Day 2 in Taiwan began a little late, partially because we were so tired from traveling the day before and partially because my brother and sister-in-law aren’t exactly morning people. We woke up, showered and fed Stella her milk before we head out for our brunch.

And the weather was so HOT! Seriously for you people who are planning to go to Taiwan during summer, make sure you bring an umbrella or buy an umbrella! You will definitely need it because the sun sears your skin!

In a matter of a minute, whereby I was carrying Stella down from 6th floor in the elevator to the car, I was already sweating buckets. It was really really that hot.

We headed to somewhere nearby our place, it was a fast brunch for us as we are about the have a long drive to Kenting National Park. We were at Paddy Aurae, a Taiwanese version of fast-food, was supposed to head to Dolik for breakfast but we were rush for time. Anyhow, I ordered a bowl of pork meat plus floss and pickled vegetables served with rice and a bowl of white fish meat soup that costs 60TWD for both! Seriously it’s a cheap meal, there’s fish!

It was nice, will definitely have it again when I have the chance.

One thing about Taiwan architecture, the buildings are mostly tiled. Like 98% out of the buildings are tiled, as opposed to Malaysian buildings whereby it’s all just painted.

After our quickie brunch, we headed down to Kenting National Park and on the way there, we detoured to Pingtung and my brother decided to randomly drive around since he’s never been in that area before. We didn’t know where we were so we scoured to using Googlemap’s to help our navigation.

We then randomly stumbled upon a railway track and fortunately, the gate was closed as a train is about to pass by. So Hugo and I rushed down and took some photos of the train. It’s been ages since I experienced waiting for a train to pass by, since my younger days in Menglembu.

We continued on our way and soon reached Donggang, famous for its sea produce. In fact, while we were there we saw an array of fishes from bluefin tuna, sharks and I have no idea what other fish there was, it all looks like fish to me.

We then moved further down the pier and saw a huge crowd, there was a fish auction going on! It was very exciting seeing a bunch of men pointing here and there, giving all sorts of gestures and the auctioneer then pastes a piece of paper on the fish and a lady would hook the fish and bring it aside for delivery.

After seeing all the raw fish around, it was time to taste the real thing and we drove to somewhere nearby for our lunch. My sister-in-law recommended us to try out the sashimi; especially the tuna and whale meat. And seriously the tuna is nothing like I had before! It was like.. magical.

One thing about eating with my brother is, he loves food and he spends most of his money on food. Hence we’re up for some good food today and in Taiwan, there’s a lot of fresh seafood available.

We were here for lunch, and it was good.

While we were waiting for our food to arrive, I began a mobile upload diarrhea on my facebook album.

This cheeky little girl was waiting for her food to come too! She almost gave me a heart attack during lunch, she would fold her legs while sitting in her chair and stand up while everyone was busy digging into their food.

We ordered an array of food, this is fried rice noodle with pumpkin. I couldn’t really taste exactly what was in the dish but it was very sweet and fragrant. Although pumpkin isn’t one of my favourite, it tasted good.

After seeing the tuna by the pier, it was time to have some! This is black pepper tuna with onions, teppanyaki style!

This is fresh prawns, that was blanched. The prawns were unseasoned and supposed to be dipped in soy sauce to taste it’s sweetness.

The Holy Dish of all, Sashimi! The salmon and tuna was so so good!

This was something new for me. I didn’t know Fernleaf could be eaten and yea this is Fernleaf. It’s fried with “wuo zi”, some sourish fruit like some assam-ish kinda fruit. I love the fernleaf, it’s really crunchy and it has this slight sliminess to it which was very unique.

Next up, seafood pancake. It had this tempura batter outer layer that sandwiched lettuce, fish meat and prawn. Not oily at all and superbly crunchy, very nice!

I love soups and this soup was the bomb! This is a pot of crayfish stew that was just sweet, fragrant and very very tasty. Even Stella loves it, I gave her a sip and she started making noise for more.

For dessert, we were served with fried sweet potato in malt coating and fresh guava cuts. It was a very different experience in eating the sweet potato because it was malt coated for a reason. The waitress gave us a bowl of ice water and told us to dip the potato into the water before eating it.

The reason for being is, once you dip the potato in the ice water, the coldness from the water would freeze the malt and so when you bite the potato, it’s crunchy! Like eating Crème brûlée where the coating is made from hard sugar. Definitely a good treat.

And the guava was very sweet and most importantly, not tough! Unlike the guavas I had in Malaysia, this was superbly sweet and soft. Perfect for summer.

Next up, we finally headed to the original intended destination. Kenting White Sand Bay was beautiful but it was too hot for us to frolick around the beach. I’d seriously die without an umbrella there because it was so hot! Malaysia’s weather is nothing compared to the summer in Taiwan.

The water was so clear, and the beach sand was so fine and beautiful, it was even more beautiful than Redang.

And Stella had her first experience in the sea, she loved it so much. She wasn’t afraid of the waves crashing on her and she seemed to enjoy “drinking” sea water. Too bad we didn’t pack her bikini for her if not she could’ve stayed longer in the water.

We stayed at the beach for about 20 minutes because it was too hot and I was practically burning in the sun! We then headed to the famous cape area, whereby the famous movie Cape No. 7 was filmed. And yes it was so hot there and to be so near to the sea, there wasn’t much wind at all!

The view was spectacular, it looked like a still photograph! But the weather was so torturous.

We took a few photos, taking advantage of the beautiful sky that day.

We were waiting for Hugo to set up the camera for a group photo with his Gorillapod, and seriously to use a  DSLR with a tripod like that can give someone a heart attack when the body is so heavy. Wouldn’t want to imagine if suddenly one of the tripod leg goes wobbly and the camera goes “ping pong piang” on the rocks.

Everyone had a great time posing as we were using a wireless remote control but Stella was probably thinking wtf are this people laughing, screaming and giggling about plus everyone’s moving around doing silly things.

We then drove further down and arrive at this place, that I have no idea where it is. I think I heard my sister-in-law explaining to me but I kinda zoned out because I was so reluctant to leave the car, it was too hot!

And to go into this place, we had to jump over the weird looking rocks and make sure we don’t fall because the holes in between the rocks are really deep.

We quickly took a few photos before we left and although the weather was superbly hot, the sky was beautiful. I was told by my mum that the weather appears so blue because it flowed from a nuclear plant hence changing the water.

All this running around taking photos and burning under the sun really made everyone thirsty and we quickly drove to the nearest 7-Eleven to get refreshments. And coincidentally, the 7-Eleven that we stopped at was opposite the famous Sail Rock.

Well, the reason it was called the Sail Rock is because the shape of the rock looks like a ship set on sail. Kinda no brainer isn’t it. Anyhow, the weather wasn’t getting any cooler by the day, I was having migraines from the heat by the time this photo was taken.

We then drove for quite some time to this place, for paos! And we had to queue for them. We were given numbers and told to sit and wait for our number to be displayed on the screen.

Thankfully next door was a drink shop so we bought more cool drinks.

The flavours available for the pao were very unique, there was the normal pork pao, mushroom and egg with pork pao and the not so normal ones like bacon pao, curry pork pao, spicy lion head (meat ball) pao. And the shop will play a song that indicates fresh paos are out from the steamers! A very unique experience.

We waited for about 30 minutes till our turn and by that time, bacon was just freshly sold out. ;cry

Since there were so many types of pao available, it’d be hard to distinguish the flavour you chose so with every purchase you will be given their name card and at the back is an indicator of the paos. Each pao is labeled with several dots with different colours so this is your pao manual.

It was a long drive home for us after buying the paos, it took about an hour plus and by the time we reached home it was already 8.30pm. We were wilted!

But considering the fact that we don’t come to Taiwan everyday, everyone agreed to head out to the famous LiuHe Night Market for dinner/supper. I was ready at 9.30pm but it wasn’t until 10.45pm that we leave. And I wasn’t very hungry either, was too tired to be downing anything.

LiuHe Night Market is currently Taiwan’s #1 night market, beating out Shihlin! And it’s opened daily and my brother told me that during peak seasons, the night market would stay open until 5am! And before we head to LiuHe Night Market, we stopped by the famous Formosa Boulevard MRT Station.

It is just a stone’s throw away from the LiuHe Night Market and it’s a beautiful MRT station with modern architectural designs and a famous spot for wedding pictures. the station is known for its “Dome of Light”, the largest glass work in the world. It was designed by Italian artist Narcissus Quagliata. It is 30 meters in diameters and covers an area of 2,180 square meters. It is made up of 4,500 glass panels. Including my brother and my sister-in-law.

This was taken about two years back, at the Formosa Boulevard MRT station. See the dome of light?

And this is about 2 years later, with a little addition.

Beautiful isn’t it? I meant the dome.

And this is at the top floor of the station, you have to take a long escalator ride down to reach the dome.

Look at the cool design!

And we were on our way up to the LiuHe night market.

As we were there on a Monday night, there weren’t many people around so it was nice to walk around. Plus the food array was nothing less. It’s like your typical pasar malam just that this one was very clean, less crowded and people were following traffic rules and there were many rubbish bins provided so it was very tidy.

We went to New Zealand Steakhouse for supper, and I was told by my sister-in-law that this shop has been in existence for more than 10 years. It was already 11.30pm when we had our supper and I felt like dying from the heat I was under the entire day. So having steak at night was sort of a bad idea.

And Stella seemed to enjoy herself very much although it was way past her bed time.

I shared steak and fish with Hugo and it comes with a bowl of beef stew and salad. The beef stew was god sent, it was so good and comforting for my tummy after being heaty the entire day.

I want to have a bowl of the soup again, next year!

We had this, beef and fish. Not bad! Will go for it again on my next trip.

We ended the night with the mother of all tofu’s.  Stinky Tofu!

Stinky tofu is one of the most recognizable dishes in Taiwan. It is very commonly served on roadside stands and in night markets. It is usually served deep fried (often served drizzled with sauce and topped with sour pickled vegetables).

And to top it off, we had the Szechuan Malat soup version! It’s already stinky, plus it’s with soup. Surprisingly, it wasn’t stinky as it smells, but it’s definitely my cup of tea. It was a squirmish experience with this dish but I’ll pass. Though the soup was really nice though, I’m a big fan of soups.

With a stinky end, we went home and I went unconscious immediately after I finished brushing my teeth and changing into my pajamas.  And the sorethroat fairy decided to visit me that night.

The next day was going to be a long day too, we are to head up hill!

♥ Wendy