And I made it to Week 3...

My second weekend in Taipei was similar to the first, sadly more bad rainy weather around, which has not been the most inspired site seeing weather. I spent Saturday mainly doing errands in the hope things would improve on Sunday, sadly that was not to be the case. As such most adventures again were centred around the shopping district close by as there are plenty of covered walkways ... Unfortunately an outcome of spending too much around very cool shopping malls is well shopping - let's call it a birthday present... I even found a camper shop!Although the disadvantage of having a big western foot most of the stores don't carry my size, oh well that should save me some money!

One of the things that I have discovered the beautiful nature of the Taiwanese people, on my adventures I stumbled across some university students giving free hugs, yep we have all heard of it but these guys were for real. It was really cute to see the little old ladies coming up and getting their hugs from students and yes they gave me one too! Being an obvious visitor to the city I get all the special treatment!

On Monday night I dragged Untung off to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and margaritas, it was his first experience of both... I had fairly low expectations after having some very ordinary Mexican in Vienna earlier in the year, but the fajita's were ok and well the margarita rocked, we are planning to back again for another serve !

The week at work was well, pretty big with a few large meetings in the back part of the week which predictably lead to some pretty long hours - who would of thunk I was capable of such things! However on Friday we had some meetings with some key subcontractors in central Taiwan, which meant our first experience of Taiwanese high speed railway. These trains don't like as impressive, if you were thinking futuristic, space age machines like me then you are going to be a little disappointed, however they are clean, tidy, efficient, fast and quiet, travelling at about 340km/hr. It was lovely to get out of Taipei and see a little of the country side and the co-packers was always interesting (everyone knows how much I like to see a new factory).

On Friday night when we returned to the office one of the girls - Claire had decided that we should have our first trip to the night markets, so Untung Claire andjumped on the MRT and headed to Shinlin, the most famous and largest of Taipei's night markets. Night markets are an institution here and it s where the locals come to eat dinner and catch up with friends. So under careful guidance we did what the locals do and grabbed some food. Starting with some toffied sweet potatoes (roasted sweet potatoes, then dipped in a toffee syrup and eaten with a stick - like all good fast food apparently.) Then it was fried chicken a better something like a piece of Crispy skin KFC, except it looks like a really large schnitzel, and is actually half a flattened, crumbed chicken, richly doused in chilli powder. Next on the list was an oyster omelette, we were warming up for the famous stinky tofu. When mentioning Taiwanese cuisine it is the first thing that is listed by people and guide books alike. When walking through the markets you see vats or cauldrons frying this fermented tofu, the smell is fairly recognisable, if you have ever made toffee or a sweet chilli dipping sauce and caught yourself with a waft of hot vinegar, that sharply hits the bits into the back of your nose and throat you will know exactly what I am talking about. Any way for Claire it one of the best things in the night market, so there was going to be no getting out of trying it! The guide books all make a comparison to the polarising effect that strong 'stinky' cheese has people - you either love it or hate it, so expectations had been set, however to be honest it was like as tofu can be, a little underwhelming, not as pungent or intense as I expected. It is kinda like the tofu you get in laksa soup, but with a rather bitter aftertaste. I think bitter is not my favourite flavour, bitter melon also getting the thumbs down recently.

Well looks like I have done it again, another ramble all about food!