Taipei, Food Heaven?

The Taiwanese tour guide proudly proclaimed that Taiwan though a small entity compared to her giant neighbour, PRC has far more to offer in terms of the great variety of foods and delicacies. He contended that Taiwanese are more ingenious and creative in coming up with all sorts of bites and snacks than their counterparts in mainland China!

Many visitors come to Taiwan primarily to try out the highly promoted street foods which are plentiful in all the night markets. Besides Laohe Night Market and Shilin Night Market, we were taken to Ximending, Shifen Old Street and Jiufen to try out some of the highly promoted lists.

When come to taste and preference of food items, there is just no absolute consensus that a particular food item acclaimed to be good would not necessarily be accepted by all. After all, taste and food preference is a very personal matter.

Jiufen: Red Yeast Rice Meat Ball.

Jiufen: Grilled Sea Snails.

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Food is a universal language that binds people together. We met this group of young Malaysia who also came all the way to try out this bai zhan ji translated as boiled and cut chicken!

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Ah Chung Rice Floor Noodle.

Ximending: T.K.K Friend Chicken.

Shilin Night Market

Taipei in March: 6

SOME OF THE FOOD WE ATE

Of course, anyone who comes to Taipei will surely try the local beef noodle except probably those who dislike or are allergic to beef . We found this shop by accident one morning in our food hunt which is near to the hotel we stayed. It turned out that this outlet had one time won second price during Taipei International Beef Noodle Festival.

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Roast duck in one of the more high end restaurants

Braised meat mushroom rice in Huahsi Night Market. To maximize tasting more varieties of food, we normally ordered one set to be shared by two!

Taipei in March: 5

HIGH SPEED RAIL

One of the reasons we decided to visit Kaohsiung was to try the high speed train which the locals call HSR or 台灣高鐵. The one-way fare from Taipei to Kaoshiung is NT$1,480 (RM160) and it just took 1.5 hours to cover 400 Km. The maximum speed I noticed on the digital displace was 294 Km/Hr. The ride was comfortable and the scenery along the way also made the trip interesting. Food items and tit-bits are sold by uniformed staff with trolley much like Airasia flights. Kaohsiung 

Train Station is utra-modern and is comparable to our KLIA.

Scenes of farmland captured through window of speeding train.

KAOHSIUNG

My impression of Kaohsiung: a city full of motorbikes. Well, probably not as "bad" as in some of the towns in West Malaysia!

Taipei in March: 4

MUSEUMS & MEMORIAL HALLS

NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM

While many Taiwanese loved the economic spin off derived from the massive influx of tourists from mainland China, some are not that happy as they feel that many tourist spots where priceless items are displayed have now been turned into crowded and noisy "market places". The taxi driver who took us from the MRT station to the National Palace Museum in Shilin is one of those who shared such sentiment.

For us, being the first timers to Taipei, we had to visit this, which is reckoned as one of the "must see places" in Taipei. Indeed, the amount of visitors to the Museum was huge. However, the staff in the Museum told us that that was not the "worst" time of the year. At certain peak seasons, the Museum would be jam-packed and one could hardly move around to see the items they come to see.

In the collections of the National Palace Museum, two of the most famous items on display are the "Meat-shaped Stone" and the "Jadeite Cabbage" made during the Qing Dynasty. The meat-shaped piece of stone looks like a luscious, mouth-watering piece of "Tung Po meat". The truth is, the piece of "meat" is made of banded jasper, a naturally occurring stone that accumulates in layers over many many years. Unfortunately, no photograph taking was allowed in the Museum. Fortunately, its photo is available in the internet.

For the Jadeite Cabbage, we bought a miniature replica from the souvenir shop. The piece of jade stone used to be carved out as the cabbage was considered "sub-standard" because it is a mixture of white and green jade. Somehow, the craftsman did a wonderful job by creating this marvelous piece of wonder!

Photo of actual Jadeite Cabbage against miniature replica.

NATIONAL CHIANG KAI-SHEK MEMORIAL HALL

Unfortunately, the Memorial Hall was closed for renovation when we went there. There are three buildings within the vast compound. Two similar buildings of Ming/Qing architecture near the main entrance are the National Theatre and the National Concert Hall.

Main Entrance and the National Concert Hall

SUN YAT-SEN MEMORIAL HALL

Many tourists come to watch the change of guards at hourly interval. We did stay on to see the change of guards.

I was surprised to discover that USA had such high regards of Sun Yat-Sen. USA at one time printed stamp bearing portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Sun Yat-Sen side by side.

Taipei in March: 3

We managed to see the two tallest buildings in Taiwan. Tuntex 85 Sky Tower in Kaohsiung and Taipei 101.

TUNTEX 85 SKY TOWER, KAOHSIUNG

TAIPEI 101

An important structural component: Wind Damper.

Taipei in March: 2

SHILIN NIGHT MARKET

One of the most publicized night markets is Shilin Night Market. It is really huge, a food heaven. We went there three times. The last was to go and eat the glutinous rice balls (both salty and sweet version) for the second time the night before we flew back to KK.

Lanterns spice up the place with a festive mood!

Cantonese bubur taste different here.

  Escargot is unbelievably cheap here !! For NT$150 (about RM 16), one can have 17 nos.

All kinds of seafood

Pork galore!!

Meat wrapped in thin pancake. Showtime - like our roti canai man.

Oysters fried in eggs. We still feel our Malaysian version is better.

Our favourite stall - Glutinous rice balls. We had it 2 days in a row. The outlet owner was surprised that we could find our way back to his little outlet tucked in a narrow side lane

 Caramelised corn on the cob.

" Tien Phin" or sweet dessert.