Asia Trip 4/4 - Tapei, Taiwan (Food, Wedding Photography, and conclusion)

Ahhh, finally the food section! Since I WAS there for wedding photography and the dress fitter told me that I was meaty (more on that later), I did restrain myself a little... for a few days. We didn't take pictures of everything that we ate, but here are some...

Taipei Seafood, where we had our small wedding banquet:

Female crabs with sticky rice. The crabs themselves were nice, but the flavouring of the sticky rice wasn't that special.

Cold squid... also not that special.

Some kind of fish. When it came, the net at the bottom was supposed to come up like a sail... also not very good.

Sashimi boat as our banquet. I'm not a fan of sashimi and neither were most people at the table, so a lot of this ended up going into the soup in a later course. 

Bottom line is, if you want proper seafood you should go to Canton or real Cantonese restaurants where they kill the seafood right before they serve them.


Night Market Food:

There are a few major night markets in Taipei, including Shilin (Jiantan Station, walk along Jihe Road, it's underground), Gongguan (Gongguan Station Exit 3), and Shida (Taipower Building Station Exit 3). Among these three, Shilin Night Market is the most famous, but also the most expensive because it is being marketed as a touristy night market. If you can read Chinese, this website would be useful: http://www.i-city.com.tw/markets/view/sl.

Any night market with food: You can pick any of these items and they will deep fry then mix them in salt pepper for you. This kind of stalls is where you can get those salt pepper chicken nuggets that you have tasted from Bubble World.

 "Sausage within a sausage" at Shilin Market: They basically put sticky rice in sausage skin and put a real sausage within that. The sausage skin on the sticky rice was hard to chew through, so it was messy to eat and many pieces fell on the floor as I walked.

"Bun within a bun" at Shilin Market: they basically hammer all those buns in front of them and roll them into a wrap. There are different flavours that you can order, but it's just a matter of what powder they add at the end, all those buns in front of them taste the same. Personally I find these things to be way too dry, not my cup of tea at all. 

Mango shaved ice at Shilin Market: mango pieces were very sour... didn't taste as good as I expected.

 There were also lots of other food that we didn't take pictures of, but just assume that behind all these photos were tons of bubble tea, stinky tofu, noodles, wheel cakes, and other miscellaneous items that wouldn't look good on camera anyway.


Din Tai Fung Dumpling House:

Din Tai Fung is famous for their xiaolongbao (aka pork buns) around the world and apparently they are rated 1 star by Michelin. The dumplings were very juicy, and their skins were amazingly leak-proof. They supposedly spend lots of time weighing the ingredients in each dumpling and make sure the folds on each dumpling are properly done. You should definitely go try them. The other thing that's worth trying on the menu would be their chicken soup, but I heard that's quite pricey for the amount of soup you get. Other than these two things, the other dishes were quite ordinary in my opinion. We didn't pay for the meal so we have no idea how much each item costs, but supposedly this restaurant is considered unaffordable to most locals. So my suggestion would just be to try those 2 things listed. Here's a picture stolen from Mr. Lilasaur's cousin:

Du Hsiao Yueh:

This is another famous restaurant in Taiwan. Apparently the original owner was a fisherman but he needed to have another job during the slack seasons, so he opened a tan-tsi noodle house, got famous for that, and that's how the store name, "slack season", came from. A bowl of tan-tsi noodle basically consists of ground pork and noodles. Since we only went here as a snack, we only ordered the signature noodles and veggies:

Such a tiny bowl, diameter was approximately 10 cm. 

Tamsui:

You just need to walk towards the old street section after you get off the Tamsui Station.

Gigantic ice cream cone

1L of drink for $25 NT haha

Fresh BBQ octopus, quite tasty

 I totally forgot to take pictures of another unique item, which was the "hard egg." Google images here. They are eggs which are repeatedly boiled in marinade and dried till they reach their smallest size. They are quite chewy and tasty but you really shouldn't have more than one egg per day.


Shrimping:

There are a few shrimping farms, but they are all located at the Waishuangxi Section of Shilin District. If you get off at Shilin Station, you can take either #255 or #18 to arrived at Waishuangxi Qiao (Waishuangxi Bridge) Stop, then get off and pick which farm you wish to go to. The bus ride would take about 35-40 minutes. We went to Chung Cheng Shrimping Farm just because it received the best reviews on the Internet. It is the one right across from the bus stop.

There are 4 small ponds in the farm, and they open the ponds upon demand. The shrimps are supposedly Thai shrimps, they are about 10cm long, and are released into the pond every hour or so. Sometimes the staff would use a stirring stick to wake up the shrimps so they would bite. The water is intentionally muddy so the customers don't see the shrimps and vice versa, because otherwise the shrimps wouldn't bite. Here's an overlook of the place:

Mr. Lilasaur waiting for a bite

This was our first time shrimping, so we asked for a lesson (free of charge), but you basically go to their fridge to get some bait, hook it, and put it into water. The baits are actually smaller dried shrimps, kind of wrong if you think about it, haha. The length of the fish line is already pre-measured for you so you don't have to worry about that. There are also 2 hooks for each pole, and you can get your pole replaced if they break. Nets are available on site and you just have to secure it on a spot within the pond, near the perimeter, so you can put the shrimps in as you catch them and keep them alive while you catch its friends. The cost was $700 NT (~$23 CAD) for 3 hours each pole, but you can also do it for 2 hours at a lower cost.

My first shrimp!

And 3 hours later, we were ready to cook them. Salt and sticks were available onsite, so you can cook them  yourself or pay extra to get the staff to cook them for you with fancier sauces:

Our catch, approximately 20 shrimps.

Mr. Lilasaur putting the shrimps in the oven. Apparently they are cooked as soon as they turn red, but the oven glowed red, so it was hard to tell. This was the first time Mr. Lilasaur making food other than instant noodles for me to eat.

And voila! The meal was ready! It got a bit salty at the end, but man, the shrimps were juicy!

We really enjoyed this shrimping experience and would recommend it to anybody! Will do it again when we go back to Taiwan.


Su Food (Chinese only):

As with most old ladies, Mr. Lilasaur's mom has gotten to the point when she thinks that killing is a sin, so she likes to eat vegetarian meals despite the doctor telling her that she is unhealthily underweight. This was one of those restaurants that she brought us to with fancier vegetarian food. They are so popular and profitable that they actually have 13 stores in Taiwan. To be fair, their food display was rather good and most of the items tasted okay, but at the end of the meal my tongue was still thirsty for meat flavours when my stomach was full. There were four of us (me, Mr. Lilasaur, and his parents), so we were able to try quite a few of dishes:

Appetizer, everybody got the same thing. Left to right: jello with tomato inside, spinach  (?),  common yam rhizome with berry sauce.

Pre-meal course: some kind of pea soup. Tasted more pleasant than I expected. The other people had less interesting stuff so no pictures were taken.

Main dish 1: Mr. Lilasaur's veggie pizza pop thingie. Some cheese inside, with mushrooms, pepper, and spices.

Main dish 2: my MIL's spinach spaghetti. It was ok.

Main dish 3: my oyster mushroom dish with baked potatoes. If I remember correctly, my mushrooms were cold, but adequately flavoured.

Main dish 4: my FIL's licorice noodles. I hate licorice so I didn't take a second bite. The circle thing that looks like a piece of squid, I think that was bamboo shoot.

Dessert: Mr. Lilasaur's honey chrysanthemum tea with cake. In the background: my MIL's tomato juice with cake.

Dessert: My osmanthus jelly with kiwi drink (not photographed). In the background: my FIL's sweet soup with tea.

If I lived in Taiwan, I'd probably try this for the novelty factor and pictures, but the general age group that visits this place seems to be 40+ years olds, at least that's what I gathered as I looked around the room.


Other Food

Glutinous cake made by Mr. Lilasaur's cousin as a part time job

Minced pork rice

Deep-fried chicken steak from Two Peck Chicken Steak (sign at the back). Very juicy steak, made to order. This is a chain store, but not sure about the quality of the other ones.

Almond shaved ice from the basement of Shin Kong Mitsukoshi

Cheese & cod bar with black pepper... the taste was interesting

Nutella snack dip!

Kinder chocolate bars with cereal filling, haven't seen it in Vancouver before

This concludes the food journey in Taiwan. Obviously there were tons of other things not photographed, including the 3 all-you-can-eat hotpots that we had, each at about $10 CAD, and all the other small items in the night markets. Should really go try the hotpot options in Taiwan, you can have it Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese spicy style, and they have so many kinds of crabs, shrimps, scallops, and other things. But yeah, we all got fat.


Wedding Photography

Not everything in Taiwan was a pleasant experience, and this was one of those unpleasant ones. According to the Internet, the most famous ones in Taipei are: Ch Wedding, Sophia, Western Design Wedding Gowns & Photography, and Taipei Royal Wedding. Mr. Lilasaur's cousin had Ch Wedding, but the total cost came to about $4000 CAD so that was too expensive. After looking through the photo albums of the other three, I picked Sophia because they supposedly have very pretty dresses and I liked how their photos focused on both the bride and the groom instead of the bride alone. Plus, they have an Overseas Experience package that translates to $56800 NT (~$1900 CAD) and includes:

• bridal dresses x 4 (got upgraded to x5 automatically)
• bridal makeup & styling x 4
• groom makeup & hair styling
• groom suit x 1 (got upgraded to x2 automatically)
• outside & inside locations
• a stylist for the whole day of photography
• 12*18" x 36 album pictures
• 24*30" x 1 enlarged & framed picture
• 8*10" x 1 framed picture 
• small album x 1 of the 36 pictures
• CD of the chosen pictures
• 100 pocket size "thank you" cards (to give to guests when they come for your banquet)

The staff that served us wasn't very professional. When I inquired about the difference between the photographers via email, she thought I was picking the most expensive one and added $10000 NT on top of the package, which I just accepted because I did like his pictures. Anyway, onto the dress fitting. Apparently all those that are included in the package are out-of-season dresses or those that have been ripped a little, and if you want to pick the better looking ones, you have to add more money for each dress. She picked a few dresses for me beforehand, none of which I liked because they all emphasized on the shortcomings of my body, which are my arms. She also couldn't zip up any of the dresses so I felt like shit. I asked her to bring me other dresses that would possibly make my arms less chubby, she complied, but she was impatient and said ,"Look, you're meaty, and there's nothing we can do about it at this point. We should just focus on how the dresses look like, they will be tailored to your size, and all the other imperfections, we will just have to fix with Photoshop." I am not fat by International standards. However, this still upset me a lot and I almost cried. I still stuck out until the end and picked the dresses, but I wasn't happy about their service at all at this point. I really wanted to complain, but Mr. Lilasaur is never the complaining type and raised these points:

1. we already paid in full before we left Canada, and there's no refunds
2. even if we do get a refund there's no time left to find and book another store
3. since we have to stick with this store, agitating the staff would make them give us crappy products
4. complaining might make this staff lose her job, I should not ruin other people's livelihood

I really disagree with the last point, because if she isn't doing her job right then she doesn't deserve the money. However, I do agree with the other 3 points so I just kept my temper down... and decided to just badmouth about them on the Internet, like now. 

Our photographer, apparently quite well known in the wedding photography world (according to the taxi driver that drove us to the airport), turned out to be very friendly and was very good at telling jokes that cracked us up for the whole day. The whole team consisted of the photographer, the stylist, 2 assistants, a taxi driver that we've rented for the whole day (extra cost), and us. On the morning of the photography, Mr. Lilasaur and I had to arrive at the studio by 8 am for 2 hours of make-up. The stylist wasn't very happy in the morning for some reason, but she turned friendlier as the day progressed. Overall the photography session was quite good, and we ended the day at 8 pm after the indoor shots. Here are my favourite pictures:

This was at the beach

Studio shot

Outside shot, there were a few other couples nearby doing wedding photography as well

One last bad thing about the service - when we went to pick up our products 2 photos were missing... so we actually had to go back on the day of our flight to pick them up. Tsk tsk. Overall, if you aren't a twig like most Asian girls, I wouldn't recommend going to Sophia for wedding photos because they make you feel like shit. The products do turn out well, but as a wedding photography service I believe that they are supposed to make the brides feel good about themselves instead of putting them down. There's really no point to pay for your own sadness.

Miscellaneous Things

Weird art at one of the MRT stations. It has a bird head and child body, and water flows down from the head. The child has a pencil in its hand. Supposedly the artist just wants you to slow down and think about this weird piece.

It says "Hire Old People"

Hello Kitty resting lounge at the airport

Shows whether the washroom stalls are being used!

Apparently at Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Shopping Center, there is a "morning song" and a "goodbye song", played when the store opens and closes. We happened to be there once when the store was closing, and the "goodbye song" was... very weirdly memorable. Also as you exit the department store everybody bows to you, that was weird.

Other places that are worth visiting would be the Eslite Book Stores. There are so many seats available to read, it's quite unlike Chapters. The books also seem to have much better cover art, and they were good enough to lure me to buy a few books myself. We actually ended up spending a chunk of money buying books. Even if you're not a book person, the book stores usually are multi-levelled and you can buy small things on other levels while your friends or significant other browse the books.

And this is finally the last post about the Asia trip.