Tamsui Day

I think my energy to travel has died down a lot..... traveling for the past 5 weeks is quite tiring... especially since I try to do something special everyday. Now I don't even get out of my room until 11am!

So yes, first, breakfast picture.

I have yet to buy soybean milk and the more Chinese breakfast. To be honest, I don't really know where to get them! I've walked around the neighborhood and I haven't seen any place that sells it.... it's mostly these egg pancake stuff. Sigh. Gotta look around.

Well... I pushed myself to go to Tamsui today anyways, just to check one more thing off of my list. It's pretty nice, with a lot of street food again. So I went to the bakery that Sherry highly recommended to buy some wedding flat cake for my family. This is the traditional Taiwanese cake that they give to guests on wedding day...... and this place is supposed to make really good ones.

I tried some of their samples. The "green bean pong" is really good... and I bought one, and then I remembered that you can't take meat into US. Well...... I'm gonna try to see if I can smuggle it in without getting noticed :( Hopefully they don't take it away from me..... ><

And then I saw this cake store that's all the rage on the internet and etc. This huge chiffon cake stuff. So I bought one, which was a huge serving... for 80 NTD.

I basically ate it for dinner. The taste was........ I can do better. It wasn't sweet at all..... just really plain. Bleh.

And then the fish ball place Sherry suggested wasn't open, so I went to a random fish ball place instead.

Not bad, but super oily. Every spoonful of soup will make you want to wipe your mouth because of how much oil is now on your lips.....

And then some Tamsui pictures to show that I was there.

I think it's a bit sad to say that.... I haven't eaten anything in Taiwan that I really feel like "wow! This is really good!" I think so far the food I've eaten, I've felt like "hmm.... too sweet, too oily, too fake, too artificial, no flavor...". So far, I think feel that Taiwan has become such a tourist place, that everything is becoming quite expensive. And since LA is so good at importing things from Taiwan, there is not a lot of things you can get in Taiwan that you cannot get in LA. I guess that's why I've been feeling "bleh" about traveling outside.

Typhoon has officially arrived. So I came back after the Tamsui trip to drop off my loot and also to rest from the heat. Everywhere I go, I get so soaked in sweat that I just don't feel like going outside anymore. And! It started raining a bit when I was at Tamsui, so I really just want to veg inside.

However, that's what I would do if I were in LA.... so I forced myself to go outside anyways and went to the Taipei Subway Shopping Area at around 8:30pm or so. Shopped around and bought some clothes... came out to see that it's starting to rain a bit. I quickly walked home (the apt is like 3 minutes from the shopping area) and it started raining really hard after that. Eek....

By the way, there are these drinking water stations all around Taiwan now...... so convenient! I've been filling up my water bottles so I don't have to buy any more water! This one is near the exit of the Taipei Subway Shopping Area.

Some thoughts about traveling: well, I've finally done this "travel alone" thing. I suppose I can check it off of my list. As far as whether I like it? Hmm.... I think it's good in small doses. I really don't like to be by myself 24-7, especially traveling. It's really boring when you can't share it with anyone. And, I am more "cowardish" when I travel by myself.... like I would just buy whatever the sales wants me to buy instead of telling them that I'll think about it. Bleh. And I finish browsing each area so quickly that it's just no fun. Now that I know I "can" travel by myself, I would definitely prefer to travel with someone else next time.....

Anyways, hopefully I make it out of my room tomorrow in good time. Still a few things I wanna do before I leave.... like eat some local fruits, eat Chinese breakfast, good shaved ice, Ding Gua Gua, instant noodles, stinky tofu..... etc. Oh, and the apartment is getting more 불편해요..... the A/C drips water all the time so I had to use the towel in the room to catch the water. The A/C is starting to make noise because I run it 24/7 to make sure all my stuff don't overheat.... and the cooling isn't very strong. The bathroom really smells every time I use some kind of water.. There are ants crawling around if I don't make sure there is no trace of food anywhere. Bleh. I think it's time to go back to LA....