A Week in Taiwan - Day 3
Sue took Tik and I to the market this morning. Midweek the market was quiet, mainly selling clothes and food. It is welcoming to be offered samples of nearly everything edible from each stall. This seems to be much of the Taiwanese culture and as Tik enjoyed her clothes shopping I enjoyed my titbits.
On returning home, Sue, Wenjing, Tik and I went for a long bike ride. We were in the countryside already and we toured around the local fields and river for about 2 hours. At this time Tik and I were both hungry and we took a boat across the river into a more populated area of the town. This area reminded me very much of Southport. We had the small narrow streets, bursting with fairground stalls, candy, cakes and bright lights. It was a short walk from there that we got to experience the wonders of Taiwan’s Spa culture again.
We spent about 2 hours at a large modern spa. On first glance it looked very much like a public swimming baths, until one sees the assortment of smaller pools, many with steam lifting from them. There were pools of different colors, smells, sizes and temperatures. We enjoyed our time there, and I especially remember the hot room with the bucket of sea salt to scrub oneself with and the iced pool, which I’m proud to say, I did experience.
We got home feeling refreshed and hungry (as always) and when the girls had returned from school we went nearer to central Taipei to a popular food court.
There was a huge variety of foods there and some truly hideous smells coming from various tofu vendors. On Sue’s recommendation we ate at a great teppanyaki meal followed by a shaved ice dessert. Both were delicious. It still amuses me to find chunks of sweetcorn in Thai desserts. I guess there are some cultural differences, which don’t ever seem to find resolve. In Taiwan they treat baby tomatoes as desserts and it was interesting to find them alongside our syrupped-up shaved-ice dessert.
