Front Row Window Seat: The Hintons take on Taiwan Part I

I was very lucky to have my Mom, Dad and youngest brother Damian visit me for two weeks during December. We packed in a huge amount of sightseeing, and lets face it folks, food! So their trip will be separated into a few different blog posts. Enjoy!

In true Hinton fashion my parents and Damian arrived on a Monday afternoon for a two week visit with absolutely no accomodation booked. But not to worry! Give Pauline a laptop, wifi, and a cup of tea and she is sure to find something in a great location, reasonably priced and just slightly out of the ordinary.
For the first week they lived in a spacious 3 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment. Sounded great! But like most things in Taiwan, you are never entirely sure what you are in for until you arrive. And it just so happens that their apartment was located smack bang above a day/night market. The Tonghua Night Market on Linjiang street to be precise. In fact, you needed to squeeze between stalls to get to the elevator up to their front door.
During the day the market sold anything from fruit and vegetables, tea, freshly caught seafood, freshly killed livestock, pigs heads, ducks beaks, chicken hearts, and not quite the kitchen sink but any kind of kitchen utensil you might ever need. At night time it becomes a vibrant and noisy night market!

At first I did not know how my parents would handle this. But they threw themselves into Taiwanese life with a great deal of enthusiasm! Trying whatever tasty treats were being sold in the markets. Including but not limited to these....

the first is dried swordfish with a bit of coating of sesame and something sweet (of course), and the second is tried tuna, also a bit sweet but not sickeningly so.

Mom also took a fancy to the toffee coated baby tomatoes and these pancakes that are filled with either a sweet red bean paste or a type of custard filling. Only $1!

The weather during their first week was not great. Quite cold with plenty of rain. So dad made the most of it with plenty of trips to a technology fair that was happening not too far from where they were staying. Perfect!

On the first full day that I got to spend with them though, the sun shone! So we took the chance to go up Taipei 101.
The Taipei 101 building was the tallest building in the world from 2004 until 2010. It also has the worlds fastest elevator! Taking you from the 6th floor to the observation deck on the 89th floor in 39seconds. (My ears popped on the way up and the way down)

Once we had come back down to ground level it was time to try the Michelen star winning dumplings at Ding Tai Fung! There was a 40minute waiting time which gave us a chance to browse the Taiwanese delicacies that were being sold a short distance from the restaurant. Of course Damian and I had to try as many of the free samples as we could without completely ruining our appetite for dumplings. So we had some pineapple cake, some kumquat cake, some green tea nougat, some red wine nougat, some sweet beef jerky, some cookies, some chewy stuff, some sesame stuff, some peanut stuff, some Oolong tea, some green tea, some apple tea..... You can see where I'm going with this.

The wait for a table was worth every minute! Collectively we tried the chicken, mushroom, shrimp, pork, and vegetable dumplings. (With some steamed spinach on the side Deirdre) AMAZING !

Din Tai Fung has restaurants in Hong Kong, the US and Sydney. If you are ever in the area it is well worth a visit.

After a feast of dumplings we headed to Longshan Temple.

Mom, Dad and Damian outside Longshan Temple.
I was doing some research on the history of the Temple and found this great article on CNN's website which has a short history but also talks about the energy and significance of the temple today. The temple is still an important place of worship. We were fortunate enough to visit the temple on a day when large numbers of people were gathering in the temple to sing, pray, and give offerings to the Gods.

"On the first and 15th night of each lunar month, Buddhists, Taoists and worshipers of the ancient goddess of the sea, Matsu, gather here to pray, bring food and flowers and share the wonders of their faiths. It has been the same here twice a month, almost every month, for 274 years."