day 40! din tai feng, wufenpu, raohe night market, zhongxiaoxinsheng

Got up relatively late the next morning (thank gooood), looked over our checklist and decided to go get xiaolongbao at Ding Tai Feng (that Michelin 1 star place that I went to my first day in Taipei). It's one of those things-you-do when you go to Taipei I guess. :) Kurt's been, before, when he came with friends, but still worth going anyway. Plus we figured Monday afternoon the wait wouldn't be too bad....

I looked up directions and we were gonna try to take the bus there, but I couldn't even find the bus stop. :( 9/10 attempts to navigate my way around the city using google and google maps have ended in epic fail. I'm just...terrible with directions. We stopped to ask this girl about bus stuff though, and though ultimately she couldn't help us and we had to take a cab, she was THE CUTEST LITTLE THING I'VE EVER SEEN. Kurt can attest to her cuteness. She was really tiny, had a cute little face, and was so sweet and helpful. I mean, not cute in the way that some girls here are super done up and cute, but she was just cute. I don't know. I think I love her. <3

...and we were right! seated right away.

Mmmmm sauce. :3 According to this little informational pamphlet they gave us, Din Tai Feng was originally a condiment/sauce company, which explains why their sauce is so damn good. They had to expand into the restaurant industry though because it was more stable during war times, or something. I dunno, I stopped reading. I'm on vacation! X< Leave me alone.

I. haven't. had. vegetables. in. so long. O_O Like seriously how am I still living? I must be an alchemist or something, transmuting baozi's into iron to stay alive. This is a big $6 pile of Chinese spinach, and it was actually probably the best thing I ate all day lol.

I think Kurt was more excited for the xiaolongbao though.

Ok maybe I am too.

I think this is the best thing they have there still though. It's called hong you chao shou, and it's shrimp (?) dumplings in red flavored hot oil sauce (?). Tried it at a bunch of different places and it's always ok but Din Tai Feng's is simply amazing.

Thank you little mascot man. :) Your brethren were delicious.

Next stop was Wufenpu -- back to the garment district. :) Guys clothing here is just not as cheap as girl's clothing!! Like girl's clothing probably gets more expensive but you CAN get stuff for cheap, while guys stuff seems much more...normalized. Most things cost somewhere from $10 - $30.

Anyway we did a bunch more shopping/talking/haggling (mostly for Kurt's stuff). Don't have a good pic for all of that so here's another random pic I took! Thought it was pretty cool. It was the entryway to one of the stores, tons of belt buckles sunken into concrete.

Overall I think Kurt liked this area best for shopping, partially cuz of the prices, mostly because of the selection available there. :) Cuz like stores in Shilin, for example, go here and pick one particular style of clothing to stock their stores with, so every area will have maybe one overall style, but all of those styles come out of Wufenpu so yah it makes sense that it's the most varied place to shop. :)

After a few hours of walking around, we were sorta tired, and decided to go to Raohe night market early and then go home. Wufenpu and Raohe are actually right about in the same area, maybe a 15 min walk apart. But both times I've gone to Wufenpu we've been unable to figure out how to get to Raohe from there, resulting in me only making it to Raohe once so far this trip. :) I was completely lost, again, but with Kurt there we were able to find it just fine.

Oooo the black pepper bun shop that's kind of famous and right at the entrance to Raohe had a short line! So we hopped in and picked one up.

Oh so this was pretty funny haha. It's a snack stand at Raohe. Owned by a white dude! It's called "Little America" and he's selling deep fried oreos and various deep fried other things...typical. Oh I also like how the people sitting at his booth was a big group of white girls....c'mon guys! :( :( Stereotypes!! Y u no break them.

We did walk up and down the length of Raohe, but neither of us was very hungry or felt like carrying anymore stuff so we headed out. Again, wasn't 100% sure how to get out of the area since the last time we bussed out and my parents were there to help. Braved the bus system again and it deposited us at zhongxiaofuxing station, where we hopped on the MRT. :)

OH before I forget. No pic but I picked up a milk tea from Raohe and it was THE BEST MILK TEA I'VE EVER HAD!!! O_O It was some sort of "black sugar milk tea", and it pretty much looked like pearls cooked in brown sugar, so that the pearls taste all caramelly, and the milk tea portion has no tea, it's just filled with milk (really nice high quality milk). So you end up with a yummy milk candy tasting drink. I don't know, I only got a small cup to try but after a while I was sorely regretting the small size. So. GOOD!

Instead of heading back home, we decided to go back to the internet cafe and play some more  hon. :p The one we'd been going to didn't have any seats close to each other so we went to a nearby one. It was maybe a bit more ghetto, screens weren't as big, but they did have earphones so we could actually hear sounds which was nice. :p Played for a few hours, picked up some soup/noodles to eat there, and left shortly after midnight, which meant cabbing back home.