Formosa Chang – Where to, Gumshoe?

Taipei/Singapore (Day 66): Heading South

May 5, 2016

Our three nights in Taipei went by really quickly. We were flying out later in the afternoon and going to Singapore. We woke up pretty late and took our time packing up. Mom went to get us breakfast and made us some milk tea (which was really yummy). She had to go out for lunch with some old friends, so Tim and I were on our own.

Before we knew it, it was already 1pm! Originally we thought we’d go for beef noodle, but the places we had in mind weren’t that close to the apartment. We decided to go back to Tonghua Street to go for a quick lunch at Formosa Chang’s and grab bubble tea for later. We headed out without checking the weather, a jacket, or an umbrella (Tim: foreshadowing). While we were walking we felt a couple of heavy rain drops and knew it was going to be a huge down pour. We quickly got undercover and into Formosa Chang’s for lunch.

We walked really quickly back to the apartment to try to stay as dry as possible. Luckily we were both wearing clothes that would dry quickly since everything else was packed. We got back to the apartment and did the final pack up and waited for Mom to get back from lunch before heading down to meet Uncle Albert.

As mentioned in my last post, I’m a sentimental person so it was sad leaving Taipei. It has become the closest place we had to a home this trip. We have had a lot of good memories here with family and friends, so when we said bye, I obviously cried (but tried to hide it as best as possible…). Tim is touched that I showed so much emotion to his Motherland.

The drive out to Taoyuan Airport is around an hour from the city. It’s extremely kind of Uncle Albert to drive us back and forth from the airport so many times this trip. They are building an airport train line out from Taipei Main Station to the airport, but it’s completion has been delayed quite a bit. Hopefully the next time we visit it will be done.

We were flying Singapore Airlines (both for the first time) and we left out of Terminal 2 of the International Terminal. This was the first time we have been to this terminal and it’s really nice. They had a good selection of luxury brands, Taiwanese souvenirs, and duty free shops. Comparing the prices of Longchamps back at Taoyuan and Incheon, they are about the same. If the USD was stronger (like it was a few months back), than Taoyuan would be cheaper since their prices are in NT.

I was looking forward to flying with Singapore Airlines since I’ve always heard good things about it and it’s consistently ranked one of the best airlines in the world. After my first flight with them, I would have to agree, it’s probably the best airline I’ve flown. The flight attendants were all very friendly (and pretty), they gave you a hot towel when you sat down to wipe your hands/face (and we were in economy), they came around with drinks (great drink selection) more than 5 times on a 4 hour flight and their meals were good (you get Haagen Daaz ice cream).

The movie selection was also great – they had over 150 movies (those are just the Hollywood movies) to watch, including some really recent releases. I ended up watching “The Intern” with Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro (I liked it!), 3 episodes of the “New Girl”, and Anthony Bourdain in Tanzania. There was no turbulence on this flight so it was more enjoyable than the flight a few days ago.

We finally landed at Singapore’s Changi Airport after what felt like a long flight. It was 10:20pm when we landed, we went through customs and headed for the SMRT to get us into the city. We packed an overnight day pack so we didn’t have to pick up our backpacks (they’re going straight to Melbourne) (Tim: fingers crossed).

We booked a hotel near the Chinatown SMRT stop through Expedia. It was $139 CAD a night and is in a relatively good location – about an 8 minute walk to a couple of the hawker food markets I wanted to go to. After a couple of transfers, it took us about 35 minutes to get to our hotel. We arrived at our hotel just before midnight. We checked in, washed up and relaxed. The hotel room is quite nice – clean, rainfall shower head, and a large bed.

Tomorrow we’ll have until about 7pm until we have to go back to Changi for our flight to Melbourne at 9:30pm.

Steps today: 8,000

Taipei (Day 27): Happy Easter!

March 27, 2016

Happy Easter from Taipei!

This morning felt a bit weird/sad without hearing Nate waking up and calling our names. After an emotional night (for me), we woke up and got ready to go to Easter Mass at Holy Family Catholic Church. There is only one English Mass at 9:45am so we had to make sure we didn’t miss it! We power walked from the apartment and through Daan Park and got to church right on time.

The Mass was lead by Monseigneur Paul Russell, an American who has been in Taipei for the past 8 years working as a diplomatic representative for the Vatican. According to the announcements at church he has been very influential in trying to connect Catholicism to the Taiwanese population (Taiwanese Catholics only make up 1.5% of the population and Christianity as a whole is only 4.5%). It was announced last week that he was appointed by Pope Francis to become the Archbishop and nuncio (permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See) in Turkey. The way members of the congregation spoke about him, showed he has made a significant impact on the church in Taipei and he will be greatly missed. We didn’t even know him and Tim got a bit teary eyed during his goodbye speech at the end (Tim: I get moved thinking about a person with no past ties to Taiwan, who can serve the people of Taiwan for 8 years of his life, and express a deep love for a country that I’m only tangentially able to connect with, even though I’m “Taiwanese”).

Our only plan for today was to meet with Austin (Tim’s cousin, in town for a wedding) for a late lunch. We finished Mass at 11am so we decided to take a walk to the Gongguan area, an area close to National Taiwan University (NTU). We planned on going to Gongguan earlier in the week with my sister but the gua bao (Taiwanese “pork burger”) place we wanted to try was closed on Mondays so we didn’t end up going.

Tim’s cousin, Karen, recommended two places in the area to try, the gua bao (Lan Jia Steamed Sandwich Shop) and a fresh milk with pearls (no tea) stand. It was easy to track the places down since they were across from each other and both had line ups. I stood in the pearl milk line while Tim went to the gua bao line. We took our drink and baos across the street to NTU and sat on the bench and ate.

After we walked around for a bit, we took the MRT to meet Austin at Zhongxiao Xinsheng station to go for beef noodles at a restaurant called 72 Beef Noodle (this was another Karen recommendation). The restaurant is called “72 Beef Noodle” because that’s how many hours it takes for them to make the soup.

After lunch, we were feeling pretty tired. We made our way back to the apartment and rested. For dinner we wanted to go somewhere casual and close by. We decided to just walk back to Tonghua St. and see if anything looked interesting. Nothing caught our attention so we decided to go back to Formosa Chang’s to have something small.

We walked back to the apartment through the night market and picked up some fruit on the way back from the quick fruit lady who Noel kept buying fruit from last week. We got one guava and an apple pear (one of my favourite fruits) for 75 NT = $3 CAD.

We’re back at the apartment now and going to start planning for our Japan leg of the trip. We’re planning on watching Batman vs. Superman tomorrow (or Tuesday) and then we’ll have dinner with Tim’s relatives. My family at home is having a big Easter dinner on Sunday (tomorrow morning for me), I’m sad I’ll be missing out on dinner. I always look forward to our big family gatherings and being surrounded by all my loved ones on Easter.

Today’s steps are: 15,000

Taipei (Day 26): A Near Perfect Day

March 26, 2015

Today was our last day with my sister, Noel, and Nate here with us in Taiwan. We woke up to sun shining through the window blinds – which made for a good start to the morning and a perfect last day with them.

We walked to Daan Park one last time to play in the playground with Nate. I think we went there four times with them during their twelve day trip. It would have been more if not for the rainy weather and going to Kenting for three days. After the playground we walked through the park towards Yong Kang St. for lunch.

The plan for lunch was to go back to Yong Kang Beef Noodle since it was Noel’s favourite meal of the trip. We made our way to Yong Kang St. around 10:45am and headed for the restaurant. There was already a line formed and the restaurant was full. They hadn’t opened the upstairs section this time so we had to wait about 10 minutes before we were seated. Since we were on the first floor, there were no high chairs available and all the tables were way more cramped. Sitting downstairs is where all the “action” is but also made for a very different dining experience. My sister had to hold Nate while they both ate, which was a bit trickier, but Nate loved their noodles so he was happily slurping it down and wasn’t fussy.

Next up on our agenda today was to visit SunnyHills pineapple cake shop. Pineapple cakes are the most common souvenir people buy when they’re in Taiwan. There are so many shops around Taipei it’s hard to sift through which ones are actually good. On our first trip to Taiwan, Tim’s aunt bought us both Chia Te and SunnyHills to bring back to our families. Chia Te is the most internationally known pineapple cake shop and is often the only place people will buy their pineapple cakes from. After trying both of them, our favourite was SunnyHills. They use real pineapple rather than jelly or melon (which most places use), so depending on the season the cake filling may be tart.

At first, my sister and Noel weren’t planning on buying any pineapple cakes since Noel isn’t a big fan of them. He talked about how the first time he had a pineapple cake, it was so dry and turned him off from them. We tried to convince him that the SunnyHills pineapple cake were different than all the other ones he’s had before.

I did a bit of research on the SunnyHills store as it’s about a 15 minute walk from the closest MRT station in a residential area. Luckily we had google maps loaded on Tim’s phone because you can easily miss the subtle signage. When we found it, it looked like a little oasis in the middle of the city.

When we walked in, the very friendly and pretty ladies (Nate kept waving and saying “ni hao”) at the store led us to a table to sit down. The front room was full so they brought us to the back room and we got to sit at our own round table for four people.

The ladies there were so kind and kept pouring us more tea, which was nice of them. Noel, the former pineapple cake hater, had a change of heart after trying them here. After sitting and relaxing for about half an hour, we went to buy some pineapple cakes. Each pineapple cake is 42 NT = $1.70 CAD, and buying them in boxes of 10 or 15 doesn’t change the price per unit. Along with pineapple cakes they sell pineapple juice, honey cake (Castella cakes), and tea.

I would highly recommend anyone traveling to Taipei to go here for pineapple cakes. I have yet to try a better one. I haven’t been to Chia Te yet to look around but I can only imagine it would be a gong show of a store as Trip Advisor reviews all say to go early to avoid massive line ups. SunnyHills was seriously such a calm and relaxing experience that I wouldn’t mind just going there to have some tea and reading a book if they let people do that.

We headed out and decided to walk to our next destination – Breeze Shopping Center. The walk was about 30 minutes and it was nice because we were in a more residential area of Taipei. The streets were tree lined and very quiet. One of the major streets had multi-coloured pinwheels lining it, which gave it a community feel.

As we were walking along the “pinwheel street”, we found a Cama Coffee (I call it Taipei’s Starbucks). We have seen locations all over the city but my sister and Noel (who are coffee drinkers) hadn’t had a chance to try one. Interestingly, as much as Taiwan is a very tea-centric country, Taipei has a lot of really great coffee shops all around the city. Tim and I don’t drink coffee, but according to my sister and Noel, all the coffee places that they’ve tried were very good. Their iced Americano from Cama was 40 NT = $1.60 CAD.

We finally made it to Breeze Center, a mall filled with high end luxury goods as well as other stores. We were there for the other stores, like Muji, Uniqlo, and they even had a Maison Kayser (Paris bakery).

After a pretty full morning and afternoon, we made our way back to the apartment so they could do a final pack up before dinner and the airport. We planned on going to the Tonghua Night Market for dinner, since Noel wanted stinky tofu for the last time and my sister hadn’t tried an oyster omelet yet.

We went to the night market around 6:30pm and it was already really busy (it’s a Saturday night after all). Since Nate needed more of a sit down dinner place, we took them to Formosa Chang’s on Tonghua St. first. Formosa Chang’s is the fast casual chain restaurant that serves a good braised pork on rice. We ordered two large rice bowls, a stewed egg, a plate of vegetables and a pork chop for 242 NT = $9.80 CAD. After we ate at Formosa Chang’s, we got our night market eats and headed back to the apartment with about 45 minutes to spare before Uncle Albert came by.

We’re very fortunate that Uncle Albert has been so kind to us and to my family. Without even meeting them he offered to pick them up from the airport and now has dropped them off for their 11:55pm flight back to Vancouver. My sister and Noel said he parked and saw them off through the security gates.

Saying goodbye to loved ones, especially when we’re away from home for 4.5 months is hard. As most people know I’m extremely close to my family and see them more often than the average person, so being away from them for so long is harder on me – that and I’m a pretty emotional person. Saying goodbye was a teary affair for me and my sister. I think Tim was worried about how much I was crying when they left (I’m better now).

It was great having my sister, Noel, and Nate here. Things started off a bit rocky with Noel and Nate not feeling 100% but after that initial hurdle, the days couldn’t have been better (despite the rainy weather). It was awesome that they were able to come visit us in Taiwan and be able to meet some of Tim’s family and learn more about Taiwanese culture. I’m happy that Taipei was so baby/toddler friendly and we actually learned a lot about what it would be like to be a parent in Taipei (I’ll expand more on that in a future post). We all said we would come back in 10 or so years when we have kids – hope that happens!

Steps for the day: 24,000

Taipei (Day 2): Let’s eat!

March 2, 2016

After our day of travel, we woke up at 6:30am, feeling refreshed and excited to explore! The first thing that came to our minds was, Taiwanese breakfast. We’re staying around the Daan and Xinye Anhe MRT stations so we decided to pick something close by. I googled “The best Taiwanese breakfast in Taipei” (I know, my google skills are top notch).

永和豆漿大王 (English translation is “King of Soy Milk”) came up as one of the top picks that was only about a 10 minute walk from us. We left the apartment around 8am, and made our way to the breakfast place. From the looks of it and the amount of locals inside, it looked promising.

Everything hit the spot. The Chinese doughnut was super light and just out of the fryer which made it super delicious. I can see us going here multiple times during our time in Taipei. I have to keep telling myself that we’re here for a while, so we don’t have to eat everything in the next two days.

After breakfast we went to Daan Park (Taipei’s “Central Park”) and walked around and checked out the children’s playground area. My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew (20 months) will be visiting us in Taiwan in two weeks so I wanted to check out to see if it was “Nate friendly”, and it was!

I always love to visit parks in the middle of the city, to escape the hustle and bustle. Although Taipei is a pretty laid back city, there wasn’t that much crazy hustle and bustle to get away from, but it’s always nice to have that option. Tim and I said we could go running around the park together, we’ll see if that actually happens…

We continued our walk to Taipei 101. Last time I was in Taipei, we went at night so we didn’t really get any good views or were able to go inside. When we got to Taipei 101, they had just opened the doors to the mall at 11:00am, it was like we were waiting for it to open like the several groups of Chinese tourists. The mall is filled with multiple floors of luxury brands and free wifi!

Din Tai Fung also has a location at Taipei 101, so we decided to just go and have some xiao long baos. We know we’d go again (likely to the original location) with my sister and Noel. We didn’t have to wait for a table, which was good but when we left the line ups looked outrageous (Tim: Actually, the sign said 5 minute wait).

We ended up ordering 10 XLBs (200 NT), Green beans with minced pork (110 NT), and Beef Noodle (230 NT) = 540 NT + 10% Service Charge = 594 NT = $24 CAD (Tim: Current “priciest meal” champ). Everything was good and the service was excellent – my tea cup was never empty.

After our early lunch we walked around to the neighbouring malls and checked out Eslite 24 hour bookstore (8 levels) which was also filled with so many cool boutiques and restaurants within the store. If this wasn’t a backpacking trip for us, I would probably buy a lot from here.

On our way back to the apartment, we passed by the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and decided to check it out. It was filled with Chinese tourists – which was reminiscent of some of the temples we saw in Bangkok with all the tour groups being dumped there at once. Inside, they had the changing of guards in front of a huge statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

At this point in the afternoon, it was about 25 degrees celsius and we were both wearing t-shirts and jeans. With the sun beating down on us, we were warm (Tim was obvs sweating)! It was funny because we passed by so many people wearing parkas, wool jackets and 80% of people had scarves (it is winter I guess..). Even when we got back to the apartment, a lady talking to the doorman looked at us and said “they hardly have any clothes on, it makes me feel like I’m wearing too much” (this was Tim’s English translation for me). Maybe we’ll start to acclimate soon.

It was nice to relax in the afternoon – I started this blog and Tim caught up on the Walking Dead. We started to get a bit sleepy but we had to get ready for dinner with Uncle Albert.

Uncle Albert picked us up at around 6pm and we headed to the Ningxia Nightmarket for dinner. I was pretty excited for this because last time we were here, I was only able to eat one thing (stinky tofu) at the Shilin Nightmarket because we had a huge dinner beforehand. We ended up starting off at a Taiwanese chain restaurant called “Formosa Chang” for their stewed pork on rice and a couple of other sides. We ventured back out to the stalls and Uncle Albert ordered us a bunch of things to share – BBQ steak bites, bacon wrapped chives and a shrimp paste patty wrapped in a spring roll but presented like a pancake. We also ordered a chicken thigh that was fried, grilled and glazed (delish!) and I got my favourite ai-yu jelly drink.

After our non-stop eating, Tim and I were fading. It was 8pm and we both fell asleep in the car ride back. We washed up and Tim tried to finish watching the end of Survivor and we fell asleep at 9pm.

I got woken up by a phone call and couldn’t go back to sleep – it was 4:30am. I started to write this blog post and catch up on what happened on the Bachelor on Monday (I knew Ben didn’t love Caila… poor girl)

To offset everything we ate, we walked 24,761 steps yesterday. Yay!