You can see pictures from our trip here.
We’re back from our long weekend in Taipei, Taiwan. It turned out to be a really good trip, thanks to Mamiko’s expertise and experience in choosing where to go and what to eat. It was our first time in Taipei, but she has been there many, many times, and took us down alleys in search of the best foods to try. I think we wouldn’t have even come close to finding anything like this if we were on our own.
This was also our first time using Peach airlines, a budget airline that operates out of Japan. It was very cheap to fly to Taiwan – even cheaper than flying inside of Japan. The only trick was getting to the airport for our early flight. We ended up oversleeping a bit and we nearly missed the ferry to take us from Kobe airport to Kansai airport. Once we got to Kansai it was an easy bus ride to the second terminal dedicated to Peach airlines, and then we were good to go. We met up with Yoshi, Mamiko and Akira there, and caught the flight without any trouble.
Taiwan was warm, comfortable, clean and cheap. Our hotel was in the city center near the main train station of Taipei, about forty minutes from the airport by bus. Our room was tiny, but we didn’t spend much time in there. Mainly we were out walking the streets, taking the trains, and eating so many different kinds of foods.
The first day we spent walking around in town getting our bearings. We ate lots of steamed dumplings from food stands on the street. They were served very hot, and you had to be careful not to be scalded by juice from the meat inside while you ate them. The shopkeepers were friendly, and most spoke English or Japanese so communication was not a problem.
Mamiko led us down a narrow alley lined with food stands and restaurants. It was completely off the tourist radar, but Mamiko had discovered it while scanning Taiwanese Twitter. We pulled up some stools and shared a table with a older local couple, and then ate huge bowls of garlic noodles with soup. The amount of garlic we were dealing with was staggering, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the trip.
We weren’t eating only savory foods – we also supplemented our meals with shaved ice topped with beans and tapioca, and now and then we had other Taiwanese sweets that were predominantly fried.
On the first day we also took a long train trip to the end of the metro line. There was kind of a beach resort town there, lined with restaurants and shops. It reminded my of Coney Island, with games and amusements combined with food and lots of young people. We tried a tea concoction that was topped with a light cheese cream – it looked like a beer but tasted completely unlike anything I’ve had before.
As we sat outside on a breezy overlook of the ocean we could see a storm coming in, and before long there was lightning, thunder, and sporadic bursts of torrential rain. The temperature was still warm and comfortable, but
we had to whip out the umbrellas and make our way slowly back to the train station while dodging heavy rain.
Once we made it back into town it was still raining hard, and it was tricky to try find our way to the local night market. We moved from shelter to shelter to avoid most of the rainfall, but in the end everyone was getting a little wet, which made it an even better adventure.
For dinner we went to an underground food court that was just a collection of temporary stands and tables serving many different kinds of local cuisine. After one lap around the establishment we ended up choosing a couple of different restaurants ordering semi-randomly from the menus. It was exciting to crowd around a tiny table sharing hot food and drinking beers with hundreds of people crammed into the tables around us. This kind of experience is one that you only seem to get when traveling in Asia, and it is a great vibe. Yoshi, Mamiko and Akira are a good group to crowd around a tiny table – they are constantly making jokes they really know how to enjoy the moment.
We ate at several stands that night, including another round of shaved ice, and then finally headed back to our hotel for some sleep. It was an action packed first day.
