vkeong loves good food, travel and photography!
Posts tagged Taiwan
Yakisoba-pan (Japanese Fried Noodle Bun) @ Feng Jia Night Market
Oct 28th
It’s amazing how food ideas are derived sometimes – it might be a sudden inspiration, an experiment with different ingredients, a conversation among friends, or even from a comic! Japan’s culture has a huge influence on Taiwan, and food is one of it. A popular Japan manga (日式面包王) about the story of boy baking his way becoming the King of Bakery had readers actually replicating one of the sandwich featured in it.
Thus, Yakisoba-pan (炒面面包, Japanese Fried Noodle Bun) was born and proved to be a huge hit especially among the teenagers who are always looking out for new and interesting street food.
I am pretty sure that this noodle sandwich is no where to be found in Malaysia, as the idea of eating noodle in a bun alone is weird enough to drive any of us away lol.
But not for Taiwanese, they are exceptionally open to new food and drinks, which is why their night market always have something new to try. Ever wondered why their TV Shows on food seems to be never-ending? Click here to continue reading >
vkeong’s Taiwan Trip Day 3 Part 1 – Yehliu Geopark & Ya Rou Bian
Aug 27th
On our third day to Taiwan, we decided to venture out of Taipei to some other tourist attractions like Yehliu and Jioufen. The package we bought to tour Yehliu and Jioufen cost NT$1000 and NT$1100 respectively. Both packages were from the same company and they included hotel pickup by van, entrance tickets and tour guide.
Well the tour guide was actually the driver himself too lol, it was basically an one-man show. After we came back from the trip only we realized there were companies offering cheaper (by NT$300 to NT$400) packages for the same tour. The thing was, it was only advertised on brochures. So if you don’t get hold of it, you wouldn’t know. If I remembered correctly we got the brochures from one of the hotels we were scouting to stay.
On the way to Yehliu we made a brief tour of Keelung town, just to know how it looked like and all. Not getting to stay at places at your own pleasure is one of the worst thing about taking tour packages, sigh.
For your information Keelung is actually a port city situated in Taiwan’s northeastern part. It is also Taiwan’s second largest seaport after Kaohsiung. Chung Cheng Park is one of the attractions here, located at Keelung’s east side.
This huge bell is said to bring good luck to whoever strikes it.
Sausage. It is serious business in Taiwan
Jul 23rd
This is Fengjia aka Feng Chia night market at Taichung, a night market made popular by the many food/drink stands and Feng Chia University.
If you look carefully at the center of the photo you will find the university’s monument. Students here are a lucky bunch to have a big night market at their university’s doorstep easily reachable on foot. Because the night market is frequented by so many people from students to visitors and tourists, competition is fierce. Already famous and established food stalls are facing a problem. Not only their recipes are being copied, their authenticity is being challenged as well.
An example would be these two stalls selling 大腸包小腸 – ‘big sausage wrap small sausage’. They are located directly opposite each other along the main entrance to the night market. The stall on the left is called 官芝霖 (Guan Zhi Lin) and the right one is 百膳工房 (Bai Shan Gong Fang).
Guan Zhi Lin (the good guy) claims itself to be the originator of the famous sausage snack and they used to setup their stall across the road, for what reasons I don’t know. After moving to the current location, a peer took over the old spot and started to claim themselves as the founders/originators instead. You should know by now the peer is none other than Bai Shan (the bad guy, supposingly). Click here to continue reading >
vkeong’s Taiwan Trip Day 2 – CKS Memorial Hall, Longshan Temple & Taipei 101
Jul 5th
Continued from Day 1 of my Taiwan trip. We decided to skip the free breakfast provided by our hostel because I have made it a point to try the Taiwanese traditional breakfast.
I guess because it’s a different culture, most Taiwanese do not have their breakfast in the food shops. Instead, they take away the prepacked sandwiches and pan fried pancakes. That would explain why the shops in Taiwan are so small compared to our local kopitiam. This is just my personal observation so please do not take it as a fact.
Lucky for us there were rows of food shops within walking distance to our hostel. But we still walked around looking for shops that sell soy bean milk, especially Yong He (永和豆浆) Actually it was pretty stupid of us to do that since almost all food shops sell soya bean milk, just that they don’t display it on their signboards.
Unable to find any Yong He Soya Bean Milk, we just settled down for the shop which looked the busiest. Just for your information we did manage to try Yong He on the fourth day, it was near Shilin MRT station.
We had a turkey ham sandwich (not shown) and Scallion Pancake (葱油饼, or was it 葱抓饼 I can’t remember lol）, two cups of soy milk for NT$80. I think you have probably guessed it, the Scallion Pancake not only looks like a roti canai, in fact it tasted quite similar too. Quite recommended.
After that we took a MRT ride to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall (國立中正紀念堂), NT$20 from Taipei Main Station. Do expect some walking before you reach the place.
Shown here is the Ceremonial Gateway (自由广场) at the entrance to the memorial. You won’t walk through it if you are here via MRT though. Entrance is free.
The memorial is surrounded by a park and is flanked by the National Theater and National Concert Hall on the south. This is the National Concert Hall. Thanks to the hot and humid (hazy like) + drizzling + overcast weather all the photos appeared dull. At that time our mood was quite depressed because the miserable weather affected us a lot.
The National Theater Hall.
I don’t know whether you know it or not but I am gonna say it anyway just for the sake of increasing this post’s word count lol. This memorial was built to commemorate Chiang Kei-Shek (obviously), former President of the Republic of China. Click here to continue reading >
