Part 3 - First night in Taiwan

Many friends asked how my trip to Taiwan. I would said good but can be better. The idea of DIY Taiwan trip is a good idea. No doubt joining tour package would ease your worry as the whole trip itinerary is pre-planned in advance and just need to follow. But hearing from many friends and my personal experienced, package tour is very rush and they are trying to achieve too many things with limited times.

A friend jokes with me, there is one saying in Chinese but I translated in English, hope it doesn’t deviate from the original meaning. It is how they describe a package tour:-

“Move faster than the horse,

Wake up earlier than the rooster

Eat worst than the pig,

Sleep late than the ghost”

LOL … It means, tour package is very hassle as you need to move around very fast, True!! A friend joined a Taiwan package tour last year and he told me that every single place, they won’t stay more than one hour. They woke up very early in the morning everyday, True!! His trip is the round island tour whereby every night he is sleeping in different hotel, need to packed and unpacked daily. Food is something you canot control, if you are lucky, you would have offered tasty food. Everyone would be exhausted with hectic moving around, sleep late and wake up early on the next day…. hahahaha …

Doing DIY trip yourselves, meaning you dictate what to do next. Time is in your hand and you decide how long you would stay in one place before move on to another place. I notice there is limitation too. Like I said in the beginning, our trip is good but can be better. What I means we may lost track of the time. As we have a free flow itinerary but when we were too enjoy, we have forgotten of the time and run out of time to visit a few important places.

A good example was the viewing of Sakura Flower at Yong Ming Shan, we some more got time to buy hot coffee and snacks at 7 Eleven and doing a picnic at Yong Ming Shan, without noticing the time, by the time we want to take some nice photo, the sky becoming dark. We missed the golden time to captures those beautiful flowers…. doom!! We left with limited times to capture those nice flowers before the sunset. Nevertheless, let me share with you some of the beautiful flower shots.

One of a pre-requisite of a DIY tour is that you must have a local to bring you around. Basing on public transport is not impossible but time consuming. As I go with my whole family and friends, 8 of us, the best way is to hire someone to drive us around. Luckily, I was introduced a local friend, Mark, a driver in Taipei, he is doing “baucer” services, which means chauffeurs.

After we arrived to airport, Mark sent us to a 3 bedroom apartment in downtown Taipei. It is located at Linson Road which is in the heart of the city, few minutes walk to the MRT. I would consider the rental rates are quite reasonable and economical, we stayed there for 5 nights and it only cost us approximately NT475 per person per night.

After check-in, we immediate went out for some nice dinner. That night, the weather at Teipie was so so so cold, it is about 12 degrees Celsius and very windy. We went straight for hot soap dumpling, a place called Ming Nyat, according to Mark, the chef is from the famous Din Tai Fung Dumpling Restaurant, but the price is half of it. So we decided our first dinner in Taipei.

Indeed, the food is so yummy, look at these photos, they are simply delicious.

 

 

Before I went to Taiwan, I'm prepare to enjoy all sort of food there. Partly blame the famous Food T.V programs in Astro, highlighted so much of good food in Taiwan. So, after dinner, (we purposely ate lesser), we then wanted to visit the Shilin Night Market which is famous with all sort of local hawkers food. But Mark suggested the Shilin Night Market is too commercial and really for tourists, it is going to be too crowded. He then brought us to another Night Market that most locals would go, near the TongFa Road, called Lien Jien Night Market. I guess need not to tell, we continue our dinner at the Night Market …… wow!!

One food that we heard so much but hesitate to take is the fermented taufoo, Chow taufoo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinky_tofu. As a food adventure, nothing fighting me off, so, the first buy in the market was the chow taufoo. I had eat this before in other place, I remember I can take it, but this round, the odor / chow is very strong, the smell can be sense miles away. Wow … let me eat ,,,,,,,,,, em…. eMMM~!! … ERRR!!

I rushed to one corner, lucky that is a quiet corners and I throw out the taufoo from my month. Walau-eh, so “chow”, the toufoo tasted like longkang (drainage) water. After that, I try again with some of its sour vegies … so beh tahan. I share some with my friend, Ho who later he did the same, oh goosh!!… hahahaha ….. Both of us had a good laugh .. Despite that, we still continue eatting a bit more. Looking at the big bowl of chow taufee, deep inside my heart said, “SeiLoo!! How to finish it”, I wanted to try other food, how can I holding something so chow in my hand and eat other food!!..

So, very rudely, I returned back to the same store owner, tell him that we are foreigner and can’t take the smell, so get his to throw the whole bowl away for us …. What a release!! Get ride this disgusted food … Hahahaha … Nevertheless, I still want to recommend to you, you never try, and you never know … at least I know now how “chow” is it. hahahahaha.