Nate and Kara spend their first day in Taipei during Chinese New Year hitting street festivals, temples, and night markets. They try chicken, squid, pancakes, and a mysterious egg-pan snack while navigating crowds and closed stalls.
Chapters
Happy chinese new year.
It's warmish.
This is our first morning in Taipei. It's not exactly morning anymore. We tend to get a late start on our first day in a new country. Did some research. Apparently beef noodle soup is the thing to eat here. And according to TripAdvisor, the best beef noodle soup in all of Taipei is like a 15 minute walk from our hostel hotel. So that's where we're going.
As soon as we stepped off the train last night, Nate said that this city reminds him of a mini Tokyo. But little did he know, Japan used to, like, own Taiwan. So that makes sense.
Nailed it.
It's nice here. I really like it. So far. Everybody's out on this fun pedestrian street.
Today is officially Chinese New Year.
It's exciting.
Even though they celebrate for like an entire month, this is the day. Look at this.
Chinese New Year is so fun. Every street looks like this. No one's at work. This is awesome.
We time Taipei perfectly. It'd be like coming to the US For Christmas, New Year's, New Year's, but better. Easter, Thanksgiving. This is not looking promising. I believe this is going to be like trying to find a restaurant that's open on Christmas Day.
You think there's any waffle houses in Taipei?
This sign.
Matches that sign perfectly, but it is definitely not open. It appears as though a lot of things are closed today. So we're going back to where all the street festivities were to get some food there.
Not a bad plan B.
This may be like the McDonald's of Taipei, but crispy chicken nuggets sounds like a good thing to start with. According to this line, this must be the greatest chicken in all of Taipei.
So much greasy goodness made a last minute substitution. We got a large bag of chicken and a small bag of fried neuritic squid.
Paris complaining about something.
So I read about stinky tofu being a thing here. Like, it's really called stinky tofu. Like fermented deep fried tofu. And there's something that smells like a toilet, like a very dirty toilet. And I think it might be what people are eating.
That's it.
I don't think I'm gonna convince her today, but comment below if you want to see Kara eat stinky tofu before we leave. Tuppeni. Yeah. It looks wonderful. Yeah. Oh, look at these.
There is so much good food on. We should get a stick of quail eggs. You down?
No.
I think I want ice cream.
Oh, I bet those taste so good. We are coming back and eating all of This.
I love Taipei. Nate's dream come true.
Pancakes.
Huge pancakes.
Too many great options. It was either red beans, sesame, or what she called butter. I want but.
Smell butter.
We really messed up stopping at the first food place that we saw.
Squid was pretty good. The chicken wasn't.
Yeah. It just wasn't as good as it smelled.
Getting tired of watching us eat. I have bad news for you. We just saw so many amazing foods that there's no way we can try all of them in the three days that we're here.
Except for the stinky tofu.
Now we are walking to some big memorial chains.
I don't know. Chainsaw. Trying to be cultural.
So we're gonna check it out.
It'll look pretty cool in TripAdvisor. Based on these people standing over here taking pictures, this building has some type of significance. That's your Taipei history lesson for the day. After some more research, we've established that the building behind us is the Presidential Palace.
It's been confirmed. It is important.
This is impress. Whoa.
Now. Doing it.
Look at it.
Walk up the stairs.
This is a really cool place. But the frozen tent's just throwing me off. Thanks, Disney.
Let it go. Let it go. I'm not holding back anymore. We are heading back to our hotel now to regroup until we go out on the town again tonight.
She's being slightly dishonest. She didn't upload the vlog last night. We're going back to upload it. Yeah.
Spent a little bit of time on our computers this afternoon. Kara worked on the vlog. I planned tomorrow's day at the hot springs.
And now we are going to find a temple and a night market.
This is like one of the most ornate temples we've been to. Seems like a very popular place on Chinese New Year's.
There's like a billion people here.
Let's go.
Year of monkey.
Tara's too hungry to enjoy the temple, so I have to come back. Going to find some food. Sorry. Entering the night market. Madness across the street. This is craziness.
It goes forever.
Usually we're all for street food, but this food is so weird.
That's some kind of intestines looking so far like pigs feet. Frogs.
Other weird parts of animals.
Dinky tofu fish.
I've never seen brain. This is too weird for me. Like what is that right there? And that?
I'm kind of getting less hungry as we go.
Definitely. Hi. Hello. Hello. Hello.
What is that.
I see?
I saw Anthony Bourdain eat these on tv. So I'm gonna try one.
No clue what that. That appears to be seaweed.
We've been told pork. Some more seaweed and some more of the stuff. We don't know what it is.
You right here. No, let's keep moving. Let's keep moving in case it's terrible.
All right. We need to step backwards there. Looking at it.
Just went for it.
I think this is really good. The grapes are not soupy. I like the whatever.
The sandwich, the sandy stuff. We don't know what this stuff is being smushed, but we're about to order.
There was a super long line for it, so we got in line.
She smushes something right there, and he throws it on the grill. We don't know what it is. She flips it over a few times, puts some sauce on it that we don't know what it is, and then she smashes an egg underneath it, fries it up, and puts it in a bag. Adios. Adios. Thank you.
Okay, Nate's gonna try the mysterious egg pan thing.
Well, delicious. I would say it's like croissant with eggs in the middle with a little bit of soy sauce.
That sounds amazing. We need to figure out what it's called.
Or what it.
Taipei does not mess around with their.
Night markets or their temples, Especially on Chinese new year.
It was packed.
I just can't emphasize enough the amount of weird food that we saw.
If you watched any of our vlogs, you know, we love to eat and try new things. This was just, like, too weird. We're not there yet. Maybe down the road. All right, One quick stop at the 7 11, and we're headed home for the night.
I didn't get enough to eat tonight.
So many scooters.
So many scooters.
Three, two, one.
Unleash the scooters.
Be the way to get around here. Kara, what do you think? You want me to rent one? Yeah, right. Get us around the city.
No, I feel like this is against the rules.
Kara's taking off her pants in the middle of the street.
Pairs of pants when it's 65 degrees.
Hey.
Go balls.
This is not the balls power tea. This is Taiwan's time lapsing they use.
If you had to guess who lived in that building.
Was the first thing that comes to mind. Ready? Go. Going with mad scientist.
I wonder if those hearts, like, circle.
How much time do I have? 30.
I'm not exactly sure what the tradition is here, but it seems as though everybody is laying gifts on these tables for the gods. This man in the striped shirt.
Has been going around taking whatever he wants off the table. I can only imagine that that's Brown. Let's just follow him and see if he gets in trouble.
