Today’s our last day in Taipei before the Down South Trip. We started with breakfast. I’d been missing the 7:30 – 8:00 meal in the past few days to sleep, but today we had the option of ordering a meal: MOS Burger. The fast food chain started in Japan, and is a popular alternative to McDonald’s in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and other East Asian countries. They are best known for their regular “MOS burger”, using bread made from rice and barley instead of regular white wheat buns.
Sadly, they don’t make the MOS burgers at 7:30 in the morning, so we had their breakfast burger. It wasn’t too great or too special, but definitely more welcome than an Egg McMuffin.
I picked up breakfast at 7:50 and brought the MOS breakfast sandwich and iced tea to our last Mandarin class. We ended our class in the same fashion that we’ve been having our classes: a slow start, very little textbook work (none at all this class), and lots of singing. At one point, we were asked to go to the front of the room, similar to the first day, but instead of introducing ourselves, we shared our thoughts of the last nine days of class. I didn’t say much, but I did honestly state that I didn’t learn much Mandarin, but I thanked the teacher for introducing us to Taiwanese jokes, food, and music.
At ten we had our last culture class, where we made bookmarks with clay (homemade playdough?) decorations. I’m not very good with clay, so I’m not going to post any pictures =P, but it was fun to work with.
The afternoon and evening was free time, intended for us to pack, but most people used the opportunity to go around Taipei before the trip. A few friends and I were planning on going to Modern Toilet, a bathroom-themed restaurant not too far for Jiantan, but the food served in toilet shaped dishes turned up to be more popular than we expected. Without reservations, we were expected to wait for an hour, so we decided to go to a “steakhouse” nearby, where they served “iron plate” / “sizzling plate” dishes. I had tried beef three days ago, so this time I tried salmon. The food was good, though it was the soup that was special, with bread baked on the soup bowl.
There's soup under that!
Afterwards, we went bowling at the Yuanshan Sports Center, also nearby. None of us were great bowlers, but it was good practice and we had fun. The cost was $60 NT per person per game, about two dollars Canadian in the early afternoon. It’s cheapest in the morning and after 11 pm ($40 NT), and most expensive between 5 pm and 11 pm ($80 NT).
Bowling!
We returned back to Jiantan to finish packing, and headed back out for dinner. We went to Shilin instinctively, and I finally bought some “oyster omelettes” (ô-á-chian, in Taiwanese). In one word: delicious.
Oyster omelettes at Taiwan Night Markets (not my pictures/video).
Here's ours =D
(click for larger picture)
We continued around the night market, and we also stopped by a specialty of the Shilin Night Market: 大大雞排, which directly translates to "big, big chicken chops". It's essentially a really big piece of chicken, deep fried, seasoned, and sold for $50 NT (about $1.65 Canadian). Cheap, but greasy. I split it with a friend, and still didn't finish it (especially after the oyster omelettes). But it was still good.
One of the vendors for the chicken. Right: Size comparison with my hand, though my hand is closer to the camera, so it's actually bigger. The middle picture is also a good reference for size.
After browsing a few more shops and buying snacks for the trip, we headed back to Jiantan for one last night before sleeping in other Youth Centers, Hostels, and Hotels for the next nine days!
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| Goodbye Shilin Night Market... for now. |
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