day15: din tai fung, guang nan, bulk earrings, ktv

saturday, 4/12/08:

again a late start to the day! i called my aunt and we decided to meet at the sogo at the zhongxiao fuxing mrt stop. when i got there, i wait and waited for about 15 minutes, which wasn't that long...but then my aunt called and was like, omg there are 2 sogos! when exiting the zhongxiao fuxing mrt stop, if you take one exit, you go into a sogo, if you take a different exit, you go into another completely separate sogo! anyway, then my aunt and i found each other. then we walked a small ways and she took me to din tai fung, a restaurant known for its xiaolongbao, which has very thin skin but does not rip (apparently a huge feat). the restaurant was packed and there was a line waiting outside (it's a pretty famous restaurant i think), but we used the wait time to decide what to order. here's what we ate (keep in mind that it's just my aunt and i): 10 xiaolongbao (picture), 10 steamed vegetable dumplings, 1 vegetable baozi, a plate of wontons, 1 order of drunken chicken, 1 black pepper pork steak, 1 taro baozi. the food was GOOOD. my favorite was the vegetable steamed dumplings. the wontons, which were not in a soup, were actually very good. i had never had them like that before! i thought the xiaolongbao were pretty good, but i actually like thicker skinned xiaolongbao (like what i had in hualien), so it was hard to appreciate the effort they put in to make the skins so thin. when ordering, my aunt keeps being like, omg should we order more, omg pick more stuff. so i'm thinking she's got a big appetite. then we are already eating and she keeps being like, omg do you want to order more? so i'm eating eating and it's like so much food, and she's like, eat more! i'm like, omg help me! she's like, i can't eat a lot because my doctor says i have a little diabetes. O_O well it was really tasty. actually the best was the ginger that they kept on serving, which was sliced into super thin slivers. you eat the xiaolongbao by dipping it in black vinegar and ginger. besides the food, ding tai fung is really very crowded, you sit pretty close to the next table. another thing that contributes to the crowded atmosphere is that the servers are checking on you every 5 minutes, bringing you ginger, or taking away empty steamers and plates. since the place is so crowded, it is really cool that there is a big pouch next to your table where you can put your purses, and then cover it with a cloth. finally, i thought the bathroom experience was pretty unique at ding tai fung. the toilet has an armrest kind of thing on the right with a lot of buttons knobs...i wasn't really sure, except that it appears there is some butt washing functions. the flushing was not on the armrest, but in a normal spot on the toilet (thank god). then after i noticed another thing that looked like a soap dispenser, but it was a dispenser for toilet seat cleaner!

anyway, after going to the bathroom, my aunt and i left ding tai fung to shop a bit on the streets outside of sogo. this area had okay street shopping, but it's overpriced because this is a more expensive area. but then you have a better chance of coming across better stuff, although i thought the gong guan area shopping was still better.

at around 3:30pm, i said goodbye to my aunt and met up with my cousin at taipei train station mrt to accomplish goal (2) from the day before: go to the area near taipei train station for some shopping. again, the goals for this shopping trip were 1) stationary and 2) bulk earrings. but, before starting our goals, we saw a small crowd outside the station, and checked out what was all the fuss. at the time i had no idea who this random guy was that everyone was watching, but my cousin said he was pretty famous, so i took pictures of him. turns out...he is jordan chan, a famous singer from hong kong who was the original singer for wo ai de ren, a song which yoga lin sang so well on one million star!!

anyway, last time after coming home from guang nan, my cousin explained to me the usefulness of crayons! she uses them as highlighters in her textbook! it works great because they don't bleed, you can definitely see through it, and also come in lots of colors!! so this trip back to guang nan (now with my other cousin) was to purchase some crayons! you might wonder why i would make a trip just to buy crayons, but i can only say that taiwan crayons are way better than american crayons!! when we got to guang nan, i first went to the notebook section and discovered that, in the week i was gone, guang nan had put out a whole host of new little notebooks! so i picked out 4 more little notebooks that had nice plastic covers, before going to the pen section to pick out a crayon of each color! again guang nan was incredibly crowded, but since i had experience and knew exactly what i wanted, the trip was relatively quick. plus, we were in a huge hurry! next stop was the bulk earring place again. last time i had only shopped in one store, and this time, basically we only had time to shop in two stores. the main mission was to buy some earring hooks so that i could change the hooks on my earrings if i had a pair that had bad hooks. more earrings and hooks purchased, my cousin and i rushed back to shilin for the main event of the day!

my two girl cousins (about my age), their bfs, a boy cousin (middle school), and i had a 4 hour session at holiday ktv! initially i had asked them to take me to ktv because i wanted to experience it, but then after, i realized that, going to ktv is about the most fun one can have! the music blasting and the microphone in your hands, singing your heart out...that has to be the reason for living! the place is a lot like a hotel, and you get a room, with a number like 487 on the door. inside are couches and a big tv and the ktv equipment including 2 mics. there is a little touch screen used for picking songs. the room is dark and the music is loud! also, each room has a private bathroom (which later i found out was really important since there is lots of drinking). all ktv also comes with a buffet, which, isn't that great, but important since you have to drink at ktv! also ktv is fun with a large group, but that means you aren't constantly singing, so eating is a good alternate pastime, and a good way to replenish energy between songs. since we sang all chinese songs (you can pick english songs, but then where is the fun?), my main goal was to get at least enough words to make the songs recognizable. it was fortunate that i had been listening to much taiwan music in the past year, but still not enough. i still couldn't get most of the words for most songs, even ones that i listen to regularly. the words just flash by so fast, and i just don't recognize enough chinese characters. i realized that going to ktv is a game. if you can sing popular songs, well that's good. but, the winner is the one who can sing songs no one else knows! in that respect, i was actually doing well! because of my compulsive idol drama watching, i was listening to a lot of music that probably is mainly listened to by preteen kids in taiwan. my cousins were laughing at me because i like rainie yang and cyndi wang's super cutsie songs! (in my defense, i also really like bands like 1976 and tizzy bac.) one song i sang that no one seemed to know was rainie's jie muo qiao ke li. the last song i sang was fahrenheit's meet on february 30th. my girl cousins and their bfs (all in their 20's like me!) were like, omg we have no idea how this even goes! so i was the only one singing (trying), but then my middle school boy cousin pipes up and is like, o i know this one! they all laughed! ha! in any case, they all told me that people practice before they go to ktv and that i should have done my homework! although i was leaving taiwan soon, i begged them to go with me again! it was just too much fun and 4 hours was way not enough!

between the 6 of us, we each payed 500NT (~$17) for 4 hours, the buffet is included but the beer was extra, and the 500NT per person included the beer we ordered. since it was saturday night, it was a relatively expensive time period, but we had the middle school cousin's student id and some other member card or something from one of my cousins' bf. all in all, it came out to be cheaper than going to a movie, considering it's twice as along, there is a buffet, and beer. and WAY MORE FUN than a movie!

WORTH SEEING: ktv!!!

WORTH EATING: ding tai fung steamed vegetable dumplings

full set of pictures at picasa!