Taipei Day 3: Ximending

The rain did not stop on our third day in Taipei. In fact, it kept pushing into the night. We left the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall for a place called Ximending which had more people than the rain.

Ximending is one of the older & therefore better known hangouts, being the earliest & the biggest pedestrian centre in Taipei. This place was probably where your parents went to in one of those huge tour buses full of Malaysian tourists in the 70s or 80s (that gives you only one hour to shop).

This is the place to come for fashion & to experience the subculture.

 

Gramps doing the subculture thing, probably doing a bit of shopping for his grandaughter.

'Dang! You ate my coin!'

 

Doraemon aghast at the menacing robotic hand which had probed him before 
in unspeakable areas.

 

Right at the heart of this place is the historical Red Theatre.

It was originally designed & built by the Japanese Occupation as a market; which  thenn strangely turned into a live performance house. Today, it houses designer/artist boutique stores on the ground floor & a performance stage upstairs. I'm sure once upon a time this place holds much romantic charm.

Today, it's an interesting place to shop  for designer souveniers; not the usual run-of-the-mill Taiwan keychains or fridge magnets. 

These are DIY sew-yourself dolls.

Postcards with people that pop-up at the back.

Old Taipei pop up cards.

And of course there's always food anywhere you go in Taipei, with long lines of people. I would have gone for this with both eyes closed & my mouth open but Nee was looking for something soupily-steamboaty.

Till today, I regreted not finding out what that rice flour thing was.

When a restaurant doesn't need to provide chairs & tables, it must be selling something really good.

By day 3 in Taipei, it became natural that my reflexes were re-programmed to gravitate towards anything that had a long line of people, including this.

But as it turned out, this shop was selling innards, and I quickly gravitated to the exit.

Then there was another bunch of crowd around this stall; a different one, mostly women, both single young ones & also aunties, obviously gawking at Tom Cruise doing the cocktail thing.

But those were not cocktails. They were white bitter gourd drinks (about RM4.00). I wasn't sure whether these ladies were there for the drinks but they tasted good. Note: the man on the right probably had dubious gender preference.

Potato balls! You can see this in every night market. It's a very Taiwanese thing.

For RM5, you'd get a big bag, RM3 for small. I don't want to go back to inflation-fested Malaysia.

The whole Ximending place was like a maze & the multiple alleys did not help. We kept plodding on hoping to come across something really nice. Nee wanted something hot & soupy like steamboat but we weren't sure where the good ones were.

Out of extreme hunger & famine, we dropped into this place that actually looked like a chain restaurant. I didn't have a good feeling about this place but we were losing our sugar level fast.

Nee looked happy. I think the food hadn't really reached her tastebuds yet.

I don't think these were any more special than any other place.

The set came with some smelly tofu plus smelly innards stuff but it didn't work for us.

Nee came out so so but I was extremely disappointed, and now I stunk of stinky tofu. Not entirely satisfied with the evening, we decided to pursue further even though our bloated stomachs were screaming in agony. But the god of gluttony was smiling down on us that night. So was this store owner.

The standard Taipei oyster pancakes which still amazes me. The prices are always up there on the signboard.

This felt like Kuching fest & we were feeding ourselves silly. There is NOTHING like Taipei stewed minced pork rice (Lu Rou Fan). I can have this ten times & I'd still want another ten more.

Children in impoverished Africa probably will never know the feeling of being full. Here, we were beyond their imagination, way beyond what their minds can fathom. We were extremely & disgustingly beyond full.

Taipei Day 3: Cultural Learnings of Taipei Make Benefit of Malaysian Bloggers

Much to our embarassment, we have not finished blogging about our Taipei trip which happened during the CNY this year. So without anymore self-pity-wallowing, we're gonna get down to it. This was Day3:

We were surprised that we could find art in Taipei underground MRT, particularly at the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall station. Excellent use of existing public space.

This was an exhibition that featured beautiful ethnic women in their costumes, some referring to historical & legendary figures. You can read more about it here.

And then there were wierd installations like this which could be quite petrifying to Nee. I don't encourage exposing her to displays like this anyway lest it disrupts her cooking & baking.

Killer blowup dolls which pretend to be cute. They will electrocute you if you come too close.

This was our destination on our 3rd day in Taipei - The Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall. We thought we shouldn't miss this since Taiwan was founded by this guy after all.

The 3rd day was still as rainy, as wet & as cold, & we were already thinking of hot food.

Sorry to disappoint keen fish hobbyists, the activity in the water is not fish-related. It's raining.

Much like the Lincoln Memorial, the giant statue of Chiang Kai Shek sits gallantly in the great hall.

This was the bugger that was mainland China's biggest thorn in the butt for a long time. I bet that smile was for Chairman Mao.

You could actually witness the change of guards here but we missed it that day.

The guy in the suit is in charge of checking the guard's uniform, straightening out what needs to be straightened.

In the other part of the building is the man himself. This used to be his administrative office where he stragetised on how to be a bigger & more painful thorn in China's butt. Here he looked like he hasn't aged one bit. I wonder what he thinks of Ah Bien.

The same building also housed a collection of all things that once belonged to the General; like his letters, documents, photographs, clothes & even his bullet-proof car. I didn't bother to take any photos of those though.

These were some kind of lantern exhibition on display.

The building also holds a few art galleries exhibiting the more traditional Chinese paintings which weren't very impressive unfortunately. We LOVED these carvings though.

You can view some of the woodwork here.

The Memorial Hall faces a huge courtyard right down below; something much like the courtyard in the Forbidden City. Normally that is the place where the masses converge to celebrate the National Day but for now, there was a long row of tents selling food & fun fair going on.

I can tell you that in the cold weather like this everything that is steaming & hot feels good. We stopped at this stall selling various soup and fried noodles cos they had reasonable crowd size.

The fried noodles were nothing to shout about, but they definitely gave us the carb we need. If we remember correctly, this is like NTD 50-60 (RM 5-6).

However the bowl of soup is definitely what we wanted. Piping hot dumpling soup, with meatballs, bamboo shoots and strips of carrots. They called this the Flower Stem Soup (Hua Zi Gen). NTD60-70 (RM6-7)

I think this the Ping Tang Hu Lu, a Chinese style kinda fruit lolly. We didn't try this cos we couldn't help imagining what it'd taste like in our mouths.

These were some potato snacks. They sell them by the whole stick I reckon. Now looking back, I regret not trying them out but at that time, we were really full & had to prioritise.

These fried sweet potato ball snacks were in every night market, every where you turn your head. Yummy stuff. Anyone has the recipe for this?

There were also high-cholesterol quail eggs.

We forgot what these were cos we didn't try them.

And just before we left the place, we found that the best cream puff in the world was in Taipei.

Day 3 was supposed to be more of a cultural trip & it was, but somehow it ended up with food again.