Exploring Taipei #1

Tien Ho Temple

I slept like a baby from 2100 till 0600. It was light outside when I woke since Taiwan is to the east of its timezone. After some muesli and milk I headed out at 0730 to Tien Ho temple by foot near Ximending. The facade was actually part of a row of shophouses and the entrance opened up into a courtyard with a small but colourful temple. It wasn’t anything new to me so I moved on and continued walking another 15 minutes or so to Longshan Temple.

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Longshan Temple

Longshan was a bigger and standalone temple. There were plenty of people (mainly older women) chanting prayers from a book. It appeared to be in Hokkien/Taiwanese. Certainly, it was a good time to come early in the morning as there was plenty of atmosphere.

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From here I took the MRT to Sun Yat San Memorial Hall thinking there would be someting to see like its Chiang Kai Shek counterpart. But it was more a concert hall (plus perhaps other smaller rooms) of little interest to me.

I had had enough for now as it was getting rather hot and threw in the towel, opting to leave the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall for tomorrow. Besides I seem to be covering a lot of ground quickly.

When I got back to my part of town it wasn’t even 1030 yet. The shops were still closed and McDonald’s was still selling breakfast. I was hungry and got a cold toasted sandwich, tea and hashbrown from the golden arches before resting in the cool comfort of my room.

Shilin Night Market

In the late afternoon, I took the MRT to Shilin Night Market. The correct MRT station is actually Jiantan which is one before Shilin. There was a bit of a crowd there but it wasn’t bad. The most popular stall appeared to be the fried chicken steak (chi pai, which sounds quite rude in Taiwanese if you don’t hear it clearly) near the main road as it had a long queue.

The street leading away from the main road to the official market place was lined with food carts and other vendors. I opted for a baby octopus takoyaki before exploring as I was hungry. I didn’t go into the non-food areas too much and found the underground food court. There’s too much deep-fried food in the world of street food.

As I didn’t feel the need for much more food, I tried the stinky tofu. Yes, it is smelly as one gets a whiff of it every now and then while exploring the markets. But taste-wise, it tasted just like taukwa (firm tofu) that has been deep fried. It came with a little sauce and cabbage-and-carrot pickle.

I returned by MRT for an early night in since I had started quite early.