Shihlin Night Market

Look at it and tell me that it's not tempting.



Bet you couldn't do it with a straight face! I was really addicted to it when I was in Taipei! Anyway, we walked back to the train station and Daniel and SH were stunned when they saw Yong He Dou Hua or something like that!



I have the picture of the signboard in the other computer, but I didn't put it up. Anyway, it's a pretty famous brand. A trip to Taipei 101 introduced Yong He as a place which is famous for its soya bean products, so I'm guessing that's where the shop got its name from. Blogging every day on Taipei is getting me tongue-tied. It's beginning to sound rubbishy. Anyway, after that we made our way to Shihlin Night Market, although it wasn't quite night yet! Weirdly enough though, the market wasn't at the Shihlin stop. Instead it's at Jiantan.



And our jaws were on the floor the moment we stepped out of the train. It's not everyday you see a mountain in view from the train station back in Singapore. So we kind of stood there for a little while, in awe at our surroundings, amazed at how close we were to landforms not seen at home.



We had a bit of interaction with the locals while playing some of the games there. There was this girl who was rather cute, teh-ing Terence and Daniel to play the basketball game. After that Daniel went to play this mahjong game which involved the characters being on the paper and having to do something like Bingo with the mahjong tiles. The girl in charge of the game was merely 16 and rather friendly as well. Some way or another, we found out that she was learning Japanese. Upon further conversation, she revealed that she would be attending a student exchange programme as she was ranked the 5th student out of 3000 in school. We were impressed.

Other than that there was this guy from Malaysia who was in charge of this dart-throwing stall. He told us that he watched one of our local shows, Holland V and he kind of liked it. And he also turned Jay really loud on the radio till the boss asked him to turn it down. For the life of me I can't remember what song was playing but we managed to win a Xiao Ding Dang doll from him! he looked our age or older, so I was quite surprised to find out that he was only 16! Oops!

I'm impressed that they were so friendly towards us. One might say that it's because we're tourists and they're out to get our money, but somehow I feel that the connection we made was a bit more than that. It's really cool that they have so many young people out working at a young age.



And this is the very famous Ji Pai (for the life of me I can't remember what it's called in English) that's humungous and really tasty. It costs NT45 (SGD2.25) which I felt was a freaking good deal. The locals seem to think so too as the queue constantly has about 10 to 15 people in it.



This is the market coming to life at night. The layout is a huge mess, which I felt adds to the flavour of the place. It was super re nao, and it was a weekday! I might be because of the holiday, but people were thronging the place like there was no tomorrow!

Everyone seemed to be in high spirits, enjoying themselves tremedously. I also liked how they were hawking their wares loudly. Even if they weren't the most patronised, or even if people walked by without noticing, they would still go on, spirits undampened. It wasn't really that they were determined to do business. It was more of the fact that they were enjoying themselves tremendously, bellowing and persuading the general public and at the same time it livened up the atmosphere.



We bought lots of clothes at this shop situated at one of the smaller alleys. Then as we walked towards the train station Terence passed by this shop selling watch straps and stuff like that. Terence changed his and hung around for a chat with the auntie regarding the various places of interest in Taipei while Daniel and I went back to the food place across the street to buy food. I took a photo of this strange practice that was relatively new. They'd stick a burning candle into your ear and it's suppose to attract all the wax onto the candle's wax. The process clears out your ears effectively. Not that I'm speaking from experience of course!

We went back real late, and was contemplating whether to continue with our plan up Yang Ming Shan.