I went back to Taiwan for the second time this year, but the occasion was because my friend wanted to go make her first international trip to Taiwan, and since she’s a teacher, the best break time for her to go is summer vacation. Specifically, summer vacation here lasts about a month, from the end of July to the end of August. We decided to make our trip from August 8 to August 15, which is what worked best for both of our schedules, falls around Japan’s Obon holiday.
I’ll be splitting my trip into 3 parts, so stay tuned!
August 8th: My friend and I were set to meet at the airport, so I got on my usual bus to Sapporo and arrived around 10:20. I mobile ordered a Gong Cha, because I heard that they’re doing a campaign for a free drink coupon the first time you make a mobile order. Plus, Gong Cha is doing the annual East vs West campaign, and this year both are available, and interesting drinks. I figured I’d get one now, and use the coupon for the other one later. First, I got the Pear Berry, in milk tea form. This was in case I didn’t have time to get a proper boba my Day 1 in Taiwan. Read about my boba here!
Normally, I’d just head over to the airport with nothing much else to do in Sapporo, but it just so happened that Yoshinoya and Kirby are doing a collaboration starting at 11am on the 8th. If you buy a Kirby gyudon set, you can get a Kirby plastic take-out bag and a mini Kirby figure. My sister is a Kirby fanatic, and she wanted the figure, so I hauled myself to the nearest Yoshinoya, because you can bet there will be a line for this.
Indeed, when I arrived on the scene, there was already a small line forming around 10:30am. I got in line, placed my order for one small eat-in (600 yen) for myself and one small takeout (589 yen) for my friend (you can order up to 3 per person), and thus received two Kirbys. Apparently, different to the Kirby Happy Meal toys which sold out immediately on the launch day, they were doing a set amount of Kirby meals each day of the collaboration. This is probably why with even a small line on the first day, the Kirby meals sold out before 11am. It might depend on the location though, since some of my friends across the country had different experiences.
This was actually my first Yoshinoya, and my first proper gyudon! It’s pretty good for the speed and the price, but otherwise, a pretty standard gyudon, with stewed thin beef slices and onions on rice. The gyudon itself came in a paper Kirby bowl, which would have been nice to wash and keep, but since I was going on vacation and the stains probably would not come out easily, I ditched the idea. The location I went to only had the salad option and not the apple juice option, and the salad was fine. It also came with mayo.
Then I headed for the airport, and met up with my friend! We did a bit of browsing before heading over to the international terminal, handed over our suitcases after a bit of a line, and pretty quickly got international security and immigrations over with. After walking the international terminal and buying some souvenirs, we got on our flight at 3. Though not a Pokemon plane, for some reason the China Airlines throw-up bag comes with a Pikachu holding a different variation of balloon colors.
About an hour in, they started serving the in-flight meal and drinks. It seems like the China Airlines exclusive drink was this lychee oolong tea soda. As for the meal, the choices were between curry chicken rice or pork chow mein. I don’t like curry, so it was a default to the pork noodle. It came with a seaweed salad, a brioche-like bun, and a tiramisu flavored roll cake.
The meal was pretty good. The soda I thought was really good, with both strong lychee and oolong notes. The seaweed salad was bright and refreshing, and the bread was buttery, soft and slightly crisp on the outside. I really liked the noodles, with super thinly sliced pork belly, and a braised pork and vegetable sauce on top of the soft and thick noodles. The roll cake was also yummy.
We landed a bit earlier than expected after a smooth plane ride, hopped off the plane, exchanged some money, and surprisingly, the foreign tourist line was pretty short. Our luggage also came out pretty fast, picked up our wifi router, and we hopped on the MRT to go to Taipei proper! I lost the Taiwan lottery though…
After checking into our hotel (after getting lost in Taipei station…oops), we wanted to go out and get some real Taiwan eats. It was like 8pm though, and most proper restaurants start closing around that time, so my plan was to head over to a nearby boba place that miraculously closes at 10pm, and a beef noodle place that’s supposed to be 24 hours.
Along the way, we found a few small shops open, so we bought a bolo bread, a pan-fried pork bun, and a stinky tofu. The bread had a nice, classic crust on the outside, the bun was super hot, soft, and juicy, and the stinky tofu was stinky, but was perfectly fried, and delicious with the sauce and pickled cabbage. My friend actually liked it, and wanted to get another one at some point!
Our boba for the night was from Come Buy Tea. I think this chain also exists in America. My friend got a Jasmine tea, and I got a classic boba milk tea. Read about my boba here.
We arrived at Fu Hong Beef noodles, and ordered a large bowl of beef noodle soup (though I think only the noodles are large portioned), and a plate of boiled dumplings. The dumplings were good, classic plump Chinese dumplings, and the noodles were ok. The soup was fine, but the beef was slightly tough, and the noodles were a very interesting al dente texture, and seemingly handmade shape. Overall fine, but not the best, and attitude was a bit mean.
We headed back to the hotel to crash for the night, and get ready for the next day.
August 9th: Since it was our first full day in Taiwan, I planned to just hang around and chill for the day to prep in between travel days. I’m mainly in Taiwan for the food, and one of the things I was most excited for was Taiwanese breakfast. I had a few new places bookmarked this time around, and first up was 4+ Break Breakfast. All of the employees were super nice, and the cafe was cute and cozy. The cashier even asked us how we knew of the place, and I told her I just saw from a YouTube video.
My friend wanted a cheeseburger, and I ordered soy milk, radish cake with barbeque sauce at the cashier’s recommendation, and an omelet with pork floss.
Everything was very yummy! The barbeque sauce was surprisingly not saucey, but dried on the pillowy radish cake. Soy milk was good, and the pork floss omelet was very nice.
After having breakfast, we headed over to Lungshan Temple. I think this one is rather big, famous, and touristy, but it was cool to see. My friend attempted the red-crescent rock fortune telling thing, but neither of us really knew how it worked.
After seeing this fancy Vietnamese Herbal Hair Wash in a video, I wanted to try it, and I felt like my friend would be interested too. For some reason, Google said it was temporarily closed, but when we actually went to the storefront, they were open with no customers. We were able to get in without an appointment, and we chose the 35 minute A plan.
It felt really nice, with a variety of treatments for your head, including various washes, shampoos, a head and neck massage, and tea for when they start drying your hair. I felt like my scalp could have really used a cleaning after sweating so much lately, and I could really go for another one…
We headed up the street to go eat some award-winning ru rou fan at Wang’s Broth (which also has a location at the airport). We got a small bowl. braised cabbage, a braised duck egg, and a braised fried tofu. It seems like everything there is braised in the same dark savory sauce, but it all tasted very good.
We headed next door from award-winning ru rou fan to award-winning gua bao at Yuan Fang Guabao. This one is a big white bun sandwich bun containing some pickled vegetables and a giant slab of braised pork belly. I think it’d usually come with some peanut powder, but I’m allergic, so I ordered it without. The bread was fluffy, the pickled veggies were not too acidic, and the meat was super tender.
Since the area we were hanging out that day was near Ximending, we spent the rest of our time walking around and doing some window shopping. First, we picked up some boba from Goldfish, and then we found a Lay’s themed 7/11. Read about my boba here!
My friend wanted to take some photobooth photos, and we found a place. Unfortunately, we are foreigners who can’t read and don’t know what we are doing, and we inserted money into a machine with a black screen, thinking it would turn on. The proper procedure is to pick the photo style you want and then pay, but the screen on our machine I guess was broken, leading to a debacle on asking if the nearby vendor could do something, him asking his boss, him referring us to ask the company, and us not being able to call the help line since we didn’t have a Taiwanese phone number. Eventually, I messaged the photo booth company’s line , and they called me. After what I believe is watching me through a video camera, he directed me to a booth in the back, asked me to punch in a bunch of codes, and eventually, one that gave us the equivalent credit amount worked. I’m sorry for being a dumb foreigner with imperfect Mandarin abilities, but big thanks to the guy on the phone and the vendor guy out front for helping. At one point I needed smaller bills to buy extra photos, and when I asked for 5 100s for 1 500, he made sure I counted the bills to check that there were indeed 5 100s.
After that, we walked around some shops, and decided it was time for some shaved ice. We hit up 3 Siblings in Ximending, and my friend chose a mango, strawberry, kiwi mix on mango flavored ice. Everything was yummy, ice texture was pretty fluffy, and the mango and kiwi were sweet and soft. The strawberries were fine.
We then went to Ay Chung Flour Rice Noodle for some of their famous mian xian. It was as yummy as I remember it, a hot, thick noodle soup with some intestine pieces. I was very happy my friend liked it.
We were thirsty and my friend was craving some boba, so as we were walking, we found this matcha specialty place (京沺屋抹茶專門). My friend got a gyokuro matcha, and I got a peach matcha, since they were doing a summer seasonal peach series.
We walked around some more, popped into some shops to do some window and souvenir shopping, and then we went to go buy some real Taiwanese fried chicken at Shi Yun Crispy Salted Fried Chicken. After the past two meh popcorn chickens, it was time for my popcorn chicken redemption. I had a bookmark for a place that looked popular and legit, and I hoped it’d be good. Along with chicken pieces, I got some tempura because that always slaps, and my friend wanted to try some Taiwanese sausage, so we got some of that too.
Our package came out hot and freshly fried, and the chicken came in nicely sized chunks, and the seasoning coated it well. Big win. I have to say, even though we were there for the chicken and that’s what the shop is named after, I think the tempura was the star. Somehow, the tempura was coated much more in the seasoning, so it was a lot more flavorful than everything else in the bag. The sausage was unfortunately not the usual Taiwanese sausage, but instead, was four normally flavored mini sausages on a skewer coated in the seasoning. They were still yummy though.
We made our way to the rainbow Taipei area, and since it was not a Monday (I learned my lesson from March, oops!), we were able to go inside the Red Brick House and browse all the cute wares. It was dangerous for our wallets, but we made it through without doing too much damage. Apparently it was also some kind of anniversary for the Red Brick House, so they had this special exhibition and shop dedicated to its mascot. After a brief stop at the Hello Kitty 7/11 (apparently there’s also another one other than the one that I know of that we passed earlier), we decided we were done for the day.
We had bought quite a few things at Ximending, so we went back to our hotel to drop our stuff off. To end off our chill day, we went to Ningxia night market, a night market a bit on the smaller side, but still with plenty of stalls and restaurants. This one also had a separate games for kids area, and also for whatever reason, anime mascots. Like 5 of them.
We got a stick of fried milk, freshly blended guava juice, a giant fried squid cut up, the big fried chicken of my friend’s dreams, and got it to-go to eat at our hotel since the night market was too crowded. The fried milk was interesting, like a tempura batter coating a soft mushy milky inside. We thought the giant squid would come like the stand was advertising, but they fried it, cut it up, and put some thinly sliced raw onions on top in a box instead. Still yummy, but not as fun of an experience. The giant fried chicken was slightly different than I expected, with this one having a thicker crispy batter as opposed to a thin popcorn chicken-like I’ve seen at other places, but nonetheless, was still very juicy on the inside. The guava juice was really good! A bit pulpy, but you get that real guava flavor as opposed to bottled juices.
That’s Part 1! Part 2 and Part 3 are here.
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