It just works (Taiwan - Monday, March 22, 2010)

After 17 years I've finally returned...

We got to my grandparent's aparment after midnight and my whole family woke up to welcome us.  My grandparent's flat is pretty small with my aunt, uncle, two cousins, cousin's boyfriend, plus my dad, sister, and I are in there.  Right away they start offering us crazy things to eat.  For example I was handed this green thing without indication of whether it was a fruit or vegitable or if I was supposed to try to peel it or bite in.  Turns out its a fruit, you just bite it, and it tastes like a smoothie of other fruits!  The only way to describe it is like a smoothie, but it's delicious.  This bodes well for the rest of the eating on this trip.

Miracle of miracles - my family comments that I look like an American Indian.  Like I haven't heard that before!

My grandparents live on the 3rd floor but they own both the floors above them as well.

My female cousin, Jei-ru (age 28) occupies the flat on the 4th floor and we got to stay on the 5th and top floor on these cool mats my dad is in love with.

My dad wakes my sister and I up before 7 am. My goodness. I have the option of going downstairs and taking a bath on the 3rd floor or showering up here on the 5th where there is no hot water heater.  I choose the latter since it's already starting to heat up and I can feel the humidity on my skin.  The water is really really cold but actually refreshing instead of shocking.  Neither my sister or my dad opted for this option until after I'd gone as the guinea pig.  My sister still (as of morning 2) hasn't but I think she'll come around.

My male cousin, Jei-ming (age 26), meets us downstairs and takes us to a local breakfast place.  In Nei-hu, the neighborhood of Taipei that they live in, everything is in walking distance and basically no one cooks.  The food is right there hot and waiting for you and is super super cheap.  The four of us stuffed ourselves silly and got out for under US$6.

Real Dim Sum.

Yes. I ate chicken feet.

Balls.

In the afternoon, my Uncle Stone (married to my dad's sister Li-Mei) took us on a tour of the North shore of the island. Taiwan's an island doncha know.  We drove in Stone's car for about 15 minutes before we saw the coast.  The drivers are insane.  It's very free form driving around here.  No one seems to care about lanes too much.  People take unprotected left turns in traffic when there isn't space for them to get across.  Tons of people have motor scooters and just weave in and out and every which way.  Being a passenger in a car is a very motion-sick experience.  There's so much turning, going around people, and braking for people who I think are being insane.  And surprisingly little honking.  No one is angry about this.  It's just how it works.  And it SHOULD NOT work.  One cool thing about some of the street lights though is that they'll give you a countdown of how many seconds it will be until your light turns green.  Never have to wonder if the sensor skipped you!

We went in a Buddhist temple and found one of the few things I can remember about my trip here when I was 7, the lucky stones!!  There are two orange-slice shaped stones, each with a flat side and a curved side.  First you approach and ask if she will answer your question.  Throw the stones on the ground.  If both flat sides are up (or both are down) then the answer is no.  If one flat side is up and the other is down, she will answer.  If she says no you have two more tries before you have to walk away, question unanswered.  If you get a yes in your three tries then you go pick a stick out of this box.  The stick will have a number on it.  Take the piece of paper out of the box with the corresponding number.  Then go back and throw the stones again.  If they say yes, then you and her are on the same page and the answer you picked from the box is correct.  If they say no, then you need to pick another stick.  You also have three total tries to do this before you need to just walk away.

After the temple we browsed a non-touristy open air market full of food.  I tried some candied sweet potato that was pretty good, but no where near as good as dragon whiskers.  At the very end of the row we run into this guy filling this white, cotton like stuff  with sweet, crushed peanuts.  The end result is called dragon whisker candy.  "How do you make that cotton stuff", we ask.  "It's all in the technique.  I've been doing this for twenty years", he replies (in Chinese hehe).  You warm up this clear-ish sugar block under a heat lamp for two minutes and then poke a hole in the middle with scissors.  Then you use your hand to make the hole bigger, expanding the donut into a rope (still connected to itself).  You keep making the diameter of the rope thinner by and thinner by pulling on sections of it.  Once it gets adequately long you coat it with powdered sugar or flour, wind it in half, and continue pulling.  Then you halve if again and again and again and again and again, each time coating with the flour so the strands don't combine with each other.  It's amazing that it doesn't break (I guess that's where the technique comes in).  Eventually the strands are smaller than human hair.  When he's satisfied with the fluffy look he can get it into strips and fill it with either crushed peanuts or crushed sesame seeds.

We also met this lady who has her face on the packaging of her products.

Podiatry sandals

One thing I remember from the last time I visited Taiwan was skin-dog, a diseased street dog we met in an alley.  They aren't as common anymore but we found another!

Dried squid!

We get home around dinner time and are exhausted.  Everyone on the trip passes out right after dinner.