Two ways to tell who's writing the post-- Paul likes smaller pictures and centered text. I hate reading centered paragraphs and like large pictures. I think we can all agree my style is better. :) But on to the post: Taiwan! Three of my team members are in our Taipei office and after nine months of connecting via phone, email and video conference, I finally got to go see Julie, Elsie and Carol.
The three of them were great hosts and the whole office was so welcoming. Target feels like Target no matter where you are. But I won't bore you with work, let's move on to food and sightseeing. During the three work days I enjoyed eating some local specialties including the country's specialty, beef noodle soup. I forgot to take a picture of the soup, but got one of this guy at the soup shop making different buns and flat bread. He was so fast!
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Different shop, different day, the highlight was this dessert-- shaved ice topped with brown sugar syrup, sweetened condensed milk and tapioca pearls in a pile the size of my head. I tried, but could not finish the whole thing. Taiwan is the supposed inventor of "bubble tea" made with these same tapioca pearls. I love the bubbles so I was intent on having them every day in some form.
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On Friday night, Paul and the kids flew in to join me for the weekend. Carol and Julie were so kind to be amazing tour guides for us the whole day. We started the day at the Taipei Zoo, which is the largest in Asia. We didn't want to spend the whole day there, so since it was super cheap and the panda was located right up front, we just stopped in for a short time. The panda got the memo and made three laps outside right as we walked up, check!
After some monkeys, elephants and hippos, we decided to say goodbye, but this camel really wanted Paul to stay. They made out for a while and she left Paul with some really good smelling slime on his neck and collar (I guess this is better than finding lipstick on his collar?).
Next to the zoo is the cable car up to Maokong, a tea growing area up in the mountains. Our gondola had a glass bottom, which made for fun views. The ride up was about 30 minutes with the Taipei skyline in the distance and nice nature and old temples to see on the way up.
Once we got to the top, we walked along a winding road on our way to have lunch at a tea house. On the road there were various snack stalls so we stopped to have an appetizer of garlic sausage, a scallion pancake and fried stinky tofu.
The tofu is stinky because it is fermented. Both Paul and I thought it smelled like the horse barn at the Minnesota State Fair. The taste was a combo of fried goodness, regular tofu, with ending notes of horse barn. Julie said some people call it Chinese cheese. When put in that perspective, it doesn't make it seem so weird after all. The Chinese stinky tofu makers probably think we're weird for eating smelly moldy blue cheese.
We continued on our walk to the tea house and enjoyed the sights like the one below. The large skyscraper just right of center is the Taipei 101 building, which is the third tallest in the world.
Here are some tea plants, reminds me of a vineyard, not sure what variety of tea though.
We had a gigantic lunch at one of the teahouses with most of the dishes featuring tea in some way. You can't tell from the backlit window, but we had amazing views from our table.
I loved these fried tea leaves, and also love Esme photo-bombing the pic.
At the end of the meal we did an oolong tea tasting that included one variety grown and processed (includes heating and drying) by the tea house owner. These kinds of experiences are my favorite thing... wine tasting in Switzerland, olive oil tasting in Spain and now tea tasting in Taiwan. Thanks, Carol, for thinking of it!
Another thing I love about these places is the old, amazing architecture that you just run into. Here's a random temple on the mountain with a beautiful roof, so special, yet easily found at the same time.
We rode back down the mountain as the sun was setting, and even though our bellies were full and kids getting tired, we had to power through since we only had one full day in Taipei. Next stop, potty break in the train station. Here is a "real-time" display to let you know the status of the stalls. At least they don't have time-elapsed info by each light, privacy please.
When in Taiwan, you have to visit the famous Din Tai Fung (it's a chain now and we also have one in Hong Kong we can take you to when you come visit...) for the super delicious soup dumplings. They didn't invent them, but they have perfected them. We watched the assembly line through the viewing window. The pictures at the bottom of the window are of Tom Cruise's visit.
The wait for a table was too long and we weren't hungry after the huge lunch, so we just got a few dumplings to go.
Next stop was for another Taiwanese specialty, shaved ice. We went with mango and bubble tea flavors, so good. We really need more Asian desserts in Minnesota.
At this point we were getting pretty tired, but we pushed on to one last stop at a night market. Lots of shopping and street food to take in.
While we were obviously full after two piles of shaved ice, there was one food item we'd heard about from one of my Hong Kong team members we purposely sought out just to say we had eaten it. Any guesses what is grilled on the stick below?
Chicken poopshoots. Paul is loving that chicken butt. So what does it taste like? Chicken. Good grilled chicken flavor, actually, but way too fatty and gristly for me to ever consider eating it again (at least in this form... I'm sure I've eaten it ground up in chicken sausage).
After that we called it a night and let our gracious hosts go back to their families who probably wondered if we had stolen them. Thank you, Julie and Carol, for your kind hospitality. We had such a great day!!
The next day we only had up until lunch before we had to go to the airport, so we spent the morning in Old Taipei. The main sight is the Longshan Temple, originally built in 1738, but wrecked many times over by earthquakes, fires and American bombs at the end of WWII. It's a beautiful sight with intricate carvings and other works of art.
We also ran into a random parade, no idea what it was for, but it was a fun surprise.
And the last pic I took before we headed out is another example of amazing old architecture just snuggled between modern ho hum buildings. I wish we had these kinds of finds in the US. Wouldn't this look nice between a Caribou Coffee and a Subway in South Minneapolis?
Our time in Taiwan was too short, but sweet. We'll visit again the next time I come for work. With that, I'll end this post with a picture of the one person in our family who loved grilled chicken a$$.
