Saturday, December 6, 2008

Taiwan: Take Two: Danshui and Shilin

After hitting the two main tourist attractions in Taipei, we headed up to the northernmost area of Taipei, Danshui, for sunset.A very cute riverside area where Mischko felt right at home, as seen below by his impromptu German jig with a guy playing the accordion in the background.

The Danshui markets were getting their fair share of shoppers.
I of course breezed by the pre-packaged goods and went immediately for the ice cream as tall as me. This picture was taken right after Ronan and I decided to have a light saber fight with our ice creams which resulted in his going directly through the water grate.
Upon seeing his over dramatic look of disappointment, the ice cream lady rushed over with another one for the big baby. We are three very happy people.
Taiwan's 'unofficial snackfood' is stinky tofu. Friends from Taiwan insisted I try it while there and I'm always one to take advice and accept a challenge. I LOVE tofu in Japan, so it didn't really seem like such a challenge to me. When we finally got to Taipei's most well known night market, Shilin, it was only minutes before the smell led us to the real deal. For a while, I thought I might be back in WI thanks to the overwhelming stench of cow manure... turns out that was just the stinky tofu. Okay, okay, I thought - so it smells? It's gotta taste alright, right?
Wrong! Maybe, just maybe, if I'd have overcome the reflex gagging induced by this terrible invention of a food and endured eating the entire thing, I could have possibly tasted something that vaguely resembled food and not what I'd expect actual cow dung to taste like... but, I wasn't going to attempt to figure it out.
Fresh fruit was the PERFECT chaser.

Taking it all in at Shilin night market. Brooke reverted to four years old and so Mischko lovingly got her a blow up giraffe;)
Ronan attempting to smooth talk his way into getting this 3 piece suit for 40 bones. Clothes are cheap in Taiwan, but not THAT cheap. Plus, Ronan's not really that good of a smooth talker, despite personal claims.

A pan of the Night Market.

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