Week 2!!

Our adventures in the second week brought us to the outskirts of Taipei city, an area named Sheng Keng. The are was relatively difficult to navigate to, needing to transfer from the MRT line to a public bus followed by a 10-15-minute walk (in which we almost got lost). Our night started with a sumptuous meal courtesy of our host school’s teachers. We ate at a restaurant known for its smelly tofu (makes an appearance in the picture), which we had in a mala broth, along with other local dishes and specialties. After dinner we took a stroll through the old street of Sheng Keng, appreciating the architecture of the building, as well as trying a few of the area’s delicacies. One of the first we sampled was “burnt tofu ice-cream”, which tasted, quite unsurprisingly as the name suggests haha, something like icy creamy barbequed tofu. A another particular peculiar snack we had was an sweet dessert roll. It was an interesting combination of flavours as we watched the shop keeper prepared a wrap similar to a popiah skin, sprinkled ground peanuts all over, dolloped two scoops of ice-cream, and finally topped it off with coriander.

Even though our interaction with the school teachers ended at the night walk, we managed to catch one of the last few rides up the Maokong gondola. While we planned to experience the ride in the afternoon, inclement weather meant that they had to temporarily close the gondola rides. However the ride at night was no less enjoyable than one in the day. Even though not much of the ground is visible, the cable car ride was cooling, and offered a breathtaking view of Taiwan’s night lights.