Day 2 (30/12/06)

Today we went to danshui. on the way to ximen station, we passed by a lot of street hawkers selling food. ok, from tmr onwards, we can dun eat anything then come out liao. we bought dan4 bing3 (omelette wrapped with a prata-like sheet outside, cut into smaller pieces and sprayed with sauce), shu3 bing3 (which was like macdonald hash brown, in fact it's exactly the same), carrot cake and soya bean milk. oh i quite like the sauce in the dan4 bing3 and the soya bean milk was not too sweet, juz nice. on the way we passed by east dragon hotel. it was quite near Rainbow hotel and also at quite a good location in XMD, so next time can also consider this place.


it was quite a long journey to danshui. at danshui, we walked along danshui old street (lao3 jie1). i must say that the traffic here is really quite horrendous. there were so many pple on motorbikes and they could be riding on any ridable path. very often they would zoom out from some unexpected corner and u would have to keep to the side to avoid them. motorbikes in danshui was like bicycles in Amsterdam but the diff is that in Amsterdam there were designated cycling tracks but here there weren't any. so pedestrians and motorbikes share the road and it;s always the former giving way to the latter. we entered this market like street but i thik it was a bad time to go there cuz it was a saturday morning and i presuyme a lot of pple were doing their marketing. there were a lot of stalls selling fried stuff and the usual lu3 wei4, easy for pple to dabao and eat for the rest of the day i guess.

For lunch we ate at this food place beside the river. we ate fish ball soup, Ah gei3
and smelly beancurd. Ah gei3 is actually a very big beancurd with glassy noodles (tung hoon) stuffed inside. previously i only heard of it but never knew what it was. smelly beancurd was actaully not that smelly after all, but i still thout it tasted weird. dun really like it... along the streets in danshui everywhere there were stalls selling food like sotong balls (called hua1 zhi1 wan2), sweet potato balls (di4 gua1 qiu2), star fruit juice, fried quail's eggs, fried prawn rolls, pig blood cake (it's called zhu1 xue3 gao1, but i am not sure is it really pig's blood?) .
we tried the fried quail's egg and this very tall ice cream which was supposedly low in carbo. when i ate it i can see why it's low carbo... there was almost no milk taste in it.

we were debating whether to go to fisherman's wharf. other than the fact that it was the place where they filmed meteor garden and there was the famous lover's bridge, i din really know anything abt it. it juz seems to be the sort of place that all tourist to Taiwan would definitely make a trip to when they go to danshui. but mum seemed pretty interested in taking a boat ride, so off we went to this place called ba1 li3 zuo3 an4 (literally translated it means 8 miles left shore), the 2-way boat
ride cost NT$40. oh by the way if u see the word quan2 piao4 (full ticket) it means adult ticket and ban4 piao4 (half ticket) it means child ticket. initially we thought quan2 piao4 means two way and ban4 piao4 means one way. that brought us to the question of what was the difference from lai2 hui2 piao4 (to and fro ticket) then? took us a while to figure out. At the very least, the traffic at this unknown place was very much less messy than danshui. here there were many pple on bicycles too but there was also an wooden path whcih they 'advised' pedestrians in the form of a sign to use to avoid collision. quite thoughtful right? in the first place there were not so many pple around, i guess because as i have said, this place is relatively lesser known, probably fisherman's wharf would
be as bad as danshui. like in danshui, this ba1 li3 zuo3 an4 had a whole street selling food and souvenirs. a lot of stallholders are happy to invite u to try their food first (huan1 ying2 shi4 chi1!) in the end we ended trying quite a lot of stuff. we bought fried sotong strips, cuttlefish, and we bought donuts and butterfly from this stall which had very long queue and a very nice smell coming from it.

in the end we spent the whole afternoon at a previously unknown place and i could see that my parents, esp my mum, really liked the place.

at night we had dinner at small eatery along xining south road. i asked for beef soup noodles (niu2 rou4 tang1 mian4, NT$50) while CY asked for beef noodles (NT$80) but which was also placed under the soup category in the menu. we were wondering what was the difference. it turned out that mine was juz soup with noodles, presumably the soup was cooked with beef inside and the noodles was served with the soup only and no meat. but i saw CY's beef noodles n was glad i din ask for that cuz the beef actually had quite a lot of fat in it, the layers were quite obvious, very different from the beef noodles in singapore.

we walked to the huaxi street night market after dinner. it was quite a long walk along many dark and dead streets, should have taken the mrt instead. there were
quite a lot of foodstuffs at the night market like di4 gua1 qiu2 and the usual night market fare like sotong balls, fired quail eggs and smelly beancurd. this night market is also called snake alley night market. because trhere were a number of restaurants selling snake soup and in one of the restaurants they were actually abt to give a live show of a snake eating a rabbit. we actually saw the rabbit in the same enclosure as the snake but the snake was not yet eating maybe cuz it's not yet meal time, but the rabbit seemed to be trying to climb out of the glass enclosure. it was quite sad to see the rabbit struggling for survival but its fate was already sealed. honestly how can anyone bear to stay to see the eating show? we certainly din and we walked on. there seemed to be a lot more variety of food here than at shilin. there many stalls selling soup, noodles, porridge. but i guess i can't really compare cuz i din really cover shilin that comprehensively.

meant to go XMD to experience the hustle but by the time we got back to the XMD area, it was already close to midnight, i guess this has to wait another day.