Taiwanese Breakfast – Where to, Gumshoe?

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).

Taitung (Day 9): Hello, Pacific Ocean

March 9, 2016

Firstly, Happy Birthday Mom! We love and miss you. Wish we could have spent the day with you.

Today was our last morning in Kaohsiung. We called it an early night yesterday and didn’t get to walk along the Love River, so that was our plan for the morning. We planned to catch the 12:40pm train to Taitung, a small city on the east coast of Taiwan.

On our walk down to the Love River, we stumbled upon a breakfast place that had a long line (out the door, if they had a door). Long line ups have proven to be the most trustworthy source on our trip, so this was a good sign. It looked like their specialities were steamed buns filled with pork and cabbage (it had it’s own separate line) and sao bing (layered flakey flatbread). When we got there, the kitchen was trying their best to keep up with demands of the line.

We ordered a sao bing with egg and one with a Chinese doughnut. After we ate, we got into the other line and got two steamed buns to save for lunch later on the train. In hindsight, we should’ve eaten these buns right away when they were fresh and juicy. You could tell that they would’ve been amazing if we had them fresh, oh well, next time! (Tim: They were still good when we had them on the train, just probably not as good as they could have been)

After a satisfying breakfast, we continued our walk to the river. We passed by a baseball field that had multiple posters of the Taiwanese movie, “Kano”. The movie is based on a true story about a Taiwanese baseball team that goes to the championship tournament in Japan in the 1930s. Tim and I had watched the movie in Vancouver a year ago when they were touring the movie in North America.

As we past by the field, we saw the Korean flag and a flag that said “Doosan Bears Spring Training”. The team was having spring training practice, so we stood there watching the practice for a bit. The Doosan Bears are a professional Korean baseball team from Seoul. It’s funny that they’re a professional team, we saw half the team running along the river after but some were totally slacking and some were even just walking, so we thought they weren’t a professional team.

It was about 10:30am when we finally made it to the Love River, and it was already about 28 degrees in Kaohsiung. At least it was overcast or else it would’ve been more uncomfortable. Walking alongside the river and seeing some of the taller buildings against the water reminded me of Chicago. Kaohsiung is Taiwan’s “second city” after all.

After a sweaty walk back to the hotel, we picked up our bags and headed to catch our train to Taitung. The train was about a 2.5 hour ride (~175 km away). As usual, I fell asleep on the train. The train chairs are comfortable because they recline quite far back, which makes sleeping on the train a bit better! When I woke up, I looked out the window and all I saw was green, then I turned to the right and I saw the Pacific Ocean. It’s too bad it was overcast and very windy out.

We arrived in Taitung to Tim’s aunt and cousin waiting for us at the train station. They took us on a quick tour of some of the Taitung sights and brought us to the B&B we would be staying at. The host is a very friendly Burmese woman who moved to Taiwan for university and ended up staying here. Her place is very nice and super clean, cleaner than the last hotel we stayed at.

Taitung is the smallest city we’ve been to on this trip. Although it is a lot more rural than the rest of the other cities, I’ve noticed that there are a lot more noticeable backpackers (single white males). In looking at restaurants that were recommended on Trip Advisor, there are a lot of western restaurants for tourists – mainly pizza places. It’s only been just over a week of Taiwanese food, and I’m craving western food already. We found a compromise of western food and Taiwanese food that was highly rated on Trip Advisor – it was an American fried chicken place run by Taiwanese people.

The restaurant is called Blue Dragonfly. It’s basically like a local KFC. Tim and I shared a combo. It came with a drumstick, wing, and two “chicken pieces (Tim: Not sure what part of the chicken this was)” and a side of fries (was basically like a sprinkle of fries) and a drink. We got a slushy (“slash shake” on the menu) that tasted like pina colada.

After dinner we walked through the park that was filled with lanterns. It was so pretty. There was a mixture of printed lanterns and some that were painted by elementary school aged children (I assume).

We walked through the park and took our time looking around. The city is so quiet compared to everywhere else we’ve visited. It’s a nice change of pace.

After our walk, we saw a KFC and went to get an egg tart. I’ve been hearing about KFC’s Portugese egg tarts for a while now and finally got to try it. It was really good, perfectly flakey crust and warm egg custard. These egg tarts are only available at Asian KFCs. I would highly recommend them.

We took a longer walk back to the apartment and stopped to get some fruit. Taitung is known for their custard apple, so we decided to try one. We also picked up a passionfruit lime drink from a vendor that is downstairs from where we’re staying. Both were very refreshing and the perfect way to end the day.

Our internet was down so we called the host and she came by and brought us another custard apple! So now we have one for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we’re planning on seeing more of the beach and forest area. The east coast is beautiful with the tall green mountains and the ocean being so close. Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow (Tim: And if it’s not, it’s out of our control so it’s silly to let it bother us, right Kait?).

Our total number of steps for today was 17,300.

Taipei (Day 5): Just relax

March 5, 2016

We ended up going to bed around 11:30 last night, which is late compared to our regular 8:30 nights. We were excited when we both woke up and looked outside and saw it wasn’t dark (it was 6:45am).

After our long day yesterday, we said we were just going to take it easy and that’s exactly what we did! What’s taking it easy in Taipei? Eating.
Other than a few sights in the city, doing as the locals do is basically just eating. Tim keeps referring to the CNN’s list of 40 Taiwanese food items you can’t live without and I don’t think we’ve even cracked 10 yet.

We walked to our new favourite breakfast place (I love that it’s so close, even closer when we move to the Airbnb) and saw it was a lot busier today and then realized it was because it was the weekend. The line up went really quickly and we ordered a couple of things to share: rice ball wrapped in a green onion egg, pan fried lo bak go (turnip cake), XLBs and a cold soy milk. Tim made me order this time because he thought it would amusing since I can’t speak Mandarin. I just took the pictured menu and pointed to things, it was pretty anti-climatic.

After lunch we walked to Zhongxiao Fuxing area and walked through SOGO- it’s basically like a Japanese Bloomingdales. We went to every floor walking around and taking advantage of their free wifi like hobos. We gawked at the prices of some of the items, like their Barbour jackets. My Barbour jacket was 22,000 NT, which is like $900 CAD!

Oh right, I forgot to mention that when we walked into SOGO, being that we were part of the first wave of customers to shop/browse this morning we were greeted by 10 people standing in a row (expressionless) bowing to us. Before we walked into the store I saw them and thought they were mannequins for a second. The girls were wearing Japanese school girl like outfits (Tim: not really) and the fact that they were expressionless made me think that they belonged in a Japanese horror movie. Tim and I will probably go back another day right when SOGO opens to record it.

After browsing through SOGO, we walked along Zhongxiao Road towards a shaved ice place that was recommended by a few people. The place is called “Ice Monster”. I think it’s in all the Taipei guidebooks because most people we saw there were Japanese or Korean tourists and they had their guidebooks turned to a page where all I could see were pictures of shaved ice. We got there around noon (just in time for lunch…), and ordered the mango shaved ice with strawberries. Mango isn’t in season right now in Taiwan so no fresh mangos, a bit disappointing (I know, more first world problems). Tim and I shared one order since we knew it would be quite big. As we looked around it seemed like everyone was ordering their own, it was lunch time after all.

The shaved ice was good, but it was pretty expensive for what it is. But I guess Ice Monster is in all the guide books and they are clearly milking it!

After our “lunch” we ventured back into the sun and made our way back to the apartment. We wanted to spend some time planning our next week, as we want to go around the island and visit other cities before my sister and Noel get to Taipei.

We’re planning on heading down the west coast to Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung and come up the east coast to Taitung and Hualien. We won’t have as much time as we had hoped to go around the island since our time in Taiwan is split up as to when we need to be back in Taipei.

I was feeling a bit frustrated this afternoon about not having had planned things out better and “wasting time” in Taipei when we could be seeing other cities since we have plenty of time here later. But I know I have to keep reminding myself that it’s okay if we aren’t going to see everything and that “seeing everything” isn’t the point of this trip. Those of you who know me well know that I love to plan things out – especially trips and figuring out the logistics of everything. So to wing something like this is a bit foreign to me. I know it will take some time to adjust and maybe at the end of it I’ll be a different type of traveler.

On that note, I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of Taiwan even if it’s just for a day or two in each city we visit. We plan on leaving for Taichung tomorrow morning and will be back in Taipei next Sunday.

After a bit of planning and hotel research for Taichung, we booked a place on Expedia. It was the #1 rated hotel on Tripadvisor, close to the Taichung train station, and it was only $68 CAD! I booked using Expedia for TD, since it gives me 9 times the points on my visa. Basically this was the only thing we booked for the week, I was looking at other accommodations for the other cities but decided to hold off just in case plans change (see, I’m learning!).

So after a couple of days of not having any greens besides cilantro and green onion garnishes, we vowed to have some vegetables in our dinner. My favourite type of hot pot is Japanese/Taiwanese shabu shabu individual style, like Pearl Hot Pot in Burnaby. Basically they give you a big bowl of vegetables and assorted items like fish cakes, tofu, meat balls (it varies) then you pick your meat. Usually they give you an iced tea and a dessert all included in your meal.

There are a ton of shabu shabu restaurants in Taipei, but English material online for them is limited. There are only so many shabu shabu places that the “Hungry girl in Taipei” (food blogger) can go to and the majority of them don’t have English names which makes it hard to find online. We found one that was fairly close to our apartment, but when we got there the menu was pretty expensive and it looked too fancy for us. We decided to just continue down the street and see what else we could find. A few blocks down we found a restaurant with exactly what we were looking for! The restaurant’s name is 佶田日式涮涮鍋, which means, “Something… Japanese Style Shabu Shabu” (Tim: Ji Tian Japanese Shabu Shabu).

I was really excited because I had been craving hot pot and it had vegetables! We sat down and looked at the menu, the prices were less than half of the expensive shabu shabu place and also similar in price to our shaved ice from earlier. Tim asked the waitress if they had an English menu, she kind of giggled and politely said no. Tim told her we wanted beef and she pointed to the section on the menu that had beef (Tim: I know how to read beef in Mandarin… I pointed to the beef section and she and the waitress helped us pick out 2 different cuts of beef), we picked two different types (we still don’t know which one was which).

The drinks, sauce and dessert (ice cream) were all self-serve which was great. We made our sauces and Tim went crazy on the garlic. Taiwanese people love raw garlic on a lot of things. My mouth actually tastes like garlic at the moment…gross.

After dinner we walked back to the apartment. We both felt super full. Despite all the food that I’ve been posting on our blog, volume wise we haven’t eaten as much as you may think since we share one portion of everything. But today was our first high volume meal that we had to ourselves. It was the first time we felt uncomfortably full since being here. But it did feel good to eat some veggies…

Now it’s time to pack up and get ready for our journey down to Taichung tomorrow. Our friend, Daniel, is originally from Taichung, was just there last week (we missed him by a day) and gave us some ideas on where to go. We’ll definitely check out his suggestions, the Miyahara store looks really neat.

One random note, I’ve decided that the most popular dog in Taipei is a miniature red poodle (I’ll take a picture next time I see one). I think I’ve seen over 20 different ones in the past couple of days. I’m going to start a count on them starting next week when we’re back in Taipei. Also, on another dog note, people in Taipei don’t like to let their dogs (mostly white dogs) walk. Most of them are held and others have their own doggy stroller. Even the stray dogs that we see are extremely clean for strays. Dogs are living the good life here!

And our step count for today is only 18,600. Our chill out day meant we didn’t even reach half of what we walked yesterday.

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!