This is to contrast the previous post of all-business text. The following gallery is a not-particularly-well-organized photodump from the past few weeks of times when I have been goofing off.
I went through a phase where I climbed Elephant Mountain 象山 to Jiwu Peak 九五峰 several nights a week. I took a lot of pictures of Taipei 101 at night. I will miss it when I leave Taipei.
My room mates and I have a new favorite market. On weekends it also has many stalls selling second hand items.
I saw this at a nightmarket. Rough translation “Don’t let pooping trouble you again!”
Taiwan has a “bento box” culture that I don’t remember encountering in the mainland. In general, it’s just a practical way to eat a lunch with a little bit of rice, pickled veggies and protein, (I haven’t seen anything too fancy like some of the Japanese bentos). This is a particularly “famous” bento place in northeast Taiwan called Fulong. There is a railway stop and the Fulong bento
福隆便當 is supposedly the best place to get lunch. Let me say that it was extremely ordinary.
I bought a bike and have been using it to both speed around the city and escape.
My bike allows easier access to my favorite bakery in the Taipei area, which is actually on the Shenkeng old street 深坑老街. Their pineapple cakes are the best I’ve had, and their breads are also pretty great.
But this is also an example of where I can get out of Taipei with a few hours on my bike.
I biked to downtown Pinglin 坪林, a tea-growing region in northeastern Taiwan.
I have started to seriously miss American food.
But don’t get me wrong, I still love Taiwanese cuisine. I finally went to the famous beef noodle place on Yongkang Jie 永康街牛肉麵. It was reputation-worthy.
Some friends and I biked along the highway of the northeast coast from Taipei to Jilong down to Yilan.
It is evident that biking is a popular hobby in Taiwan. For example, this 2km long old railway tunnel was specifically converted into a bike pathway.
Our bikes parked by the remnants of the gold mines at Jiufen 九份.
Our biking trip ended in Luodong, which has an excellent night market. It was a good day trip of probably about 80 miles, which we took at an easy pace.
Luodong’s special baoxin fenyuan 包心粉圓 . The baoxin fenyuan are in the triangular cup to the side, and were essentially molassas tapioca wrapped around red bean, served with your choice of shave ice, puddings, beans, bean curd, etc. I vote this as a Must-Eat.
Spring includes gravesweeping 掃墓 traditions. I joined in with my dad’s family as we visited the graves of some of our ancestors where we offered food and scattered and burned paper money.
