I love holidays - Day 42 - June 16, 2010

Mosquito Bites of the Day: 2
Total: 19

Freaking mosquito bit me on the hand and pinky!

Dragon Boat Festival

Today is actually a national holiday, the dragon boat festival. A lot of people get off from work, including the place I work in. That means I get to sleep in ^_^ The original plan was actually to wake up and go to the festival or to the zoo. But both of those didn't happen. Ended up snoozing, sleeping in, and waking up at 3:30pm. It's so bad!

Shida Night Market



Instead, I ran five laps on Shida's track. So that could be 1.25 miles. I'm gradually improving =) After that was dinner at the hand shaved noodle shop. On the way there, I took some pictures. The first picture shows the area artists usually come by and perform their music. Last year I saw a girl singing her songs and trying to sell her albums. Today was a man playing his violin. The second picture is just part of Shida Night Market.

Dinner at Hand Carved Noodle Shop



You get this view on the second floor of the restaurant. The second picture shows my one of my favorite restaurants. The yummy chicken restaurant ^_^ You can also see how crowded night markets get. It's a pain to walk through the crowds, especially because people walk soooooo sloooooowwwwwwww. You have to try to weave your way through if you want to go faster.

Let's start with small side dishes.

This is free pickled vegetable you can grab.


Pickled cabbage for 30NT=$0.93


Pickled cucumbers for 30NT=$0.93


Fried rice for 80NT=$2.48. It was good, but it needed more flavor. I mixed the sauce of the stir fried noodles into the fried rice. That made it good =)


A big plate of the stir fried hand shaved noodles is 90NT=$2.79. Theresa dugged in already so I didn't take a picture of the plate. But I ordered this before and it is good!


Each little cake thing is 10NT=$0.31. The first one has pieces of mango around the cake part and the other is strawberry. They both have cream inside. It's good!

I can't read Chicken - Day 31 - June 5, 2010

Taipei Main Station Underground Mall (Y)



I went to the Taipei Main Station underground mall. There are four different underground malls. The one I went to this day was the letter Y. I forgot what it's actually called, but the letters are a lot easier to remember. The stores here sell clothes, shoes, games, accessories, and cute item stuff. There is always an area for the restaurants =) My favorite spot of course!

There are also areas with open space where a lot of the younger crowd come and practice dancing.


Fail #18



I revisited an old restaurant that I went to last year. As you can see, the menu is posted near the ceiling in Chinese. Yeah I can't really read much. So I took a picture of what I wanted. I ordered the item with the green background. I wasn't super hungry, but wasn't completely full and wanted to try something small. Well turns out what I ordered was jiroufan, which is chicken meat with rice. I couldn't even read chicken.

The food wasn't that good... it was basically pieces of boiled chicken with a sauce. Why is this a fail? Because I couldn't read chicken >_< How can I not remember chicken? At least I knew the character for meat haha.

30NT=$0.94


Shida Night Market

The underground malls at Taipei Main Station starts to close around 9pm. The night is still young. So Theresa and I went to Shida night market to look around since we haven't really done that since we got here. Only because it's so close to our hostel. I ended up buying a lot of stuff. I didn't think I would buy anything there. But I did at great prices =)

290NT=$9.08


I love two for one deals =) 150NT=$4.69


100NT=$3.13


Got a purple version as well for 100NT=$3.13


150NT=$4.69


Hot Dog



I was craving for a hot dog so I went to 7-Eleven to get one at 1AM. It was actually on sale, lucky me! The hot dogs here taste a little sweeter. The condiments are also different. Ketchup, mustard, and relish are asianfied. Which means...

Ketchup=not as tomatoey, light taste with sweetness.
Mustard=Honey mustard tasting
Relish=not pickle sour, but Asian pickled sauce taste.

Actual hot dog: 11NT=$0.34 Bun: 10NT=$0.32


It still satisfied my cravings. It tasted pretty decent. There was also cheese inside the hot dog, but I didn't hit that until halfway. Wish I had onions to go with it =(

Big chickens make me laugh - Day 13 - May 18, 2010

Big chickens make me laugh. Why? I don't even know. I saw one today in Shilin Yeshi (Night market) and I just giggled and laughed.

Look how huge it is!


Maybe the reason why I cracked up was because it was so random. I'm just walking around eating my rou baozi (steamed meat bun) and I see this big chicken.

Anyways let's start with lunch!

Lunch Fail

Went to a small restaurant on the edge of Shida's night market. Thought it was going to be pretty good but it wasn't at all. Good thing I didn't spend much!

40NT = $1.28


What I ordered was basically noodles with pork and sauce. They overcooked my noodles so it was kind of soggy. There wasn't much flavor either in the sauce and not enough meat. They also put ooky green onions and bean sprouts haha. I'm not a fan of those two. I can stand eating green onions but bean sprouts >_< You know me and bean sprouts, we don't roll well together.

After work, I took a 2.5 hour nap. It felt GOOD. I'm not really sure why I slept so long. I've been getting almost 7 hours each day. Sometimes less, but I do need a lot of sleep haha. Then I headed out at 6:30 for dinner and Shilin Night Market.

Pho Pho Pho



Dinner was definitely better than lunch. I went to Thanh Ky behind Shida. It's a Vietnamese restaurant. According to their menu, they are famous for their Pho. Their Pho was okay tasting, I liked it more than lunch though haha. The restaurant itself is pretty small, but it smells like Vietnamese food =D Mmmmm.



Their prices aren't too bad. They sold fried spring rolls for 90NT=$2.87. I thought it was kind of expensive since it only came with two. That's what you would pay in the states.

I ordered the simple Beef Pho. The Pho was definitely not Pho Hoa. Golden 28's pho taste better than this one. Instead of using the skinny white noodle, they used a flat and wide noodle. The restaurant also overcooked my beef because it was chewy. I probably wouldn't order their pho.

This small bowl cost 95NT=$3.03. Not a bad price. I wish they had soy sauce, sriracha, and ho-sin sauce available =(


Shilin Night Market



Shilin night market is huge. There are so many stores to shop out, restaurants to eat, and stands to pig out on. I especially like the stands because they sell really cheap and good food.



I decided to try the rou baozi (steamed meat bun) for 12NT=$0.38. It was my first time trying a baozi in Taiwan. I was really surprised, I thought the baozi was going to suck but it was really good! It's like eating meat from dumplings but in a different dough. I was expecting less flavor but it was tasty =)



I also explored the Shilin Market. I thought it was a supermarket but it's a bunch of night stands with yummy food!. Definitely should have had dinner there. There will be a next tme though =)

Purchases of the Day

It's so hard to resist from buying so many clothes! I managed to get two things that I have to buy. A purse and boots =)

Purse: 200NT=$6.38 - Boots: 650NT=$20.75 - Good deals =)

I feel like an old lady - Day 7 - May 12, 2010

I feel like an old lady now and days. I get really tired by 10PM. Sometimes 8PM if I'm walking around the night markets and stores. I have no idea why! I get about 8 hours of sleep each day. Maybe it's because all I do during my internship is sit for 4 hours. But that should be changing in June hopefully!

New Cake

I went out to lunch today with Theresa and Xiao Wang. We walked to the area behind Shida for lunch. She treated us to the Asian pizza/pancake that I can't remember what it's called. Cong something haha. But she also took us to this dumpling place and let us try a piece of cake.

The texture was thicker than the Chinese cakes I had. I really like the red bean paste because it wasn't too sweet.


After work, headed to the bakery in Shida Night Market. A lot of owners here are getting strict with taking pictures of their store. But I managed to get some shots mwuahahaha!



I bought this cake =) I forgot how much it was, I think it was 38NT which is $1.22


Let's try Vietnamese Food
Decided to try the Vietnamese restaurant from a hungry girl in Taipei Blog because the Banh Mi in the picture she took looked really good. But I didn't get a Banh Mi because it was pretty expensive, it was 120NT = $3.83. One banh mi wouldn't get me full. Their food overall was kind of pricey for Taiwanese daily life. Especially for me since I'm not getting paid for the internship haha.



Passed the Taipei Arena along the way to the restaurant. This is where Jay Chou is suppose to perform in June for a concert. So sad =( I saw that tickets were sold out (of course). Just when I'm in Taiwan and get a chance to see a live concert, I won't be able to because tickets are sold out =( It's okay food made me happy.

Here is the storefront, inside the restaurant, and menu!



They showcased the sirarcha bottles haha.


What I got =) It's a Pork Rice dish with half an eggroll, egg, and vegetables. 140NT = $4.47


The pork was decently good, not the greatest. The eggroll had a weird taste at first but tasted good later. The egg thing was okay.


But the fish sauce tasted really good!


Sogo Department Store

With a full tummy, I started heading back to the MRT to go home. I had to switch from the brown line to the blue line to get back. One of the signs said SOGO Department Store. I been wanting to go there because people said it was good. I thought there was doing to be some cheap stores but they're mostly expensive brands =( Had some fun exploring the balling grocery store though.

Here are some shots of the levels of SOGO.


There was even a Din Tai Fung there! Haven't eaten there yet but I heard good stuff about it. I will soon!


The baller grocery store. Everything is pretty much overpriced.


Look they have this at Meijer haha.




Fail #10
To get home by the MRT, I have to get off at the Taipei Main Station. This station connects you to all the colored lines. I had to get on the green line to get back to my hostel. Well I completely forgot that one of the stations has two different routes. Once I saw an MRT approach, I quickly got on with Theresa.

Theresa and I both looked at these two girls in high heels who didn't get on the MRT. We thought wow, it's not too bad standing. We thought they wanted seats and we started laughing at them for some reason. Well turns out we got on the yellow line instead of the green line. The yellow and green line meets at one station where we could have got off at (Guting) but we would have to switch to another green line to get to Taipower Building stop.

So FAIL we had to get off the yellow line and get on the green line. Then we realized that the girls waiting for another MRT were probably waiting for the green line. Jokes on us. FAIL.

The Grand Finale

Remember the grocery store inside SOGO? Well I found a pair of flip flops there. These flip flops cost 6600NT = $210.66! It doesn't look really special right? The sparkling stuff on the thong are embedded with crystals. No wonder it's in a glass case. CRAZY!