Inspiring Beautiful Travels
When you’re visiting a Thai street market (especially the Damnoen Saduak floating market, which you’ll find about 100 miles south of Bangkok), leave your notebook at home. It’s a camera and a nose you’ll want to bring with you on this trip. Enjoy this photo essay of some of my favorite shots from our trip to Damnoen Saduak, which is, of course, only one of the unforgettable street markets in delicious Thailand.
If you ever find yourself traveling in rural Taiwan, you might want to bring someone who can tell you what you’re eating. Let me clarify: if you ever find yourself on the lovely little tropical island of Xiao Liuqiu (off the coast of Donngang), and you’d like to know what you’re eating, you’ll NEED to bring someone who can tell you what you’re eating. While many of the restaurants in Taipei have pictures of their food items or, if you’re lucky, an interesting English translation, nowhere in rural Taiwan will afford you this luxury. Save for my fruit juice extravaganza yesterday, this is where my culinary adventure has begun.
In my soup this afternoon (there is a picture to your left), I found the following items: 2 fully-intact clam shells, one purple octopus leg, two balls of something-fishy-tasting (example to the bottom right of the picture there), a pile of ground meat (beef? pork? something else entirely?), three shrimp, a selection of scallop parts, some fried white meat-like substance that tasted more like beef than the other meaty stuff, three strips of hot pink tofu, some cubed brown pieces I imagine are a third kind of meat, one piece of fried tuna, and lots of noodles and green onion slices. The delightful chef, a sweet Taiwanese woman with a shy smile and a dear love for cooking, excitedly took me into the kitchen, which, yes, was actually a six-burner stove next to our table, and with flourish, pointed out every single item for me on the item, pointing to the Chinese characters and then pointing to the corresponding dish cooking on the stove. While this did give me a kind of ballpark, to be honest, I didn’t really have much of an idea of exactly what was what on the burner itself, but I did appreciate her very kind attempt to help me navigate her restaurant. Everything, by the way, smelled fantastic.
In a leap of faith, I pointed at one of the bowls, smiled, nodded, and sat down. Sipping my papaya-milk and waiting patiently for lunch, I hadn’t any idea that I’d just ordered an absolutely delightful soup–with just the right amount of chili pepper, just the right amount of noodles, and just the right amount of octopus legs and unidentifiable meat-like objects.
What I’ve learned today is that sometimes, you’ve got to just close your eyes, point, and hope for the best. After all, when it comes to navigating culinary delights in countries with characters, you simply have to trust the experts.
Welcome to Xiao Liuqiu!
I have just discovered, after a full day of being so proud of myself for jumping in and attempting to speak Chinese from the very first moment I arrived in Taiwan, that I have actually been telling everyone I meet, everywhere, that I have to urinate.
You can imagine my mortification, especially since I didn’t realize this until I’d already spread the word to, oh, probably about half of Taipei. I would have preferred to remain blissfully ignorant, but my traveling partner thought it’d be best to inform me of my linguistic error today after the nice little old Chinese juice lady nearly fainted onto her blender after she handed me my freshly-squeezed beverage. Her friend, another nice little old Chinese juice lady, had immediately covered her mouth in surprise and started giggling in the very sweet and unobtrusive way that Asian ladies seem to do here–polite, soft, and subdued.
At the time, I hadn’t any idea what I’d done: after all, I’d just braved entirely new territory by ordering a fresh fruit juice of, well, everything on the menu (since I couldn’t read the menu, not because I was feeling particularly bold and exciting or anything). Tomatoes, bananas, and strawberries–all horrifically chopped and dumped into a bowl, whirred up in a blender, and handed to me in a paper cup. I’d thought I’ve paved new ground in other ways, boldly sticking the plastic straw into a lumpy concoction of fruits that make the at-home Kristin shudder in disgust (adult selective eater, anyone?). And yet, I turned those tables almost immediately when instead of saying a little thank you, I instead shocked two little old ladies in an off-the-beaten path juice shop by telling them how much I really had to pee.
The secret, I’d later learn, was this: xie-xie is not, as you might think, pronounced she-she. It in, in fact, a bit more like shia-shia (and even that’s not right….). The differences, you see, are somewhat substantial.
My watch is telling me it’s 8:15 a.m. My cell phone, however, which just performed its automatic update, is telling me it’s 11:14 p.m. This means, if I’m calculating correctly, that except for an accidental twenty minute nap while watching a hopefully pointless romantic comedy on the airplane, I have now been awake for 28 hours. I can’t remember the last time I did this (wait, have I ever done that?).
I’ve been awake longer than I can ever remember and yet: I’m sitting in my surprise upgraded room in the superbly spiffy Dandy Hotel in downtown Taipei eating the Hershey’s kisses that were sitting pleasantly on my pillow. (From what I gathered at the reception from the hopelessly sweet but nonetheless impossible to understand concierge, the hotel upgraded my room to a suite because they didn’t have time to prepare the room I was supposed to have. How my room wasn’t ready at 10:30 p.m. is baffling to me, since checkout is 12 noon…?) Anyway, I’m not sure how to use any of the four digital remote controls sitting next to the bed, and I’m not exactly sure how to flush the toilet or how to turn on the light in the bathroom (still working on that), but I’m smiling, I’m awake, and I’m exhausted. My knees are sore for sitting still for 15 hours, and despite drinking about 6 bottles of water on the plane, there’s a dull pain between my eyes. I went next door to the infamous 7/11 mart, the mart company that has literally taken over Taiwan with its lure of all-in-one shopping, and attempted to buy an ibuprofen, but after combing through the aisles and having literally no idea what any of the pill bottles were actually advertising, I settled for a warm pork dumpling (from a microwave, no less!) and another bottle of water. What a relief to discover that bottled water looks the same everywhere.
Our drive through Taipei was, surprisingly, a lot like I imagined: flashing billboards, huge Chinese characters advertising all sorts of products, ideas, and slogans I can’t read, sleek skyscrapers and ultra-fast highways, mini-marts and grocery stores with animal parts hanging from the windows, women holding umbrellas and hustling down the streets in the drizzly rain, men on motorcycles, a near-death experience when my taxi had a stand-off with another taxi on the windy, one-lane cobblestone road leading to our hotel….you know, the traveling usual 🙂
So now, having been awake for 28 (is it 29 now?) hours and having had my fill of pork dumplings, I am going to try and lie in bed, close my eyes, and dream of tomorrow. The mountain biking tour was cancelled because of the impending rain, so I’m going to sleep in, have a wonderful buffet breakfast, and take a bus to the fantastic National Palace Museum. For lunch, I’m going to order something off a menu I can’t read, and after lunch, I think I’ll be going with Matt, the fellow writer I’m traveling with, to a graffiti/street art festival (celebration? honoring?). I hope to top off my day in Taipei with a visit to one of the renowned night markets, which, I’m told, take a brave stomach and an open mind. Bring on the squid parts and stinky tofu!
