The mandatory bus ride from the international airport to the citycentre never fails to put me in a state of jaded-ness, a far cry fromthe excited bubble I was the moment the plane touched down. Perhapsit's the intrusion into another's culture, all the similar MNCs macsmos 7-11 etc all housed in oh so slightly different buildings fromhome. I find myself trying to immerse myself in this new fishtank,staring goggle-eyed at the brightly lit shops manned by scantily cladgirls. What are they selling, I asked my travel companions. Somethingthat stains your mouth red was the answer, betel nuts. Oh and thefurther away from the city these shops are, the less clothing you'llfind on them.
This june saw andrea, car and i heading to taiwan for lil trip, we've been planning for it ever since we started our kickboxing lessons. It almost didn't materialise when tickets on jetstar cost 700 bucks, but we just let loose the pocket strings and clicked 'BOOK'!
stayed at a proper hotel on the first night, it was slightly costly and breakfast were these kfc coupons that we didn't get to use coz we took the first high-speed rail train in the morning out of taipei..
but it was a really decent place...
threw our stuff down, went to get our high speed rail tickets and then started exploring taipei. at this time it was already 11pm but we were all rearing to go.
first up was this jelly (beancurd?)-redbean-yam sticky balls dessert...
took a short walk to ximending where we had to try the all famous ah zhong mian xian, instead of oysters they had pig's intestines in it..it tasted yummers until i realised they were intestines..haha but i still like my kway chap. thing is this thing wasn't soy sauce coloured. it was pale white euyew?
and so the bubble tea count starts! it's andrea's favourite drink, she made it a point to drink at least one cup everyday.
and then we started proper on the street food! peanut pancakes, fried mushroom cups, corn dogs, sotong balls (abit too fishy!) and grilled meat....
the grilled meat really killed our appetite. it looked awesome on the grill. but what we didn't know is that they massacred a million spring onion plants and hid it beneath the grilled meat. i took one such roll of meat and think my face turned green immediately. i didn't dare touch a single spring onion during the rest of the trip.
another one of those bubble tea before we called it a night...