. As soon as we stepped inside, it was a gong show. General admission to the museum is 250 NT = $10 CAD (in 2013 it was only 160 NT = $6.50 CAD).

First, this is the strictest museum I have ever been to and I’ve been to a lot. You’re not allowed to bring any food or drink inside (which is understandable but this includes water bottles that are inside your bag). Traveling with a toddler, this isn’t ideal as you never know when they really need something to drink and they won’t take no for an answer. There are signs that say no backpacks are allowed and that you have to check it in. I’ve been carrying a small Longchamps backpack as my purse during this trip and as soon as we got into line to get into the museum, they singled me out and told me to check it in. I get why you can’t bring huge backpacks in, but mine was smaller than most purses and that made no sense to me. I even took everything out of it and was folding it up (it’s a foldable bag that can fold into a small square) and they told me I needed to check it in. At this point I was getting really irritated and annoyed with the security people (Tim: who were just doing their job) at the museum. They weren’t very courteous and it was a bad start to the morning. We put everything into a locker (for 10 NT, which is refundable), including Nate’s lunch bag and water (which he later cried for).

We finally got into the museum and were greeted with even more Chinese tour groups. I was already on edge with security that this whole scene made me want to leave. Being pushed around and cut in front of it not a great way to start your morning. In addition to the pushing, the tour groups were so loud. I felt bad for the museum workers inside that were holding signs that said “Please be quiet”, as their jobs seemed really hopeless and a bunch of them looked so defeated. Even when Nate woke up from his stroller to see where he was, his crying didn’t even matter since the tour groups drowned him out (this was the only upside to the noise). I know this is bad, but I learned to start walking with my hands on my hips when I wanted to get out of crowds because I didn’t want to get pushed around anymore. I don’t remember the museum being so busy when we were here in 2013. Not only did the price go up 90 NT, but it was not nearly as enjoyable. This was probably my least favourite place in all of Taiwan – inside the museum, which is such a shame because they have a lot of interesting things to see. But personally, I wouldn’t want to go back again (Tim: a statement that could probably apply to all museums for Kaitlyn :P).

After we escaped the museum, we headed to the Miramar Entertainment Park. This is a mall that is known for their large Ferris wheel on the roof, that has nice views of Taipei. Due to the weather, no one was on the Ferris wheel. Once we got to the mall, we went down to the food court for lunch. We were feeling a bit cold and wet – although it was 15 degrees, it didn’t feel like it when it was damp. We did a quick loop around the food court and all decided on Pepper Lunch (a Japanese casual/fast food place). I knew we could get this in Richmond, but we hadn’t tried it yet. We shared two lunch specials between the four of us, which each came with an appetizer and a drink.

The mall food courts in Taipei are all really good – great food selections, clean and ideal for eating with children. They have very clean high chairs to sit on and cleaning stations for people to wash their hands right in the middle of the food court. Since Nate is here, we’re eating more in food courts because it’s easier than what we have been used to. It’s nice and comfortable compared to eating on the street.

We walked around the mall and went to Muji and Uniqlo to look around. My sister and Noel bought a couple of items from Uniqlo. I notice that their prices are a bit more expensive than what they are in New York and in Hong Kong. There was also a Carrefour (French grocery store) across the street from Miramar, so we went to check it out. Our Grandma (Paw Paw) really likes the cookies my sister brought back for her from Paris’ Carrefour so we went to see if we could find them. Unfortunately, there didn’t have much Carrefour branded items so we couldn’t find the French cookies she wanted. (Ah zut!)

The rain continued to come down so we decided to go back to the apartment for the day- it was about 3pm. Nate was in and out of napping, poor guy, his days and nights are mixed up. Once we got back he was pretty happy playing around with the bubble tea cups – he likes to play with the straw and poke holes in the top of the thin plastic lids. Nate went down for a nap and then eventually so did everyone else (including me) except for Tim. I feel like since my sister has been here, I’ve reverted to having jet lag again. Nate and I woke up from our naps around 7:30pm – except Nate eventually went back to sleep and has been sleeping since (it’s midnight right now). Noel fell asleep and has been sleeping since as well.

My sister, Tim and I went for dinner without them, hot pot as originally planned. We went to the same place we’ve been twice before. Tim and I now have a stamp card (10 meals and one is free). My sister enjoyed her first individual shabu shabu experience and had some much needed vegetables. We picked up some soup noodles from a popular food stall down the street for Noel – but he hasn’t woken up to eat it so we put it in the fridge.

Once we came back to the apartment, we started to watch the finale of the Bachelor (3 hour finale). Warning! Spoiler alert!

My sister hadn’t watched any of the season so she was rolling her eyes the whole time (and same with Tim). I knew he would pick Lauren B, but I liked Jo Jo more. We were joking around that out of the final three girls, he got rid of the ethnic ones (half Persian and half Filipino) and picked the blonde girl (typical).

Now everyone is sound asleep and Tim is watching the Walking Dead. Apparently my typing is too distracting, so he went into the bedroom to watch it while I type away outside in the living room.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to be mainly cloudy so hopefully it will be a better day!

Our total steps were 15,400.

Mapping our Trip

The last time I travelled for an extended period of time (2+ months), it was 2006 and I did the whole backpacking through Europe thing with my sister. On that trip, I shocked myself that I had the discipline to write every day in a journal. Even on a night where I barely remember how I got back to the hostel (in Lagos), low and behold, there was some (not so great quality) writing logging the events of the day. This time around (and this is probably the first of many comparisons I will make to 2006), I find myself lacking in discipline to write about the events of this trip on a daily basis. I’m so glad Kait is motivated and putting together an excellent record of our trip that we can look back on in the future.

Do you ever have a deep desire to do something, and are really motivated (or downright OCD) to do some very related things, but just can’t bring yourself to do the actual thing? That’s me with daily journalling. There are a lot of good reasons to journal, and I was recently inspired again to keep a daily journal by something my cousin wrote, but although I’m disciplined in a lot of aspects of logging my daily life, writing out the day’s events in prose is not one of them. I recognize that short coming, but still want to keep a log of things we’ve done, and record my thoughts, on a regular basis. Our memories are incredibly flawed (in the sense that we really don’t remember things the way we think we do), so it’s valuable to keep a record of events and of our thoughts and emotions as they happen, in order to more accurately reflect on the past.

With that in mind, I already do two things rather compulsively that keep a pretty good log of my daily events: I track every penny I spend and I record events in Google Calendar. I started doing both these things for different reasons, but I’ve found that they’ve had the added benefit of providing a pretty good log of my day to day activities. For this trip, I’m adding a third item to this list that, while serving another purpose, will also provide a good log of our activities.

I will be mapping out our trip as we go, and sharing it here on the blog. The main purpose of the map is to share the places we’ve been to and talked about in blog entries, and hopefully make it easier for people to find them if they decide they want to go to the same places. While Google Maps is pretty incredible in North America, I find that a lot of locations we are going to are not actually on Google Maps, so finding them may not be so easy. With the map that we’re creating, we’ll drop pins on the locations of places even if they’re not on Google Maps. Hopefully someone will find this useful!

The map also creates a spatial log of our trip (along with the spending log) which helps provide a record for us to look back on. For me, this helps lift the burden of writing a daily journal logging the events of the day. However, this doesn’t mean I don’t want to write. It lets me focus my journal on thoughts and feelings without the “chore” of listing out daily events. I can still write about events of the day, but I’ll know I’m not obligated to because they’re being recorded elsewhere in a different fashion. (And worst case, I’ll always have Kaitlyn’s blog entries… but of course those will record the events as seen through her experience, not mine).

So my “Journal” for this trip looks something like this:

Spending Log
Events in Google Calendar
Map of Locations of Interest / Step Counter (Location Tracking)
Written Entries of Thoughts (digital)

Hopefully they’ll provide a satisfying record of our adventures and provide insight to future Tim regarding current Tim.

Taipei (Day 14): We Have Visitors!

March 14, 2016

It was another early morning as my sister, Noel, and Nate arrived in Taipei this morning at 5:30am from Vancouver. Tim and I set our alarms and waited for their arrival. They got to the apartment with Uncle Albert around 7am. They dropped off their bags and we headed straight to our favourite breakfast place – Yong He Soy Milk King! We were excited to share our love for this place with our Vancouver visitors.

After breakfast we went back to the apartment and the travellers took a nap before we headed out for the day. Since the weather today is a bit cold (around 15 degrees) and gloomy, we decided to go to Taipei 101 to check out the mall and eat at Din Tai Fung. But before we went to Taipei 101, we went to Daan Park to stop by the children’s playground for Nate to play. He seemed a bit scared about where he was so we wanted to bring him to the park to cheer him up; it worked!

Once we got to Taipei 101, we could see the hoards of people waiting in front of Din Tai Fung. The wait was around 50 minutes (this was at 1pm). The wait actually went quicker than we thought it would be and we only had to wait about 30 minutes. Since we told them we needed a high chair, when we got to table they had the high chair set up with a Din Tai Fung plastic dish set (how nice). The dish set was really cute and we asked if they were for sale. Our waitress said they are but they are all sold out at the moment – the set (bowl, plate, utensils, cup) is 350 NT ($14 CAD). So now we’re on the hunt for these.

With my sister and Noel here, we were able to try a variety of dishes. We were also really hungry when we ordered since we hadn’t eaten since 7am. Nate was polishing off the noodles and loving the food. It actually slipped my mind to take pictures of a few of the dishes because I was too hungry to think about it. The dish I really enjoyed that isn’t pictured is the DTF house special appetizer dish. It’s a cold dish of sliced bean curd, (organic) bean sprouts, julienned seaweed tossed in a slightly spicy sesame sauce. (This dish was 70 NT = $2.80 CAD)

After lunch we walked around to the neighbouring malls and ended up at the 24 hour Eslite Bookstore (Xinyi location). We started on the top floor and worked our way down. Nate walked around the children’s floor and enjoyed looking around and touching everything. He even made some Taiwanese friends in the book department.

It was fun to watch Nate interact and observe other kids and their parents in the bookstore. A Dad was reading his son a book in Mandarin and Nate sat really close and kept inching closer hoping to listen. As he inched closer and closer you can tell from the look on his face that he didn’t understand anything that was being said. Pretty sure Nate knows he’s in a foreign land.

Eslite has floors of books as well as boutique shops within the bookstore – we took our time going through each floor since Nate fell asleep in his stroller.

After spending an hour or so at Eslite we made our way back to the apartment area (we decided to just walk there instead of taking the MRT two stops). We stopped by a 7-Eleven for pudding (to eat later) and bubble tea from “50 Lan”. We’ve seen this bubble tea place everywhere and have been meaning to try it out (there’s one located just down the street from our Airbnb). We ordered pearl milk tea with mini pearls – the tea was good, but I think I still like the bigger pearls (or a mix of both like the Panda bubble tea in Taitung).

After we got our bubble tea, we headed to MOS Burger for dinner. We decided to have a low key/casual dinner because everyone was getting tired. My sister and Noel were doing well staying awake considering they’ve been up for over 24 hours with minimal amount of sleep on the plane. MOS Burger is a Japanese fast food restaurant with multiple branches in Taiwan. I was waiting for them to come so I could try it out. We decided to just eat in since Nate was still sound asleep. I ordered the shrimp patty burger and Tim ordered an “Australian Wagyu Beef” burger. He ordered one combo which came with a drink and a side of chicken nuggets (default option instead of just fries). My sister and Noel tried their more famous burgers – ones that use rice instead of buns. I had a bite of my sister’s sukiyaki burger and it pretty much tasted like you were eating a donburi (rice bowl) in your hands.

After an eventful afternoon/early evening, we headed back to the apartment. Everyone washed up and now are fast asleep. Tim and I are still awake working on our blog posts. We expect them to wake up really early like how we did during our first week here.

I hope tomorrow will be a good day after they get their much needed rest. Even though we are far from being locals, the fact that they came to visit us here, I feel like we’re responsible for getting them to like Taipei and enjoy it as much as we have. I hope the weather improves – we were blessed with such great weather our first week here but now it’s so cold.

Traveling around the city with a 20 month old is challenging and also enlightening to see how child friendly Taipei is. I noticed that it was really easy to get around with a stroller – especially in the MRT stations, which is something not to be taken for granted (ahem, NYC subways). Also, in each MRT station they have super clean bathrooms and “breastfeeding rooms” (which are also family rooms used to change diapers).

I’m really happy my sister, Noel, and Nate are here to visit us. I just hope that (even travelling with a toddler), they will be able to experience as much as we have so far during their time in Taipei.

Our steps for today are: 18,000 steps (I was surprised we walked so much with Nate – it was mostly because we walked back from Taipei 101 instead of taking the MRT).

Taipei (Day 13): Back in the Big City

March 13, 2016

We set our alarms today at 5am to get ready to pack up and catch our train back to Taipei at 6:07am (Tim: One snooze later…). We checked out of our hotel and caught a cab to the train station. Unfortunately the hotel free shuttle to the train station doesn’t run so early in the morning (Tim: Neither does their breakfast, which was pretty good). This was the first cab ride we’ve taken this trip, generally we try not to take cabs but since time was an issue this morning we had to. The cab fare to the train was 140 NT = $5.70 CAD for a 3km ride.

Once we arrived at the Hualien train station, the place was packed for 5:45am! The only store that was open was 7-Eleven and they had two long line ups to pay. We passed on grabbing anything for breakfast as we planned on just sleeping on the ride back to Taipei. The train ride was 3 and a half hours, it was the only train that wasn’t full (local train). The ride didn’t feel that long because we both slept for the first two hours. The scenery along this route was quite nice, the ocean and high mountains lined the east coast. As we got closer to Taipei the scenery changed back to older run down buildings and high rises. I was looking forward to getting back to Taipei. Although I enjoyed seeing the rest of Taiwan, Taipei is probably my favourite city in terms of accessibility and variety.

We arrived at the Taipei Main Station at 9:38am. We decided to buy our tickets to Kaohsiung for next week – when we’d be going down to Kenting (a beach resort area at the southern tip of Taiwan) with my sister, Noel, and Nate. We didn’t want to get burned with not being able to pick a good train time with them. Since we bought the tickets early, they were 20% off. The high speed rail tickets are about double the price of the regular Taiwan railways tickets (which we took around the island this past week). But to save time (especially traveling with a toddler), the high speed rail was a no brainer. It would take less than two hours to get to Kaohsiung (the trains go at 300km/hour) from Taipei, versus around 5 hours on the regular train.

We headed back to Tim’s uncle’s apartment to drop off our bags before finding something to eat. The whole train ride I was craving shabu shabu hot pot again. We went back to the same place we had dinner last Saturday. It totally hit the spot and I was on a hot pot high. I noticed there were a lot of children (around 5-8 years old) with their parents there – about half the tables had children at them. We will probably take my sister, Noel, and Nate here when they visit. It’s a block down from where we’ll be staying, it’s kid friendly, good value ($20 CAD total for both of us) and delicious.

We planned on walking to Daan Park after our lunch but it started to rain and Tim didn’t bring his rain jacket, so we went back to the apartment. I repacked my bag and organized items that we had left here last week. Also, I forgot to mention that as soon as we got back to Taipei, I saw two miniature red poodles.

We met up with the Airbnb host in front of the apartment at 3pm. Her name is Violet, an English speaking local, who showed us up to the apartment. The apartment looked like how it did on Airbnb for the most part. The walls are a bit weathered but that’s not really a big deal as the apartment is clean and stocked with all the necessary amenities. It has 2 bedrooms (3 beds), 1 bathroom and a large kitchen. The location is really good- close to two MRT to lines (Daan and the Technology Building stations) and lots of restaurants. One of the perks of this place is that it has a washer and dryer (Yay! We can finally do laundry) (Tim: The dryer just basically spin dries the clothes…).

After settling in and finishing up our laundry, we headed out to buy some groceries for my nephew, Nate. My sister will be cooking for him while he’s here. We went down to the Technology Building station and went to PX Mart to buy a 6L jug of water, some fruit and chicken. Across from the street from the apartment, there are a couple of organic grocery stores. We bought organic milk and eggs from the market – Nate is a lucky boy!

Around 6:30pm, Uncle Albert stopped by and we went for dinner down the street on S. Fuxing Road. Tim and I have walked down this street every morning we went to the King Soy breakfast place but since it was always the morning we never realized the street was filled with lots of busy restaurants. Uncle Albert said that S.Fuxing Road used to be full of all the same restaurants for people looking for late night eats, but now there are only a few left. We headed to his favourite one down the block, basically two doors away from our favourite breakfast joint.

When you walk into the restaurant, there is a long counter full of dishes to choose from. You simply point to what you want and then they prepare it for you. Most items are already prepared (except the fish dishes) so they plate the food in a metal bowl over top a flame (similar to how hot pot is served at Boiling Point in Vancouver). Uncle Albert treated us to dinner (again! Tim is not good at fighting for the bill) so we don’t know how much each dish was, but from what we can see on the wall they range from 60 NT to 150 NT ($2.45 to $6 CAD). It was nice to have congee on a rainy Taipei night and all the dishes were more homestyle cooking which was nice and comforting.

When got back to the apartment, we took the clothes out of the “dryer” and they were still damp. Asian wash/dryers don’t actually use heat to dry clothes, they just spin it, so we had to hang dry everything. I washed the bulk of my clothes so hopefully they dry on the balcony for tomorrow!

Now we’re washing up and going to sleep early because my sister, Noel and Nate will be here tomorrow at around 6am. Uncle Albert kindly offered to pick them up from the airport at 5:30am. We’re very lucky to have Tim’s family here – they’ve always been so kind and hospitable to us.

Another random thing to note about Taiwanese buildings and high rises, most are made of concrete- something we’re not used to as most buildings and homes in Vancouver are made with lumber. I first noticed because when I walk down the halls at home, I usually like to tap the walls with my knuckles and hear back a hollow sound. But here, I do the same thing and there’s no sound at all and it hurts my knuckles. That being said, Nate isn’t allowed to run around apartments here. The walls are too dangerous.

Our step count today is pretty low at 11,500.

Hualien (Day 12): Taroko Gorge

March 12, 2016

This morning, we took the bus towards Taroko Gorge National Park. It’s about a 45 minute ride from Hualien. We caught the shuttle from the hotel to the train station to catch a local bus that does a loop of all the major sites around Taroko Gorge. The daily unlimited ticket was 250 NT each ($10 CAD).

We started out on the Shakadang Trail, which was about 6km. The scenery was amazing, especially with the low lying clouds; it made it seem mystical. The greens and landscape reminded me a lot of British Columbia. Although it was beautiful, it made us think that we’re pretty spoiled to live in such a beautiful place and it’s also a shame that we haven’t explored more of our own province. Hopefully we’ll get to do that more this summer when we’re back home.

Our favourite part of the Taroko Gorge Park was the Shakadang Trail, it was also the only trail that was opened fully. A lot of the park was close due to unstable gravel and rocks (they’re still fixing it up from typhoon season). It was too bad that a lot of trails were closed because this made all the areas that were open busy with all the busses of Mainland Chinese tourists. This was my only complaint about the gorge – it was a bit hard to fully appreciate its beauty when there were hoards of loud Chinese tourists around. We saw a bunch of them smoking when there were a lot of signs saying smoking was not allowed (the park should have more park rangers to crack down). As we weren’t able to go to all the different sights due to closures, we know we will have to come back in the future to see more.

When we caught the bus back into the city, I fell asleep as soon as we got onto the bus. It was a nice 45 minute nap. When we got back into the city, we started walking back to the hotel and we noticed that there were a lot of mochi shops in Hualien; specifically the one in the picture below. We decided to stop in and take a look, we had two samples and left. They were really tasty and I can see why lots of people were buying them. I tried to look up to see if they have a store in Taipei but their website doesn’t exist. This seems to be a common issue of website addresses on bags, store fronts and cups in Taiwan. (So far I’m 0/3)

After resting up a bit and finishing the first season of “Fuller House” on Netflix, we headed out for the night market. It was raining quite hard tonight, but Hualien’s Zhiqiang Night Market has vendors all undercover so the rain wasn’t a huge deterrent for most people. The night market is unique compared to other night market’s that we’ve been to in Taiwan as there are a couple rows of vendors that are all aboriginal.

While going through the stalls, there was a huge line up at a roasted corn stand called, “Li-Jo Corn BBQ”. We decided to join the crowd and line up. They had video footage of testimonials and how they made their corn (typical). Once you get to the front of the line you pick corn you want and they charge you by weight. We thought it would be around 50 NT ($2 CAD) max per corn, but for our two corns it ended up being 164 NT ($6.65 CAD) total. It was quite pricey (For Taiwan standards), so we were hoping it would be amazing. We waited for our order for about 15 minutes (took about 10 minutes to get to the front of the line) and when it came and I took my first bite, I was a bit disappointed. The corn wasn’t fresh tasting, I’m not sure if they roasted it too long to make the corn kernels chewy. The sauce was a sweet, spicy, sticky soy sauce. It was good we tried it but I wouldn’t get it again – especially for 80 NT on average each. My favourite corn is still the corn from Cafe Habana in NYC (Tim: Me too. Best corn on the cob I’ve ever had).

Here are some other items we got from the night market.

We walked back to the hotel in the rain, the rain eased off a bit so it wasn’t that bad. We’ve been wearing these MEC breathable rain shells my Mom bought us for our trip… so far so good! I’ve noticed that a lot of people wear flip flops here when it’s pouring rain. I guess it’s better than soggy socks (although it wasn’t very warm here tonight).

We have to wake up around 5am tomorrow to catch our train back to Taipei. Tomorrow will probably be our laundry and errands day, in anticipation for my sister, Noel, and Nate’s arrival! Yay! I can’t wait.

Number of steps today: 26,200