Missing Taiwan

I feel like updating my blog but my phone is soo slow loading the photos onto my blog (I blame the Internet). So I randomly selected a post from my draft to complete. I have lots of posts like these in my drafts. Sometimes I end up choosing too many photos, or I end up being too long-winded (like now), and the draft just never sees daylight or eyes or other people. You know what I mean.

So this is a Taiwan post. This was from Sept 2012 when I went with mum and Winnie. We wanted to go to Din Tai Fung - the famous xiao long bao shop in Taipei.



Try not to go during lunch or dinner time. We went during lunch. There were a lot of tourists and locals. You see the number 31 on the top left? Yah, have to take a number and queue up.



That guy looks so unglam. Haha F his life.

Anyway, I think we were number 85 or something. So, we went to the book store next door to waste time. You get to look at the menu and choose your dishes first while waiting outside. So when you go in, your food gets served very fast. Quite good actually. Saves waiting time.

Camwhore while waiting.

This is the famous beef noodles soup! It tastes as good as it looks! Hot slurpy soup. Soo good.

Even the fried rice looks good too right? Every morsel or rice covered in egg. And lots of prawns. Good stuff. 

But everyone comes to Din Tai Fung for this: Xiao Long Bao. The famous bao. I love it. If you never had this before, be careful cos each of this is filled with piping hot soup and meat. Careful you don't burn your tongue. Normally I would bite a tiny hole in the side and wait for the soup to fill my whole spoon (should have taken a photo) and then finish the whole thing.

Winnie likes to put the whole thing in her mouth and pop it. She described it as an a mouthful of orgasmic explosion (something like that - i made it up). Hahaha.

Must order. Must have. Must try. Must eat.

We actually have this in Malaysia and Singapore too. Only tried the HK and Taiwan only. Never tried the Malaysia one.

I am randomly choosing photos as I go along now. 

This was at one the underground station - their stations have long winding roads filled with shops - very nice to do shop around (quite cheap stuff).

After you get tired of shopping, you can stop and get cheap massages. I remember this was one of the best massages ever!!

Win hates massages (something wrong with her), so she walked around while mum and I enjoyed ourselves. Heheh. :) This was in full view of the public btw. Not in a tiny room or anything.

This was taken in a club. Don't remember the name. Le awesome cousin brought us clubbing, with our mums. Clubbing in Taiwan is soo expensive lah. On one night, she brought us out for beers. The bill came to 4,000++ Taiwan dollar. About RM 400. Seriously mind boggling. Can drink Macallan like that. Or maybe we all drank too much. Or chose the more expensive ones. Don't know lah. I wrote about it more below.

Took photo of these shots cos the waiter broke 2 beer bottles in front of us (on the counter), and he immediately apologized, wiped down the table and mixed us these free shots. Awesome much?! It wasn't even our beer. It didn't even make us wet or dirty. Nada. Seriously good service.

If only Kch pubs like that too eh? Keep dreaming mi.

Does it still count as OOTD if its a year later?  

Don't remember if I posted this before. Oh well. Taipei 101 in the background. This was before clubbing.

Typical 7-11 food that I love. I gotta say this again. If only Kuching's 7-11's are like this!! Arghh. Quit whining mi. We have good stuff too. We have kolo mee, laksa, kam pua, chicken rice.... meh meh meh and meh. I just want their fully stocked 7-11's and Family Marts.

 So convenient. They have everything. I used to think Taiwan's convenient stores are awesome. That was before I went to Japan. Japan's kick Taiwan's ass. And everyone kick Kuching's ass. Ok I stop. :)

That sandwich costs about RM 4.90. Not bad la..look at that huge piece of meat. Thicker than the bread ok. And they have sushi! Anyway. We go to the convenience store almost every day for breakfast and/or supper or snack time.

I don't like this duck..don't know why I posted this picture. It tastes good but I'm not really a duck person. This was at some unassuming shop at Ximending too. Next.

Self explanatory store at Ximending.

Our aunt brought us to sing karaoke one afternoon. In Taiwan, you have to go on stage to sing karaoke. Not just in public. But on stage!

My mum and her sis working it. Hahaa obviously my aunt is more daring. She's a natural. She has more practice. According to her, she goes karaoke very often with her friends.

 The karaoke that our aunt brought us to..well, it was safe to say that we were the youngest table there. All the other people were very old. White hair, with walking stick or cute looking hats. So, it was just quite an experience. 

I got dragged up by an aunty to dance

This is a bad photo of the condiments. Photo obviously not taken by me. *cough*winnie*cough*

They eat vegetables while singing karaoke. Hmm okay. Different, but still nice.

Instead of usual beer or whiskey, our aunt suggested we have kaoliang. I have never tried it before, just heard about it. Its a really strong liquor. 

Kaoliang has about 58% alcohol. Normal beer has about 4% - 5% alcohol percentage only per bottle. This small bottle contains 58%. Crazy strong liquor.

We drank it with ice, water and plum. It took 4 of us a few hours to finish one small bottle. Damn strong. 

After karaoke, and we were all happy and buzzing from the kaoliang, we went to have "niu pai" aka beef steak Taiwan style.

They have "niu pai" shops everywhere. Some shops sell mainly these, together with salad, some small dishes, and dessert buffet style. You choose a set meal like below and you can have free flow of the salad, dessert and drinks. The price varies at restaurants but they're not expensive.

This is my beef steak "niu pai" with pasta. They serve it like this: either beef/lamb/chicken (maybe fish too) and a type of pasta, with egg on the side. I miss this!!

Wayy better photo taken by Jerrick. Haih. This is why people pay him to take photos. Hahaha. Incidentally he's in Australia now, to take wedding photos. So popular.

Anyway, remember I said we went beer drinking one night with le awesome cousin and it came to RM 400+?

We didn't drink that much did we? Hmm..it seemed less.

We had finger food too. I forgot about it. 

That's le awesome cousin and Winnie. :) Miss her. She's my mum's sister's daughter = cousin. They live in Taiwan, obviously. We only meet when we go Taiwan or when they come to Kuching. Unlikely these days cos we have jobs and our own families now.

Beer heaven. Spoilt for choice. So many types of beer that we've never seen or heard of. Awesome.

On that awesome note, I bid you adieu.

Night.