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foooood in taiwan

night markets

night markets are one thing taiwan is really famous for, and i was sooo looking forward to exploring them! they open around 6pm and offer an eclectic mix of street food and entertainment. sometimes they’re in a normal street that has traffic during the day and is closed at night, and other times they take place in purpose-made indoor markets. there’s a few in each city and they were always fun to walk: buzzing with people, arcade games lining the street and lots of food to try!

and the food is really good too — the variety is endless and some of the stalls even have michelin stars!






Categories
foooood in taiwan

a cooking class with ivy

one of the gifts the boy gave me last christmas was a cooking class in taiwan, and i loved the experience! beforehand, i picked a few dishes and discussed them with the teacher, and we agreed on the plan. we met at the market to grab some ingredients, including eggs, which were in shortage on the island for some reason. ours were salted eggs — the yolks are firm and delicious!

the market tour was definitely a highlight of the experience — they had so many types of rice, and things like spice mixes and dried leaves for all sorts of things, fruits i’d never seen, and the cuttlefish was so fresh it changed color if you touched it!

back in her studio, we had tea, and then started cooking! we made wontons in chili oil (which was not as spicy as expected) and sweet steamed red bean and sesame buns…

… and shanghai zongzi! zongzi is a laborious affair of rice, pork and salted yolk wrapped in a huge bamboo leaf that is then pressure cooked. ivy was super patient with me though, showing me the right wrapping technique while i made a mess in her kitchen.

it was amazing experience, with delicious results — and i even got to bring the leftovers home for the boy! :D

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in taiwan

more manhole covers from taiwan!

after the first few, we kept seeing more and more fancy manhole covers, so we kept collecting, a bit all over taiwan. here’s some more from taipei:

from tamsui:

from hualien:

and kaohsiung!

also from kaohsiung, this rather funky constellation of little sewer lids, which i loved walking by:

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in taiwan

taroko national park

what a magnificent place! taroko gorge is a national park near hualien, created by tectonic plates and millions of years of erosion that reveal gorgeous marble canyons. they are super narrow or deep in some places, others show the greenest water you can imagine.

it looked a lot like vintgar gorge in slovenia, but many times larger. it really looked like we were inside an ancient chinese painting, with the steep mountains and fog covered peaks!


our host recommended this place for lunch, and it did not disappoint — especially the sticky rice, steamed in bamboo!

one of the best parts came near the end. to get to a particular trail, we had to do 400 meters of tunnel through the mountain, and the tunnel was completely dark. i couldn’t quite understand why… but then some taiwanese tourists walking besides us shone their powerful flashlight on the ceiling and wow! sooooo many bats! i think this was the first time i saw so many of them together, and it suddenly made sense why the tunnel was so dark.

i did not realize there would be so many highlights to this place, otherwise i would have planned to stay more days so we could hike around the park between all the sights. something for the next visit! :)

Categories
birdwatching in taiwan

more taiwan birds

let me just make note of a few more birds we saw in taiwan, because they don’t exist in this part of the world, and so it felt extra special to see them. first up, the light-vented bulbul, our first ever bulbul. a little bird, that seems like it has been snowed on:


next, the chinese bamboo partridge! we spotted them next to a patch of bamboo and while we watched with the binoculars, a couple of taiwanese hikers walked by, curiously looked at where we were looking and exclaimed “ah! bamboo chicken!” :D



the common myna seems so used to people in taiwan that they get really close to us in the city…

and look at the black bulbul, with its spiky hair… a funky sight!

just as funky was the malayan night heron. it’s a big, stern-looking bird, and the juveniles look less rust-colored than the adults. i learned that the technical term for the color is “rufous”.

and last but not least, we saw some oriental turtle-doves with their stripes on the neck (and the spotted dove too in the south, but i didn’t get a good picture).

this concludes the brief tour of birds we saw in taiwan! i think it’s one of the brilliant things of being so far from home, and especially on an island: every bird we saw seemed new and made us look more closely, even sparrows and doves.