Sunday in Ban Qiao 板橋 - 15 Mar 09

After a very eventful Saturday, I headed out again on Sunday, this time to Ban Qiao 板橋 in Taipei county... many thanks to Justian and Yue Guang from YZLC for being my tour guides that day :)

Ban Qiao is the largest and most developed area in Taipei county, and is also where the County government is located... interestingly, the building is open to the public so we headed to the top floor (oops I don't remember which floor it is) to check out the view...

it's clearly quite a tall building for us to have such a superb, unobstructed view of the surroundingsfrom this next photo, I am sure you can roughly guess the ratio of scooters to cars in Taipei :)

After that, we headed for lunch and on the way we came across THIS!!
a store selling Singapore fried noodles, rice and Bak Kut Teh!! haha... we didn't eat there though, which was probably a good choice cos I did enjoy our lunch: hungarian beef noodles :)

Our post-lunch itinerary involved total immersion into chinese culture so we headed on to the Lin Family Mansion and Garden (林家花園) - chinese names always sound funny when translated to English, don't you think?... you can read more about the history of the place at http://www.tonyhuang39.com/tony0500/tony0500.html.. there are loads of photos there and in my Facebook album (link will be at the end of this post) so at this point, I shall just feature these 2 shots from the garden:


This guy was just one of the many people painting in the area.. do you see the resemblance between his painting and the real thing?

the environment there was really great and we ended up spending almost 2 hours there, simply because it was so relaxing and conducive for conversations... (p.s. from now till 31st May, entrance to the garden is free as long as you produce a receipt from any other shop in Taiwan)

So if you happen to drop by Ban Qiao, remember to visit the garden, and while you're there, ask for directions to a store selling cuttlefish soup... if you get to the market area, it's hard to miss because there's always a looooong queue... but well, if there's cheap and good food, the queue will be worth it :)

Carrot cake (HUGE!) for only NTD 15 and cuttlefish soup (overflowing with cuttlefish!) for only NTD 35!!!

So yes these were definitely the highlights of my trip to Ban Qiao 板橋 :)

For more photos, check http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=231685&id=576355703&l=b45c83980a

p.s. finally I have cleared my backlog of updates
p.p.s. I just realised that most of my trip updates feature food :)

Danshui Trip - 14 Mar 09

14 March 2009 was White Valentine's Day (mostly celebrated in Japan and Korea as far as I know) and I spent it with a big crowd of AIESECers at Dan Shui...
Dan Shui (淡水) is located north of Taipei and literally translated, means "fresh water"... it's famous for the Dan Shui river, which flows into the Taiwan Strait so naturally, one would expect lots of water, and boats like below :)

The trip was planned by some of the members and we started off with a "store treasure hunt". We were split into groups and each group was given 6 photos taken from stores in Dan Shui... so we had about 1.5 hours to explore the areas and locate the stores... it was quite fun and fulfilling, especially since we also took the chance to explore the food in the area...

This is my ah-gei 阿給, it's glass noodles packed inside tofu with some kind of sauce... isn't it creative? why have boring noodles outside of tofu when it can be inside?

This is me with my stick of potato chips... again, Taiwanese creativity with food... why bother having chips separate from each other and packed in a bag when you can "curve-slice" the potato, skewer it and roast it over fire? (I don't think there's such a word as "curve-slice" officially but it's the only word I can think of, considering the slices are cut such that they are linked together... like skinning an apple in a single slice)

Other tasty food I encountered: Dan Shui fish balls (with meat fillings!) and Iron eggs or 鐵蛋 (eggs which have been repeatedly stewed in a mix of spices and air dried)... that means I've pretty much eaten all the supposed famous food from Dan Shui... hooray for treasure hunts!!

so with a very full stomach, and an incomplete treasure hunt paper (we only managed to find 4 of the 6 stores), we gathered again with the other groups and headed out for part 2 of our Dan Shui adventure...

After a brief (but very windy and cold) boat ride across the river, we reached Ba Li (八里) island... yes there's a Bali in Taiwan too!! :)

It's a small township, and mostly visited by people looking to enjoy some nature and cycling... Here I am with Maxx, an intern from Thailand/New Zealand (he's Thai but has studied in NZ since he was 13) who is working in Kaohsiong but comes to Taipei some weekends just to sightsee and hang out with AIESECers here.

Ba Li is quite nice for cycling, since there are specially constructed tracks for cyclists and you get some really nice views along the way

for example, rows and rows of mangrove trees beside us (that wooden path is for pedestrians)
and a blend again between the city, factories, nature and open space...

So all in all, it was another great day spent with lots of cool people exploring another cool place in Taipei... and just to round it off, here's part of what I had for dinner :)

Mussels, prawn balls, Miso soup, sauteed squid, vegetables and (missing from the photo) diced chicken!!!

for the rest of the photos, check out http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=231682&id=576355703&l=2087f7cab4