Taiwan, part 2: Raohe Street night market

After the strenuous ascent to the top of Taipei 101, we went in search of some much-needed sustenance. There are a number of night markets in Taipei: Shilin seems to be the most famous; Hwahsi Jie is also referred to as 'Snake Alley' and the one we chose, Raohe Street. There are others too.  Shilin gets mixed reviews online - a number of people said that Raohe has better food. It was food we were after, so this is the one we chose. Simon was keen to go to Snake Alley. I have developed an unhealthy fear of snakes, so I resisted strongly.

We hailed a taxi from nearby to Taipei 101.The inside of this taxi would rival a set from The Gadget Show. Whenever we stopped at lights, the driver's DVD player would come to life and he would carry on watching some classical music concert. In addition to the DVD player he had 2 mobile phones resting on the dashboard, 2 cameras, with a live feed, pointing out the front of the car (to capture any meteors flying towards Earth I presume), a sat nav and a camera pointing towards his passenger. The live feed on this one seemed to be switched off. So many wires in an automobile I have never seen. Still, he drove us to my poorly pronounced Raohe Jie, nice and quickly.

To say the nightmarket was busy would be an understatement.  After wandering around the ghost-town like streets during the day, it was a shock to see so many people at the market.  Clearly everyone else was hungry too.  You had to walk up one side, and down the other.  You didn't so much walk as get pulled along by everyone else.

There were hundreds of food stalls up the middle of the street, serving all sorts of delicacies from roasted corn on the cob to noodle soup to any part of a chicken to green mango and so on.  It really was a feast for the senses.  And all the food we tried absolutely delicious.  We had pork 'pop corn' (small pieces of pork battered and deep fried) sprinkled with spicy salt, green mango in a passionfruit and chilli dressing, fried pork buns and a chocolate waffle to finish it all off.  And it was so cheap.  If only I could eat like that everyday!

See our photos from Taiwan on Flickr.

Taiwan, part 1 – a day in Taipei

A few weeks ago we received an invitation, from my friend Petula, to join her and her in-laws in Taiwan for the tail end of Chinese New Year.  We checked out flights, Simon booked the time off work and away we went.

In the Manila area we have a choice of 2 airports: Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) which is the main Manila airport, probably about 20 minutes away; and Clark Airport, which was an overseas US air base until 1991, about 2 hours away.  NAIA is the main airport, and Clark is where a number of low-cost carriers operate out of.  We flew from Clark.

Just getting to Clark is a bit of a mission.  It involved a taxi ride to ‘SM Megamall’ in Mandaluyong City, just North of where we live.  And then a bus (Philtranco Express) to Clark Airport (₱400 each, one way).  But the bus arrived on time, and we had plenty of time to spare in Clark Airport.

But there isn’t much to do at Clark Airport.  It’s tiny.  The pre-departure area is a few seats under a gazebo outside.  The arrivals hall has a few food outlets and a MiniStop (similar to a 7 Eleven).  And that’s about it.  When you go through security and passport control there are a few other food stalls and a couple of small shops.

Taipei was like a breath of fresh air.  After getting a helpful tourist information lady to write down the name and address of our hotel in Chinese, we jumped in a taxi.  The driver knew exactly where we needed to go, straight away.  We were driven on smooth roads where everyone followed the rules, in a relatively fancy taxi (Toyota Camry).  We had to pinch ourselves.  It was such a difference to Manila.

By the time we arrived at our hotel it was about 3pm.  We’d started off at about 6:15am.  We were in need of food.  What we hadn’t counted on was half the city being closed because of the Chinese New Year holiday.  Still we managed to find a small restaurant serving pork noodle soup.­­ It was tasty, but we weren’t too sure about the meat.  It didn’t really look like meat that we’re used to.  We ate the noodles, some of the soup and then politely paid and left.

We had planned on visiting Xing Tiang temple and then going to Taipei 101.  But by the time we’d had our lunch, and then a quick cup of tea it was already almost dusk.  We headed straight to Taipei 101.  There was a massive queue.  No chance of seeing Taipei at dusk from the top of the third tallest building in the world then.

To get to the top of the tower, you travel in the world’s fastest lift.  1010m per minute.  That was 37seconds to the 89^th floor.  You hardly had time to think you were in a lift.  At the top you are given audio guides and you can walk around to get 360 degree views of the city.  The only issue is that the audio guides are designed to be used during the day.  At night you can’t see half of the landmarks you’re prompted to look at.  Still, it was fantastic to see the views.  It was more fantastic, for me, to see the giant wind damper after reading about it in this article in Wired Magazine back in 2010 whilst sitting in a campsite in France.

The day’s excitement continued well into the evening with a visit to Raohe Street Night Market.  More about that next time…

TBHQ - added to retard rancidity

Heard of it?  I hadn't either.  This was one of the ingredients on a recent snack of Baconette Strips, a 'Bacon-flavored snack' with 'No-meat goodness'!  Look out for the 'Nature-Identical Bacon Flavor' too.

Tagatay, Talisay & Taal

Taal Volcano Island's lake

On Friday 8 February, I received another forwarded email from Simon.  This time a bunch of his colleagues had arranged a day trip to the nearby volcano town, Tagatay.

There were 7 of us, so we hired a car with a driver to take us the 60km South to Tagatay.  The journey took us South out of Manila on the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX) to Santa Rosa where we met Fernando & his girlfriend Angel.  From there we took the ‘Santa Rosa to Tagatay’ road, where we turned left to head towards Talisay. 

As soon as we hit the road to Talisay we started seeing men holding little wooden signs ‘Boats to Taal’.  The driver had been here before though, so he just drove us straight down to a spot in Talisay where we could catch a boat.  There was a little clubhouse, another building and a few boats on the shore.  It was right next to a cockpit.  Cock fighting is one of the big sports here in The Philippines.  We haven’t been to watch it yet.

After some fresh mango supplied by Fernando (Simon tells me that Fernando always has snacks throughout the day at work), we spent some time negotiating our price for the short boat trip (roughly 30 minutes) across to Taal Volcano Island.  The man we were negotiating with insisted that we needed a guide for the walk up the volcano.  I could see the well-worn path up to the top of the volcano on the other side, so I was dubious.  I think a couple of the others were as well.  But the man wouldn’t relent, so we ended up paying ₱2000 for the boat & the guide.  

We really didn’t need a guide to get to the top of the volcano.  It’s literally one, very well-trodden, busy path up to the top.  But the guide was the same person as the boat captain, and I think we might well have needed a guide to find our boat when we returned to the bottom of the volcano.  There were loads of boats, and they all looked very similar!

The walk up the volcano was very hot and dusty.  You share the path with a few other walkers and lots of little horses with big people on them.  Sometimes 2 people per horse.  I found it really sad that there seems to be a complete disregard for the environment.  The erosion is marked and as you get nearer the top there is quite a lot of litter.

Taal Volcano Island is amazing.  It’s a volcano within a volcano.  Lake Taal is a volcanic lake, and the volcano you climb, Taal, has another lake inside it (with its own little island).  To me it was an awesome sight.  I believe the volcano is active and you can see little spurts of volcanic gas at a few places along the way up.

Once at the top, as well as being rewarded with fantastic views, we were also rewarded with ice-cold buko juice. Buko is the Tagalog word for ‘young coconut’.  Ladies sell them to you at the top of the volcano.  They slice off the top, stick a straw in it and you sip in the fresh, cool coconut juice.  Once you’re done with that, the ladies slice it in half and create a scoop with the outer shell to enable you to scoop out the soft, cool coconut flesh.  Delicious.

A few photos later and we made our way back down to base camp.  Fernando decided to walk with us and when we were about half way down, his horse joined us.  I decided, contrary to my complaints about the ‘poor little horses’, to give it a go horse-riding down the rest of the way.  It was quite fun really, being on a horse again after however many years.

And then it was onto Tagatay to get lunch.  We ate at Josephine’s with fantastic views over Lake Taal and the volcano.  It was only the second time here in The Philippines that we felt a bit chilly.  Must remember to take a long-sleeved top with me next time I visit somewhere with a bit of altitude.  After a satisfying lunch and pudding we headed back to Manila stopping en-route to purchase some pineapples and other fruit.  I love living in a tropical country.

Food shopping

We have a very good supermarket, Rustan's, a 2 minute walk from our apartment.  There is also a local market about a 10 minute walk away.  The prices in the market are probably about half of what they are in Rustan's for fruit & veg.

The first thing that you see when you walk into Rustan's are shelves full of Casino (the French supermarket) products.  When I first visited the store, I thought that it was a spin-off of Casino.  As you walk further up the aisle, you come upon a section dedicated to organic & healthy food.  By this I mean 2 categories - not just healthy organic.  These were the first 2 things we saw when we visited Rustan's on our second day in Manila.  Immediately we were thinking that I would need to find a job as soon as possible.  The prices in these 2 sections are not aimed at a one-salary household.

As we wandered around the supermarket on that day, and on (many) subsequent visits, it became apparent that you can buy almost anything in this supermarket.  Simon was delighted to find peanut butter on that first visit!  Of course you can't get sugar-free peanut butter, but there is a huge selection nonetheless.  

But back to the product range.  The organisation of the supermarket is crying out for some UX design (look it up).  There are entire sections dedicated to Japanese, UK & French (but no dijon mustard?!) nationals and perhaps others that I haven't picked up on yet.  And generally the products you find in these aisles can also be found elsewhere in the store.  It can be a very confusing experience - you're never sure whether you're seeing a full product range in that aisle, or whether you'll find another product of the same category nestled somewhere else in an international section.

The Australian & USA products are peppered throughout the store - I haven't noticed an aisle dedicated to them.  Although, saying that, the baking aisle does have A LOT of American products.  Yes, there is a baking aisle!  And I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find chocolate chips here, so have shipped 2 massive bags I bought in the USA.  I haven't been able to find self-raising flour, it's all 'All Purpose Flour'.  It's also tricky to find wholewheat flour.

I'm sure you're dying to know what's in the UK aisle.  It's like a mini (very mini) Marks & Spencer.  You can even buy Percy Pig sweets as well as M&S frozen meals!  I avoid that aisle just in case something really unnecessary and overpriced falls into my basket.  Perhaps when the shock of being here finally hits (if it does), I will go and load my trolley up with frozen Cumberland pie, Lancashire hotpot etc.

Still, it's a fascinating experience to go round the different supermarkets here.  I never knew it was possible to get so many varieties of tinned tuna.  Or spaghetti sauce.  Or rice.  

There are some things which are difficult or extremely expensive to get.  Hummus is available on some days, depending on when they've had a delivery.  I haven't seen Golden Syrup (it's pancake day next week!).  Plain (i.e. not salted, roasted or fried) seeds and nuts are stupidly expensive here - I found a 500g packet of almonds in a local deli for about £20.  Luckily Rustan's have started stocking them now, for about £7.  

That's the other thing about Rustan's - their product range changes continually, so you're never sure if you'll be able to find something again on a subsequent visit.

Shopping in the local market is a different experience.  On the day I went, I was the only foreigner there (in Rustan's you pretty much only see foreigners).  The fruit and veg is piled up, with different vendors grouped together selling mostly the same things.  They don't really seem to compete for your attention, they rely on the display of their produce to do that.  Also in this market you can buy fish & meat, household items (I bought a local grass brush to clean the apartment), dry goods & tailoring services!

The fruit and veg is exotic, plentiful and fresh.  There were more than a few things which I couldn't identify.  Perhaps I will just buy some and try them!  The aubergines are long and thin, rather than long and fat as at home.  The local limes, calamansi, are tiny round things with an orange flesh, rather than green.  Everything is differently shaped and sized, none of the uniform-ness you expect in a UK supermarket.  I rather like it.  And I love being able to buy 3 mangoes for about £1 and having them for breakfast every day.

36 hour beach break: Manila – Sabang (Mindoro island)

On Friday 1 February, I received a forwarded email from Simon.  One of his colleagues was suggesting a one-night getaway to ‘Puerto Galera’ on Mindoro Island (the island immediately south of Luzon, where Manila is).  It was rather serendipitous as we’d been planning to get out of Manila in one way or another that weekend.

I say ‘Puerto Galera’ because whilst this is a place in its own right on Mindoro, it is also the name used generically to describe the areas of Sabang, White Beach and Puerto Galera itself on Mindoro.  We were going to Sabang.

To get to Sabang, you need to:

1. Catch a bus from the bus station at Buendia MRT station in Manila to Batangas Port.  This takes about 2 hours and costs ₱167.
2. From Batangas Port, jump onboard a Bangka to Sabang.  This takes about 1.5 hours and costs ₱300.  When you get off the bus, follow the crowds towards the port building and soon enough someone will have helped you buy a ticket.  Beware - they will, of course, ask for a tip for their services!  You can do it on your own, just look for the ticket booth with your destination on it.

So at 7am on Saturday we met Simon’s colleagues George & Daniela to ride a taxi to Buendia MRT station to catch the bus.  By about 1pm we had checked into our hotel and were wandering along the beach to find a spot for some lunch.

When you write it down like that, it seems like a long time to travel to be somewhere for only 24 hours.  But somehow it didn’t seem that bad at all.  The journey was a great experience and it was worth every hour to swim in the crystal clear waters around Sabang.

As soon as the bus is almost full, various vendors come aboard to peddle their wares.  You could buy newspapers, drinks and snacks before we’d left Manila.  As we meandered through a town called Lipa, en-route to Batangas, we encountered vendors selling snack bags of 3 hardboiled eggs complete with a salt sachet, buko (young coconut) pies, peanut brittle and peanuts fried with garlic.  On the way home, one vendor was even selling hamburgers!

After a short wait in Batangas Port (where, of course, there was more food on offer.  Simon ended up with a pizza slice, George with a multi-pack of Skyline crackers) we boarded our brightly coloured Bangka to take us to Sabang.  As I often find at the start of the journey, everyone was in felicitous spirits (can you tell I’m reading a Jane Austen novel?) and full of optimism.  That was until we hit the open sea and the ride became a bit bumpier, and a lot wetter.  Poor Daniela was soaked through by the time we reached Sabang.  After being soaked about 3 times whilst sitting at the side of the boat, she moved into the middle.  Even there, she wasn’t safe from the waves.  The boats are open-sided, and although the crew did try to cover the sides with plastic curtains, they didn’t completely waterproof the inside of the boat.  Still, with the prospect of some beach time, she didn’t mind too much.

Our hotel, Red Sun Resort, was a short walk along the beach from where we docked.  We were on the ground floor with lovely views out to the clear blue sea.  Simon and I were delighted to have a full double sized bed, which didn’t feel like a waterbed every time one of us moved in the night.  We didn’t even mind the rather odd arrangement of the toilet in the shower cubicle and no bathroom door, other than the clear glass shower door.

It was on this trip that I tried Filipino food for the first time.  I am a bit ashamed to say, that after almost 4 weeks in the Philippines, I had not yet tasted the food!  For lunch I had chicken adobo which is a stew of chicken previously soaked in vinegar and soya sauce.  Other than being a bit salty, it was delicious.  For dinner that night I had beef caldereta, a stew of beef, onions and peppers.  Also salty (makes a change from sweet) and delicious.

We spent Saturday afternoon lounging on the beach, with the odd dip in the lovely sea.  The beaches were strewn with coral, providing further evidence to The Philippines’ reputation as a world-class dive destination.  Although, that would mean that there would need to be some coral left in the sea too.  Which I’m sure there is.

On Sunday the weather didn’t start well.  We’d planned on hiring a bangka to take us to nearby beaches, but as the rain came down we decided to have a leisurely breakfast instead.  The rain did clear, but we opted to go on a walk up behind Sabang instead of getting on a boat.  We were rewarded with fantastic views and we stumbled upon the lovely Coco Beach resort.

See more photos from our time in Sabang.

All too soon it was time to reverse our journey home.  Certainly a great, very do-able, weekend break from Manila.  Where will it be next weekend?  Lake Taal perhaps?