Continuing on with Part 2 of my August 2024 Taiwan adventures! We head to Tainan to meet up with my cousin, explore Taichung, and then chill at Taipei 101 for a magical Din Tai Fung experience.
August 10th: Because we wanted to maximize our time in Tainan, we had reserved our shinkansen/high speed rail train for 7:51-9:17. Partly because it was early, and also partly because this was one of the fastest trips (less stops for the train itself). Because it was early in the morning, the pickings for bentos were slim, but we ended up opting for a sushi roll-type box set. Mine was a cucumber and pork floss thick roll, and my friend got a mixed thick roll and inari set. It was ok, but while I’m in Taiwan, I’m eating all the pork floss I can.
We arrived on time, and unfortunately due to a long bathroom line, didn’t make the immediate train to Tainan train station, so we waited for the next one, and ended up at Tainan around 9:50.
My cousin came to pick us up with a car, and we immediately went to go get something to eat. First on Tainan specialties, is beef soup at Win Chang Beef Soup. No, not beef noodle soup, it’s hot soup poured on top of thin slices of raw beef. We also ordered a ru rou fan, but instead of ground pork, it was made from ground beef. This is a very not normal thing, but apparently, something they do only at this restaurant.
After eating, we headed over to Hayashi Department store, a store that was built during Japanese rule, bombed in World War II, and restored to look retro. Also known as, the oldest department store in Taiwan, and a very popular tourist destination, specifically for Japanese people. It was really cool though, seeing the inside, and some of the goods were also very unique (maybe some, too unique…). What was funny was that there was a Taiwanese tourist group and the leader was talking about facts about literally each corner of the place.
We were all thirsty, so we found the nearest boba shop (literally across the street, before heading to our next destination, about a 5 minute walk away from Hayashi Store. Read about my boba here!
Behold, Tainan Long Story, made up of two things: a paid exhibition to see…7 flights of the same set of worn down white-ish stairs, and gelato, with a lot of handheld fan imagery everywhere. The gelato is super expensive, but they give you a coupon when you pay to enter the exhibition, so it becomes normally priced gelato. Apparently this building used to be a hotel, but it wasn’t doing well, so Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto decided to build these stairs to represent the alleyways of Tainan.
Maybe I’m just a harsh art critic, or I have no appreciation for art, but I thought the stairs were…stairs. They weren’t super fancy or polished, some led to a dead end, and I guess the view from the top is cool, but otherwise I could have walked down and not really have given it a second thought.
As for the gelato, I opted for the guava juice. I think my friend and my cousin go different flavors, and the consensus was that as gelato, it was just ok. I was very sad that mine barely had any flavor. It was light and creamy yes, but the actual flavor was really hard to place my finger on. The fan-shaped butter cookie was a lot better, and very yummy.
After that, my cousin drove us over to a main street-like area, and took us to this grilled corn stand, Shi Tou Xian. My friend opted for the popular shacha flavor, and I went for the seasme soy sauce. While we were waiting, we walked a bit down the street, and got a bowl of Tainan-style nabeyaki noodles (醇涎坊古早味鍋燒意麵). Typically yi noodles are used, but since they offered a variety, I chose the vermicelli noodles. The soup came with some veggies, green onion, and tempura in a light dashi broth. Very yummy, nostalgic tasting, like a meal my mom would make for me for lunch on a Saturday afternoon.
The corn was also very good. The soy sauce had caramelized into this really savory coating on the outside, the corn was just a bit sweet and took a bit of a chew in the mouth.
We walked around the area a bit, popping into shops and taking in the sights. We stopped by 蜷尾家 甘味処, a various famous place, for our second ice cream of the day. I opted for the tieguanyin flavor over the milk one, since tea is more unique, and more Taiwan. The ice cream was a nice degree of creaminess, and the tea flavor reminded me of leaning more towards a hojicha, but with a bit of an oolong flair to it. Perhaps it was once of those roasty tieguanyins. In any case, it was very good.
We walked around a bit more, and then before doing anything else, figured it’d be best to put down our stuff and chill first. We drove over to my cousin’s house where we’d be staying (thanks again to him and his family for hosting us!), and took a bit of a break.
After a bit of digesting and listening to my cousin’s record collection, we headed out to eat another Tainan dish: eel noodles. My cousin says it’s a fish that just looks like an eel, but the English translation calls it eel, and it looks like an eel, so we’ll just leave it at that. We actually went to his friend’s family’s restaurant, and everyone got their own plate. The eel was soft, but simultaneously a bit crunchy, and the noodles were yi noodles that seemed like that had been fried at some point but had been rehydrated because of the stir-fry. It tasted a bit sweet and acidic, which I reckon there’s probably some black vinegar in there. Definitely a unique taste (it was probably the vinegar), but my friend and I both liked it., and part of it felt a bit nostalgic.
We were all pretty full I think, but if it was small eats, I think we would have made it work. For now, the consensus was to go back to the house, and figure out some food delivery there and chill for the night. Little did we know that when we arrived, my cousin’s brother and his wife were there, we did some greetings, and they went, “Hey, wanna eat some xiao long bao?”, and obviously we agreed. This time, we all rode scooters to what is Tainan’s Din Tai Fung (上海好味道小籠湯包). Well, they all rode their scooters, and my friend and I hopped on the back.
I really thought maybe it’d just be a bit of xiao long bao, but we went to a full on restaurant, and they went ,”We have 5 people, and we can take-out, so order whatever you want”. I was down for anything, and my friend ended up picking out a few things. In the meantime, we had our first sighting of Apple Sidra in Taiwan this entire trip (boo 7/11), and I had to get one.
My older cousin encouraged me to get a boba at 9pm, saying one that day already wasn’t enough, so we went across the street to a place they recommended before closing. Unfortunately, this place ran out of boba, and I am a stubborn boba girlie, so we tried a place next door. And yes, I did get boba, while having an Apple Sidra waiting for me at the restaurant, on a full stomach, with a bunch of food probably also the table. Read about my second boba here!
When we got back, the food we ordered was already on the table, and my gosh it was a spread. I had a bite of everything, and it was all pretty good (I’m sorry, it’s not DTF-level good, but for what everything was, it was good with the unique items). My favorite has to probably be the scallop steamed dumplings, because I love scallop, and that’s a bit more of a unique item. I stopped myself before I became unreasonably full.
We weren’t done for the night without dessert! You can’t go to Tainan without eating fruit, and we stopped by Yu Cheng Fruit Store to grab some fruit and shaved ice. Specifically, we got a Mango Shaved Ice, and cut slices of dragonfruit, guava, and wax pear. Everything to-go. Yes, shaved ice to-go.
All of the fruit was so yummy, and the shaved ice I think came with a really good, not too sweet, eggy pudding. One thing to note is that this place’s shaved ice doesn’t give flavored ice like most other places I know of, but it was pure crumbled ice. It also melted pretty fast, in combination with “we are all full so we will eat slowly”, so eventually it turned into a cold mango soup. Oops.
August 11th: Although we all probably wished we could have stayed in Tainan longer, it was time to go on our early reserved train to Taichung. Thanks to my aunt for driving us to the station, and giving us so many local Tainan pastries.
Our train was from 8:28 to 9:06, and again, we tried to choose one of the earlier and fastest trains (they’re all priced the same, so might as well get the faster one right?).
We put our baggage in a locker at the High Speed Rail station, and then headed out for Chi Cha San Chen. One of my bucket list items for Taichung was visiting this tea place, which calls itself a chain, but somehow has more locations abroad than in Taiwan. We arrived a bit before opening time, but there were already people lining up, and more that followed after us. Insane, but I guess that also makes me one. Read about my boba here!
The first floor, along with the drink ordering register, supposedly has an oolong tea taste test area, but maybe we were there too early for that to even be an option for us. The second floor had a gallery of sorts with extra seating, and the third floor had some tea books, and a tea fermentation cold tank.
We spent a good amount of time chilling and sipping out fancy tea, and after getting hungry, we made our way to Fu Ding Wang, supposedly a well-known pig feet place in Taichung. To be honest, I had some sweet shops and places to hang out bookmarked, but not many savory options that I knew of. I had searched up “Things to Eat” in Taichung, and this place popped up. I wanted to eat pig feet at some point during this trip, so this became a good option. We had to wait 30 minutes for dine-in, but it was up before we knew it. We ordered a pig feet noodle, a ru rou fan, some boiled veggies, and a duck egg.
Everything was super yummy! In particular, I was really happy to get to eat pig feet again, although the noodle only came with 2 portions (good for splitting, but that meant we each ended up with 1). Furthermore, these weren’t the types with a bunch of meat on them, but that might just be more of a Taiwan thing, and also because I’m used to my mom buying pig feet with a lot of actual meat on it.
Done with lunch, we bussed over to Shen Ji New Village, where there are a ton of cute shops (also a lot of ice cream shops), and also a weekend flea market of sorts all selling their wares. We did some window shopping, but also were suffering from the heat, so we stopped by a dofua shop and got one with ice, green beans, and boba. Unfortunately, they ran out of seating, so we had to eat our dofua outside in the shade. Read about it here!
We checked out KerKerLand, a postcard shop, and what’s unique about the place is that you can buy a postcard, write a message, and have it scheduled to be sent to you or someone else in the future. My friend did one, but I was ok.
Between going somewhere to eat and somewhere to hang out, I figured we just had a sweet item, so I decided to take us to the National Taiwan Museum of Comics. It was less of a museum and more of a park with a collection of exhibitions, but nonetheless, it was cool to see a mic of Chinese and Japanese comics and their unique art styles. Thanks to my mom for sending me this recommendation!
Last realistic thing to do on our list was check out Miyahara for the ice cream. We entered the building, and it really looked like a shop from straight out of Harry Potter. They had every type of baked good possible, and after buying some souvenirs, we realized their ice cream was blocked off from our side, and there was a bit of a line for ice cream. Although I wanted to get something from their wide variety of flavors, we didn’t have the leeway to wait in the line and still make it in time for our high speed train. And so we headed on to Tainan train station, to take the train to the high speed train station.
Little did we know that the train station was packed. Upon riding the escalator up to the platform, there was literally nowhere for the people riding up to stand, and we were pushed further into the crowd. Turns out, quite a few trains that day were being delayed by a bit. We made it onto one safe and sound, and also on to our reserved train with just a bit of time to spare.
Shoutout to my dad for giving us business class tickets! Otherwise, there were literally no reserved seats left on any train, high speed rail or local, from Taichung to Taipei until 10pm that day. We found a business class one at 6:04-7:13, and felt that this time fit our schedule the best. The seats were bigger, cushier, and an attendant came by with free drinks and snacks between a pork floss egg roll or mixed nuts.
We dropped our stuff off at the hotel, and at that point, we were pretty hungry. However, similar to my problem the first night, not many places are open past 8pm. We tried a dumpling place, but they wouldn’t allow anyone else without a reservation. On our way to another more local dumpling place, my friend spotted this eatery (集美食——重慶酸辣粉) still open, and with a variety of choices, we decided to just eat there. I went for a zhajiangmian, she got a mapotofu rice, and we decided to split a wonton noodle soup. The waitress was concerned if we ordered too much, but it was just right. For a spur on the moment find, it was pretty good.
And then we raided the local supermarket for cheap and local souvenirs.
August 12th: As a scheduled rest day in between travel days, it was finally time to go to DTF and Taipei 101!
First up, was breakfast, because I’m not missing a Taiwanese breakfast. We went to Lao Jian’s House, which is a 24-hour, cozy and stylish cafe with a modern take on Taiwanese traditional breakfast foods. We ordered a soy milk for each of us (which came in a giant mug), a you tiao, a fan tuan, some radish cake, and a green onion pancake. Not going to lie, this menu was super exciting. Everything was super yummy, and simple. My thing of note was that the fan tuan’s pickles were a bit peppery, and there was no you tiao in this one.
There was a boba shop around the corner I wanted to visit, and they should have been open, but they actually weren’t. Sad. Never ended up getting to try them.
It was a bit early to head over to Taipei 101, let alone eat DTF, so we popped over to the National Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, which was basically next door.
Once being outside in the heat got a bit too unbearable, we bussed over to Taipei 101. Huzzah for air conditioning! For 11:30 on a Monday, there was already an 80 minute wait for the DTF. Not bad, as we were still quite full from our late breakfast. We walked around, shopped around, and waited until our number was called. Pretty on time around the 80 minute mark. I ordered a spicy cucumber salad, the house special appetizer, stir fried veggies, xiao long bao, and a pork chop fried rice. All of the classics, good for two people that weren’t super hungry.
Everything was an yummy as I remember and as it should be! My friend thoroughly enjoyed everything, and I’m super glad she did. What I found absolutely hilarious was this Japanese family sitting next to us, and the mom was directing and supervising everyone to make sure they ate the xiao long bao the “correct” way.
After lunch, we went to the Taipei 101 observatory. Unfortunately, while we were eating, it had just started pouring, so there was a disclaimer that visibility wasn’t going to be good and that the outdoor deck on the 91st floor wasn’t going to be open. Turns out the visibility was ok, really with only some clouds in the distance, and if you look hard enough, you could watch the rain fall. Otherwise, the view was pretty similar to what I saw in March (many buildings as far as the eye can see). We spent most of the time just taking photos in the pre-set photo spots scattered around the 89th floor.
As part of our ticket, there were a bunch of coupons for some of the cafes on the 89th floor. We used the one for Milksha, and because they ran out of boba, I just got a mango green tea for a refreshing drink.
After chilling for a bit and taking in the sights, we made our way back down to the basement floor area to finish up our shopping, since we didn’t want to buy a bunch of things earlier and have to lug it all day. We bought some tea from Geo Wyong Tea across from DTF, which is my go-to for souvenir type teas. There’s also quite a bit of souvenir stuff in the supermarket area/section, where the danger lies…the ladies selling their goods there are super intense, and because Japanese works on us, they’re a bit too effective…I managed to get away earlier, but we stopped by a lady advertising tea, and she saw my already purchased souvenir bag and proceeded to make fun of my purchase decision and boast about how her brand is better than my brand. Sorry lady, but I already spent my tea money for the day, I don’t need you guilt-tripping me. I get it, your tea is good. Taiwan has good tea. There was also this lady that kept insisting to let her give us her spiel (literally, she was kind enough to ask to let her give her speech) on her throat spray and honey. I admire the hustle, especially in a foreign language, but it won’t work on me.
We were just chilling for the rest of the day, so I figured it’d be a good time to get some mooncake. Mid-autumn festival season would be the next month, and I decided to get some mooncake to take home and also as souvenirs. We made a stop at Kee Wah Bakery near Taipei station before finally going back to our hotel, where they sold gigantic mooncakes.
On our way back we saw a giant crowd of people all on bridge looking at what was probably going to become a sunset. I am not one for crowds, but my friend went to go check out why there is a crowd, and to see the potential sunset. Turns out, the weather the past few days has made this specific bridge and the view of the sunset from it to look exactly like a sunset frm New York. Not sure why that’s specifically a thing as opposed to a normal sunset, but hey, that’s cool it made the news I guess.
We spent the rest of the evening checking out and relaxing in the hotel’s pool and public bath/sauna.
Our consensus is that Tainan has Otaru vibes, Taichung has Sapporo vibes, and Taipei has very big city, Tokyo vibes.
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