Happy New Year 2009 (in Chinese: 新年快樂)! Although I had originally wanted to go to Taipei we ended up celebrating the New Years back in Taichung which was no problem. Some of our Taiwanese friends chose a pretty good restaurant to celebrate in. It was a kind of all-you-can-eat hotpot restaurant. This means you cook the food your self, however they keep bringing it to you. In addition they also had several types of sushi which were quite good. Being that we were eating dinner so late, we were all starving by the time we got seated!!

Some of my friends went to the Taipei 101 to see the fireworks display. It always is very beautiful, take a peek at the picture above. We stayed out munching away and drinking until probably about 2 or 3am. Hotpot style cooking is in a vague way similar to fondue, but you have to wait longer! Here's a few pictures:

The last picture shows the totality of our 'destruction'. Frankly put, we ate a lot of food and it was damned good. I had never been to this type of 'hot pot' restaurant before but it was a really nice way to spend bringing in the New Year.

For starters I'll say, beware! This post might make you a little hungry just as it is making my hungry as I sit here typing it. For this thanksgiving we went to a little foreigner district in Taichung, Taiwan known as 'Little Europe'. We've gone there a few times now. Two of the bars/restaurants were serving thanksgiving style food. One was an all-you-can-eat buffet and the other was just plates of thanksgiving style food. We opted for the the single plate as it was significantly cheaper and we weren't starving-hungry.

The little alley way is all of 'Little Europe'. It really isn't much, just a few bars and restaurants run by Canadians & Americans. The place we went to for a mini-thanksgiving feast is called PJ's cafe. The cafe is aptly named after the owner-PJ. Normally it has a healthy mix of tex-mex style food. Good stuff. One thanksgiving plate like in the picture above was NT$195, which is about USD$6. Pretty cheap (actually expensive by Taiwanese standards), but not much food.

So, our appetites weren't quite filled by the plate of traditional thanksgiving food, so we went over to Fubar (a bar just down the ways in Little Europe) and got chicken wings, chicken salad & 3 plates of nachos to finish filling out stomachs. Nachos are so good. Fubar is co-owned by one of our classmates so he always makes double sure we are well taken care of. It's pretty cool to know the owner of a bar!

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.

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.

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.

As I've mentioned several times in all of my posts about Taipei, this is a huge city. With that in mind, it's time to mention some of the many, many sights there are to see in this city. Most of the places we went to were right out of one of the travel books we brought with us, or Taipei city's own travel guide. They were all easily reached via the MRT subway or via Bus. If you plan to travel around Taipei using the Bus or MRT it is really recommended that you get an 'EASYCARD'. It's like a debit card for the transit system there.

The very first sight we saw was down at DanShui in Taipei. There's a bit of a fisherman's wharf and a bridge well known throughout all of Taiwan (Danshui Harbor Bridge). I think the easiest way to know if a bridge is famous or not is to see if someone is getting photographs in their wedding gown on the stairway. Well, we were lucky enough to catch that as you can see in one of the photo belows. A pretty young bride wearing a very pink & beautiful dress with her soon-to-be husband. The fisherman's wharf itself had some pretty good looking food and a nice long stretch to walk on (pretty slippery so look out) with great views of central Taipei and of course, Taipei 101 in the distance.

These few photographs are from the biggest night market in Taipei at Shilin. It lives up to it's name, it was pretty damn big. We didn't buy anything, but a random Airsoft gun store caught my eye. I still can't believe things like those are sold, they look so real! In the middle of the night market there was a Chinese play going on. I like the two photos of the 'tourist' shop. Seems like such a blatant Tourist Trap and yet they mostly only sold socks and other random stuff.

Taipei 101: It's Tall

The next sight we ran upon was another random bridge. I couldn't remember for the life of me where exactly it was located. I think it was right outside of the Shilin MRT station. There was a mini wharf and some rentable paddle boats. We didn't feel like going that far as there were plenty of other sights to see. So next to the Taipei 101 it was. From the MRT Taipei 101 station exit, you just take a (free) bus to the tower. It is HUGE! and there's a mall right next to it to complete the commercialization of it. Yes that's a new castle beer for NT$89 = USD$3. For ONE! Granted you can't get a New Castle pretty much anywhere else in Taiwan, still quite the rip off.

So now to continue with the rest of the restaurants we went to while on our trip in Taipei. The next 'theme' or 'weird' restaurant that we went to went under the guise of a 'hospital' type restaurant. All the waitresses were dressed as nurses and the walls were decorated with...hospital paraphernalia like crutches. Each table also had a little IV line coming down from a beaker looking glass that held a vodka mixture that you could fill your glass with if you ordered it. The rest of the pictures are just the more 'normal' types of places you can find throughout Taipei.

The the above restaurant is called 'DS' or something similar. Take a look at the Menu pictures for further info I guess. I nabbed a few business cards to show my teacher. She lived in Taipei for a while and I was curious if she knew this place or not. The food was nothing to brag about. I paid about $7 for my little entre of 'Indonesian Curry Chicken', this is pretty expensive by Taiwanese standards, but we didn't come for the food. We came as tourists with cameras =D, big time! I was really surprised to find a Heineken girl in Taiwan, but there was one going around the restaurant and I managed to get a quick photo with her. American culture has spread far and wide!

We went to the same place (twice) across the street from our hostel for breakfast. It was pretty good, almost like a breakfast burrito from back home but it needed cheese and salsa. Taiwanese and most of Asia seem to not like much cheese in their food. Take a look at the menu (English and Chinese) to get a better idea of what kind of food they had. The second row of pictures are just scattered quick shots of food or snacks we got. Two of them are pictures from inside the Taipei 101 mall food court, try to find which ones (hint: one of them has 'Taipei 101' on the chopsticks!).

We were on a normal shopping trip to Carrefour for some groceries and went through some of the smaller shops next door and I came across this shower curtain:

I didn't look at it for very long but I did give the 'Free Size' written on it a strange look. I'm not exactly sure what it's suppose to mean. It brings me back to the days in Europe where you see signs that say 'Extra Price!'. We always got a good laugh at those signs.

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.

Taipei is a huge city with many, many different restaurants. Being (young) tourists, we wanted to see the weirdest ones first. The ones you hear about on TV or from the Internet and that probably few locals actually visit. Two restaurants stuck out in our minds; one was a bathroom/toilet themed restaurant and the other was a hospital themed restaurant. Quite honestly these places were in the back of my mind and it just took one of my friends to remind me that they're all in Taipei. The rest of the restaurants we went to were just 'normal' places around Taipei, which is far from normal to any westerner (except for Burger King!).

So after getting what seemed like 100's of photos of this place...because I mean...look at it; The seats are freaking toilets, we finally ordered. There's two quick shots of the menu below. The translations are kind of funny and be sure to order one with a toilet bowl star next to it if you want your food served in such a dish. How ridiculous is this, I mean seriously, but it was for real and we weren't the only ones with the: "dear god I need another picture," attitude. There were plenty of others.

If you're into the bizarre part of Taiwanese culture (presumably leftover from when the Japanese were around) this is probably a place you want to check out. As shown above they have menu(s) in English so ordering isn't much of a problem if you aren't fluent in Chinese. I think the ice cream looked the worst. We took full advantage of that as you probably noticed in the last few pictures =D!

For this 'Lost In Translation' there's a bit of a precursor, I got a 98% on one of my Chinese mid-terms! It's true...I'm still in the lower-levels for learning Chinese but I promise you, that doesn't make the language any easier. 98% was the highest score in the class and because of that my teacher let me choose a prize out of a grab bag (aka ~ a bunch of random gadgets she found at the NT$10 store). This is what I nabbed out of the bag:

If you can't tell, it's a pig-shaped flashlight that doesn't require batteries. It has a little crank on the side to generate electricity! I can honestly say I didn't expect to get this for doing well on a test =P. But after reading the box all around I found some strange engrish. It's actually not that bad (which just means I've seen worse)! I think if your native language isn't English you might get a little lost reading this, but for native English speakers it's good...enough.

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.

A few of us went to Taipei for one of our extended weekends, in particular on Taiwan independence day. We hadn't really thought it through and in retrospect the timing couldn't have been better. We left for Taipei on Thursday afternoon and stayed there until Sunday. Throughout our time there we visited many places as there is a lot to do in Taipei. The best part about our little vacation was that we were at the Chian Kai-Shek memorial at mid-day on Taiwan independence day and got to see many parades and a few marching bands!

These are all pictures from the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. It is probably one of the largest monuments I've ever seen in my life. There are two gigantic 'theatre' buildings parallel each other and a gate with a pathway that leads up to the main Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. The entire memorial/monument is surrounded by little gardens with lots of different trees & flowers.

The next two stops were at the National Palace Museum and the Sun Yat-sen museum & memorial. The National Palace Museum is huge and consists of a large collection of things from Chinese antiquity. You can easily get lost in that museum as each doorway leads you to another huge room filled with history. The Sun Yat-sen museum & memorial is not but looks just as cool with its traditional style of architecture. We all also got a little picture sitting on Sun Yat-sen's lap!

At the entrance to most of the trails there’s always a few maps & warning signs. Although the English is quite easy to understand (whilst leaving something to be desired) I love this warning sign:

I think it’s the “Be Careful Monkey”. Somehow whenever I read it and see that picture I think of the movie Jumanji and some voice in my head says “Ahhh, be careful, monkeys!” Either way, luckily for this one, not too terribly much is lost in translation from Chinese to English.

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 most signs are translated into English, it has been infinitely helpful to me.

The first half of our day at Sun Moon Lake we spent exploring around on one of three ferries. We saw a small temple, the wonders of the lake and ended up at what I would call a bit of a Taiwanese 'strip-mall'. Which really just means a bunch of small shops along a road, a common site all over Taiwan. Lunch came soon afterward and it was quite gourmet; A lot of food in a bamboo bowl with desert and a tea. The last two stops we made were at a monument of a Pagoda and to a gigantic Buddhist temple along side the road in Nantou, and after our last stop we started the 2.5 hour journey back to Taichung.

The first picture is just a bunch of extremely phallic pieces of artwork we saw at one of the stores. Really weird, I'm not sure who buys that kind of stuff. Another thing I didn't realize is that they have Slurpees here at 7/11. That really made my day! Lunch was quite exquisite as you can see in the photo of my bowl/plate, although some of the food did look a bit sketchy to my eyes, it was still pretty tastey. We played a few card games waiting for everyone else to finish then it was off to the Pagoda.

It started raining shortly after we arrived at the top of the hill where the Pagoda was so we all sought refuge until the rain stopped. The next stop was at a gigantic Buddhist temple. The entrance way was even big enough for us to make an entire group photo as you can see. The temple was very beautifully decorated. They are not afraid of bright colors here, in fact they seem to use them without any hesitation. After exploring around the temple for about 20 minutes we all headed back to the buses and began the long journey home. It was a long day with a lot of walking so everyone was tired, so the bus ride back was very quiet with everyone sleep.

Taiwan has many lakes which are great for a variety of different reasons on Holiday. Sun Moon Lake is the largest natural lake in all of Taiwan at about 3 square miles large and it's conveniently located right in the middle of Taiwan. As it is a touristy spot, there are ferries of many sizes available to tour around the lake. We took three large ferries as our group was over 100 people. There are many different places to see around the lake including temples, the island in the middle of the lake and the fancy restaurants that surrounding the lake. There are also many 4 star hotels available to stay at if you're interested in more than just a day-trip.

These first few pictures are just our group getting from Taichung to Sun Moon Lake. We took 3 buses and the trip was about 2.5 hours long. After we arrived we headed straight for the dock and got onto our boats. They were pretty big boats. It felt nice to be out at sea. The third picture is a shot of the High Speed Rail that goes from Taichung to Taipei in like 40-50 minutes. The fourth picture is a shot of a Korean ID card, she was one of the girls with us. Korean writing looks coool! The picture here is the island in the middle of Sun Moon Lake. Really, not much of interest was there except for some exotic plant life, it was just the middle of the lake!

Riding The Sun Moon Lake Ferry

Our next stop was on the other side of the Lake; it was an old Buddhist Temple. It was rather small too but had a lot of 'unique' things in and outside of it. Along the pathway to the Temple there were some taiwanese handing out fliers condemning the Chinese government for many different things it has done repressing people.

Since I first arrived about a month ago I've been taking pictures of the food I've ordered while at restaurants. The main reason behind this is I'm really, really surprised at the lack of emphasis on how food is presented, but I think that it's just because I'm expecting to see a 'western style' presentation of the food. The more expensive restaurants definitely show more care for this aspect of dining compared to the cheap ones, which is something I would expect no matter where I was. So get ready to see quite a few unique dishes, each one cost only USD$1-4.

Food In Taiwan Is Good!

So first off, I'll admit we went on a bit of an Italian restaurant binge as soon as we found a few of them. Really, they are just unique pasta places, no where near Italian pasta, but what makes them unique keeps bringing us back. Another thing I've learned while being here is that, even though it looks pretty good, you still 'never know' how it actually will taste!

The little sandwiches you see are one of my daily meals. They sell them only in the morning to all the students as they walk to school and also on weekends. There's tons of different kinds but I usually opt for the chicken or beef + lettuce + egg ones. They sell cheap tea at the stands as well, but those are damn good sandwiches =D! One thing I was very surprised about when I got here was how little rice I was eating with my meals. It wasn't until I actively started looking for meals with rice that I got it.

Wet noodles or noodles in soup seems to be one of the staples that can be found at any and all restaurants here. I'm really not particularly fond of the Chow Mien here, sometimes it is good, I really to do prefer the dishes with rice; Much, much better! The toast looking thing above was called a 'chicken pizza sandwich'. A strange invention if I may say so, but a tasty one, especially with the awesome tea next to it.