Taipei Day 4: Yao Yue Teahouse at Maokong, Tamsui, and Shihlin Night Market

Part 1: Modern Toilet Restaurant
Part 2: Taipei Story House, Jiufen & Northeast Coast, and Raohe Night Market
Part 3: Shifen Waterfall, lantern release, and Ningxia Night Market

~ Maokong/Yao Yue Teahouse ~

What's visiting an Oriental country without having a traditional tea tasting experience, right? There are tea houses within the main city area of Taipei but we decided to get the true blue experience by heading further out to Maokong hill, which is full of tea plantations and ancient tea houses.

The Taiwanese really love their cartoon characters; Even their cable cars are cute??

To get to Maokong you first have to take the Maokong Gondola near Taipei Zoo. There are 2 queues: one for normal gondolas and another for glass-bottomed ones. It's super super cheap, way cheaper than Singapore's cable car rides. The glass-bottomed ones are just slightly pricier so you might as well go for those to see all the greenery beneath your feet.

There are various stops along the way but if you're not going to the Zoo and aren't interested in temples, just go all the way and alight at Maokong Station. To make things move faster the staff will make you share the gondola with others, but during our ride the other passengers got off at the other stations so we had the whole cabin all to ourselves after a while :D

Once you reach you'll see a few stores selling food. But the teahouses are much further, up a hill. There are loads of taxis in the area so if you're not up for the trek up you can just flag one of them. We decided to walk up though, because it was our first time there. And because budget.

Nicholas was very pleased to be getting a photo against his favourite Misty Mountains (sorry inside LOTR-related joke)

There's a whole row of tea houses along the stretch but we picked Yao Yue Teahouse, which was...just our luck...all the way at the end. So the entire walk up from start to end took us about half an hour :0 A lot of sources online say that it's the best in the area (and supposedly one of the oldest?) so we stuck with our decision and continued walking on. No regrets! From the outside it already looked like the most "authentic"one, and the view was great to boot.

We picked some kind of Oolong tea and at about $15 for 2 people we thought it was quite pricey, but when the tea set came we were pleasantly surprised to find that the price included the entire tin of tea leaves, not just what's in your pot. Yep you can take the remainder home in a handy tin so it was actually reasonably affordable! And it's quite a substantial amount too.

Nicholas ordered xiao long baos and I got some red bean pancake which turned out to have the consistency of...roti prata?? It was good though!

There's a booklet with all the steps you need to take to make your tea and you can get unlimited refills of hot water for multiple brews. I kept almost knocking shit over because everything was so tiny and delicate, am obviously not cut out for this.

There's a shuttle from the tea house to Maokong Station but it comes at long intervals and we didn't want to wait, so we decided to make the long walk down. But luckily along the way we spotted this taxi driver picking plants (??) by the roadside and he agreed to bring us down.

Before heading taking the cable car back down we stopped for some tea ice cream. There are many stores selling the same thing at the same price but we picked this one because it looked the cosiest.

He didn't like mine (oolong I think) and I didn't like his (green tea) so we happily ate our own. They came with cute kitty tea biscuits! 

Tea eggs

Random cute clock near the zoo

~ Tamsui/Danshui ~

After that we headed over to Tamsui (or Danshui, in Mandarin) to stroll around by the waters and catch the sunset but alas the entire day had been rainy on and off so there wasn't much of a sunset to see. In general the place is scenic and relaxing but I'd skip it next time because it's just like strolling down East Coast Park HAHA.

Played some shooting games, which I sucked at. Nicholas won some mini pinwheel thing as a consolation prize HAHA.

Look at this. The face of a winner. HAHAHA.

It appears that I have no motor skills

BIG BABY!!!

 This sunset is like some sluts' clothes: barely there

Addicted to smelly tofu!!!

~ Shihlin Night Market ~

For all the hype that it's been given, Shihlin Night Market was a little underwhelming. As mentioned in an earlier post, Raohe was the best as it's much larger and feels less stifling. But there are some gems here you won't find at other night markets in Taipei - like snake meat. (And yes, we tried it!) So if it's your first visit to Taipei you'd probably want to drop by here on one night.

This was right outside the snake meat stall. So fat and grotesque!

I'm not very adventurous when it comes to food so snake meat probably wouldn't have been something I'd even think of trying if not for this fellow. But he likes trying strange things (insects, pig balls, you name it...) so I followed suit.

It actually tasted very much like pork!! The soup it came with was some typical cheena soup with red dates. There was also a little shot glass of snake bile, but it was mixed with honey so it didn't taste disgusting at all.

We weren't allowed to snap photos in the shop but we sneakily took one while the owner was busy talking on the phone. Ft. me frantically keeping watch HAHA

Shihlin also has fried milk cubes, which I didn't see at any of the other night markets we visited.

You'll see these candied fruit sticks all over Taiwan. They looked super appetising so I had to try them. Verdict: BIG MISTAKE

I love fruits but the candy layer is super hard and sickly sweet ._. NOT ENJOYABLE AT ALL

Played some games. Didn't win shit. HAHAHHA.

Defeated

I dunno. Just some very intriguing building. Looks so post-apocalyptic especially with the black sky

~ More random food and claw machines at Ximending ~

Didn't eat much at Shihlin so we headed back to Ximending to get more food at this random beef noodle/lu rou fan stall.

Very pleased that he finally got to have Taiwanese braised pork rice on our last night

A CUT SLOBBERING FATTY!!!!! If you look closely you can see the saliva dripping out of his mouth wtf.

His owner was on the phone and he was just LYING there splat on the floor letting just about anyone grope him. Clearly given up on life.

A street performer playing the harp!!!

Ended up in a random 24h claw machine shop not too far from our hotel. Rates are much cheaper than in Singapore (around 45c vs $1) and Nicholas was trying very hard to catch a Miffy for me but failed. I find playing at claw machines akin to gambling (ie mostly a waste of money) and after a few of his failed attempts I was like "Aiyah waste money lah, not like we're going to win anything". He gave up after a while and passed me 2 of his remaining coins to use up, and guess what....

I FREAKING CAUGHT IT IN A FEW TRIES HEHEHE

And the crazy thing is that I was actually aiming for another one (in orange) because I thought it'd be easier to catch. Which is just as well because blue is way nicer than orange lol.

Bought street food to bring back to our hotel for a final feast.

FYI I don't wear that headband out *fashion* okay, it's to keep my hair up when I wash my face

I love Taiwan. To more trips together!!!

Abrupt end of post with no proper conclusion or reflection because this series of Taiwan posts has been dragging on for way too long and I'm tired tired it's now 2019 which means that there's been a 10 month gap between the Day 3 post and this post oh my goodness.

Stay tuned for my next blog post which will probably happen in 2020 or something.

This blogging regularly thing is obviously not working out for me. :(