HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME AND DAVID!

You don’t often get to celebrate your birthday twice, right? David and I have done it TWICE. The last time we were on our way home from somewhere in Asia and this time is the same; we’re celebrating in Shanghai right now but we will be celebrating again tomorrow (or today?) when we arrive in Chicago!

David and I have a special relationship; we are siblings, roommates, and used to be colleagues. We get along, have inside jokes that my mom thinks are ridiculous, and actually enjoy each other’s company. Living in New York these past two years have been so much more fun because of David and I can’t imagine living without him in the next room (I joke that when he gets married some day, I’ll have the spare bedroom…he does not find that so funny).

Below are some of my favorite pictures from our trip – I hope you enjoy them!

We celebrated with my dad in Taiwan before we arrived in China – he bought us this really delicious taro cake:

Me and David cutting the cake together (in hindsight, maybe this picture wasn’t the greatest idea since newlyweds seem like the only people that cut cakes together):

This trip with David and my mom has been really fun and might be one of our last “family” trips; before you know it, we’ll be married and bringing our spouses and children on vacation with us!

On our first full day in Taipei, we headed to our favorite restaurant, Din Tai Fung:

Sitting in the hotel before going on another eating adventure:

Visiting the area where my mom grew up:

Eating three types of shaved ice at the night market:

A Japanese lunch at Matsui with David:

Jumping at the World Expo:

At the Syrian tent:

Another picture at the World Expo:

Taking a tour of a cave in Guiling:

Hanging out in Chongqing:

With my mom:

And my dad:

A big happy birthday hug to my big brother, David, who was nice enough to share his big day with me!

Last Days in Taiwan

I wish I had more time to do a full update (I will definitely do one once I get back home and sort through pictures from three computers) but for now, here are some things I did in the last couple of days:

Wednesday

We went to the Taipei 101 area to eat at one of my favorite restaurants, a place that specializes in Beijing duck. After lunch, we walked around the area and then met up with one of my mom’s colleagues – she took us to the new Sogo for tea at Kaffe Amadeus (one floor below the place we had dinner the night before). We had ice cream, souffles, cookies, and ice coffee (all very delicious). After afternoon tea, we went back to the hotel to meet up with my dad because we were meeting up with my dad’s friend from work for dinner. We mentioned that we wanted to eat traditional Taiwanese cuisine and my dad’s friend, Yen ai-yi, took us to a place that specializes in Taiwanese cuisine. Her niece is also my dad’s secretary and helped me with my grad school application in Taiwan. I’ll post pictures of Taiwanese food in another post, but here we are after dinner:

After dinner, my dad took us back to the hotel and we were so exhausted from eating all day that we decided to call it a night.

Thursday

On Thursday, dad picked me up to visit my potential school for the next two years, National Taiwan University. We did a tour of the campus and checked out the nice dorms (a huge thank you to, Tina, my dad’s student from 20 years ago, for showing me around!) After doing a tour, we met up with my brother and went to A Cut Steakhouse. We met up with my dad’s friends as well as my dad’s wife, Isabel, for a really wonderful (and filling lunch):

They have a pre-fixe lunch deal and everything was really great and it was really nice to see Isabel and my dad’s friends!

After lunch at A Cut Steakhouse, my dad drove us past Xin-Dian to Wu Lai and we went on a gondola ride to an inner mountain (it was a pretty scary ride):

Here I am clinging onto dear life because I’ve suddenly become afraid of heights:

After taking the gondola back to my dad’s car, we drove to his house and had dinner with Isabel and then drove back to the city to pass out after another fun-filled day with my dad.

Friday

We had lunch with my dad’s friend, Tina, at Chopstix, which is the restaurant right next to National Taiwan University. Afterwards, I attended a class to see what it was like and then we went to dinner next to the hotel (the second time, actually)

Saturday

My aunt picked me and David up and we went to Matsui with my cousin, Eric. Matsui is popular because they have really fresh seafood and it was in the papers when the past president’s son took some people there to discuss insider trading (or something like that). The fish was very fresh and we ate a lot:

After lunch:

After lunch, we headed back to the hotel and later in the evening, I went back to the night market to pick up some candy:

And baked goods:

Sunday

Sunday was my mom’s last day of class and her students invited us out for lunch:

We ate Thai food and hung out with my mom’s students for a while, discussing life in Taiwan vs. life in the US and what they plan on doing after they finish their masters. After lunch, David and I were on a mission to find Meet Fresh again – we asked all of my mom’s students and the waitresses at the Thai restaurant…eventually, we found one not too far from where we were. Once we found the Meet Fresh, we were so excited that we were speaking gibberish to the waitress (our Chinese is already pretty bad so the waitress must’ve been REALLY confused), but eventually we pointed to what we wanted:

Grass jelly with grass jelly ice, taro balls, yam balls, and fresh cream is really the best thing EVER. We were contemplating whether or not to get another order, but sadly decided against it since we were supposed to meet up with my dad and we left him waiting in the city.

On Sunday night, we went to a great restaurant with my dad and extended family and then went by my dad’s city house to have some shaved ice (one last time before leaving Taiwan!) My dad also surprised us with a birthday cake and we went back to the hotel to celebrate.

Monday

On Monday, our flight was at 8AM, so we got up around 5 and met my dad at the airport for one last meal together. Our flight from Taipei to Hong Kong wasn’t too bad, but from Hong Kong to Shanghai, I was really short of breath and started scaring everyone around me. I guess flying too much has made me really claustrophobic and all of sudden, I just couldn’t breath (I used to love sitting by the window, after that incident, I can’t stand it at all). China updates, including the World Expo, will be posted as soon as possible!

Taiwan Day 6 – Part 1

I’m sitting in the Hong Kong airport waiting for our connection to Shanghai, so this might be a quick update. On Wednesday, our 6th day on the island, we braved the heat with my uncle to take some family photographs. My uncle is a really great photographer and does some work on the side so my mom asked him to take some pictures for me and David in the park. Wednesday was especially sunny and humid, but my uncle managed to take a lot of great pictures of us. Here’s my favorite from the morning:

After taking photographs of my family, we rushed to the Taipei 101 area to eat lunch with my dad – peking duck! Okay, getting ready to board so I’ll write more when we get to China!

Taiwan Day 5

On Tuesday, my aunt and her husband picked us up from the hotel and drove us to Yilan and Su-ao, on the eastern side of the country. On our way there, we drove through Taiwan’s longest tunnel – it takes a full 8 minutes to drive through it, which is quite scary! (I slept through it on the way to Su-ao and Yilan but was awake on the way home and it was kind of claustrophobic, especially when you couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel) We stopped by the Su-ao train station to stretch our legs after riding for about an hour and a half:

We saw a really cute dog sitting on his own picnic bench, so I snapped some pics with him:

After taking some pictures by the Su-ao train station, we headed to the village and saw a huge crowd by a woman serving a specialty only made in the Su-ao area. There was a large crowd around the vendor and my aunt jumped out of the car so we could get in line and buy some of their specialty burritos. The burritos made in Su-ao are really interesting; first, they freeze three scoops of ice cream (two pineapple surrounding one taro):

Next, they use a machine to shred peanut brittle into a fine powder:

Then they quickly place the ice cream on a very thin handmade burrito, pour lots of powdered peanut brittle on the ice cream, and finally place cilantro on top of everything before folding it up:

The end result is a sweet and fresh tasting burrito:

We ordered two and by the time we finished them, our faces were covered with bits of the sticky peanut brittle! Luckily, it was time to get out of the car again to take pictures of the Pacific ocean:

As usual, we spent the majority of the time taking pictures of us jumping:

After playing around the area for a while, we drove to the main strip of Su-ao and found a restaurant for lunch. Su-ao is known for their fresh fish (they begin selling it at 5am everyday) and all of the restaurants show off their fish for potential customers. Here’s one of the vendors showing us fish eggs and squid:

When you touch squid that’s still alive, their skin changes color to hide from predators:

Hey buddy! We’re going to eat you!!:

We also saw this crustacean walking around its container:

It looks like a lobster, but it also looks like it has eyes on its tails but also had eyes on the other side of its body. Not sure what it was, but the owner said it tasted just like lobster.

Hi, how are you:

More interesting crustacean:

We started making our choices for what to eat – first, the squid:

Do you see how one is white and the rest are red? One changed colors when you touched it because it felt violated!

Next, the owner picked a big fish out of the tank and let us get a good look at it by throwing it on the cement:

We tried to weigh the fish to see how much it would cost, but it kept flipping out of the scale and the owner didn’t want to kill it unless we purchased it. We told her we’d just buy it so she took a big hammer (the ones you see at fairs when guys try to impress girls by showing how much arm strength they have) and hit it once to kill it.

Here she is weighing the poor little dead fish:

To cook the squid, the owners quickly steamed it and served it with a light dipping sauce:

Our mouths were completely black from all of the ink! We were smiling to see who had the blackest mouth (I think David won).

After lunch, we walked around a little more and then got back into the car to find a small hot spring:

We stepped into the hot spring and it was REALLY hot (it was quite uncomfortable, actually) and then got in the car to go back to Taipei because my mom was teaching that evening.

My dad picked us up and took us to the new Sogo for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Me and one of their specialty dishes:

The restaurant also serves steamed buns (but they’re nowhere near as good as Din Tai Fung). Here’s their kitchen area, where they put everything together:

After dinner, we went to a night market and walked around and also picked up some shaved ice at Meet Fresh:

Meet Fresh was a popular franchise a year ago, but a lot of their stores have started to close because the quality is different at all of them (reminds me of Pinkberry). The Meet Fresh we went to was absolutely amazing – my dad ordered the grass jelly with grass ice, taro and yam jelly balls, and cream:

We really enjoyed the dessert because it was really refreshing and had a lot of interesting textures and flavors. I really want to recreate the dessert when I get back to New York because I definitely see myself craving it (I’ll tell you just how much we craved it in another post).

After eating grass jelly at the night market, my dad dropped us off at the hotel and I met up with my mom, who had just finished her first weeknight class. She hadn’t eaten dinner, so I accompanied her next door to eat some lamb:

I ended up having a second dinner because everything smelled so good! After dinner, we walked to a stand that sells really good breakfast buns so we could figure out how much time it takes to walk there from our hotel (dry run for the morning!)

Taiwan Day 4

My mom had a break from teaching on Monday and we took advantage of the break by meeting up with her friends at NCCU, where my mom also attended college. We had lunch in their union, where we ate German food and drank interesting coffee (David drank a blended papaya coffee that was really interestingly bitter). David and I planned to visit the Taipei Zoo to see the pandas China gifted Taiwan, but ran out of time because we were meeting all of my mom’s friends.

After a full day at NCCU, we went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. We didn’t have any plans for where we were going to eat, so we decided to just get in a cab and ask the cab driver where we should go and what we should eat. The cab driver recommended a bunch of places and we decided to go to Beijing Do it True:

The restaurant opened in 1949 and has been visited by many presidents (on the walls, there are pictures of their more famous visitors, including George Bush). There were two dishes that I really liked – one was a vegetable cold dish with seaweed and a little bit of kewpie on top:

The other dish I really liked was another cold dish – liang ban tsai (cold mixed vegetables):

Napa cabbage was thinly sliced and mixed with vinegar, soy sauce, dried bean curd, cilantro, and peanuts. We also ordered a bunch of other dishes (I will post pictures of those once I get home!)

After eating at Beijing Do it True, we walked to Sogo:

When we were kids, there was only one Sogo in Taipei, but now there are THREE! The newest Sogo has a lot of higher end shops (Hermes, Chanel, Burberry, Cartier, etc), but this Sogo is the original and we used to visit all the time to eat gelato from Capatina:

They’ve redone the food court at the original Sogo (it’s almost non-existent now) but when we were kids, Capatina used to scoop the gelato into pyramids that David and I absolutely loved.

Sogo also used to have this clock that played music – we were looking for it for a while because David thought it was a lot bigger:

Was there some kind of exhibit when we were kids that used to come out at every hour? David thought the clock was a lot bigger (and I seem to remember some kind of moving mannequins) but maybe it’s just our imagination since it was such a long time ago!