day8: bali, danshui

saturday, 4/5/2008:

saturday was my second seriously sunny day since i had been in taiwan (the first being when i got burned in hualien). after the very patchy experience in hualien, i spent a long time and applied sunscreen REALLY well and thoroughly. then, my cousin and her bf took me to bali. last time i was in taiwan, i had gone to bali on my own, saw this egg on the grass in the park, took a picture, but then lost my pictures from the trip. i had been thinking about that egg and curious about why it's there ever since. (i still don't know anything about it.) luckily, this time, we easily found the egg again (picture). the bali and danshui area is also really good for biking, and i saw lots of bike rentals, but my cousin and her bf didn't seem to be interested. my next trip to taiwan i am definitely going to spend a day biking in bali/danshui (and drink lots of water!). after the bali mission was accomplished, we took a ferry back across the river to danshui. and now began my personal one day tour of danshui, at least half of which, was a food tour!!

first stop was a ma's plum tea, taiwan's most famous plum tea. it was pretty refreshing on a hot day, and pretty good as far as plum teas go. next stop was danshui's famous fishball soup. danshui is famous for its fishballs. we each had a bowl of fishball+wonton soup and a meatbun. first i was eating my fishballs and i was like, "AHH!", and quickly grabbed my camera! and my cousin and her bf were laughing at me. all the fishballs i have ever eaten are just solid fishballs, but these fishballs had a ground pork filling! i bit into my first fishball and was SO SURPRISED! anyway, i usually don't like fishballs, but these were pretty good, and the soup was pretty good, the wontons were average. next i started eating my meatbun, which was pretty average, until my cousin explained that the meatbun is supposed to be eaten with the special red sauce (seriously that is the name of the sauce). generally i don't like sauces, and i almost always try things without their sauce first, but i tried the red sauce and it was SO GOOD, kind of sweet and ever so slightly spicy.

next mission on our tour of danshui was to the "niu dan" (literally: twist egg) store. my cousin kept talking about it before so i just had to go! the store is filled with lots of machines, which you can put in 50NT (~$1.50), and then twist the knob, and out pops a plastic egg that has some cute figure inside! each machine has a theme, and about 6 different possibilities that can come out with the egg. i wanted to get a mini shaved ice figure that can actually shave a tiny ice cube, but that machine was no longer at the store! instead, i finally decided to twist the machine that was dispensing figures of mini niu dan machines...apparently the little figure will actually work too, it comes with lots of little eggs, i have yet to put mine together! then on my way out of the store, i saw another machine that was dispensing cute nintendo ds styluses, so i twisted one for my brother.

next we were on our way to fort san domingo. on the way we passed an old, western style church, which of course everyone who passed by wanted to take pictures with. then we went to the bathroom at a phone company (or something?)'s building. in taiwan, there are many toilets with the two function flush, like shauna had blogged about previously. they come in all different kinds (buttons and levers), but all the ones i have seen were well labeled. this one was kind of like a normal lever flusher, but there were two levers. the smaller flush (for after peeing) was the bigger lever, since it's used more frequently, but also labeled with the character "small", which in chinese can also mean peeing. the bigger flush (for after pooing) was the smaller lever, and also labeled with the character "big". outside the building, was the mascot for the phone company, which was pretty cute!

on the way to fort san domingo, we also passed streets by the danshui river that i think were in jay chou's secret (which we saw the night before). my cousin and her bf said that the big tree that almost touches the water was in the movie. (they are slightly obsessed with this movie.)

fort san domingo, a fort that has been occupied by the spanish, dutch, and british, was not the most exciting of stops on my tour of taiwan. it's basically looking at old western style buildings and rooms, which is not wildly fascinating for me. i think i would have liked to go there alone, though, so that i could read all the placards and learn some history. instead, we basically walked through and looked at / took pictures of everything. i thought it was ironic that i took pictures with some giant dutch clogs, because i had originally planned on going to the netherlands to visit shauna this spring. when leaving the place, we walked through a nice, well-groomed path, and noticed some cute tiny flowers. they reminded me of the lego flowers i used to have when i was younger. somehow, the three of us (each with our own cameras) became obsessed with taking giant pictures of these flowers, and this is where i realized/discovered the macro function on my camera! (okay, i'm not the most experienced photographer.)

after fort san domingo, we walked through aletheia university, which my cousin and her bf said was also part of the filming location of the movie secret. the campus is large, so we couldn't really make out what was in the movie, but it's a nice campus to walk through. what i thought was strange was that, within the college's campus, there were also elementary and middle schools. is there no drunken streaking on this college campus? the campus was more like a park (at least the section we were in) and there were a lot of families with kids there, and a lot of pigeons. these kids were feeding the pigeons, and i finally made good use of the 10x optical zoom on my camera (mine is black, i feel that is important to note) to sneak pictures of the feeding, without scaring away the pigeons (or letting the kids know i was spying). i made a good choice with the camera! the zoom is great and the image stabilization definitely works well!

and then my cousin and her bf took me to eat a gei, of course at the best shop for it. i had never even heard of a gei before! but it was soooo goooood! it is basically a big fried tofu, with cellophane noodles inside, and then the tofu is sealed shut with fish paste. on top is a special red sauce, i couldn't tell if it was the same sauce, probably not, but similar, less sweet, slightly more spicy.

at this point i was passed off to my other cousin, who had just finished taking an exam for getting into a masters program. she and her bf met up with us. they hadn't eaten all day, so now begins our food tour of danshui old street: a whirlwind of eating! first of all, danshui is famous for it's very tall and cheap ice cream, that is not necessarily good, just cheap (well it wasn't too bad). they come in pretty tall for 10NT (~30cents) or REALLY tall for 20NT (~60cents). it's difficult to finish the REALLY tall one, but i wanted to take a picture of it!!! so i got the mango and taro twist REALLY tall cone and my cousin broke off the top part and helped me eat it ;) next we ate grilled stinky tofu...OMG SURPRISINGLY SO TASTY!!! then we had some seafood sausages. and then candied and roasted taro, sweet potato, and some REALLY purple potato-y thing that was a taro crossed with a sweet potato (literally). then we had quail eggs on a stick, again really tasty. the quail egg vendor has this (basically a) frying pan that has all these impressions in it, basically just big enough to crack in a quail egg. that fries a while, then gets turned, and the result looks like a meatball, but tastes like a bite sized fried egg. the quail egg vendor strings 5 on a stick and sells them for about 15NT (~50cents). i also tried part of my cousin's corn dog, surprisingly, REALLY tasty, but i guess i've never really had a state fair corn dog in the states, only the gross ones you microwave or bake from frozen at home. and we had the famous danshui shrimp rolls. they were okay, nothing special. then we had these fried shrimp balls, what a waste of stomach space. then the eating was finally over.

my cousin and her bf went home on his motorcycle, but i stuck around danshui and walked the old street toward the mrt station. while the day was hot, it was getting to be quite breezy at night and by the danshui river. there was an occasional singer trying to perform. i enjoyed walking by the river, feeling the breeze, and slowly trying to digest. there was also a woman playing the guzheng, a traditional chinese string instrument. i watched a while and then rode the mrt back to shilin.

WORTH SEEING: danshui

WORTH EATING: fishball soup, special red sauce, a gei, grilled stinky tofu, quail eggs on a stick

full set of pictures at picasa!