Up on the peak, Down with Mcdoh

 Today was our first full day in Hong Kong. We started at Victoria Peak, taking the old tram to the top. We read that you should sit on the right side, and good thing too, as the whole view was on the right. The panoramic was breathtaking, and as I get older, I appreciate views more. As a child, my parents would try to get me enthusiastic about views....yeah, that didn't happen.

 The tram itself was pretty awesome. At times, we were at a 45 degree angle going up or down and it felt SO steep. You couldn't even see the track from the top. It looked like a roller coaster track. Yikes!

 It's a 2 way tram so we passed the other car. Cute!

 We then walked to find a Ding Ding (a day of transportation) and rode it to Causeway Bay, a very lively neighborhood. The ding dings were very crowded but they are SUPER cheap and the way the locals get around. You pay when you leave the car as opposed to getting on. They were so tall and narrow, they reminded me of the night bus in Harry Potter.

 We then took the Star Ferry (another mode of transportation) to Kowloon, the mainland. (When I researched Hong Kong and where to stay, it wasn't quite clear which area is better or what area has what, but I can now say that when people say "Hong Kong" they mean Hong Kong Island and that you get better views from Kowloon because you're looking at Hong Kong, but that both places are nice and both have high end areas.) We found the area where every tailor in China is, and some of them touted that they could have a custom shirt for you in under 4 hours and a custom suit in under 10. Seems insane. Had tea and Hong Kong style french toast, which is just a fancier way of saying deep fried. We then went to the bird market, where you can buy a pet bird and see men walking around with their caged birds. How sad for the bird.

 I thought it was the perfect place for my dad to visit and see the different types of birds. Some were even free to fly away.

 After birds, we found the goldfish market, a street where every store was a fish store. We discussed together and figured out that we both like aquariums and might want to own one someday. The saddest thing was seeing the fishes in baggies. I hope they got purchased.

 We walked around until we found the Temple Street Night Market which was just like the street market in Taiwan except no carnival games, which I really wanted. I saw a fortune teller but by the time we saw him, I was exhausted and wanted to go home. Hong Kong/Kowloon really put NY neon to shame though.

 The ferry ride back to the Island was pretty. All the buildings are lit up not only because it's late, but also because it's holiday season. How fun!

For dinner, I begged Aaron to take me to McDonalds, and no, I didn't cave and get a burger. I got some crazy things called a Rice fun wrap, a fried chicken and fried rice wrap with cucumbers and mayo. We also split a shake shake fries, which is fries covered in Japanese curry powder. Yum! Aaron also got a taro pie and an ebi burger with egg. Weird flavors, but not bad!

Goodbye Taiwan, Hello China

 We packed our bags and headed out to Hong Kong this morning. The airport has a Hello Kitty airline, as well as Hello Kitty breast feeding rooms and free massage chairs to any traveler who asks. Why is this not a thing in America?! It was BOSS!

 After settling into our hotel, we decided to make the most out of our "free" day in Hong Kong, free meaning that we didn't count it as a full day and therefore, we're just in limbo according to our schedule. First stop, Man Mo Temple. At first Aaron wasn't that impressed. It wasn't until I pointed out that each cone shaped spiral hanging from the ceiling was actually burning incense. We decided to light some incense to worship the gods.

 Aaron enjoys playing with fire.

 Here's my massive bunch of incense. I wanted to light them one at a time, but I noticed that the asian people were lighting them all together. We also walked around downtown area and Cat Street which is just a market for junk. Craziest thing though....we ran into someone we know; Tamy the graphics professor from Paris Tech. We've run into him randomly in Paris as well, but how crazy to see him at a random market in Hong Kong without previously mentioning to each other that we were going to be in China. I guess it's a sign that Aaron should study games in Paris.

We then walked towards the Star Ferry but decided to call it, seeing as the weather looked like shit. Rain was coming. We took a cab to a mall and caught a movie, Parkland. It was about the Kennedy assassination.

Jammed packed Taipei

 Today was our last full day in Taiwan, so we filled the whole day with things we had missed the first day. Aaron had a talk in the middle of the day so we couldn't go all out. We started off at the Miniatures museum, which proved to be very fun, much like the one in Lyon. They had lots of tin toys on display as well as the really cool miniatures. I think of it as house hunting or picking different types of interior decorating.

 Look at this lovely Manhattan apartment. I'm sure everyone in NYC lives like this.....not!

 The boys both went nuts over the Lego's exhibit at the end. Geeking out, majorly. Aaron especially liked a model that had a wagon full of sacrificial heads.

 We stopped at a bakery for snack and Aaron LOVED this peanut cream bread, describing it as "what you want all bread to taste like." To me, it's sweet and creamy so no, I wouldn't want ALL bread to taste like that....it was like whipped cream peanut butter inside a dinner roll. Nevertheless, it was delicious.

 We stopped very shortly in a paper museum. Snooze fest. They asked if we wanted to make paper...no thanks, but we did see the area where it's made. We also learned about different types of paper fibers and how long they are when magnified.

 We also stopped by the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial. Gorgeous. As the founder of the country, he has a large temple and 2 opera houses. I overheard an English tour guide say that only internationally renown performers are allowed to perform here.....sad face.

 Here's the whole monument. It's a sitting statue of the man himself and he's flanked by two soldiers with guns. Just like the English guards, they weren't smiling...

 The ceiling was pretty bad ass. Had to do an aerial shot.

 Here's the monument from afar. Look how massive the threshold is! There are 87 steps here, one year for every year of Chiang Kai-Shek's life.

 The boys were also feeling thirsty and gutsy so they bought strange drinks from a vending machine; Alex bought 'peanut milk soup' and Aaron bought 'asparagus drink' both of which had their pluses and minuses. We also stopped in the Peace park and sat in a bogota for a couple of minutes to calm ourselves.

 Lunch was at a Michelin star restaurant in a food court. We got their famous soup dumplings. Yummy. Since we hadn't done it yet, we also got shaved ice. And whoa, they were huge mountains of ice and weird crap. Aaron bought a red bean mountain as well as one with tapioca balls all over it. It was not the easiest thing to eat.

 Alex also bought some very expensive macaroons, all weird flavors. I sampled the prawn one and decided to stop after that. I'd prefer if my memories of macaroons are all happy ones.

 Aaron went to his talk so Alex and I returned to the hotel, but not before stopping across the street to the giant crab restaurant, where we both got to hold the massive crabs!

 It's bigger than my head, and since I'm holding it away from my body you can't really tell how massive it is. The owner made sure to pick a really big one for us. I've never seen Alex a little scared of experience before....

 Our last major activity was going to the Taipei 101, the SECOND largest building in the world. It held the title to #1 until 2010. It still has the fastest elevator though. Fun times!

 It is really mind boggling how tall it is. You don't realize until you're up there. Since we were late, we didn't get to see it during the day. Oh well.

 The building is equipped with a damper, a large ball that will shift and move when the building is knocked with wind or earthquakes to counterbalance the structure. It looks small in this picture, but I thought it looked like a planet in a giant space diorama.

 The Taipei 101 is so massive that underneath it, you can't look up and really see the top.

 For dinner, we met the game developers that went to Aaron's talks. I really didn't eat much because the food was STRANGE. The worst part; stinky tofu! AAAAAHHHHHH it follows me. I couldn't eat anything while smelling it because I had to close my mouth to chew and breathe through my nose. I got around it by either drinking orange juice very slowly or rubbing hand sanitizer under my nose.

Nougat, Tofu, and Noodles.

 Thought you'd like to see how I'm getting around the city, speaking no chinese. This is exactly what concierges are for; scribbling code for the taxi drivers. I feel bad that I'm not really using the MRT to its full potential, but I only have 3 days total here and taxis are so cheap. First stop today was the nougat museum. When I arrived, no one spoke English except one woman who could say 'mango' and 'almond' because there was both almond nougat and mango nougat for sale. None of the diagrams were in English so literally all I could understand was pictures. I GUESS nougat is made with sugar and peanuts, and since cows were everywhere, I assume milk is added at some point. Either way, I bought some delicious nougat candies (which are already half gone as I write this)

 The outside of the building looks like a unicorn threw up.

I then went on a very unsuccessful hunt for vintage clothing. It's not popular here (at least not anything pre 1970's) and the only luck I had was with an art deco jewelry store, but the owner was too knowledgeable and knew what he had. Most of his pieces were from the 10's and 20's and were priced VERY accordingly. Sad for me, as I wanted to buy something. I did buy a 1930's hat from a nunnery charity second hand store as well as 2 boxes of trouser fabric, but nothing remarkable.

 Aaron and Alex along with a group of game developers/hosts took us to the Shilin Night Market, something I've been very excited to do. It was filled with lots of carnival games (mostly the balloon popping type but with guns or bows and arrows, or mahjong type tiles that you had to make a BINGO) and unknown foods in stalls.

 Aaron's accuracy in these games impressed the other game developers.

"Were you in the military?"
"Does he play a lot of first person shooter games?"

Needless to say, I was both impressed as well as proud of my hubby, knowing now that if a balloon tries to rob us, he'll protect me.

 I was mostly excited to eat here. Everyone talks about the food; how yummy it is, how weird it is, how there is no guarantee that you won't get sick unless you don't eat anything....I like those odds. We ate fried eggs with shrimp which was tame, but Aaron went a whole football field's length further by trying STINKY TOFU! If you've never had the displeasure of eating or smelling stinky tofu, you are a lucky soul. Here are some things we thought to describe the smell.

1. A marathon runner's asshole after mile 20 and he's just shit himself
2. A pig trough and a pig has died there
3. A homeless subway man who pissed on himself and is drooling in the corner
4. A man's asshole after wading in the ocean all day

Needless to say, it's a pretty heinous smell. Everytime we walked by, I couldn't bare it, rushing past the group. I even had the displeasure of eating something and passed by the smell, which then made my food taste like stinky tofu. Nearly threw up.

 Some of the nicer foods in the market were the peanut ice cream wrap which Alex got. He picked the weirdest ice creams; taro and plum.

 Aaron enjoyed the jelly drink which is essentially jell-o pieces wading in lemon tea. He loved the consistency.

"Faust, what's that?"
"It's cake.....cake of cow tongue."
"What what?!"

We laughed about this exchange all night. It's actually just a sweet pastry but it's called cow tongue based on its shape. I also bought a cookie called a "pig's ear" so you can see where we'd be double taking at every weird name.

 Some of the more crazy stalls had interesting meats (not trying this as I don't want to get sick).

 Yummy fruits are more my style.

After the market, the boys wanted to try some beef noodles since it's one of Taiwan's best dishes. Both exclaimed that it tasted "homemade" and "just like grammy's" so that must mean it was delicious!

Art, Shit, and Shrimp

 Today was our first full day in Taiwan, and more importantly, Aaron's only day to sightsee. We're here for business. Well, Aaron is anyway. My business is fun. And mischief. The #1 thing I had read about in Taipei was the National Palace Museum. It's filled with a ton of Chinese pieces and if we hadn't gone, I know people would've given us the side eye....so we got it out of the way first. It was a nice museum and we only stayed about 2 hours. We saw the jade, bronze, and even a whole wing on snuff bottles. Aaron wants to bring the snuff bottle back into fashion. We couldn't take ANY pictures inside....so sad. So the only photo I have is of me outside the building.

 We then took a cab (cabs are SO cheap here) to a temple in the old town. It was hilarious because it looked like half temple, half bus depot. Very tacky but very Chinese. I'm sure we'll be seeing many more of these little temples. This was on the roof. We then walked around the little shops and found lunch at Modern Toilet. I shit you not, it's a shit themed restaurant. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to stomach it, but I was with 2 guys....and the curiosity was too huge. The menus were in the shape of shit, and all the food came in toilet bowls.

 I can't believe I saw this giant shit in the entry way and still went in.

 Even my tea came in a toilet mug. My hot pot was tasty and the funniest thing was that Aaron and Alex both got beef curry in a shitter. We took a cab back to the hotel so they could both get some work done and I only mention it because the cabbie started asking me questions and saying how beautiful I was....and it became apparent that he thought I was a prostitute. He kept asking me "how much?" and saying that Alex was "big" and Aaron was "long." I tried to telling him I wasn't for sale. Very awkward to be confused for a prostitute, but more so in front of your husband.

 For dinner and night activity, we went shrimp fishing. This was the 1 thing I read about that I HAD to do. It's a cement pond indoors, and you rent a fishing pole by the hour. Aaron was by far the best fisherman catching 5 shrimp. Alex caught 2 and I caught 1. (Mine was the largest of any though so that has to count for something, right?) We rented the poles for an hour and when they came to retrieve the poles we decided that 1 hour wasn't enough. It was strangely therapeutic. The water was calming and really the only stressful thing was having to pull the shrimp off the hook (which I didn't even do because I was chicken)

 Aaron then helped the woman put the shrimp in a basket to be cooked.  The boys were very excited to see the shrimps cook.

 Here's the pond. I was the only female fishing there. I think it's a male activity. They usually drink beer and eat junk food while fishing. The other ponds there had fish and lobster.

 Here's our finished, ready to eat shrimp. It was by far the freshest shrimp I've ever eaten and tasted good knowing that we caught them ourselves, but I was terrified, since I don't like dealing with animals still looking like animals. But I managed. Aaron was so proud of me being brave. Here's a picture of me with my sole shrimp all cooked.