A while back Yoshi decided that he was going to Taiwan for a short vacation, and he was drumming up support. The more people that came meant that we could order more food and try more dishes. I agreed on the spot, and after some adjustments to the schedule Kuniko was in, too. Unfortunately we couldn’t get Mamiko on this trip, but with three people we could still eat widely.
The way the trip worked was that we’d all fly there together on the same plane, but Yoshi would stay a few days longer than us. We got up early on Friday and picked him up on our way to Kansai Airport. We parked at Terminal 2, where Peach airlines is based. There wasn’t much open at the airport while we were there, but I think we were used to the inconvenience of Kansai International. We did manage to get a couple of coffees, though. Yoshi even had a sandwich, although we were thinking ahead to all the eating that we were going to do and abstained.
It was a two and a half hour flight to Taipei, and a pretty smooth journey through immigration and customs. I changed some Japanese yen to Taiwan dollars – and it worked out that I changed 10,000 yen and didn’t have quite enough cash for the three days that we were there. Next time I should exchange a little more if the rate is the same.
Traveling with Yoshi is always really easy. He is up for whatever and always is game for anything we want to eat, drink or do. He had some trouble with his SIM card that he had bought in Japan – and unfortunately we couldn’t get it working. He was doing it the old fashioned way, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Kuniko used her SIM the most to guide us around and find what we were looking for at the time. My job was just to make decisions and pay for things that we ate, which suited me just fine.
We started our eating odyssey with a trip to have the ja-ja men (spicy udon noodle bowl) – it was our third time here and it was just as good as I remembered. The restaurant is located down one of those mysterious alleyways that seem to be everywhere in major cities of Taiwan. We ordered the large size of noodles which seemed like the right decision at the time – but it was a lot of food. And we had some boiled dumplings on top of that – wow.
But that kind of set the tone for the trip and we ate plenty of different foods. We had some shaved ice, Taiwanese style. Kuniko had a big Nagano grape flavored one, and we all shared a kinmokusei (osmanthus) one that really was unusual. I vowed to buy some osmanthus syrup when I returned to Japan. The shaved ice place we found was in a sort of Japan tribute style, and the nice staff gave us free drinks of soymilk tea, yum.
During our trip everyone tried to speak Chinese to Kuniko, so she had a hard time of it. Occasionally they spoke Japanese – Japan is a very popular country in Taiwan. Mostly we tried English, but usually we started out with confusion as Kuniko had to explain to them they she didn’t understand whatever it was they were saying.
The weather in Taipei was pretty warm, quite humid, and just what you’d expect from a tropical country. We were sweating a lot, but since it was sweating in service to finding great food we didn’t really mind. A sprinkle of rain occurred every now and then but we managed to be inside when it happened.
We had a chance to hit Din Tai Fung, something we usually only get to do when traveling through Kuala Lumpur airport. We introduced Yoshi to the molten salted egg yolk buns – a Din Tai Fung must-eat dish.
Later we took a train to the Shilin Night Market, to try more and more varieties of foods. The underground food court that we like was closed for renovations, but we were able to eat well walking around the other parts of the market. Here we had an oyster omelette, hot lamb noodles (hot here meant temperature more than spice – unbelievably hot!), and oyster soup with ginger. At another place we managed to get a table and have stinky tofu – this time fried hard and served with a spicy sauce.
After the market we went back to our respective hotels – Yoshi’s was a little farther away from the station than ours. Our hotel was very Chinese – it had the clean yet anything but comfy vibe that we’ve seen elsewhere in China. Still it was spacious and was comfortable enough.
Our next day was a travel day to the southern city of Tainan. Before we organized our tickets we went out for a traditional Chinese breakfast – egg/scallion pancakes, some pork buns, and egg flour pancake, shared between us. We each had our own drink – mainly soy-based soup. I went with iced peanut soup and it was so good…
Travel that day was a little tricky because of the national holiday weekend – National Day for Taiwan. We had to stand for part of the journey on the Taiwan High Speed Train. This was our first time riding it and it was a little special for me since my company built the train and exported it to Taiwan. The bullet train was almost exactly the same as the one running in Japan, but still it was cool to try it out.
We have been to Taipei a few times but never outside of it, so the city of Tainan was interesting. The city had a slightly different vibe – sort of what I imagine Japan was like in the 1970s. It was not quite as developed as Taipei, but still a buzzing city with plenty of activity. We got around mainly on foot, only occasionally using an Uber/taxi.
We ate well here too – starting with some steamed rice rolled up in pandan leaves. We were smarter here and ordered only one to share so that we could try other foods, too. We also had a bowl of noodles that was kind of simple but still good – almost dry noodles with the texture of spaghetti. We were also able to order cold beers, and Kuniko had a tea that turned out to be quite sweet – it was hard to find non-sweet drinks that weren’t beer.
Next stop was another noodle place, this time specializing in Yi Mein noodles. We didn’t really know how to order so we chose things from a picture menu. Here we had some great stuff! The Yi Mein noodles had an interesting texture, sort of like a ribbon that was curled along the edge. There was also some kind of transparent potato noodles in a spicy broth with peanuts. We had pork wontons in spicy oil, and some wonton soup. In addition we had chunks of chilled pork in a sauce that had raw garlic chunks floating around. Oh, yeah!
Here we discovered that some restaurants had a minimum order amount per person – here it was 100 Taiwanese dollars. We didn’t realize it so the poor lady at the counter had to try to explain it to use. She wasn’t confident with English but she researched on her computer and got the point across. She even translated the word for pickles when she brought a cold plate of free pickled radish for us.
Around Tainan we did a little bit of sightseeing but not much. It was a food-focused trip. One place we did spend time to see was the Hayashi Department Store, filled with traditional and nostalgic items and gifts. It also had an old feel, like stepping into Japanese/Taiwan colonial history.
As we walked around Tainan we ran across festivals and big groups playing traditional music and pushing around mikoshi shrines. It seemed to be gumming up traffic but since we weren’t driving it didn’t affect us much. We avoided one big group by diving into a shaved ice place. Mango was out of season but we could try others – a mixed fruit ice that was excellent, and a green tea and azuki bean one that was just so-so.
Yoshi had wanted to see the sunset so we went out to Yuguang island to get to the beach. We took an Uber but due to all the traffic it took a long time for them to arrive. We got to the beach in time for the sunset, but unfortunately the clouds kind of hid it away. Yoshi seemed happy to be there, and it was interesting to see all the young people gathering at the beach – it was a social scene. I felt the water and it was quite warm, but the waves and surf looked pretty violent – not a good place for swimming.
We had trouble at this point because the location was so out of the way that we couldn’t get an Uber out of there. In the end we had to walk for about 30 minutes towards town before a taxi would consent to pick us up. It was good to walk around and we had plenty of time to crack jokes and pray for transportation. We passed a wedding place but decided not to crash it looking for help. Finally Uber came through and we caught a ride to another night market.
Night markets are sort of like the country fair in America, except it happens almost every night. We walked through stands of goods, games, etc until we got to the food area. In between the stands there were tables that had some connection to the stands – if you ordered from them then you could sit there. We had lots of good stuff here.
We had two(!) bowls of duck over noodles with salted bamboo shoots – one of the bowls was the price for sitting down at a table. Also we had some bifun noodles, three skewers of fried egg slices (one skewer also had sausage which was a nice breakfast touch). Also we had scallion dumplings, but the big hit was steamed dumplings filled with pork. They were a unique texture and shape, and they came with a big smear of garlic – so good. Not sure what they are called but they were memorable and delicious.
We were ready to grab another taxi back to our hotel, but Yoshi suggested a nice walk through town and I was really glad he did. It was much more interesting and scenic. I think in my mind I remembered that we had arrived by taxi so we should leave the same way, but it turned out to be way more fun to walk it. The weather was comfortable and cool by that time. I have lots of great photos from the walk back.
This time our hotel was a little boutique hotel hidden behind a furniture shop. When we were checking in I could meet their cute little dog who was totally friendly, and our room was not so big but much more comfortable. The only problem we had was that there was some staff/guest/family member on the same floor who was talking loudly on an outside balcony – their voice carried through the whole floor and her creepy cackling laughter or scream sometimes was disturbing (in every sense of the word).
On our last day we met up with Yoshi (whose hotel entrance was actually inside of a Family Mart convenience store) and tried to get some traditional beef soup. On our way to the restaurant (which turned out to be closed) we passed a shop that had a skinny old guy wearing a Japanese schoolgirl uniform with a miniskirt smoking a cigarette. We exchanged nods as we passed and Kuniko told me later that he almost caused a car accident from people slowing to see what the hell was going on with this dude.
Since we struck out on the beef soup we decided to head on the train back to the high speed rail station (a 20 minute ride on an old nostalgic-style train through the countryside). There we separated from Yoshi – he was going to move on to another town for a little more travel. We had some time before our return train, so we went into the next door outlet shopping center for a bite to eat.
There we struck gold – a Taiwanese conveyor belt restaurant. We ordered based on the English translation of our phone on the online menu, and the food was delivered by little trains that moved along an upper track. On the lower track appetizers rotated around. It was an interesting system that we haven’t seen outside of the sushi conveyor belt chains of Japan.
There was some good food, too. We had a spicy omelette in a red sauce that was fried up until puffy, some more boiled pork dumplings with ginger, steamed dumplings, and a splendid dish of truffle rice with red beef and konbu.
This restaurant took a long time for the food to come up (by robot train) and we were just starting to worry about missing our train. Luckily everything came pretty quickly together and we were fine. Finally when it was time to pay we couldn’t figure out how to cash out, and caused some minor trouble with the staff. I love this state of total confusion – even though it was probably stressful for the staff.
The return train trip was easier since we had reservations and comfortable seats, and I drank a leftover can of Taiwan beer as we went along. Kuniko was showed some good thinking and discovered that if we got off the train a little earlier we could save time getting to the airport, so that worked out great. Once again we were eating at the airport – sliced pork served with a heavenly garlic sauce, and a big bowl of mushroom porridge with fried garlic. Wow!
Our return flight to Japan was delayed enough that we scored some food coupons, and so it was more food near the gate – braised beef noodles, and a sautéed pork dish that was served in one big piece – impossible to eat without chopsticks. We were able to get a plastic knife from the staff, and then everything was OK.
Everywhere in Taiwan seems to be over-air conditioned, but nowhere more than the International Airport. We were lucky to be alive, even after wearing all our long pants and overshirts. We had to make a run to the coffee shop for hot beverages while we waited for our plane. What is the deal with the super high powered air conditioning in Taiwan? I’m sure the Japanese air conditioner companies are happy about it.
One weird thing was that as we sat down in our seats on the plane, we noticed that the three people sitting across the aisle were the same people from our flight over. What were the odds of that? Our delayed flight put us back into Japan after midnight, and we drove home through the rain and around the tight corners, pulling into our house around 2 am. It was a long day but worth it to sleep in our own bed again!
Thanks to traveling with Yoshi we could eat a lot of great foods, and it was hard to choose what we liked the best. I think it will be a while before we are traveling in Taiwan again – we want to hit some other Asian destinations in the near future – but this trip was just what we needed.
