Real reviews from real travelers.
Taipei Pages by budapest8
| Page Views: 1,853 Last Visit to Taipei: 1987 | The other China by budapest8 - last update: May 1, 2006 |
'One week in Summer of '87 in Taipei | snake snacks in snake alley |
I travelled here with mieke
on a 'milk run' .I was living in Hong Kong
and she was a student on here 5th year
of studying Chinese at the University
in Shanghai. I was a Brit on a year long
RTW trip and she a young Belgian girl
almost fluent in Chinese.
We both had a love for China and
things Chinese.
I will be writing about our adventures soon.
To understand a bit about how it started..ROC,
well that's not 'rock and roll', but the
Republic of China. You can check out
some stuff in my tips....
Funny thing in Asia you got the cult
of Dr.Sun and Dr.Moon, but they
couldn't be more different.
We took a stretch limo to the
airport as there was a special
on from one of the hotels. There was a
huge TYPHOON on it's way and we had to
get out quick. Mieke had to fly out of
HK back to Brussels the next day.
We didn't know that we had to fly through
the bloody thing! I will always
remember that flight as we considered
joining the mile high club, but I'm
sorry to say that the will was drained from me
as I thought it was pretty close to a
'near death experience',
But then I'm not a pilot, but boy was I scared
when the plane dropped and flopped around
and baggage flying out the above lockers
and the stewerdess's looked scared
sh#tless to me.
Well we landed later in HK and people
applauded for a few minutes.
Mieke took a Phillipines Airines flight
to Europe the next day, it was the only
flight taking off, all others on the board were cancelled.
I saw a container being blown down the runway
like a matchbox. Her plane had cables holding it down.
When she took off, she took a part of me with her.
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Taipei's nightlife is full of night markets.
Probably the most famous one is called Snake Alley
on Huahsi Street in Taipei. I imagined it to be some hidden
away place, dark and windy, crammed with people and crawling
with snakes. It was not really anything like that at all.
It is a well-lit arcade with big decorated arches at each end,
with the name of the market in Chinese spelled out.
Little shops line the sides of the arcade, jade and trinkets,
touristy stuff, little statues, massage places and interspersed
between these merchants are lots of restaurants with display
cases out front. You can see varieties of shellfish that you could
not even imagine could possibly exist. You can recognize certain
things like tiger shrimp and little clams, but then there are big
praying mantis looking creatures, proto-crab-lobster type things,
clams that were bigger than my hand and had an enormous leg
(over a 6 inches long) swishing about in the water. And then,
of course, are the snakes. If you want to eat snake in Taipei,
Snake Alley is the place to come. The Snake Restaurants are
unto themselves, they don't serve all these other maritime delights,
just snake and various snake parts. The snake handlers play with
the snakes for the passersby, feed them small animals, and then
at the appointed time, hang them up on a hook and begin the long
process of preparing them for the restaurant. First, they cut open
the snake and remove some of the internal organs.
Men eat the gall bladder and shoot the snake testes
with beer to enhance their virility.
(Other parts are supposed to help with certain health problems,
but I can't remember it all.) Then, once the snake's nervous
system stops wrenching, the preparer peels away the skin
and the meat is used in soups and other dishes.
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| Night time is the right time |
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Taipei is a crazy place. You have an entire fried bird (beak to feet)
on a stick for sale next to the booth selling "Angel Dog" hair clips,
"Prank Cat" notebooks, "Adorable Tomato and Loving Strawberry"
(my personal favorite) accessories. Skinny, mangy sick-looking dogs
hanging around, while you get cash from the "Hello Kitty" &
"Dear Daniel" ATM Machines. Trash cans overflowing and mopeds
lining the sidewalks, so there's hardly room for a pedestrian,
and then two giggling Taiwanese girls walking in the street,
holding hands, wearing t-shirts that read "Enjoy your life!" or
something in English that doesn't quite make sense.
It's a culture of cute against a backdrop of the all too real.
Taipei is amazing and full of surprises. It's like the little buns
that the street vendors sell. You never know what's inside
until you bite into it.
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> Add to your Custom Travel Guide [What's This?]
| Pros: | "After travelling in mainland China you can experiance the best of Chines customs" | | Cons: | "Quite polluted but otherwise I loved it" |
budapest8's Taipei Travel Tips
| Overview | Things to Do
Tips: 4 - Photos: 4 | | | Restaurants
Tips: 1 - Photos: 2 | Hotels & Accommodations | | | | Nightlife | Off The Beaten Path | | | Tourist Traps
Tips: 5 - Photos: 4 | Warnings Or Dangers | | | | Transportation | Local Customs
Tips: 10 - Photos: 16 | | | | Packing Lists | Shopping | | | | Sports Travel | General Tips |
 Comments for budapest8 about Taipei | | | | |
chewy3326 Mon Dec 25, 2006 04:33 UTC
Great page, there appear to be many insights on the tourist traps and history of Taipei and the ROC. Its interesting to see what Taipei was like in 1987 | zazatann Thu Jun 8, 2006 11:18 UTC
i hate s n a k e | Wild_Orchid Tue Jun 6, 2006 01:43 UTC
you know more about Chinese history than I do. shame on me! LOL :) | frankyboy5 Fri May 12, 2006 17:37 UTC
Hello :)Nice new page will come back and read more abouth it! Have a nice weekend! |
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