My first Day in Taiwan

Imagine the amount of calories consummed during this trip and it would be enough to sustain me for a month without eating.

Truly and surely, Jolin Tsai did a really good tourism advertisment which showcased the finest of Taiwan and so we headed to the all so popular Shilin Street which is more like a hawker centre filled with stalls the size of 2 office tables.

Seriously, the stalls are basically carts with their stall names brightened up my neon lights.

Just like any our typical Singaporeans, good food = Long queue and queue i did for this famous chicken cutlet stall.

Taiwan has a speciality dish that is close to every Singaporean heart. I mean who can resist succulent, fresh juicy oysters fried in an egg and flour batter right? But their version is slightly different from Singapore's as the orh luak contains more flour batter as compared to ours and threre's is the soft, chewy version while the Singapore one is crispy.

Floury orh luak, not the best though

We all know about the bubble tea craze that exploded in Singapore a few years back yeah? Bubble tea was created in Taiwan and the tour guide said now Taiwan has a new kid on the block which is this -- Bittergourd juice with honey. I tasted it and it kinda has 2 dimensions to it tase, when the juice enters your mouth, it taste well, tasteless then before it enters the throat there is the kick of bitterness and lastly followed by a hint of sweetness. Hmmm, talking about a happy ending huh.

Bittergourd juice with honey:



Walking around Shilin evokes the feeling of being packed in a sardine can and having to endure the stink of smelly tofu and Taiwan is famous for there fatty sausages! It kinda scared me to see the long, red meat embedded with speck of white fat in intestine skins hanging on the metal rails on the stalls. Taiwanese people seem to be in love with the internal parts of animals as can be seen by the large display of lungs, pig' blood, etc in front of the stall.

Well, that's the food part for shilin and Mum and me ventured into the clothing side which is a long stretch of road with roadside stalls selling a wide range of stuff. It was a wrong move to enter that zone as we we stuck in the human jam for 1 hour and mum was so fed up that she hailed a taxi and headed for the hotel the minute we squeezed our way back onto the main road.

HA, what a day. So packed that i couldnt whip out my camera to photgraph the scene!