Taipei, so yummy!

Yesterday Katelin and I went to the Taipei International Food Festival. Her Chinese tutor gave her the invitation, saying that they needed foreigners to eat some food. So we went, only knowing vaguely where to show up and not really what to expect of the whole thing! Turns out there was a tent set up on the sidewalk area around the 101 with about 100 seats inside. We were shown to our seats, while being videoed! I have never been filmed before, so I didn't really know what to do. We knew the show had started when a man in a white medical coat (one of the official judges) picked up a big red mallet and hit the large gong on stage. There were maybe 9 or 10 different chef stations set up around the perimeter, and the hostess of the whole production talked briefly with each one (the whole thing was being videod and shown on a big screen at the front, behind the stage.) Most of the chefs were from Taiwanese restaurants, but there were also some from Japan and Thailand. We’re guessing that why we were invited as foreigners (without having to pay anything!) is because it was Western day, although none of the food was particularly Western.
We were each given a slip of paper as well; Katelin and I figured out by reading that one line was for our name, but we had to ‘cheat’ and look at someone else’s to figure out what else we were supposed to write for the other one. At least it was easy compared to the 3 page survey we were given at the end, which we ended up getting help to fill out.
Then we got individually served some of every dish that was made – it was amazing food! We had linguine with egg yolk balls, grapefruit-sized potato balls, tuna rolls, shrimp with mango, salmon steaks, chicken asparagus rolls, spicy Thai vegetables, Japanese hot pot soup, chicken skewers, and fried fat lumps in a pancake. Strange as the last one sounds, when each audience member picked their favourite dish by placing a small silver spoon in front of the dish, the fat lumps won by a land slide!
We also got a show with our meal as a bartender spun flaming bottles while making cocktails on the front stage. Impressive!

Sunrise Hike

Katelin and I decided that we wanted to hike up Mt. Qixing (the highest peak -1120m- in Yangmingshan National Park) and watch the sunrise. So, we planned it all out and left our apartment early this morning at 2:30am, making the necessary 7-11 stop for coffee. Then we made the 30 minute scooter ride up to the park and found the trailhead. Things were still pitch black at this point so we were equipped with a headlamp and flashlight. The wind was blowing and the bamboo makes a pretty eerie sound when it rustles together and there’s no one else around, and to complete the scene, there was also a garbage can lid banging in the wind – eek! We set off and almost immediately encountered a massive toad the size of a large grapefruit in the path – both of us shrieked in surprise, but luckily those were the only animals we saw. (We were a bit concerned about seeing any of the numerous poisonous snakes that lurk in the vegetation here...)


We got about 2/3 of the way up and all the sudden we realized that we were in pea-soup fog, so we decided to hike back down so we wouldn’t get stuck up there and see if we could find another place to watch the sunrise. Once back at the trailhead, we drove just about 5 minutes and found a suitable place – we had a perfect view of the sunrise as we ate some fruit and drank milk tea on the side of the road. We were commenting on how pretty it was, and all of a sudden we realized we could also see the ocean! By then it was pretty light out and still only 5:15am, so we decided to make a short impromptu scooter trip. We drove up through the mountains to the northern coast, and made it about 3/4 of the way to the beach before we turned around because we were tired of being on the scooter. We found a very large cemetery with an accompanying crematorium/shrine/mausoleum thing – quite impressive!

So we arrived back at our apartment at 7:30...usually about the time I’m getting up for work during the week! I won’t be doing these sunrise hikes often, but it was really fun and quite pretty with all the colors and wispy clouds.