My parents and I came back from a 5-day getaway in Taiwan and it was gastronomically enjoyable! :) All of us wished we had bigger stomach space to try all we wanted to, which we didn't - there's too much to try.
Before going on the trip, the impressions I had of Taiwan were that it's a good place to shop and eat, and also had some impression of Taiwan from some drama serials and Apple of My Eye last year. After going there, Taiwan is almost like what I imagined it to be like, except that the city wasn't as developed as I thought it would be, and had a little of the streets-of-China vibe. I love how the people there communicate in accurate Mandarin (love their articulation) and specks of Hokkien (especially common among older folks).
After the ~1-hour taxi ride to Taipei from Taoyuan Airport, we checked into our hotel and had a quick bite at one of the street stalls just behind the hotel.
That’s 鲁肉饭, our first meal in Taiwan. This came with the whole ‘package’, with the minced meat, bamboo shoots, thin slice of Taiwanese sausage, and tau poks and braised egg ( :D ). It smelled delicious, was very appetising and warm, and not too salty. 鲁肉饭, along with other staples like beef noodles, fishball noodles, they’re sold everywhere in Taiwan (or at least Taipei).
We took the MRT to 五分埔 (Wufenpu), a very Bugis Street-like place selling wholesale garments at cheap prices. One thing about Taiwan – it follows a right-hand rule, so their roads and driving orientation are different from ours, they keep right instead of left etc. People keep right on escalators and it was quite weird for us, we took some time to get used to it haha. I felt that Taiwan’s MRT system is quite efficient! It seems much more orderly too (they have lines specially drawn for people to queue within), but maybe it’s because we took their MRT during non-peak hours.
Anyway wufenpu is really wholesale, it’s quite interesting and fun to walk around:
For shopaholics, I don’t think a few hours is enough. My dad must have been so bored, but thank goodness he’s patient, and he has his handy camera to occupy his time. Thanks to that too, almost all the photos here are taken by him :)
After a while, all the shops really looked similar, and there were too many streets to walk and shops to explore, so we went to the nearby Raohe Night Market to grab food and experience one of Taiwan’s much talked about attractions.
The must-try of Raohe St. Night Market is the 胡椒餅, Black Pepper Bun, a traditional Taiwanese snack. It’s a bun with a crispy outer layer but dough-y interior, with black pepper pork, chopped spring onions. The meat is marinated with black pepper and it’s really mouth-watering and smells good too. There was a very long queue but it’s worth the wait, really. Good food is worth waiting for :D
This is their stall and the workplace. People prepare the buns in a routine – one will be rolling and flattening the dough, another will be filling the flattened dough with the filling, another will be placing the prepared buns into the clay oven, another serving, etc. Very systematic and efficient.
This is their awesome clay oven, it’s the first time I’ve seen something like this. They bake the buns in this oven, and the buns stick to the sides of this clay oven, and each oven can take about 20-30 buns at a go. It’s amazing, how this works. After the buns are ready, there’ll be a man ‘scraping’ the ready buns off and piling them onto another big wok-like plate. It’s oily, but smells fantastic.
And this is it – the delicious black pepper bun with succulent (and very hot) filling. It’s very filling, by the way. Oh, figured that the long queues were due to the time needed for the buns to be ready. They serve customers buns hot and fresh from the oven, and there were only about 3 ovens? And people buy quite a lot of buns at one go, so demand exceeds supply… You get it.
That’s only Day 1. There’s so much I want to say about Taiwan and the trip, but will save it for another day. Till then~ (:
No comments:
Post a Comment