The Adventure to Find Food

So every night so far we have gone out and ate as a giant group from our Reitaku Dorm. Which is pretty much the highlight of my day because that's when I know I'm going to have a solid meal. Last night, we took the bus (by campus) that took us to the Mass Rapid Transit [MRT] (railway system that can take people to Taipei or other places). Now this bus is crazy, it just hauls ass down these tiny roads and every time I walk on the side of the street (not all streets have sidewalks) I feel like one day one of them will just side swipe me. Inside there are only a row of seats by the windows and lining the back of the bus. The rest of the space is all standing room with handles that come from the ceiling. It gets pretty "close" when those things get really crowded. When we get to the MRT station, we exit and damn, there are a ton of people waiting in line for these buses. The great thing about Danshui (City I live in) are all the public transportation that can shuttle you around the city for a low price of 15 New Taiwan Dollar (NTD) which comes to about... 50 cents.

Is that a 3-story McDonalds? 

After getting off and walking around what's the first thing I find? Yep a McDonalds... This one had multiple floors I'm thinking to myself, with all the great food you can find in the back alleys and roads why would anyone want to eat there. But I guess everyone loves to try to live the "Western Culture Life". So we keep walking down the street to this little restuarant and the cool thing about this is that the entrance was completely open. (My FB Friends can check out a picture I'm tagged in where we are all standing in the entrance way) This restaurant was like Hot-Pot (the first place I ate at) but this had the burner on top of the table where 6 people shared food. So we had duck, cabbage, lettuce, mushrooms, tofu, and corn all boiling in our little kettle with a side of noodles for our meal.

This is how Menus should look like.

They gave us a couple of different sauces to eat with our meal and lets just Life Lesson #3 comes in. My roommate put about 3 little teaspoons of this one sauce all over his noodles and then just took a few bites... literally seconds later he is just drenched in sweat. I was like you ok? He just shook his head no and pointed to the sauce. So I dip my chopsticks in the sauce.. just a tad bit, and DAMN that sauce was hella spicy/hot. So Life Lesson, taste test everything before you put it on your food even if people say that it's good. My two friends love taking pictures so after eating.. well I guess during too.. we took a bunch of pictures. Now these people know how to take pictures, they have this extendable pole that attaches to the bottom of their camera so they can hold it out and take a picture of everybody including themselves. No one is ever left out of a picture here. It's a pretty clever idea, I can't believe I haven't seen anything like it back in the States.

Walking back to the MRT, we probably took a little over 20 pictures... craziness. Oh and I think I started a word fad.. Since I've been here I think the 2 most common words out of my mouth are, Crazy and Awesome. Now everyone is beginning to use them.

Just a random street we were walking down.

I might be the downfall of this dorm because I'm just a big book of American Slang. Anyways, we get back the MRT and here comes this giant golden retriever running around. (There are so many stray dogs, but they aren't like American Strays, these are really nice. Probably because they would die if they were because no one would feed them) This stray dog makes all the girls in my group scream at the top of their lungs. I think that someone just got mugged, but then I just realized it was a giant dog. It ran into this tiny 7/11 and just wanted water. So the employee just turned on the sink and let the dog drink from it. That's why I use the word "Crazy" a lot. How else do you explain that scene. Maybe.. That's Bananas? I'll try to think of something new... I already have a card game named after me because I'm so bad at it and I lose all the time. They call it the Nate Game. Lovely.. Right? Its like slap jack, except you count 1-13 and if the card you lay down matches the number count everyone has to slap the card. Last one gets the pile. Tricky part, playing in Chinese. Thinking now.. I think this may have potential for a drinking game.. The Nate Game... hmm this could get popular..

Blurry, but this is the night market. 

After walking to the MRT we start heading a different way back to campus so that we can stop at the night market. This is where it gets really crazy. The first thing I see is a moped biker gang that pulls out of 7/11. (FB friends check out my roommate's wall for a video I posted about this event) Then I noticed just a crowded street full of stores, vendors, cars, mopeds, and people. Honestly I'm sure I could buy almost anything here. Just looking at all the signs of different shops and looking at all the people that were selling their wares was insane. The only downside of this would be the occasional air spot where it smells like shit. But that doesn't happen to often its just happens when you think.. Ah all the good food smells and BAM! that's when you run into one. We went there to get a drink from this certain vendor. I guess it's really popular at night so it made me think of Rubio's back in good ole' Dub-town. The drink is like warm hot chocolate but it has some sort of flavored "gel beads" on the bottom. So when you drink out of the straw you get a couple of those after every sip. It's actually really good but the first time I tried it.. the texture was really weird.

After than we just headed back to campus and walked up probably 150+ steps on the way. Yeah it pretty much killed our whole group and we had to take a break at the top. It was pretty funny to see everyone bent over from exhaustion. Oh and there was a mini amphitheater right before campus, so obviously I had to try it out. To all those that don't know, you can stand in the middle of the stage and hear an echo when you speak. It's crazy, so I had to stand in the middle and sing/say something.

Hope the pictures make it a little better. I'll try to keep them coming while cutting down on the whole reading aspect. Until next time...

Cheerio & Enjoi

Alastar Swift


Ps: It's rained everyday that I've been here. Life Lesson #1, always bring your own umbrella.