Da’An - The Beach
November 16, 2008 Posted by Chris
After quite a bit of time traveling around the insides of Taiwan we felt it was time to see the ocean! Luckily, Taiwan has plenty of ocean all around it. The nearest 'decent' beach from Taichung (台中) is Da'An (大安). The plan we had set out was to go to a fish market nearby and have a bite to eat for lunch, then to go hang out and 'Skim board' at the beach. A large group of Taiwanese & foreigners arranged it all over a website called couch surfing. So we met up early that morning, (all the carpools had already been arranged) and set off for the fish market!
The fish market had all kinds of types of fish and foods I had never seen before in my life. We also got a type of 'sugar cane' drink that was not very sweet and generally didn't taste very good to me. It was sold everywhere so I think Taiwanese people like it. The different types of fish that we tried were awesome but it takes some guts to eat some of this stuff based off of looks alone. Some people went to a restaurant and ordered quite a few different items, that looked to be the best idea. The fish market was pretty big and pretty filling so everyone had a good time.
This beach was definitely like no beach I'd ever seen before. The tide left about a 1 kilometer gap between the front of the beach and where the ocean actually was. During the evening the ocean quickly crept up about 1 kilometer. That was incredible to me. The beach itself was not that great. A lot of trash about and....windmills. I've never seen electricity generating windmills at a beach before. Many people went a head and skim boarded but I opted out being that I had no swimsuit to wear. It looked like more pain than fun to be honest. The night came pretty quickly since winter is coming near and we left the beach at about 6 for home. Everyone slept quite peacefully on the ride home.
Pizza Hut In Taiwan
November 14, 2008 Posted by Chris
Whether you are or aren't a fan of Pizza Hut, you have heard of it. Believe it or not Taiwan has many branches of Pizza Hut. We saw a few in Taipei and here in Taichung there's more than one. Although many of the same items and tastes exist at Pizza Hut here, it is very different from what we have in America! Today I grabbed a quick flyer for Pizza Hut to post a few pictures up on here so you could see. Some of the additional Items look good, some you'll wonder why and others just look plain disgusting. So without further adieu onto the pictures!
This is the little brochure I found. So...yea, 1.25L Pepsi bottles, soup, chicken buckets like KFC and pizzas with broccoli and squid. The specialty pizza on the front is pizza with mini hot dogs for the crust of the pizza. Definitely a different taste here.
We had a long movie night and got some pizzas for it. Two pizzas & a box of chicken wings. The pizza I wanted ~ a normal meat lovers ~ was cheap at about NT$300 = USD$10. The other guys ordered some kind of 'taco' pizza that turned out to be Squid, Mayonnaise, Potato, Cheese & Soy sauce pizza. I could only swallow two bites of that one. The chicken wings were sub-par as well, but alright enough to eat. So I just stuck with my meat lovers pizza =D.
The next time we got pizza was because I wanted to treat some of my friends from Indonesia for helping me out in Taiwan. This pizza was only half strange to me. Chicken, Onion and Corn! I think if it hadn't of had so much corn on it, maybe it would have qualified as a normal pizza to me. It was still pretty good though, but there is definitely better in Taiwan. The familiarity is all we seek in ordering food from Pizza Hut.
Lost In Translation (11/5)
November 5, 2008 Posted by Chris
As we walked through the Shilin night market in Taipei we saw a lot of things we didn't understand or know what they were. This person probably was the peek of our feelings about being lost:
We didn't really have any clue why he was dressed like that, maybe some kind of Monk or Buddhist? He was saying something as he walked, but we weren't sure what it was. For westerners people like this only ever remind us of mystical ideas from movies we've seen like Lord of the Rings, except it's not fantasy, it's real life.
My little disclaimer to go a long with these photos is that I have much respect for the many cultures in Asia. It is only that many Asian ideologies inherent in their languages translate poorly into English. Even with these translation errors, I am completely grateful that so many things are translated into English, it has been infinitely helpful to me.
