Our adventure this week is from Taipei, Taiwan! Yea! What a great time was had seeing the wonderful Taiwanese people and their culture. Before we get to Taiwan, I just have to show you something from Japan that was one of those oddities that I had to share. We were in the taxi on our way to the airport and look what was following us!
A giant bear bus!
Well look at this! It's Duffy the Disney bear! I'm pretty sure I haven't heard of him, have you?
Check out the back paws. Okay, this was pretty cute, don't you think? If only I could have stopped and taken some better pictures.......
Before you get started, please know that there are more than a dozen pictures, so find a chair, sit down, relax and "enjoy the show".
On to the airport to get on China Airlines to Taipei.
Since we were there for only 3 days, just one bag was all that was needed to be checked on for the two of us. Nice!
So where is Taiwan in proximity of Japan?
Japan is in the upper right hand corner and you will notice how it is the yellow island southwest of Japan, near China.
Let's get a closer look at the country....
Taipei is in the northeast section of the country. A military leader by the name of Chiang Kai Shek who was fighting communism in mainland China surrendered and came to Taiwan. He desire was to rid China of communism, and to unite China and Taiwan. It never happened. Taiwan is not under Chinese rule and has a great amount of freedom.
It's nice that they have a few signs in English. I hope there are other familiar sites along the way.
Yes, these look familiar. Cars. We like cars. We like taxis and bright yellow taxis they are!
Well look at this! The steering wheel is on the left side! Sure enough it feels like home......kind of, well,..... maybe not. Just the steering wheel on the left side is pretty much the only familiar thing in this taxi.
As we are stopped at the intersection, a "herd" of motor scooters went flying by! What in the world? There was literally a loud noise that came out of nowhere and it was a mass of motor scooters. There are more motor scooters in this city and cars. Unbelievable. You better watch out for those guys or you just might get knocked off your feet if you are walking!
The buses pretty much look normal.......
well, some of them do. I'm trying to decide if this is normal or not. Check out the drapery inside the windows. I'm pretty sure we don't have drapery in the windows of our buses in the U.S. We probably have graffiti covering our windows.......
This is the entryway of the hotel that we stayed in. It looks pretty good unless you have a queazy stomach.......
and you are looking down from the 14th floor into a restaurant. Not for those of you who have a phobia of heights.
Another city view of endless buildings. However, this city is much smaller than Tokyo. We are looking at just under 3,000,000 people in Taipei, unlike 34,000,000 people in Tokyo.
The sidewalks are not as crowded and the streets are wider. Nice.
The buildings are built to the road leaving the first floor open as a covering for the sidewalk. That's a nice affect.
You find people selling many kinds of things on the sidewalk. This man is selling fruit.
Here we have shoes for sale, and these ladies are looking at scarves.
We have food booths. Please don't ask me what they are selling. I'll tackle that answer if I get a chance to go again.
Grills, pots, containers bowls.......,
vegetables,
Construction on a widened area of the sidewalk. Hey, don't fall in those holes! If you do fall or twist your ankle, you can't blame any one but yourself around here. You would never win with a law suit unlike some place we know.
This poor guy is a street vender moving his full cart to go sell his things on the street. I felt compelled to go help him, but the group of people we were with were hurrying to an appointment. I should have gone with my gut feeling though...... Nothing better than helping someone in need.
What else did we see?
Stores with the latest fashions,
more motor bikes neatly parked,
and an Outback Steakhouse just to mention a few sights for the night.
The next day for lunch was a real treat.......
1,000 year old eggs for lunch. Yumm! Any takers? Not me. I have tasted them before and I couldn't do it then so I highly doubt I could do it now. I'm sure some of you out there love them or they wouldn't be in existence. Maybe you really don't love them. You are probably just trying to show off the fact that you can put something really disgusting in your mouth without throwing up.
How about some Kimchee?
This doesn't even come close to the eggs. This is something that I can eat.
This is truly the best edamame I have ever had. Sesame oil with salt and pepper. Yummy!
The only thing that I can say about this little morsel is - It was great!
Duck and chicken.
These little delectables had shrimp inside.
Beef and wide noodles. How can you go wrong with this?
Green beans with black bean sauce. Tasty!
This was one of my favorites. It was a steamed wrap with veggies and a crispy fried shrimp in the middle.
Lettuce wrap
and the final dish - coconut milk with tapioca. Delicious! By the way, I didn't take pictures of all of the food for lunch this day.
This is a picture of part of the restaurant we ate in.
As we were walking out of the restaurant, I had to take a picture of the hanging Peking Duck. If you haven't ever tried Peking Duck, you should. It's tasty.
Now that we have checked out some of the food, let's check out some fashion.....
We have anywhere from jeans to the traditional Chinese attire to suits, and skirts........
These clothes are something that we could find anywhere.
So are these, except I don't think many people would put a pink knit scarf with bright red, green and black. But hey! This lady is adorable.
We've got our basic leather skirt complemented by blue as well two lovely ladies modeling the ever- popular color of orange. You can choose orange pants with a maroon shawl accented with comfy, furry, rust-colored boots; or an orange "jumper" with a lovely purple sweater, emerald green turtle neck, brown and red decorated tights with brown boots just past your ankles to finish off your look.
Unfortunately the photographer of this picture didn't hold her hand still and this adorable little girl is blurry. Cute, huh?
Let's now move on to dinner. Google the restaurant called Din Tai Fung. It is ranked by the New York Times as one of the top 10 restaurants in the world. I personally would have to agree.
Notice who's picture is at the bottom of this photograph. Yep, Tom Cruse thinks it is pretty good too. These guys are making something called Xiao Long Bao. They are a Chinese dumpling that are literally to die for.
They roll out small circles of dough and fill them with a meat filling and then steam them.
Instructions on how to eat them.
Here they are!
Delicious.
Uh,.... we didn't just stop at eating the Xiao Long Bao, no we are in Taiwan where we have to eat about 15 different things at each meal. You will find any of you gluten intolerant people would love living here. There really isn't much gluten in their food and it is tasty.
The food is endless......
rice, veggies, chicken,
two kinds of soups,
two kinds of desserts. One is called 1,000 layer cake (much better than the 1,000 year old eggs) and a sweet bean cake.
To eat the cake, notice how you peel off the layers. The nice thing about this kind of eating, is you eat just a bite or two of many different things and it doesn't sit heavy in your stomach.
I appreciate the cleanliness of the workers and how they cover their heads. Very clean.
Let's not stay in this restaurant all evening, let's go to one of the night markets!
The entryway of the night market.
What do we buy at a night market?
Your basic seafood - shrimp and squid on skewers,
Would you say these are peanuts? Yes.
With crowds like these, it's hard to find the booths amongst the people.
This is unique. Strawberries and cherry tomatoes dipped in sugar water on skewers. The strawberries were good, but I'm curious about the cherry tomatoes. I've never eaten cherry tomatoes with sugar. Maybe some of you connoisseurs would know if they are good. Evidently I'm not one of them.
I'm not quite sure what these balls are, but they looked interesting.
Well, look at this! You can buy luggage for cheap,
stylish shoes for cheap (ok, maybe some of the shoes aren't so stylish),
different kinds of fresh fruit,
sweet bean "pancakes",
nuts, sweet beans, and all sorts of who knows what,
cotton candy??,
the infamous chickens feet,
hot pots of who knows what,
fashion jewelry for maybe......gypsies?,
lot and lots of ???,
deep fried???,
king size shrimp and regular size crab,
tables and tables of food,
fresh rice crackers,
boiled feet? Wait a minute. These aren't edible! These are getting prepped for a........
foot massage?
Yes, a foot massage. You can have a one hour foot and shoulder massage for about $20. Yes, it was worth it.
You can buy bags of all kinds for little kids,
as well as inexpensive clothing. The night market was pretty fun!
The next morning on Sunday, we went to church.
This beautiful building is one of the stake centers in Taipei. It was stake conference and a member of the Quorum of the Seventy spoke to the people in this building who was accompanying Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who was speaking at a different stake conference. They are on an Asian tour.
The Taipei Taiwan Temple is next to the stake center. It is beautiful.
Here is a partial view of the temple.
Let's now check out a gas station.....
Their pumps are located on the ground like it they are in the U.S. but they are utilizing space by having offices above the gas pumps.
Here we are on a road just below and next to the freeway. The freeway is built like a bridge but it isn't over water, it is over.......
a market. Very interesting to see how this space under the freeway is being utilized.
Let's now look at the building structures and architecture.
I found this building to be very interesting.
This is the "capitol" building of Taiwan.
A regular city street with all of the stores and buildings. Notice how the buildings are built to the road and the 2nd floor is above the sidewalk.
Dinner tonight is one of those chickens hanging on that pole.
This is a memorial of their soldiers.
Memorial.
This was an interesting building of the Taipei World Trade Center.
This street is lined with apartments and businesses. What is that huge building in the distance?
It is called the Taipei 101. It was the tallest building in the world from 2004 - 2010 when the Burj Khalifa in Dubai took it's spot in 2010. It has 101 floors and is huge.
This is part of the base of the tower.
Looking up.....
This is the main entrance. This building as well as other tall buildings fascinated Jeff while he was growing up. He has always wanted to come here and see the Taipei 101 and since he is in Michigan, we had to come here and see it for him.
Another shot of the Taipei 101.
So what is this?
It is a place to rent a bike in the city. You can buy a ticket to rent the bike or you can use your bus or train card to rent it. Pretty cool!
This is the Lung-Shan Temple which is hundreds of years old.
Notice the intricate detail in each of the pictures.
This year is the year of the horse, thus, the myriad of horses.
People bring food to offer the gods and then go up to the shrine and pray.
A closer look of the food.
They pray with these sticks.
This is one of many large posts supporting the roof of the building. These incredible carvings were carved out of the post hundreds of years ago.
Shrine.
These are more foods that are brought to various smaller shrines. This food was brought to this particular shrine from people who are praying to have children.
This particular shrine is for health.
This particular shrine is for love.
This is a booth that sells trinkets at the temple.
This is the last food place that I will be posting....
This particular restaurant serves food from the Qing Dynasty that ended in 1911. This particular kind of food was served to the empress who loved many kinds of foods.
The waitresses dress for the time period.
The dishes are of color, beauty and flavor.
This is called "the world's best" and it was way good.
All of the foods were vegetarian.
These were desserts and a smoky plum juice.
Here we are eating over 30 kinds of foods not one thing was bad. They were all delicious and nutritious. The Chinese woman in this picture works for Kent's company. She and her husband were so kind to show us around the city and take us to lunch at this special restaurant before we left for Tokyo.
It was nice to squeeze in a little sightseeing between the work, as it was a very interesting, successful trip. We are so blessed to be able to see the incredible places of this beautiful world that God has made for us, and to meet wonderful people who are full of kindness and love.
May we all be as kind to others as they have been to us.
Love to each of you,
Mom and Dad
Grandma and Grandpa
Uncle Kent and Grandma Barb
Kent and Barb
