14 March 2017
Full of cake
Eating Shabu Shabu in Taitung
Fast forward towards the end of the evening, and imagine my surprise when my phone rings, my phone with a Taiwanese SIM card in it, I dont even know what the number is, I only use it for data.
So I answered, and the guy on the other end starts yelling really fast, I listened for a while then spoke, explained what I thought was the Chinese words for wrong number, my name, and that I am from Au-Da-Li-Ya.
Oh, HELLO! SORRY! HELLO! why you in Taiwan? I love Audaliya! So me and Zhou, possibly Joe if thats his chosen English name had a 5 minute chat. Joe is from Hsinchu, a city near Taipei. He has never been to Taitung, he hears its boring. Joe insists Hsinchu is the best place in Taiwan, very good fish balls.
For dinner, I actually had somewhere I wanted to go, but its shut on Tuesdays, so maybe tomorrow, instead I just set out in a random direction. I think the direction was chosen by the general flow of scooters at a street crossing.
I think lots of places close Tuesdays, many roller doors were shut, I had choices of lots of pizza places, and lots of pasta places, and surprisingly steak restaurants. Not just the Japanese style hot grill plate cook your own with an egg steak places, but fancy expensive choose your cut of meat places.
The average salary in Taipei is about $25k USD, which isnt too bad actually, I imagine its quite a bit lower in Taitung, but these steak meals were all more than $30 each and the places were full. Too expensive for me.
So instead I had a poor person dinner, and because it was almost free of calories, I could have dessert. Now I am full of cake.
Just for variation, tonight we are starting with the dinner photo rather than ending with it. It is a neighbourhood shabu shabu place. The soup stock is just water, nothing else!
We negotiated on the type of meat I wanted, you get a couple of slivers only, and then a selection of mushrooms. Thats all I thought was going to be in my ingredient pot.
Except underneath the stuff on top there was a selection of strange processed foods, including rabbit ears here. It would have been hilarious if a hello kitty appeared.
There was also a seafood stick, a cube of pigs blood jelly, and some other small sausage shaped processed fish things, as well as a couple of fish balls.
With chilli oil added, it was ok, largely completely flavourless.
On my loop back to the main part of town I passed yet another huge cake shop, I bypassed this one though.
Then I hung out with some wooden natives. None as wooden in their performance as me.
Note my jumper / sweater (american translation). I believe I have been wearing this on trips for the last 5 years. Lets hope it can make it to the next trip!
This photo exists only because it was so colorful. All the Taiwanese candy tastes like durian.
And because of poor person dinner, heres the cake. Its actually very small, but it was delicious. Inside was fresh mango and mandarin slices between layers of sponge cake and cheesecake. This came from the big 'Donutes' store I photographed last night, as far as I can tell they do not sell donuts.