Today was very much like many of the previous days that we spent in Tokyo or Bangkok this year. We attempted to take it easy by following the original plan of eating and shopping.
Started out the morning going to Din Tai Fung which is a very popular Chinese chain restaurant in Asia and some parts of North America which started in Taiwan. We got like 5 different kinds of dumplings ranging from traditional pork soup dumplings to dark chocolate filled.
I let joanna get her shopping in after lunch so we could burn off some calories and find tasty things to snack on. There really was nothing interesting (at least I didn’t think so) about visiting 4 different eye glass stores, clothing stores, and make up stores. I got the idea of taking pictures while I wait either inside or outside of the store. Unfortunately it was later in the day and I only managed to get 2. Maybe this would be a good way for me to practice some new photography techniques. Also, I realized that my color settings on my camera were completely whacked out. Magenta was set super high so all my pictures for the past 6 months have had a tinge of pink in them. I forgot my portrait lens at the hostel and this morning my camera switched from taking RAW photos to Jpg which also was annoying. It was not a great picture taking day today.
We ate a lot of snacks here and there throughout the day. Check out the pictures on the footer of this page or go to my Instagram account to see where we ate and how much the dish was.
By 5pm we REALLY wanted to head back to the hostel and take a nap. Joanna was still on the hunt for a new pair of sunglasses and we planned to finish the evening by going to the Shilin night market. It didn’t realistically make sense for us to head back to the hostel for a few hours and risk not feeling like leaving again for the night so we toughed it out and headed north of where we were in the city.
I don’t want to sound cynical but this was basically like any other night market we went to in Thailand, just with less variety of food options. If I were to show you these two pictures at a glance, would you have easily been able to tell which one was taken in Thailand and which one in Taiwan? The signs are a dead giveaway of course.
I think we were at the market for 2 hours and we were done. The street felt like it was never ending but I was thankful that it was a Monday night which meant there were a lot less people pushing and shoving.
We did get a few tasty street food snacks like grilled beef chunks with white pepper and cheese, baked pork bao, and grilled trumpet mushrooms. They ranged from $1.50-$3 which was really reasonable.
This is our first full day in Taiwan so we’re still pretty jet lagged. The fact that we made it through a full day probably meant that the 5 cups of bubble tea and iced coffee had something to do with it. We could have taken the subway which would have cost less than $1, we said f-it and jumped in a cab which cost $10. It was past 10 and we saved over half an hour by taking a taxi. My fitbit says that we walked 19,942 steps or 8.89 miles today. Darn, just shy of 20,000 steps.
