day 24! zhongxiaoxinsheng, ximen

Gah!! More anger. So today was Saturday morning, and I had repeatedly mentioned that Saturday was the day of this weekly flower market that my mom had found some nice gifts at before, that WE needed to go to to get gifts for the aunties/uncles that we'd be meeting in Nantou soon. Despite that though, and setting an alarm, and getting up early, we...*ahem* didn't manage to get to the station til about 3pm. :/ and the market is only open til 6, and no guarantee that any of the gifts that we wanted would still be available! So yes, I was a little grumpy heading out. Also cuz I had to do all the research and find out where it was, and how to get there from the station...just gets old.

But we did make it and I did get less grumpy.

The flower market is quite nice, it's under this overpass and is surprisingly large! Took us maybe 20 minutes to walk from one end of it to the other end, and we didn't even stop to browse very much. It attracts a lot of crowds (mostly older people) and is a really refreshing sight after being surrounded by dirty city for so long. :)

It's mostly live, potted plants, as opposed to freshly cut flower bouqets as the name might sound. There are all varieties of plants, including these bonsai trees...

many many stands of just orchids...(so pretty!)

other assorted flowering plants...

as well as my personal favorite, baby succulents and cacti!! X3 look how teeny. :3

There are also other non-living stands, but most are within the arena of home decoration. Cow!! I so rarely see cute cows, which kinda makes me hate being an ox....

Some aquarium-type stands. :) This one had a ton of different fake fish you could add to your aquarium.

This orchid stand had REALLY cool hanging orchid collections. Almost caved and went for these cuz they're more unique, but I'm not a fan of the flower...it's too yellow and floppy lookin (yessss twss). Also more challenging to transport. Really affordable for a gift though, they're all ~$8?

Coupla fruit stands -- here's guavas!

damn it, the name of this one's escaping me right now... :( some help??

Too many other pics of pretty flowers to include all of em so I'll just sneak in one last cactus one -- eeeeee! XD

Lol also this pics of a lady awkwardly shufflin along with a huge plant. I'd feel like a dick for laughing as I crossed the street, but she beaned Michael in the head a few times as she walked by so I'm less sympathetic.

So we finally located the stand, and nabbed 3 cute gifts! :D I'm really happy with em (orchids in pretty pots) but sadly did not remember to kodak the moment.

Afterwards, since we were at our grandmother's station and hadn't dropped by for a visit in a few days (ever since my parents left), decided to buy some food and bring it over. Ran all around the neighborhood getting lunch foods for us, some coco mango green tea (she likes sweet cold consumables), watermelons and some plantains. By the time we were done we were swimming in plastic bags of stuff. D:

She was happy to see us, I think. We chopped up the watermelon right away but she said she was too full to have any.

My lunch: dry beef noodle soup. Errr I guess those two words negate each other, leaving you with just "beef noodle". It was not bad. :) I just don't like soupy foods......

Michael's lunch: dumplings in beef noodle soup's soup.

After eating, we walked to the tech market (GuangHua technology market, we went there earlier this trip) to get some headphones for me, and some for my mom. Got a pair of decently priced ones, I spose. :)

When we got back, our cousin was home. We helped her take out the trash. That was a pretty interesting experience. Instead of the garbage truck coming to take your trash every week, a garbage truck drives by more or less every day, and you bring your trash to it. It's an interesting system. On one hand, it's inefficient to require a member of every household to be home at a certain hour in order to take out the trash. On the other hand, having daily trash runs might make more sense in a humid, warm environment where trash sitting in a bin for a week could lead to disastrous results. :S

Hung out a bit with cousin/grandma and watched tv. Then we decided to go out to watch the Avengers, which came out in Taiwan a few days ago. :) Apparently the international version comes out two weeks before the US version so we get a sneak preview. Despite my unadulterated hatred of movie theaters...it was surprisingly good! Also despite the 3rd row imax 3d vantage point. Never been a fan of action movies due to the lack of content and the overflow of cheesy tough-guy declarations but, somehow they were able to catch you with off-guard humor and maintain a decent enough flow of relevant action sequences to make it worth watching at least the one time. ;)

People walking to and from the theater, located in ximen. Not surprisingly, a lot of dates happening. :) Phew that chick on the left is skinny.

A display for Johnny Depp's next movie that I've never heard of, Dark Shadows. The cute lil girl from Kickass is in it!!

Mmmm imax.

The theater experience in Taiwan was actually...almost identical to watching a movie at home. It did feel like home, other than the Chinese subtitles.

We didn't manage to catch a show til 10:40 cuz all the theaters we tried had only the front 3 rows available, and by the time we reached the last one, there weren't even opening in the earlier 9, 9:30 showings. With about 1.5 hrs to kill, we got some snacks, played some claw machine (Michael won our cousin a Totoro plushie), took a break in that giant plushie cafe that I took pics of a while back, and walked around.

By the time we got out it was already 1am, so we had to cab it back. Meant to sleep early cuz we had to get up early the next morning for Nantou -- oops! :3 Threw some clothes in a bag and jumped into bed but still had some trouble sleeping. Avengers on the brain, perhaps........

day 23! guting, ximending, shilin night market

Another late start to the day. The room I'm staying in is such a cave. I don't mean it in a bad way, just that there's only one small window, and it faces out into an alley where the next building's wall is about one foot away. So even during the daytime it looks like the sun has just set, making me not want to do anything.........

But there's no stopping a determined and hungry Michael.

So we go to McDonalds?? He's sort of obsessed with trying American foods that have made the journey to Asia. I don't quite get it, but he says it's because they're so different here (true) and that he's been here long enough that he's having cravings for home food (only true for pizza). I'm too apathetic to argue too much, so after I'm badgered into figuring out how to say "McChicken" in Chinese (it's mai4xiang1ji1 for anyone who might be interested -_-;;) we are off to the nearby McDonalds.

So it's quite fancy inside O_o The second floor is this giant seating area with really koosh seats, fancy designs, and a surprisingly number of couples on dates. (wtf?? Ireland's Potato and now McDonalds...potatoes must be the Taiwanese aphrodisiac). It looks like people treat McDonald's kind of like a Starbucks, which is kinda funny given the huge gulf separating the marketing image the two companies have back at home.

Anyway thanks to the research assignment I was given, I knew which sandwich on the menu had the least calories, some chicken...something or other. Had a horribly stilted conversation with the cashier where I tried to order a #10 but with no drinks or fries (no combo), but not knowing how to say the word "fries", or "combo". :( She got it eventually. It was not bad, I was surprised that they used real chicken and not the ground up parts of whatever 20 legged swamp creature passed FDA requirements that morning.

After McDonalds we had plans to go to ximending to shop, since it's pretty defensible from the rain. (Yes, we are now at war with rain).

Found a cong zua bing (flaky green onion pancake) cart, one of Michael's favorites (there are a lot of them around, in each area). He's gotten countless ones but come to think of it I haven't had one yet. It's pretty similar to a cong you bing (green onion pancake) except that I added the word flaky to the front of one. :p

Hehe, no, the texture is a little more flaky I guess, I'm not really sure how they're made differently. People usually ask for +egg (~30cents), which makes it a bit more hearty.

So she cracks the egg, scrambles it quickly before it cooks, then throws some basil on (Michael and I are still trying to figure out how to say that in Chinese), and then the pre-cooked green onion pancake. Insta snack! They usually add a dab or two of sauce (vaguely hoisin ish) and spicy sauce if you want it.

So, still trying to uphold my previous resolution to take pics of non-food. Here's a pretty common sight in ximending. :) There are pillars along the sidewalk to support the walkway roofing, and since they're all about maximizing store real estate space, many pillars double as a small stand that people sell goods from. There's always a variety of things so they have to pack em in pretty snugly to show all their wares.

Same deal, two little pillar-shops selling hats, in front of a boutique called Vivi Sweet. Most shop owners encourage you to try on their stuff, since they know it's way easier to get you to buy once you've seen yourself in it (also it'll give them a few seconds to pitch to you).

Another cutesy plushy/goodies type store, with a pillar-store selling bags and wallets.

Whoops that's a bit awkward. :) This store owner happened to look up as I was taking a pic of her restocking a few items. Guess you guys get to see an example of Taiwan street fashion.

Michael and I found a cool display that mirrors whatever the little cam (black bump on the right side) sees. Took a few pics before noticing that it was probably intended for a couples kiss cam or something.

So I just took one alone. T_T

This pillar is being used (outside a boutique) as advertisement for the types of fashion that boutique has. Pretty funny...I like certain elements of each outfit, but I would never in a thousand years wear any of those complete outfits. :S

NRGNRGNRGNRNG ANGRYPLUSHIESPILLAR!

One of my favorite things to do anywhere is people watching. :) Cuz who doesn't people watch?? I see so many cute outfits/girls walking around but usually am not fast or subtle enough to sneak in a pic. So I tried snapping a few pics of whole crowds, not sure I managed to capture anything great but, more examples of what people here wear. :) At least, in ximending (which tends towards a younger, possibly trashier crowd?)

wtfjumpsuit. Also, I think one pretty notable thing about fashion here is how willing girls are to compromise beauty for comfort, in terms of shoe apparel. Wearing a pretty cute/pretty outfit, paired with walking shoes is considered normal here. Odd but I think I like it -- it speaks to a more practical minded approach to life. :) As opposed to Japan were all girls look great all the time but....if everyone looks great all the time, you have to wonder how much time is squandered in the name of vanity on a day to day basis??

So, we split up and did some shopping, then met up again and shopped a bit more. Michael bought the same large white totoro I got, from a different place. But the guy gave him the same deal that I got! So I spose all vendors to have quite a bit of leeway on pricing, and it's factored into the initial cost of the item.

By the time we were done, it was 8 or 9ish and we figured it was a good opportunity to go to a night market (it would give us a coupla hours there). Back to Shilin. :) Haven't been there in a while.

Thirsty, so we stopped to get drinks at one of these WOW Frog eggs stand. lol. Despite huge indications otherwise, there are no frog eggs in any of the drinks here! I don't know why they're called frog eggs, or have a large pic of a frog with eggs. But it's a really commonplace stand (franchise?) that you're guaranteed to see at least once at any night market. They sell mmm, lighter, more "refreshing" drinks? (vs. milk tea or other heavily creamy/sweetened drinks). We got an aiyubing (cold aiyu).

Looks like this....the yellow blocks are aiyu, basically the same consistency as jello. Lots of added lemon/lime flavor which is what makes it refreshing. :)

Made our way to the underground food court area, cuz Michael wanted some oyster pancakes. As expected on a rainy day, it was totally packed with people. We agreed that this one stand has our favorite oyster pancakes though. ^^v and we have sampled from many many stands over the past few weeks!

Stopped to get some sausage. *pause for sausage jokes*. Yah these are all REALLY really big sausages. You don't have to buy the whole thing, you can just get however many lbs you want and she'll cut it up and put it in a baggie for you to eat as you walk.

On our way home, saw this interesting Oreo milk tea concoction and wondered how close a McFlurry it would be. (turns out not close at all, since I've never wept over a soggy disappointing mcflurry) 

She had a cute straw dispenser though. :3

Didn't do much shopping at Shilin but got our yummy street foods and called it a day. :)

day 22! shida

For once weather.com was right on target, and predicted 100% chance of rain. Welp. It went from sprinkling -> drizzling -> raining -> pouring -> raining -> drizzling -> pouring....many many times throughout the day. I turtled up (oh hon T_T i miss you) and tried to ignore the fact that an ocean was being dropped on Taiwan. We really did pick an inopportune month to travel here. :) Even though there have been plenty of non-raining moments, the fact that the weather forecast every day is "thunderstorms" kind of casts a bleak shadow on the day. :) I dunno, I learned from living in Pittsburgh that the weather affects my mood and mindset way more than it ought to.

So, spent most of the day indoors waiting for a reprieve where I could sneak out and do things. Never got it, but decided to walk to Shida to get some baozi's from that place we went to last time we were there. It's really good!! Probably the best baozi's I've ever had in my life. T_T Although a nikkuman from Japanese konbini (convenient store) comes close. :)

Michael tagged along for baozi's (I was planning to shop around a bit at Shida while I was at it, last time I didn't really feel like it and their stuff tends to be girlier and not stuff I could see myself wearing). We managed to NOT GET LOST! :D Thank you google maps! The rain was pretty yuck but as long as you dress for the weather it's alright. Poor Michael's sneakers have "breathable" tops and his socks were soaked in 5 minutes.

We decided to try one of these "large sausage wrapped around small sausage".  Minds out of the gutter please! :)

They're a pretty common snack that we've seen a lot of, but were never that interested in. The "large sausage" is actually just rice encased in whatever they use to wrap sausages with? And the small sausage is a normal Taiwanese sausage. They put lettuce, sauce, spices, ginger, etc. in there. It's just a hot dog really, but with a rice bun instead of a bread bun.

We were not impressed. :( No more sausage.

We also grabbed an oyster pancake since we had to walk through the Shida area to get to the baozi place. After securing the goods, walked back through and did a bit of shopping...

I've decided to make an effort to take pics of stuff OTHER than food so y'all don't think I'm sitting here eating myself to death. :p This was one shop we stopped by. Pretty cute, all their stuff consisted of dresses, and big shirts/tops that you can wear over the dresses (since Asian fashion is all about layering). You could mix and match whatever you wanted, and any two items you buy are 500nt (~$17). I picked up two dresses cuz the shirts all have weird english. :3 foblish?

Some shirts they had up for display...."magazine"? why??? what does it mean??

Clothes clothes clothes!!! Cute little asian clothes. T_T I want to catch them all!

So usually these little boutiques go and buy clothes wholesale (like from that wufenpu we went to way back at the start of the trip and put out one set of everything they have in their inventory for people to rifle through. When you actually want to buy something, though, they'll find a new article of you want in these packages of wrapped clothes, and you get to take that home instead.

Michael found a crepe store, and wanted to try since he said he's never had crepe before. 

It was...unlike any crepe I've ever seen before. This was a savory crepe, turned out to basically be a salad inside a waffle cone.

Got my daily milk tea here. :D Almond milk tea is amazing!!!!! Love it.

That was pretty much it for the night though. Did a bit of shopping, wandered around in the rain for a while, went on a quest for laundry detergent, then back home. :)

day 21! leofoo hotel, taipei central station

Experimenting with a new font/picture size after having the sudden realization that there was no need to be stingy. D: Thank you cloud! Actually I'm not even sure what the cloud is. People in the industry just talk about it and refer to it the way that our ancestors used to talk about God. So. Praise be to the cloud! May your bountiful terabytes rain down upon us. Amen.

So, day 21! By all means a very slooooow and uneventful day. As we lose party members, our will and resolve to carry on slowly drops. When all 6 of us were here we spent all the hours in our day trying to get stuff done. After Jennifer and Kevin left, we got a bit depressed and hesitant to go outdoors. With mom and dad gone....well. :( I woke up at like 5 or 6pm. Actually I woke up earlier but I'll like get up, do a few things, sigh at the rain, and inevitably go back to sleep for a few hours. 

Michael's periodic hunger is the only driving force keeping us going. He requests that we go to this dim sum place my cousin looked up for him. He'd been clamoring for dim sum this whole time but we hadn't found a place yet. :/ I wasn't super hungry but didn't have any better ideas so I said fiiiine. He also recruited Justin to come along.

After a confusing roundabout musical chairs around various metro stations, we meet up with Justin and catch a cab to the restaurant. (The cab was Michael's transportation of choice, after the fiasco with Momo's). There was actually a lot more anger and raging that went on before arriving at the restaurant, which some of you have already had the misfortune of sitting through, so I'll refrain from going off about it here. :)

The restaurant is actually the top banquet floor of a fancy hotel. There were a ton of Japanese tourists there when we arrived. The hotel had it's own 7-11 inside, that's how baller it was. :p

Oh so I forgot to mention but it will come as absolutely no surprise that this is an all you can eat dim sum. I guess it's surprising in the sense that I've never heard of dim sum served buffet style, at 8pm, but not so surprising because it's Michael. :p

Anyway we were told we had a 1hr time limit and we were like fine, we can definitely eat enough  shaomai (sp?) in 1hr to put this place outta business. But. This was no ordinary dim sum place. :|  You know how most places push around carts and you get to feel like a king and point to whatever you want? :D That's now how this place worked!! They had a coupla carts sitting out that we kept making sad eyes at, but no one was pushing them. Instead, they give you these little order sheets that you can tally mark what you want and how many you want. Which would be all well and good except that none of us really reads Chinese that great. D: I thought that the order sheets had like, OTHER dishes. Cuz even at dim sum you can usually order special dishes from the kitchen that don't show up on the carts -- chow mein or fried rice and what not. I thought it was THAT stuff. But no, the chicken feet, shaomai, chashao bao, all of it T_T it was on those sheets.

SO. We got a bit of food to start, then spend like 40 minutes drooling at some carts, and bitching about the service the whole time. We did try waving over the servers and all, but they all managed to appear busy walking around, writing determinedly on little pieces of paper, while actually accomplishing nothing. By minute 40 we were so pissed off that we were like fuck the carts!! And started marking down random tally marks on the sheets, sending in the order, and then asking for another sheet so we could order more while that order was cooking. Lol! All in all it turned out to be pretty hilarious and a very interesting way of eating....I mean, I can read simple words like "cabbage", "fish", "shrimp", "chicken", so I tried to base our orders on the words I knew? But you know. SOMETIMES. The dish would usually end up being "tons of CABBAGE cooked plain with nothing else" or "CHICKEN egg rolls with wasabi dipping sauce" or something along those lines. :) It was almost never what I imagined. It was pretty fun, to see what popped out! Luckily Michael and Justin are indiscriminate eaters and I must say I held up my own (polished off that whole plate of cabbage by myself since apparently the two boys are TOO GOOD FOR CABBAGE).

What was hilarious though was as time got later and later, we got more and more frantic trying to mark orders, which meant that the orders came out an insane rate around minute 50. Hahahaha. At one point this chick, who we'd nicknamed "6" (for being the only decently cute chick in the room, as opposed to the angry one that we nicknamed "2"....) came by with a tray with all the dessert orders I'd just placed?? 3 small bowls of almond tofu, 3 small bowls of coconut tapioca soup, 1 bowl of this amazing red bean..chocolate...pudding stuff (<-- I claimed that one for myself), and slowly and methodically moved them one by one to our already filled-to-the-brim table. We just lost our shit. Started giggling like 3 little kids with tooooooo much power over the kitchen. Yeeaaa pretty sure 6 hated us. X3

Anyway it was a really fun dinner. Um. Got to try a lot of interesting foods, learned how to order properly. I was really worried that at some point they'd come out with more trays of our food and that there'd be no place to put them so I was constantly being like GUYS WE HAVE TO EAT FASTER hahahaha. Race against the kitchen. And despite my fears that by the end of the night we'd be full but still have a banquet left to finish off.......we did manage to finish everything. :)

It cost about $17/person so, not cheap, but probably worth it in the end? I don't know. I don't think I'd go back. :) I enjoyed the novelty of it but I don't particularly enjoy the I'm-about-to-birth-a-watermelon feeling. The food was pretty good quality wise but...I dunno. Not convinced. I think I like Momo's better, and would rather just eat normal a la carte dim sum. :)

Ok you've all been patient enough. Throughout all the furious eating, I remembered to stay true to my loyal bloggites and took pics of almost everything we had. :)

Here we go!

The first round! The manager did drag one cart over to us in the very beginning and gave us one of everything (which was nice, but fueled the misconception that the carts actually DID ANYTHING AT ALL).

Awww cute lil rice balls. :3

Chicken feet!

Intestines + ginger in some spicy sauce (surprisingly good!) :o

Spareribs.

Oh. my. god. THESE WERE SO GOOD. Imagine if you took 3 little croissants, swirled them around in a tub of butter, and then filled it with...ok...I don't know what was in the middle. Doesn't even matter!! The outside was so good. O_O 

Meh. Not impressed. I raffled off my extra one.

Paaaaaaass.

Oooh here's a good example. :) I read "noodle" and thought it was gonna be chow main or something but instead we got......this piece of work. :S I've never been a fan of this sort of dish.

This one too, I saw "vegetable", and ...well, I guess they did deliver pretty accurately.

The inside was some vegetable, I guess they just wrapped it and fried it and added a dollop of ketchup??

------ Insert a half hour break here ------

Stephanie/Michael/Justin learn ORDER!

It is super effective. >)

"Fish" = squid and chashao.

Omg I know I'm gonna lose a bit of respect for this (don't kick me from the meatmasters Janet T_T) but this salad was really exciting. The dressing was like....soy sauce + ?? + wasabi? It was kinda light but it was REALLY GOOD. I'm excited to go home and try it. :D :D :D It'll break up the monotony of my salads. Anyway the boys were "kind" enough to let me finish this off.

Lololol. I saw "chicken" and wrote down "2" next to it (desperation level increasing). They came out with this massive plate of chicken! Hard to tell but it's the size of a regular dish, not a small dim sum dish. We were like Holy... O_O and I was like uhh guys I ordered another one D: D: Fortunately for us the reason it was so big was cuz they combined the two orders onto one plate, and we did NOT have to eat 2 of these. :p

My cabbage! :D

Lol, "shrimp" turned out to be, in fact, shrimp. :p Justin tanked this one for us.

6 comes by, her hatred for Americans is born, and we get dessert. :3 Pretty random to get dessert in the middle of the meal but I've always like mixing sweet/salty. Not sure why a lot of people get squeamish about it. ITS ALL GOING TO THE SAME PLACE PPL!

Almond tofu was really good. <3

Coconut tapioca was not. </3

I absolutely loved this one T_T not sure what the flavor was, I think red bean something? As you can see I could not help myself and took a bite before my manners got the best of me.

And then we put in our last orders, where we discovered the actual "dim sum" order sheet that we should've been using the whole time to order the more traditional dim sum dishes. Cuz on the other order sheets we were like where the fuck are chicken feet?? Well we found it. Hidden in one column on page 2. >3 Goodbye Leofoo hotel.

Aww haha I am disappoint. I didn't catch all of our final order in one shot. :) But as you can see....3 shaomais, 3 spareribs, 2 chicken feet....maybe it doesn't SOUND too epic but we've eaten at least 20-30 small dishes of food so far. :p lol.

OH another funny story with 6.

Kinda hard to describe the sequence of events but, we placed an order that included 1 plate of spareribs. Then in our final order Justin was like "put 2 more!" so I did. The 1st plate took a while coming out, and when she finally brought it over, we had our last order sheet ready. She took it from us with this expression: -_- and marched off. Then she pivots and comes back and is like "....did you really want 2 spareribs?" and we were like "ummm" *exchanges looks* Her senior coworker comes over and is like "why are you asking???" I guess she thought it was rude of 6 to ask. And 6 answers back (this is all in Chinese) "Well, they JUST ordered 1. I didn't think they really wanted 2 more." And without skipping a beat Michael's like "Yao. (Want)" loooooooooool. 6 definitely spat in our spareribs. She also officially dropped to a 5. -_-

And this pic pretty much sums up dinner. Total domination!!! XD America 1, Taiwan 0!

Michael does not feel bad. No he does not.

Michael also insisted on eating dinner with that ridiculous tiny fork (we got it to eat our "seasonal fruit" dish with, which turned out to be watermelon. I got to eat all 4 slices :D)

Oh my god. :( I may have eaten more than the other two.

Couldn't really decide on a good follow-up place to go to, geographically speaking (Justin lives off in a weird direction) so we went back to Taipei central station so I could massage my tummy while they claw machined various plushies.

The elusive teal llama!!! :D I think he was there just for show, Justin tried to claw it but the claw just slide up its neck lol.

Oh btw. All the employees at the Taipei central station location recognize us now. :(

Oooo I was kinda proud of this find. :D This pic was on the "prize retrieval" flap of one of the machines. I zoomed in and took the pic, thinking it would make a cute profile pic for Michael. :3

Taipei central closed soon after, so we lumbered off on home.

Kind of an embarrassing day to recount XD Embarrassing? or glorious? you be the judge. :o