Taiwan - Christmas 2019
25th December 2019 - To Taipei
Som and I are off on our third Xmas and New Year getaway. This year it is Taiwan, to cool down a bit, eat some 'interesting' food and see what really is Made in Taiwan. As with most holidays the first day is taken up with travelling. Left home at 7:30am and didn't arrive in our Taipei hotel until after 5pm. First impressions of the city from the taxi ride in are that is is quieter and more modern than Bangkok.
Tonight we headed out to Ningxia Night Market. Som is a foodie and there are lots of Taiwanese specialties she wants to try. Our first impressions as we approached the market which is a half mile or so of stalls selling various food was not good. What was that god awful smell. Was it the drains, had a skunk just passed by? Turns out it is the well named stinky tofu. If you ever thought the idea of tofu could get any worse here it is in all its pungent intensity.
But despite the name and smell it still wins out over this one. We decided not to ask what it contained and moved swiftly on.
Apparently the spicy stinky tofu was on Som's must try list and she ordered herself a bowl. I did try a little bit and it didn't taste as bad as it smelt but she was in no danger of my stealing half of it from her.
I went for a much safer cubes of beef cooked with a blow torch. In fact many stalls were cooking this way whether cooking meat or melting the cheese on huge prawns. The beef was a little tough but much better than the tofu.
One of the stalls Ningxia Night Market Food is famous for is the “Liu Yu Zai” crispy taro ball stand. This stand only makes and sells one thing crispy taro balls. The dough balls come two ways either stuffed with just taro or stuffed with taro egg and pork floss. The queue was massive running from the stand down the road around the back of other stalls and then another 30 or 40 people beyond that. Som had to try it. It doesn't look all that special but Som said it was a good taro ball whatever that is.
My main meal of the evening was much more straight forward a stir-fried noodle wrap. It was pretty good but I could've made something more to my taste myself.
Tonight was an interesting introduction to Taiwanese food. I wonder what Som will introduce to me tomorrow.,
26th December 2019 - Taipei
Today we did a little bit of sight-seeing between the eating. We checked out the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Park and the 2/28 Peace Park. We also passed by the Presidential Palace but there was much to see as they are erecting stands for the New Year's celebrations.
National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Park contains the most famous historical landmark in Taiwan, the CKS Memorial Hall. It is a huge building with exhibition halls underneath and steps up to a big statue of Chiang Kai-shek. We didn't plan it but we arrived during the changing of the guard which is always fun in any country. We walk through the park past the concert hall and the lake alongside. In the lake were lots of interesting birds some I recognise like the heron and many others I didn't. On one side were a dozen professional wildlife photographers set up with their tripods and huge camouflaged zoom lenses. There was a kingfisher on one of the rocks occasionally diving in for fish.
We had a lovely wander around the old part of the city. It wasn't busy and there was lots of interesting thing to see as well as foods to investigated. Som stopped off at this little corner shop Tian Jin Onion Pancake. It sold sort of rotis with half a dozen varieties. The woman the the front was coking uo the rotis first then returned them to the hot plate with some omelet mixture, ham, basil and/or cheese. There was a decent queue for such a small place but it I guess many like Som were hunting it out. I tried some and it was nice but the only thing a roti is really good for is mopping up a chicken jalfrezi.
Along with the food the other other reason Som wanted to come to Taiwan is the cat cafes. Today's coffe shop, which did a great cranberry smoothie, only had the one cat but it was quiet so Som could monopolise him for quite a while. I left them to it and enjoyed my smoothie in peace.
Tonight it was back to the Ningxi Night Market to try another popular dish the Taipei oyster omelet. The shop was knocking out huge omelets that it chopped up into portions and sold as fast as they could make them. It came with a tomato chili sauce poured over the top. I quite liked the crispy bits around the edge but the middle was a big sloppy mess.
27th December 2019 - Taipei and on to Ruifang
Another slow start to the day, we really are quite lazy on our Christmas holidays. We decided to spend a bit more time looking around Taipei before heading out to Ruifang. We headed down to the 'old village' part of Taipei to the Mengjia Longshan Temple. This is the most famous temple in Taiwan built in 1738 by Chinese settlers. As with all such temples it has been rebuilt many times (during WWII the Americans bombed it as it accused the Japanese of using it to store weapons) but it looks authentically old.
We walked around the many buildings trying not to disturb the hundreds of worshippers with their burning incense sticks bowing and praying at each of thre many, many alters. But my main memory of the temple will be the sound of wood being dropped on the floor. When praying at an alter they would drop two of these wooden pieces. We found out they were making wishes and depending on how the pieces fell decided whether it would come true or not. One guy we watched was very persistent. Either he had a lot of wishes or he was going to kep dropping them until he got the combination he wanted and the wish to come true.
Nearby is the Bopiliao Historical Block. This was once the main road to the temple and has recently been restored to how it would've looked 200 or more years ago. It had good reviews but I wasn't that impressed. It was a street of red brick slightly industrial looking buildings and looked like many such places in the UK. Maybe in Asia such an area is rare. A number of shops had exhibitions either of art or of how life was. A pleasant half an hour but glad we didn't make a special journey to get here.
Next up another restaurant on Som's To Do list, Zhouji Meat Porridge. I see it has rave reviews for it's meat porridge and crispy pork and the atmosphere was great. Busy with mostly locals, old women running around delivering food to the table quite unceremoniously, I liked it. The porridge is rice porridge in a meaty broth. OK but not to my taste. I would've sprinkled half a pot of pepper in it to pep it up, but Som enjoyed it. The crispy pork was good, but when is it ever bad and Som order some pork liver too.
The MRT system in Taipei is great. Lots of lines, frequent trains and not too busy. We got an EasyPass each and we've been using it to get around the city really easily. On top of the trains being great the toilets in the stations are great too. I know train station toilets that are good, that's a first. The sigh below is outside the ladies toilets it gives a real-time view of which stalls are empty :-) One thing I've noticed around Taipei is how clean and ordered the place is. Everyone seems curtious (unlike China), no spitting (unlike China) and everything is clean and tidy. Compared to Bangkok the roads, pavements and public transport are quiet, it really is a very pleasant city.
Time for more cats and to warm up. It's been about 15 degrees today and quite windy. I've worn my coat all day (along with shorts and sandals) and Som is wishing she bought a thicker fleece for the trip. Today's cats were at Funlife Gelato Cafe. We changed into cat motif sandals, washed our hands and went upstairs to the cafe. The waitress regulated the door so we could come in without cats getting out. Not that the cats looked energetic enough to plan an escapes.
The cafe had lots of climbing places for the cats and scratching poles etc but they mostly seemed happier curled up in their boxes. A few of them nonchalantly wandered around and the one above who was obviously in charge checked everyone out as they entered.
By the time we got back to the hotel it was 4pm, I had planned to get the train across to Ruifang but laziness took over and I booked an Uber. Just under 1000 TWD (TWD is 1 to 1 with the THB which makes our life really easy) or £25 for door to door service. I'm glad we did take the taxi. Som lay her head down on me in the taxi and we both fell asleep. We really are feeling lazy.
In the evening we got some street food from a popular stall very close to our hotel. You have a bowl and choose what you want from the range of meat, veg and unrecognisables and they fry it and sprinkle chili and garlic powder over the top. We played it quite safe with breaded chicken, mushroom, taro and chips. There was chicken skin, lots of offal as there seems to be on every stall, some more veg and breaded things that could've contained anything. What we had was very tasty and rounded off a nice day.
28th December 2019 - Pingxi Railway
Today we explored the Pingxi Railway line. The Pingxi Branch Line is an 8-mile stretch of narrow-gauge railroad that runs alongside the Keelung River starting at Sandiaoling north of Ruifang where we are staying running south to Jingtong. We are just taking in the three most popular stops along the way. The railway was completed in 1921 during the Japanese occupation and was used to transport coal from the mines in the area. Now the line takes hundreds upon hundreds of tourists to the old mining towns that have now transformed themselves into tourist centres.
Our first stop is Houtong. As the coal mining industry died out in the 1990s, Houtong Village fell into steep decline. But in 2008 Houtong started to be reborn as a cat paradise. A local woman started looking out for Houtong's cats. She brought volunteers together to care for the stray cats that had been abandoned as people left them behind when they moved away. Today there are more cats then people living in the village but each day tourists flock in. The train was jam packed when it arrived at Ruifang but we managed to cram ourselves into the carriage. Thankfully we were only going the one stop to Houtong. When we stopped off we were among the few that got off.
Considering how busy the train was and that 7 or 8 trains had gone before Houtong was relatively quiet. Quite a few people around but enough space and enough cats to accommodate us all. One side of the train line is the river and the old mine works. The river looks beautiful running through the green valley in a different way the abandoned mine working look great too. It really looks like they stopped working the mine and just walked away. The workings are slowly collapsing where they stood.
Everything in the village is cat themed. Along with the cat gift shops and cat cafes there are lots of statues that cats climb over and tourists get photographs with. This was probably the cutest of them.
We ended up spending 4 hours walking around the village with Som stopping to photograph and pet every cat and look at every cat themed souvenir.
All the cats look well looked after and very well fed. Lots of tourists give the cats treats to encourage them over and some have endulged more than others.
We wandered around to lanes that run up the side of the valley right past peoples houses and through their gardens. Only people making money from the cats and the tourists could possibly live here, but I guess if you like cats there is money to be made. Anyway four hours of cats was fun but it was time to move on to our next stop which was to be Shifen but as we pulled up it looked so so busy so we stayed on board through to Pingxi.
Pingxi is another old village that now caters to tourists plying them with snacks and along with Shifen specialising in sky lanterns. We walked along the line from the station where people were painting their large (3 foot high) lanterns, taking their photos then lighting the fire below and letting them off. This lead to the the old street which runs from the river up under the railway and up the hillside. Lots more gift shops and food stalls and pretty decorations.
By now we were getting peckish and saw a place with a sizable queue and tasty looking snacks so we joined the queue. It sold sausages with various toppings. The firm sausages were half sliced through 4 or 5 times and slices of garlic or ginger stuff in and mustard or chilli sauce over the top. We went for a garlic and mustard sausage and a breaded chicken covered on a bit of everything; garlic, ginger, coriander, chili sauce, mustard and wasabi. It was delicious.
It was starting to get dark so we headed back to the station and back to Shifen. The is the main tourist stop on the Pingxi line. Bigger than the other places and with a lot more food, drink and gift shops. The place was quite crowded and sky lantern after sky lantern was being released from the train tracks. We had a quick look around but it was so busy we just stayed for an hour and jumped on the next rain back to Ruifang.
For dinner we went to the Ruifang food court. A hall with 20 or more faood stalls and some seating. All the usual favorites like most food in Taiwan either deep fried in boiling oil or boiling in broth.
Som went for glutinous noodles in pork broth which was quite nice but I wouldn't have wanted a whole bowl full, I went for the one thing I really fancied a pizza. It wasn't the best pizza I've ever had but it really hit the spot.
29th December 2019 - Jiufen
Just a short bus journey away from Ruifang is Jiufen. Jiufen is another old mining village clinging to the side of the valley that has transformed into a tourist destination. You can hike to the waterfall or sit in a tea house and admire the view out over the sea. But today we woke up to the sound of rain so we went back to sleep for a bit but when we woke up again it was still raining. We put our coats on jumped on the bus anyway.
The view from the village between the low clouds and rising mist was still pretty good. Green rolling hills and the sea beyond.
Jiufen is famous for its red lantern adourned alleyways lined with small food stalls, tea houses, souvenir shops, and pottery stores. The alleyways were busy with people but not as bad as I had expected, maybe the rain had kept many away. As everywhere lots of tea shops of various sorts. Traditional, bubble tea, milk tea, soya this and taro that. This one caught Som's eye containing all the things she wanted in one mug; Earl Grey, Bailey's and taro balls.
After wandering up to the top we started back down and stopped off for lunch before hitting the main part of Jiufen Old Street. We avoided the recommended tea houses and went into an old run down looking one. We got a table with a great view and some lovely food and drinks. Thick toast with garlic butter, red pork jerky, shu mai (steamed dumplings), a cappuccino and a delicious blueberry smoothie.
On the way down we stopped at lots of shops trying their samples. Grilled squid, fried chicken, taro cake, pineapple cake, dried fish with almond and spicy fish crackers. Some tasted better than others. Same as yesterday many of the things were cat themed others with famous Japanese characters. Som bought a few things to take home for her work colleagues and we decided we had had enough of ducking umbrellas and headed for the bus.
30th December 2019 - Keelung
Still raining today. We've definitely had more rain than forecast but to be honest it hasn't really stopped us doing much. Today was always going to be a lazy one. Another lie-in check-out train to Keelung check-in and head out for lunch. Travelling in the days of mobile phones and Google really is a doddle. Ask Google for directions and you get train numbers and departure times no need trying to read timetables where you can't read the destination names and trying to work out if you get off at this stop or the next. Same walking from the railway station to the hotel. So so easy.
For lunch we went to a grill restaurant where you choose as many items from the menu as you want and grill them over coals at your table. One issue the menu was only in Chinese. Once again Google to the rescue. We've found that Google translate is a bit hit or miss with Chinese characters but it gave us enough help to be able to order pretty much what we wanted. Below you can see the sort of translations we were working with. Lots of marinated beef and pork, some chicken, some seafood and a few veggies. Lovely.
We're staying at the Keelung Harbor View so we spent the afternoon looking out over the harbor watching the rain fall.
The reason we're staying in Keelung for a night on the way back to Taipei is for the Keelung Night Market reportedly the best in Taiwan. The market runs across a couple of blocks that are closed to traffic and permanent vendors line the streets all numbered with their names and their main dish displayed above them. The streets are decorated with lanterns but unfortunately I guess because of the rain they weren't turned on. I bet it would look quite a sight with them on.
As you would expect for a market by the port there was lots of seafood along with all the Taiwanese favorites. Som went for glutinous oil rice with pork thick soup. The rice wasn't to my taste too sticky and tasted a little burnt to me (it wasn't that's just the flavour) but the pork soup was lovely. Quite thick was described and really tasty, adding just a little black pepper made it perfect.
I went for a combination of snacks, first Taiwanese Fried Chicken which was just like and other bread chicken nuggets with garlic and chili powder poured over it. Next meat dumplings with shrimp; like a big boiled dim sum containing the meat ball and shrimp in a glutinous soup. It was pretty good but I don't get the Taiwanese obsession with all thing glutinous. Lastly I had a Taiwanese Pork Belly Buns (Gua Bao). A fluffy steamed bun stuffed with slow cooked braised pork belly, pickled mustard greens, cilantro and ground peanuts. A very tasty messy, colourful handful of sweet, salty, and fresh flavours and a variety of non-glutinous textures.
Lastly we stopped off at a desert stall much like you see across Asia. Milk or in our case shaved ice (bào bīng) with a mixture of toppings: red bean, mung beans, grass jelly, taro, brown sugar jelly balls. I always find the toppings strange they are sort of sweetish but also quite savoury. If it was topped with fruit cocktail and a bit of squirty strawberry or chocolate sauce as wee had on ice cream as kids it would be delicious. Instead it is just another glad I tried it but there is a lot better out there dishes.
31st December 2019 - Taipei
Still cold and a bit damp this morning; bags packed coats on and out we go for the 45 minute train ride from Keelung back to Taipei. Taipei train station is huge and has a warren of shopping malls running underneath and around the train, MRT and bus stations, it took us a while to find the right exit but eventually we found the way out and over to the hotel. Too early to check in so we dropped our bags and headed back out to scout out places where we could watch the fireworks at mid-night.
Everywhere we've gone in Taiwan we've seen row after row of machines some are the claw type but most you put in 60 or 100 TWD turn the handle and a collectable comes out. Superhero and cartoon miniatures are common but the most common of all are cats and dogs. They obviously hold some attraction as Som can't walk past them without checking them out and actually put money in a few turned the handle and go the little plastic toy out.
The forecast had the weather brightening up today but well into the afternoon the clouds were still low and it was still spottig with rain. We never intended to join the throng around Taipei 101 but the weather made our mind up tonight we plan to find a spot further away that we can go to close to midnight and head straight back after. Hope in works out. Here's a shot of Taipei 101 earlier, not great weather for fireworks.
We headed out again around 10pm and went to Rainbow Bridge park. The weather had certainly perked up. The clouds had risen, the rain had stopped and the wind died down It was actually quite pleasant sitting in the park waiting for midnight. It was one of the places recommended online as away from the crowds and it worked out well. In the park by the river there were a thousand or more people but it wasn't crowded. For the hour leading up to midnight and continuing after people were letting off fireworks some small and some really quite big. We were a good distance from the Taipei 101 Tower but we had a good view of it between a nice gap in the buildings. Then the countdown started and at mid-night the tower lit up with fireworks.
Fireworks of varying colours sprayed out from the sides of the tower it must've been a hell of a sight close up. It was very good where we were.
The display only lasted 5 minutes but in that time a lot of fireworks went off. It was spectacular but call me old fashioned but I think I prefer a traditional display with rickets exploding at different points in the sky.
As planned we headed back soon after midnight walking to the next station to avoid the crowds and we were home by 1:20am. A really nice evening.
1st January 2020 - Taipei
After a late one last night we had our latest lie-in of the trip today, glad we didn't decide to fly back to Bangkok on the 1st. We barely made it out of the hotel in time for lunch. So the first task of the day was lunch. Som wanted beef noodle and we headed to the one on her list, Liu Shandong, but the queue was long. This is one hidden gen that is no longer hidden. It was a very old fashioned style place full of tourists crammed in sharing tables with the queue running to the end of the road and then starting fresh on the other side. I managed to talk So into trying another good beef noodle place around the corner. Liang Pin Beef Noodles is a much more modern place but with the same brisk service and authentic food. Som ordered the beef noodle of course I had a pork chop with rice. The beef must've been cooked for a week it was so tender and the noodle big and thick. My pork chop was good and well seasoned but I'd much prefered it shallowed fried or grilled rather than deep fried but that boiling and deep frying is the Taiwanese way.
Next up time to get up close to Taipei 101. Today it was dry all day and maybe 16 degrees but the clouds were once again fairly low so we got close to the tower but we couldn't see the top. We could still see that it was big and tall though. Inside it was just a high-end shopping mall; we didn't have tickets to go to the top thankfully the view from up there would've been pure cloud.
Time for a sit down and to try another cat cafe. This one was the best so far. Lots of cats in lots of baskets spread around the cafe. A few were wanderig around most as you would expect were fast asleep. Som had a coffee and I had a delicious lemon sorbet smoothie. Som petted and photographed the cats and I photographed Som.
Later on a group of loud American came in, it was a good job the cats were used to customers, had I been them I'd have ran away and hid. We had all but finished so we didn't hang around much long. Just one more cat photo for Som on the way out and we headed back to the hotel.
The holiday ended up back where we started at the Ningxia Night Market. Som had more street food she had found recommended on her food blogging site, I had some fried meat on a stick.
To finish off we stopped off at the crepes stall and had a chocolate and banana sundae. Decadent and tasty.
So ends my Taiwan blog not that I've really shown you much of Taiwan. This really was a lazy get away for the two of us and so the blog has been food, Som, food, Som, food, cats, food, Chris and Som, food, food, food.
2nd January 2020 - Heading home.
Soon after arriving home we headed out for some delicious spicy Thai food; after a week of boiled and glutinous a spicy Thai stir-fry went down lovely.