We chose to leave souvenir shopping to today so we’d have the best ideas on what to bring home for people. One of Taiwan’s specialties is pineapple cakes. You can find them everywhere but they all range on quality and price. I went online and looked up a few bakeries that actually make them fresh and are highly rated. I settled on SunnyHills bakery which was totally on the other side of the city from where we’re staying. People said online that the cakes are slightly tart instead of overly sweet and that the bakery only uses fresh pineapple whereas others try to cut the filling with winter melon hoping people won’t be able to tell the difference.
It took about 45 min to get to the bakery and it was in the middle of a residential area. They assume all visitors are here to buy one of their cakes so they sit you down in the lobby with a free cake and a cup of oolong tea. It was a very nice experience and the cake was really good. The pastry was firm but kind of sandy when you bite into it. The filling was sweet, slightly tart, and very flavorful. I couldn’t help but ask for a second one to “sample” for later. Joanna and I bought a few boxes to bring home and they came in really cute tote bags. I would definitely recommend people to make the trek out there to try their cakes and tea.
Another item on our final day checklist was to go to the hot springs in the Beitou district of Taipei. I came here my first time and enjoyed the experience. While not as luxurious as the Japanese hot springs that we went to earlier this year, I thought a soak in a hot spring before our flight out the next day would be nice. I made the mistake of walking to the public hot spring from the Beitou subway stop instead of the Xin Beitou stop so we had to walk an extra 15 min slightly uphill.
The public hot spring has specific time windows that you can come visit which are:
05:30-07:30
08:00-10:00
10:30-13:00
13:30-16:00
16:30-19:00
19:30-22:00
I thought we timed it well and arrived at 1:40. There’s a touch screen machine that you buy your entry ticket for $1.30. When we walked in, the woman said that my plaid white swimsuit wouldn’t work and that I had to buy one before I could get in. For some reason Joanna’s bikini was fine. I paid $7.50 for one after eyeballing my size and couldn’t help but feel ripped off. We walked in and the place was packed.
Pictures aren’t allowed but I was able to sneak a quick one that ended up a little bit blurry for illustration purposes.
Joanna and I just stood there watching all these old Chinese people cram into the hot spring pools. I was kind of disappointed but I wasn’t going to risk getting Legionnaires’ disease with what looked like 100 people crammed into warm water. At least in Japan it’s required to fully shower and wash your hair before entering the hot spring AND being naked is mandatory so no rip off swimsuits.
Speaking of hot springs, one of the guys that we met at the hot springs in Taroko Gorge was hanging out in Taipei and was interested in spending the night with Joanna and me. Considering we’ve had really enjoyable times with joining up with random people we invited him to dinner and whatever else we ran into. Josue is from Chicago and is currently traveling for an undetermined length of time (so jealous). He was telling us how he was in Puerto Rico during the hurricane and volunteered with the Red Cross for a few weeks providing disaster relief to the people down there.
I think at this point we checked off all of the things we wanted to eat: traditional Taiwanese breakfast, beef noodle soup, din tai fung, sheng jian bao, stinky tofu, bubble tea times infinity, etc. We found a highly rated ramen shop near the hostel and grabbed dinner there. I kind of missed the huge number of arcades that acted as time killers in Japan, there was a moderately sized arcade a few blocks down.
The three of us spent a lot of money trying to win a stuffed cat with a mustache in one of the crane games to no avail.
Similar to how we enjoy food food, Josue really enjoys trying out cocktail bars and fancy drinks. He threw out three places that we could check out. What started out as 3 options became a list of bars we needed to have visited by the end of the night. All the nice pictures taken were by Josue, photo credit goes to him.
We started out at Nox whiskey bar. I tried out a Taiwanese whiskey brand called Omar that was produced in a blabla oak barrel blabla [insert pretentious description about how fancy their distilling process is]. The service was really nice and they suggested we try some of their recommended snacks. The waiter read off their entire chalkboard menu for us in English. We went with the beef…something (it was too loud) and pork fries. What came out was a beef quesadilla with jalapenos and cheese and the “pork fries” were overcooked fried pieces of pork belly served on top of Doritos garnished with cilantro and red chilies. One was a pleasant surprise, the other was just…a surprise.
This was our cue to move onto the next place, Brown Sugar which was a jazz club and bar as described on their google profile.
We jumped in another cab and arrived at an office building across the street from Taipei 101 and funnily enough, next to Hai Di Lao, the place we had hot pot on our first night.
We walked in and it was almost dead with a group of European business people in the corner sloppily singing Happy Birthday in several languages at once. The “jazz band” was lead by a very enthusiastic Chinese guy with blonde highlights and a generously unbuttoned shirt who opened with Careless Whisper in a Chinese accent. I actually prefer his version now over the original one.
While we were being serenaded by the band a sloppily drunk lady and her friend started dancing in front of us, rubbing her butt and just being weird. She began talking to us and told us like 4 times that she’s Taiwanese but lives in Switzerland and said 3 times that her and her BEST FRIEND have been friends since 2005. She called Joanna and me her babies and that her friend is very single. She bought us shots and then took Josue’s camera and insisted on taking pictures of us then she grabbed his junk.
This was the cue to move onto to the next bar, also it was 1:30am. We walked to Alchemy which had some cool Harry Potter and other fantasy themed drinks.
Josue’s friend Matt was at 1001 nights, an Arabian themed night club which is where we headed to at 3am. I don’t do night clubs, let alone night clubs at 3am when I have a flight to catch the next day but we were having a good time and figured why not. For those who have been to a nightclub before, this was like any other nightclub, flashing lights, loud deafening repetitive music, drunk people everywhere. Long story short, we acted like we belonged at a VIP table until 5:30am and got back to the hostel at 6.
I’m absolutely exhausted since I woke up randomly at 4:30 am yesterday and have been going for 26 hours. We’re flying back home today 🙁
