A Little Taiwanese Cuisine (on pictures of food)

    Now that I am getting used to the cuisine here and it is no longer a novelty, I chuckle when I think back at some of things that used to disgust or surprise me.  Yesterday Chris and I dined at our regular hole in the wall, steak noodle shop, and saw a small rat, about the size of my open hand, also dining just underneath the outdoor kitchen.  (Basically it's a stand where they cook their food but it's right outside on the street).
   Chris: "Oh, there's a rat."
   Me: "Ew, where?" (Chris points)
   Me: "Oh, it's kinda small."
Then we both went back to our food and kept eating.  Of course it bothers us, but not like how it was before, where a rat would be cause for us to stop eating our food or at least contemplate it.  Now, it's cause for us to not contemplate it, so that we can keep eating... unless maybe a ginormous rat scurried across the table...
   Oh, but I digress, it's almost always not at all like this, most of the restaurants we go to are clean enough to keep the rats invisible.  If anything, it's our fault, Chris and I are still in frugal travel mode, despite the fact that we've been here for almost eight months now, and we are for some reason drawn to the hole in the wall restaurants because it usually means it's cheap.  I can think of multiple times in our travels where we've eaten some sort of weird dish or bowl of soup and it very well could've been a rat itself. 
   Okay I keep digressing, so on with the food of Taiwan.
   Even though when I first got here, and at times even now, I order by basically closing my eyes and pointing at the menu, the Taiwanese fare is hardly intimidating.  I never felt too nervous about questionable foods because it would usually look acceptable, and most of the time tasty.
   Of course, I miss a good old fashioned burger, with a real hamburger bun, or huge pizza slices from Lampost or Giampettro's with dripping cheese (mmmmmm...), or (drool) a carne asada burrito with extra guac... but I actually like the food here for the most part.  Living in a rural town, there isn't a whole lot of variety in my opinion, but I think it's because of my American taste where American food really means a little bit of everything ffrom every culture. So for me, noodles are noodles and rice is rice.  Doesn't matter that it has a different sauce or a different cut of meat, if I eat a noodle dish for lunch and then another noodle dish for dinner, I feel like I've just eaten noodles twice in one day.  But I'm getting used to the idea of concentrating less on the rice and noodles part and focusing on the broth or the other stuff.
   The food here is good, and because of the very strong Chinese influence, I've found that you can cook and eat a lot of things you would've previously never imagined as food.  It keeps things interesting.

   So here's some pictures of food that I've taken:

Every morning, a truck comes around our neighborhood selling food, one morning it woke us up, and Chris went down to check it out and brought back this. He says, "I got dumplings."  I opened it, "No, Chris, you got stinky tofu".  (This is the third time that we've accidentally ordered it.)  I ate one.  Chris ate them all.

Tofu, chicken parts, other weird stuff. 

Steak noodle dish.  It comes on a sizzling hot plate and it's delicious.  

Fresh chicken, like really fresh

   Night markets are a HUGE part of the Taiwanese culture.  Every town, big or small will have at least one night market.  If not once a week, then every day.  Night markets are great fun and the majority of it consists of a plethora of food stands that serve a good snack or meal.

Deep fried squid on a stick

BBQ chicken wings on a stick.  Notice the grill, it's the back of a car, very trendy.

Spicy sea... snails? You get a bag of of them and basically you just suck out the inside.  It's actually good, especially when you're walking around the streets with a beer, which I still can't get enough of because of strict liquor laws back home... 

Deep fried milk balls, or something.

I forget, but I like the dogs on the chair.

Deliciously cheap sushi

Omelet style dishes

More stinky tofu. Stinky tofu soup, or fried stinky tofu

Lots of restaurants, there's over a hundred of them crammed together in a very small area at this night market.

Oyster omelet

   I have more pictures, I just have to find them, I'll make another food post sometime soon.  Hope you're hungry!

Typhoon Surf (on the beginning of the Taiwan typhoon season)

   I've never experienced a typhoon in my life, I've never experienced a hurricane either since I've spent most of my life in Southern California.  For those of you who are like me and never grew up in an area where you have to worry about cyclones, they're basically crazy super storms.  Lots and lots of wind going in all sorts of directions and tons of rain.
I'm a little anxious but excited to experience a full blown typhoon which is sure to come.  We just had two typhoon warnings in the past month.  Luckily, neither of them made it to land.  I've been told that it's pretty early this year for typhoons to start.  This means that we're probably going to have more typhoons and rain than usual, this last one that just missed us was huge, bigger than Taiwan, and it was a category 4 out of 5.

   I'm worried about all the wind and rain that we'll get.  Landslides are a common problem because of the heavy rainfall.  There are still many remnants of debris from previous typhoons.  If you walk along the coastline in Taiwan, you'll see that most of the beaches are completely littered with mangled pieces of driftwood.  They came from previous typhoons that wreaked havoc and washed everything into the sea.  Another thing that we'll have to look forward to during a big typhoon is our commute into town on our little scooter.  Since it's about a fifteen to twenty minute scooter ride into town, it's not going to be easy going to and from work when winds are blowing at around 100 miles an hour and there's so much rain it'll be almost impossible to see through my helmet's face "shield".  My boss told me that I'll also have to be careful of the wind picking up a large random object, say a sign post, and chucking it at me to kill me. I'm definitely not looking forward to that at all. I imagine I'll be a little paranoid.

   Of course an incoming typhoon isn't always a bad thing, especially for a surfer.  Typhoons bring in some big swell, lots of beaches that look like lakes most of the time will suddenly spit out a perfectly gorgeous barreling wave or just some fun-sized swell.
It's too bad that the overly cautious Taiwanese government thinks this means danger.  If a typhoon even gets too close to Taiwan, a typhoon warning is issued and consequently all of the beaches get closed down.  This means no one is allowed in the water or you can get greeted with a ridiculous fine.  It's really silly because they shut down all of the beaches, even if there are no waves. 
They enforce this by sending the police and coast guards to patrol all the beaches, and the popular beaches for surf are guarded at all times.

   This last typhoon that was making its way towards us produced some great swell.  On Saturday, the wind switched offshore and Chris and I drooled from our rooftop watching the beautiful unsurfable swell. Every hour we walked down to the beach to see if they dropped the tape that was blocking off the beach.  Finally, at around noon, we timed it perfectly, as we walked down to the beach, we saw the bright orange coast guard jumpsuits getting on their scooter as if about to leave.  As we jogged over to them, they zoomed off giving us the "okay" sign.  FINALLY!

   I surfed so hard that I thought my arms were going to surrender and detach themselves from my body.  I caught a few waves where I was in the perfect spot, I would paddle and suddenly the wave would get taller and taller and I would race down the face of the wave grabbing my rail for support, staring at a perfect wall that was lining up so vertically, so perfectly, solely for me.  They had some size too, almost double overhead for me, (but remember, I'm 5'3").  Ohhhhhhh it was so SWEET! One of the waves that I caught felt so big that I actually made a few turns while I was dropping down the face before I even made my bottom turn. It was the first time surfing ever reminded me of snowboarding.  I know some of you surfers out there are chuckling at my childish excitement, but that's how I felt, like a child at Disneyland.  It's days like this I feel like I could devote the rest of my entire life to surfing.  In fact, I do not at all think it's crazy when I hear of people giving up everything they have in search of waves, I get it.

   Once again, I was too busy surfing to worry about pictures, so sorry about that...
Check back later for the next typhoon swell, hopefully I'll remember to take pictures of at least the waves.  

Beautiful Taiwan (a weekend trip to Taitong)

  During a long holiday weekend, my boss invited us to join them on an excursion to the mountainside.  The last time we were in Taitong we surfed some pretty amazing waves so we brought our surfboards with us just in case.  We didn't realize that there were so many other things to do in Taitong and our surfboards just sort of ended up being useless weight in the van.  

We stayed at a place called Coconut Grove.  It's nestled in the mountains away from the city which means, beautiful and tranquil.  The kind owner built the whole area with his bare hands.  He spent twenty years piecing together everything using bamboo, twigs, strings, coconuts and other resourceful things.  It's quite unique and pretty.  

Here he is making handicrafts using bamboo leaves

   He spends his days entertaining his guests with a unique talent of being able to play any song using almost any leaf. He puts it in his mouth and out comes a tune! It's not exactly a melodious, hypnotizing tune... more like a baby duck with a talent, but it's impressive nonetheless. He's actually pretty well known in Taiwan for this bizarre talent.  He said he learned it from an aboriginal when he was young and practiced and practiced.  
   

    The rest of his time is spent fixing up his property.  He built a large pond and put fish in it for his guests to fish out of.  He also makes lots of beautiful furniture and structures using various parts of bamboo trees and leaves.  His place feels like a remote, private museum.  This man is one of the most resourceful people I've ever met.

   We spent one day basking in the beautiful scenery, riding bicycles around a government funded  recreational area called Guanshan.  To encourage bicycling, the government helps to fund bike rentals shops. So, in a very Taiwanese way, there are probably about twenty rental shops lined up right next to each other right at the entrance, beckoning customers.    I rented a great recreational bike for the whole day for $3.  
   The bike path goes through very gorgeous scenery.  Parts of the path run along a river completely surrounded by lush vegetation.  The surrounding views are dotted with rich green hills, rivers and streams and complete with fat, muddy water buffaloes grazing and drinking.  

Three of the many bike rental shops

 


   All in all, it was a nice weekend well spent.  If you're ever in Taiwan, Taitong should not be skipped.