It's been three months since I came back from Taiwan.
Do I remember the trip well?
Yes.
Not merely because there were people whom I got to meet there.
But also because it has been 12 years since I stepped foot on Taiwanese soil and whilst I wish it could have been more than a week, it's the best there is to it right now and I'm thankful for that.
This was a trip that didn't see us going to Hualien. (We wouldn't be able to even if we wanted to)
Nor to Taichung.
This was a trip that saw us go to Kaohsiung instead.
First day however we were in Taipei, where, after having arrived at Taoyuan in the early morning, took the Airport Train from Terminal 1 to Taipei Main Station. Over there we decided that instead of taking a cab we'd take the train to Technology Building Station, then walk to our hotel.
Along the way we stopped at what seemed at first to be a random mom-and-pop shop for breakfast, but over the crepes, the thick toast, the coffee and the tea, we soon realized that random it was not- the National Taipei University of Education was right across the road and students regularly popped in.
I can't remember whether our room was ready- I don't think it was- but lunch that afternoon was at this place called Sung Kitchen in Xinyi District. This place, right across the road from one of Taipei's elite shopping malls (Breeze?) had been recommended for their roast duck, and that's what we wanted to have.
What we didn't know, however, was that you couldn't just walk into the shop and order the duck. You had to make a reservation with the restaurant and order it in advance.
We tried doing that... and were given a date two months away.
So we abandoned the idea of having a nice roast meat lunch, and stayed for other dishes instead.
As it turned out, the flavors of the three dishes we had were really interesting.
How exactly to describe them, I don't know, but it's just there.
Some might say it's got a bit of heaviness to it.
Some, however, might say that their flavors lean towards the clean.
Either way I can't really place it- not skilled enough to tell- but I fell in love with the salad of lettuce with vinegar, the braised tofu came with surprisingly huge pieces of tofu prepared in a way that had some sort of crisp over it, then we had a beef crepe which was well fried and crisp with a skin so thick, and which had lots of beef, and then there was a dish of gong bao chicken that was neither too sweet nor too spicy but had a bit of saucy kick to it.
The one thing that struck me about their food were the nuts.
They seemed to include nuts with everything.
Not only that, there was chicken in the salad.
After lunch we took a quick walk around the area, wandering first along the little street where the restaurant was located, then across the road, then afterward into Breeze Shopping Mall which I later discovered was the quieter sister of another mall located just behind.
This side of the road outside the restaurant however seemed to consist mostly of either apartments, or office units.
It could have been either.
I wasn't able to tell.
But nearly every window was a sliding window, and nearly every window surface was protected by a (seemingly rusty) grille firmly affixed to the building structure itself.
One gets a fascinating variation of different architectural styles right through the decades all along this one single street.
On one hand you have a U-shaped building painted red and white whose units all look out upon a common corridor and who are pushed back from the elements by a sturdy medium-height concrete wall.
On the other, however, you have newer glass-fronted structures with (I assume) protective barriers of steel (or something) that look aesthetically prettier than their predecessors across the road.
Like a bit of a history lesson, all at once you saw the years of Taiwan, and Taipei nestle themselves confidently along this singular road.
We got back to the hotel, checked in, and afterwards in the evening just before heading out for dinner, went up to the rooftop pool where from the outdoor patio I got a most lovely view of Taipei.
With better weather, better skill even, it might have been postcard-quality of Tourism Bureau standard.
Alas, I am but a visitor who don't get to choose what day I want to take the picture, and I don't get to work out how I want the picture to be.
But maybe that's the charm.
And that don't mean that what turns out isn't beautiful.
They're just a little bit different, a little bit more dramatic.
We went back to the area around the shop where we had breakfast this morning- I wanted to take pictures of the road- which, if you ask me, showed scenes quintessentially Taiwan.
Maybe it were the sight of the train trundling steadily past the tracks above my head.
Maybe it were the sight of all them similar-looking motorbikes parked so neatly by the roadside.
One thing that struck me was how youth oriented the place (attempted) to be. It might have been the proximity of the university, but I've been in places where the zone around a five-star luxury hotel caters to the (business) guests of the hotel rather than the locals who come to it.
Instead of eateries offering sky high tourist prices for bland-tasting local food, you had indie burger shops, fast food and snack shops.
And instead of shops offering visitors specially tailored business suits at record speed at urgent prices, there was bubble tea shop Milksha.
We got a matcha latte.
I'm so glad I managed to grab a picture of the National Taipei University of Education.
Albeit night time.
Taiwan R.O.C. does, after all, place emphasis on education and book learning and experiences, and it's not every day I get to be near the campus that houses students (and future educators) from all over the country.
It was time for dinner, so off we went to the mall (I forget its name) behind the hotel where in the basement we found a little food court with a sort of diner/eatery that offered the typical Taiwanese favorites, so we had a beef soup, a basket of xiaolongbao, a deep fried pork chop and a plate of dumplings in chili oil.
And because one cannot come to Taiwan without visiting as many night markets as posssible, we walked to Linyang Night Market nearby where we wandered about the stalls looking at clothes, costume jewelry and cute little tote bags before stopping for a snow ice in taro flavor.
