TAIWAN - Day Two: Jackie Chan Lunch, Longshan Temple, & Ningxia Night Market

Jackie Chan told me where I should eat lunch that day.

And since Jackie has never steered me wrong before (or at all), I decided to follow his advice.

So, yeah.  I was walking around the neighborhood in the area of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial MRT station, looking for a place to eat. I could probably never find the place again, since I came to it on accident. (I wasn't worried about getting lost - I created a sixth sense about where I was in relation to any MRT station.  If I ever got lost or couldn't find what I wanted, I knew I'd be okay if I could find the MRT station!)

Anywho, it was hot and muggy and I was hungry and thirsty. It was a pretty typical part of Taipei - not super fancy or touristy, but not scary or sketchy.  I saw a few chain places (like MOS Burger, a Japanese chain, and Sushi Express, which was everywhere), but I wasn't interested in those.  Not that I have anything against trying local food chains when in a foreign country; I just wanted something more authentic.  Then I realized I hadn't had Taiwan's national dish yet: beef noodle soup.

It was not exactly a soup day.  (Hot and muggy days rarely are.)  But I had noticed that most of the locals ate hot meals for lunch and dinner, no matter how miserable the day was.  Maybe they knew something I didn't know?  Maybe it helped them deal with the heat?  It did seem like I was the only sweating person in the heat.  How were they not affected by it, while I was a sweaty, hot mess?

Thinking these deep, important thoughts, I walked by a little shop that had lots of random snapshots of people in the window. But one of those people wasn't so random: one of them was Jackie Chan!  Not that I can claim to be any sort of Chan fan.  It's not that I don't like him, it's just that I don't care.  You know, he's not my favorite or anything.  I'm kinda surprised I recognized him. I looked at his picture and I looked at the pictures of the food (there's always pictures of food) and my tummy growled and I went right in.

The owner was very nice, very kind and patient.  He didn't speak any English beyond "Hello!" and "Thank you!", which, coincidentally, is all of the Mandarin I know. (Nie Hao and Xie Xie)  He showed me a picture menu (which I found almost all restaurants in Taiwan have - very handy) and I chose a good looking beef noodle soup.

He somehow told me to select a cold drink from the little fridge, which I was very grateful for.  I had noticed most of the locals didn't drink anything with their meals, but it just feels weird to me not to have a drink.  (He must have known that about Americans.)  The place was small, with communal tables. It was late for lunch, but there were probably 8 people in there.  It smelled heavenly.

I didn't take any pictures because it would have been a little awkward.  But omigosh, guys. I did a little Googling and I found the place online!  With pictures! Holy cow!  It must not be as much of a hole-in-the-wall as I thought.

Here's the outside. Apparently it's called Lao Zhang Beef Noodles Shop.  The red poster on the left side is where I saw Jackie's picture.  (Yeah, we're on first name basis.)

This picture totally could have been taken from where I was sitting.  And I was at the table closest to the kitchen.  Like I said, small place.

Lunch was delicious.  The meat a little fattier than I like, but I think that's an Asian thing.  I slurped my noodles with the rest of the diners and gave the owner a thumbs up as he hovered around.  It really was good, but it didn't help me handle the heat outside.  I was still a sweaty mess after lunch.  Dang.

Lunch cost all of around $3.  Can't beat that!

After lunch I headed over to my second temple of the day: the Longshan Buddhist Temple.  I've seen a lot of churches and cathedrals and temples and whathaveyous in my day.  (I spent a couple of months in Israel, where churches are a dime a dozen.)  But this was my first real Asian temple, so I had no idea what to expect.

I certainly did not expect a digital scrolling sign on the front gate.

I went inside, where there was a really pretty waterfall.  Which was kinda weird at first, because its in the heart of a very busy city. But it was still cool.  The koi in the pond were HUGE!  (Because they were in Taiwan, where everything apparently seems huge to me!)

The architecture was really interesting and beautiful. This temple is by no means ancient; apparently it has been destroyed several times over it's long history, most recently during WWII.  But the Buddha statue inside stayed miraculously safe, making it very important to the locals.

The details on the building were incredible.  The temple is guarded by several dragons.

Another "borrowed" image from the interwebs.

Here's the inner courtyard of the temple complex.  As you can see, the incense was pretty powerful.  Almost overwhelming, really, for a hot, sweaty, soup-filled girl!  It felt a little weird to take pictures in there, even though tons of people were.  I kinda felt that even though we didn't share the same faith, this was still a sacred and special place to these worshipers and I didn't want to intrude.

I took a few surreptitious shots, though.  (But nothing inside; that would have felt really weird to me.)

 But apparently not to someone else!

Borrowed from the interwebs.

I stood around and watched for quite a while.  Outside of the temple there were tons of little old ladies selling stuff for offerings inside. People would buys packs of incense (7 sticks, because 7 is symbolic or lucky or something) or fruit or flowers, and then go inside and offer them.  They would light the incense and bow up and down for several minutes.  Here's one of the very few videos I took in Taiwan.  (I am KICKING  myself for not taking more. Oh well.)

There was traditional Chinese music playing in the background, but as you can tell it was a noisy, bustling place.

After a while I sat on the front steps with all of the old people and tried to plan what I was going to do next.  There were a couple more temples in the area and a store that came very highly recommended in my guide book.  Map in hand, MRT station-sense switched on, I made my way out of the temple and into the streets of the Wanhua district.  (Taipei is huge and made of several districts. Our hotel was in the Da'an.)

This was a pretty busy area, with lots of people, lots of cars and scooters, lots of ads.  There were even several vans that drove by with pictures of someone on the side, flags, and a recording blasting out.  I can only assume they were for some sort of political campaign.  All of them sounded angry, but that's because Mandarin often sounds angry to my ugly American ears.

I walked and walked and walked, happily following my map.  I knew right where I was.  Until I didn't.

Oh, here's a typical Taipei walkway.  Generally right next to shops.  Lots of goods and restaurant seating out and about.

Parked scooters take up most of the room on the outer sidewalks.

So at some point I found myself to be where I was SURE the store was supposed to be.  Only it wasn't there.  It was a sketchy little stretch of road full of what seemed to be appliance and restaurant supply stores.  People looked at me strangely; I'm pretty sure they didn't get many tourists in the area!  So I skedaddled out as quickly as I could without looking like I was fleeing.

Happily, I discovered I was on the same road as one of the temples I wanted to visit: the Qingshan Temple.  Unhappily, the inside was under construction, so there wasn't much to see other than the front. It's kind of cool that in the middle of all these high rises there's this little temple, minding it's own business.

So I walked some more and realized that I was in the area of Snake Alley.  This is an area that has had a very shady past; a real red light district.  However, I had read that in the last decade or so the government had cleaned it up and made it more of a tourist attraction. (Rather, more of an appropriate tourist attraction.)  It's more of a night time attraction, with lots of snake-product related shops and such.  In the daytime?  Not so impressive.  I knew that the road I needed was just down that block-long strip of stores and restaurants, most of which were not open. I really needed to get to that road, and was worried that I wouldn't be able to find it otherwise.  (Taiwan is great about putting English translations on their street signs; not so great at consistently spelling those translations!) I decided I'd be fine and rushed down, feeling eyes on me, knowing full well I was out of place.  I wasn't scared, but I wasn't exactly comfortable.  Pretty sure I saw some day-time hookers, or at least women who dressed the part!

I quickly found my way back to the Longshan temple and the MRT station.  It was still fairly early in the afternoon, so I decided to check out the underground mall at the Taipei Main Station.  You read that right - an underground mall.  Taipei is totally packed and crowded, so they're apparently all about underground malls! (We visited several on this trip.)  The one at the Taipei Main Station is HUGE!  Tons of stores selling all kinds of stuff.

The biggest part was like this - mom & pop shops and convenience stores.  Lots of neat things to look at, but nothing I really had to have.  (Cute teapots and tea sets, and I almost bought one, but then I was like "Hey, I don't drink tea.  Why would I ever need this?!")  Notice the 7-11 stripes on the right.

Borrowed image.

One part of the mall was more upscale; it was nice, but not hoighty-toighty like that Taipei 101 mall.  It even had a frozen yogurt place just like our Pink Walrus in Lafayette!  I window shopped for a while and ended up buying a cute wallet.  I know, I'm a super exciting shopper on this trip. (Lance was grateful for this; I was surprised by it.)

Borrowed image.

I eventually made my way back to the hotel, where Lance was napping.  That weirdo.  That tired, tired weirdo.  Things had gone really well for him that day at Computex, but if you want to hear all about it you will have read about it on his non-existent blog.  Or ask him, one of the two.  

We eventually headed out of the hotel in search of some dinner.  Neither of us were terribly hungry, so we were in no hurry.  First we went to the Taipiei Main Station mall, because I was so impressed with the idea of a huge underground mall and thought Lance would be, too. (I was wrong.  I think to guys it's all just shopping.)  So then we went rode up one stop to the Zhongshan station, I can't remember why. But it also had underground shopping.  This is where we ran into these fancy bathroom signs.

Now let's just stop for a moment and talk about Taiwan bathrooms.  On the whole, they were pretty typical public bathrooms, if maybe even a bit cleaner than most American ones.  And there were always little signs on the stalls, so I was never surprised to discover a squat toilet when what I very much needed was a Western toilet. (Old dog, new tricks?  No thanks.)  But... BUT...

TRUE STORY: in Taiwan they don't flush toilet paper.  You throw it away in a garbage can next to the toilet.  I know.  I know. (It has something to do with the island's ancient sewer system.)  I was pretty grossed out by this concept before our trip, but you know what?  It wasn't as gross as I thought it would be.  I mean, it was still kinda gross.  We're talking about used toilet paper in the garbage can.  But it wasn't that bad.

Okay, so back to our quest for dinner.  We decided to walk down the underground mall at Zhongshan station, which turned out to be only book sellers; thousands and thousands of books all in Mandarin.  Are e-readers big in Taiwan?  I never saw anyone with one.  We walked and walked and walked and finally found ourselves at the Shonglian MRT station, a good half-mile from where we started!  That's a lot of book stores!

By this point we were starting to get hungry.  We happily discovered we were close to a night market that was recommended to us by someone who lives in Taiwan, so we made our way to it.

And by made our way I mean we got out of the MRT station and blindly tried to find it.  (I swear I'm good with maps on my own, but when I'm with someone else I lose all map sense!)  Luckily, it was just a little further than we thought and we found the market.

It. Was. Packed.

It was all we could do to get through.  Lots and lots of people, lots of yummy smells, some yucky smells (stinky tofu again!), and lots of things to see.

We saw a meat kabob stall that smelled and looked promising - until we saw the English translations: lots of  internal organs for chickens.  And, I kid you not, chicken butts.  It said Chicken Butts.  I like to try new things, but not butt things.  We were both a little disappointed and agreed that we would have eaten them - and probably enjoyed them - had we not know what they were.

Right after this we were stopped by a group of what appeared to be middle-school girls, all cute in their school uniforms, giggling and awkward.  They asked if we spoke English and if we would mind being interviewed.  (Pretty sure they got extra credit or something for doing this.)  We chatted for a bit; they seemed surprised that we considered the night market crowded.  How was the night market different from restaurants in America?  Again, they were surprised that all of our eating establishments were inside because it gets cold in the winter.  It was fun talking to them, although I'm not quite sure how much of our responses they really understood.

Having been through the entire night market and not really wanting to go through it again we walked back towards the MRT station.  I decided that what I really wanted was something from a bakery we had seen along the way.  No more hot meals for me that day - I wanted carbs!

We stopped and each bought a few things, including this super yummy sandwich.  I know it included tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and a fried egg.  It had a meat paddy of some sort and some yummy spices.  Delicious.

We ate and dragged our exhausted selves back to the the MRT station, where I took a random picture of this movie poster I had seen all around town.  It's of some old lady rubbing a bald man's head.  It tickled me.

And then, because I had been craving it all day and because we were on vacation and you should always have dessert while on vacation, we hunted down and bought some chocolate ice cream cones while in the Taipai Main Station mall.  They were made all the more awesome because the servers were so very polite and friendly and kept bowing to us and saying "Xie Xie!"  (McDonald's could learn a thing or two, I'm just sayin'.)

It had been a good day.