Hurray! breakfast! Joh! Rice porridge with meat, egg and several other things i didn't recognize, but who cares! tasted good! lol




New drink for the day, Tangerine flavored citrus drink, with at least 20% reall tangerine taste! hehe, says so on the bottle!




View outside the front door, Gee.....its still raining.... in fact, it hasn't stopped the entire week ive been here =p.  So...this is monsoon season eh?




First stop before heading to 18 lords temple, Rice dumpling shop.  Yes, i know, seems like I do talk about alot of food. Yes, I will get even fatter than before.... but all the food is so good and affordable!




Lots of Yummy stuff inside, like boild chesnut and egg and various meats, depends on what you like.




Even get to watch them make it.






Reminded me of something I would see back home, like Jai? forget what its called.  I thought it was also called "Monk's Food" but i was informed that because this rice dumpling usually has meat, it wasn't suitable for that.  Will have to check when i get home, maybe they were vegitarian versions?




The only real picture of Shiba Wanggong or 18 lords temple, or "Dog Temple", since it was discouraged to have cameras out around areas that are for showing respect for the dead.  I had to take pictures of the 2 cats that were setting up camp in the "Dog" temple.  In thier defense though, it was damn cold, windy and rainy outside and i dont blame them.  The temple was built to remember 17 fisherman who went missing ages ago and the family dog that was pining at the sea for days for them to come back, until finally he jumped into the sea to be with them.




gotta love ads on / near a temple.

This was probably the most North I'll get in taiwan.




After the temple we went to YangmingShan National Park.  The only pictures I have are at our destination, since the mountain roads were very tight and the fog/steam from the volcanic vents made visability very very difficult and traveling was slow going. Reminded me of some of my youth in Colorado, trips with my dad to campsites in the rocky mountains and the snowfall being so thick and the reflectivity of the lights off the snow combining to an absolute white out.  You were lucky to be able to even see the hood ornament on the truck!  This picture is from one of the Hot springs we eventually made it to.




alot of steam and sulfurous smells in the air =p



I love functional paper lanterns





Hall way leading to the hot springs.



Resturant to eat before relaxing in the water.




Chicken soup!




Definitely what i need, its freezing outside!




Some mountain Pork.




Forgot what this one was really called, Dragon's beard or something.  Made of a vine-like plant that reminded me of bitter melon vine/weeds I had to pull out from my mom's yard.




Doors to the Hot springs, covered in steam and sulfur.




Damn did it feel good after i finally got all the way in...was freekin HOT!  ..The preceding picture has been edited for PG audiences.. =p






After the springs we took a not so short and windy drive back to the national museum, it was open this time, didnt get to see all of it, very nice collections, very ancient.  Considered one of the worlds most important top 5 museums.  The Chinese artifacts are so extensive in fact that only a fraction of the entire collection can be displayed at any one time on the massive grounds, so exhibits are frequently rotated out during the year.

Well folks, I have intermittent internet connectivity today, most likely because there are so many people on holiday for Chinese New Years Eve.  When i can, I will update about yesterday's adventure to Shilin, ending at the night market there.





Breakfast / Lunch Niolo Mien (Beef noodle) one of the best tender beef dishes I've ever had, Ex-girlfriend's mom cooks very very well =)





Part of the market outside my residence, gearing up for sales leading to New Years.  Reminds me of China Town Markets back home, only with much fresher food.






As Promised, some of the hot food in Taiwan's 7-11s. 




Tea Egg, one of my favorites.  Egg Boiled in a special herbal tea mixture.  The Shells of the boiled egg are lightly cracked to allow the tea to seep into the surface of the egg.  Not sure how to appropriately describe it.  Its a boiled egg that has a pleasant taste and smell of Chinese Herbal Tea!




Guan Dong Chu? Diffrent hot snack meats. (on a stick of course)




Chawan Bean (Cakes).  Disclaimer, from here on out I really dont have a good way to tell if these are being spelled correctly.  They are suppose to be written in chinese characters and I am doing my best to write it into a Romanized form as close to the original spoken word as possible.  That being said, this little cake, which can be filled with lots of things, the ones I tried had, azuki bean, a cream custard and shredded beef (each a diffrent cake, not all together, lol!) are very similar to the ones i see being made back home in Japanese specialty shops, like the ones in Shirokiya.  Only they are a mere fraction of the cost.





Hurray! More trains!, warned you all that i love trains.  This one is the cheaper one at Cidu Station.  If I can get it posted correctly, the following video will be the more expensive one cruising through.




Potentially boring video I know, but if this works then i promise to get some more interesting ones posted.  Will have to watch my bandwidth though, xanga only allows a certain amount of uploads a month.




My drink of the day.  Just a simple Taiwanese Green tea, unsweetened.




No idea what the teddy bear store on the right is, ate at the noodle shop on the left however.




Dah-Shang Mien Shin.  Little noodles, Pork intestine (the brown), Fish cake (the white), chinese parsley in a moderately thick,  spicy (i added a little chili oil) soup base.

-side note....I know I'm going to gain a few pounds from this trip, despite the amount of walking around I'm  doing.  The food is very affordable and very tasty.





Really like the coffee shops here, they have a very comfortable and accommodating atmosphere.  This one happend to be : Ikari Coffee Shop, http://www.ikari.com.tw/.  It was chosen in lieu of the smaller starbucks 2 stores down.




Advertisement on a board in a more upperclass part of college townish Shilin.

"People are always searching.....Searching for a touch of beauty"

Other advertisements in the background solicit for new buildings to be built.




These two sculptures reminded me of the Easter Island carved rock statues.  They were outside guarding the entrance to one of Chiang kai-Shek's favorite get away residences ( I believe he had quite a few, 30 or more all over Taiwan)





As if i needed reminding... It hasn't stopped raining since I've arrived here days ago thanks to Monsoon season.




Pathways up to a mountain view point on the kai-Shek estate.




At the top there was this sign that basically says watch out for Poisonous Snakes, frogs, etc.  I was like...er...ok! no problem!




The estate grounds were quite extensive, and included very large Eastern and Western Style gardens.  These are some pictures from the Eastern Style ones. 




Saw some sort of snake like fish in here.  Was creepy looking, reminded me of an eel or possibly a large Arrawana, which, for those that don't know, when hungry, this particular fish has been known to jump out of a hosting fish tank and take a chunk out of a feeding owners arm....






This struck me as a reminder that all water eventually goes to the sea, rivers and other plants.  Unfortunately, from what I've read about Taiwan and all its different foreign occupations over the years, they will be struggling to recover from excessive pollution and resource stripping that have occurred over the past 600 years caused priviously by the past invaders and the new country's industrial explosion this past century.






Pillar outside National Palace Museum.




Hard to tell, but there is a nice dragon carved into the base.




Would loooooove to have a gate like this leading to my future Estate someday. =)





Misc. pictures from The National Palace Museum.  Unfortunately, there was a mistake in interpreting the times it was open and I arrived there an hour after it had closed.  Don't let the pictures fool you, I had to take them at extremely low shutter speeds so that you can see the image.  In reality, there wasn't enough light to read a book by, and the overcast rainy sky didn't help.



Expensive Residences across from the National Museum.  The Vice President lives there I hear.





Still amazed at the places I see mopeds parked.




Everyone needs a Fish...er...Shark...er...Dolphin doctor to help advertise health products!




Store / garage door I thought looked nice.




Beginning of a part of Shilin Night market.






This place was very very crowded, then again, i hear most of them are usually, and tonight more so with the pending New Year coming.






My view above the heads down one of the Night market sidewalks.





Of course the Night market includes lots of food as well as commercial products =).




Incase you wanted to make sure your food was still crawling, swimming or slithering before you ate it....




Dont worry, his friends floating near by assure me he is not dead, but simply tired from the stoic staring they engage in while soliciting for potential customers that pass by.






Very Famous fried chicken booth in Shilin




The pieces are quite huge and delicious.  I'd take a bag or 2 of it over KFC anyday!




This is a picture of about 1/3 the total peice, or about the size of a normal person's hand.  x3 would be the whole piece.




People evacuated from the streets to the inner stalls after some very loud fireworks were set off.  It was a good place to enjoy my chicken ^_^.






Shilin MRT Station on the way home.




Some art near the exit to Cidu station.




Of course there was dinner at the market around the house when I got home.  This was a few parts Soy sauce boiled egg with bologna, cucumber on a freshly fried bread that reminded me in taste and smell to malasadas back home.




Tomorrows drink!  "The Best Taiwanese Tea" as exclaimed by my Ex's brother who presented it to me, lol.

  Well, ive never ever really been able to stick to a journal thing, but here we go again.  I am currently in taiwan for the next few weeks and will see if i can get some pictures up and dialog going about my adventures and experiences here.  Since I have never really tried doing a travel like journal or account of my going abroad, please bear with me as I stumble through the blogging process and haphazardly try to put up pictures and descriptions.  This is of course with the hope that as I refine the activity it will become more meaningful and more easily browsed.  That is it for now.  I'm going to go see what i can do to get some pictures up. =)


This is the view from my hosting family's apartment.  There is a rather excitingly noisy Market there everyday of the week, selling a little bit of everything, mostly good food, fairly famous i hear.  "Miao.Kao Keelung".  I appologize in advance if I got that area's name wrong.  darn good eats.




Preparing Tien Fu Low, basically battered fishcake with a special sauce. Pretty darn good too! And that is from a person that generally doesn't care for fish =p.




Oh yeah, and some cucumbers =)




Gao, chewy mochi rice like desert for New years.




Random Interesting building shots.  I forget that most of the world doesnt have laws preventing billboards and huge advertisements like hawaii does.  It can really add, or take away from the local color / feeling of a place.




One of the largest McDonalds ive ever seen.  This one in Keelung, and i so far ive seen a huge one like this, if not several in each city ive been to so far.  They even deliver! O_O




End of the Keelung exploration, went to see a movie, CJ7 after this.  Kind of like a Chinese kung fu comedy version of ET.  It was pretty funny and i found my self trying to find a stuffed version of the alien after.