Day out in Daxi

The car was full and the sun was beating down as we pilled into Ali's silver Toyota as we headed out to Daxi (pronounced Da Shi).  Daxi is a small historic town about 45 minutes to the south of Jhong Li.  Back in the day it used to be a major port in Taiwan because it is located along a large river bed.

It was about a 45 minute drive or so through the outskirts of Jhong Li.  Much of the highway was perched upon the side of the mountains so there were some beautiful views.  I do like how close all the mountains and valleys are to each other here.  It really creates some great opportunity for beautiful vistas, of which you will so more photos in a second :P

As we crossed a long white bridge traversing a valley, I could see the sign "Daxi" carved into a large stone.  We were here!  "Hao rue" seems to be a common phrase as it means "very hot!" referring to the temperature.  It was hot, though not the hottest day we've had.  And there was plenty of shade from the trees so I felt the temperature was perfect.

As we walked into the historic part of Daxi there were, of course, food vendors selling all sorts of different food.  I was hungry so this worked out perfectly :P  The first thing I bought was some freshly squeezed cane sugar juice.  It was coloured a light green and... yah tasted like cane sugar.  It was a bit sweet but had a neat taste to it.  Soon after picking up the cane juice Ali recommended for me to try these fried quail eggs.  Wow! delicious.  They pour the eggs into these little half circle frying pans, and then when one side is cooked, they flip the egg around.  It ends up being these little nicely fried egg spheres which they put on a stick.  There was a handful of different seasonings to choose from.  I told Ali to season it for me because I couldn't read any of the seasoning labels.  He did a mixture of salt, pepper, and lemon.  It was delicious!  Definitely I will have this again.  And you can't argue for $0.60 a skewer (8 mini eggs).

For desert we picked up some peanut/milk crusted mochi.  Always a favorite :D  I think it was $1 for an 8 pack.  For a video of some locals making a similar mochi style treat, check out my video I made here: http://picasaweb.google.com/justinliebregts/Taiwan2010Week4#5502883770446080930

The historic area has some really neat buildings and lots of little knick-knacks.  We walked around in this area for a while just chit chatting and eating the various food we picked up.

Daxi is famous for making an assortment of different soy-based products such as different flavoured tofu, or tofu rice toppings, and other soy treats.  Ali took us to the original place that was famous for making these treats and we bought a handful of stuff.  I didn't really know what we bought but I'll update you when I eat them at home :)

This is the original soy store :)

At the end of one of the alleys we approached a view point that allowed us to see across the whole valley.  The view was spectacular and is probably beyond any words I could write here.  Luckily my camera will be able to speak some words for me :P

We walked along the edge of this valley path for quite some time checking out the views and some of the older buildings.  At the end of one of the paths was the house of a famous Chinese military general C.K.S.  Though apparently this guy was "bad" in the eyes of Taiwanese people because he was the one who brought Chinese rule to Taiwan.  C.K.S's backyard was turned into a patio/cafe so we sat down and took in the beautiful valley view.  Sometimes I would turn back and look at the house and wonder if C.K.S ever thought that his house would turn into a tourist area, and his backyard and living room would be a cafe.  I smirked at the thought.

We sat here for quite a while.  I was sitting beside Ali so we talked about a whole bunch of different things.  Ali is a great guy and I'm really glad he's my roommate.  I'm also glad his english is really good :D

The sun started setting so I took the opportunity to snap some more pictures

We walked back to the car as the sun was setting and headed to the Jhong Li night market for some diner.  It was surprisingly not as busy as last time we were there considering it was a Saturday night.  We picked up our usual Yogurt (Yakult) Green Tea drink at Mr.Queens and walked around showing Rebecca the night market.  We stopped at a hot-pot place where you pick the food you want, put it into a red plastic strainer, and then you give it to the cook who cooks it all up into a soup.  I wasn't going to have any but Johan ordered way too much food so I helped him out, and it ended up turning into my full diner :D

After diner we walked back to the car and headed home!  Another great day of sight-seeing and food :D