Friday night Mahjong at Jeff's

I have to give props to Marcus for teaching me Mahjong because I had a blast playing tonight.

Jeff called around 10pm asking if I wanted to play Mahjong.  I've only played a half dozen times or so, but I knew enough to want to go over and play :D  I walked over to Jeff's place and met him, Girl, and Eric (and coco too).  We went up to his 4th floor where he had a room with a Mahjong table set up.  It was a bit weird walking through his house because the floor plan is identical, yet they've done some modifications and much more furnishing so the place felt like we were in an alternate reality of our own place.

coco wants to play

We were playing for money (small money) and I'd never played for money before so I had no idea how the payout works, but Jeff said he would help me out and tell me when to pay who.  I was thankful that there's no "active" betting, and the amount to pay, and to who it goes to is decided at the beginning of each game with a dice roll.

I was a bit slow to start because I had to learn my kanjii numbers all over again and also start to learn the words to all of the other misc. tiles.  I had my notebook with me so I wrote all of the translations into it so that I wouldn't forget.  I was really happy that by the end of the night I was able to say a lot of the words, and I had memorized the kanji for numbers 1-9 and also how to say everything in Mandarin.  yay!

By the end of the night I think I was out a few hundred NT, which is a bit less than $10.  Out of the 20 or so games we played, I only won 1 game but at least I had 1 game!  hahaha.  I came close many times too so I think I did okay for my first "real" Mahjong game.  Johan was not around, so communication is always dodgy but fun, and I find I learn a lot just by listening and asking "okay, how do you say this" and then writing it down.

Another memorable night :D

coco is not impressed

meet fresh!

Went to this desert bar for some afternoon dessert :)  I ordered this crushed ice desert with brown sugar syrup and taro/yam QQ's, red bean, peanuts, and pearls.  It was pretty good!  Personally I prefer the all-mango desert but this one sure does photograph well :D

Diner in Jhong Li with Jeff

Jeff called us up to ask if we wanted to grab some diner together.  We had no diner plans so we took him up on his offer.  He drove us to a pub/restaurant type place very close to where we usually go in Jhong Li for diner.  I didn't catch the name of the restaurant but it had an interior that looked like a pub, but with lots of lighting, and then an outside patio.  We sat out on the patio and it was a great atmosphere.  The patio happens to be right alongside a semi-busy road, and also borders a large gorge with a shallow river at the bottom.  The temperature outside was perfect.  On the wall they had the most famous soap opera "Night Market Life" projected and broadcasting live.

This place has large beer coolers inside and you basically go and help yourself, and a beer waitress comes by to collect the empties and keeps track of how much you've drank.  We started off with 2 large bottles of the local brew.

Jeff ordered for us.  Most of the food was regular: chicken with peanuts and sautéed onions, heartless green veggies with lamb, and some other light veggie.  One of the never-before-eaten things he did order was Octopus Lips.  Haha it sounds really weird but because it was deep fried, really it could have been anything.  It was just this sorta crunchy deep fried ball with peanuts and some other veggies.  It was quite delicious and went really well with the beers :D  The last thing that was ordered was the Taiwanese "Snow" Fish, which came to the table in a deep dish with sauce and some candles underneath to keep the thing hot.

The food was tasty, the beer was good, the outside air was great, and I was in great company!  Another successful meal :D

Dog rescue plan B:fail

We decided to wake up a bit earlier to try and grab out the puppies from their little fort again this morning.  Armed with milk and water we headed out.  When we arrived at the puppy site we could hear them waking up and making small chirping noises once we started calling out for them.

They were a bit more receptive this morning, and Niki was able to sit at the little hole in the grass and coax 5 puppies to come out.  as they came out she passed them to me and put them down into a large cardboard box lined with plastic and paper.  After 5 puppies emerged the rest of them weren't budging! :S  It looked like we were only going to be able to get 5 outa there.  Niki started feeding them milk and I went back to the hole and managed to get 1 more puppy out, for 6 in total.

The box was already starting to get full and we figured 6 puppies was all we were going to get for the day so we decided to head to the animal shelter with what we had.  We closed the box and lifted it into the back seat of the car.  Niki drove in the front and I rode in the back with our guests.

After driving for probably close to an hour and stopping multiple times for directions and finally resorting to the GPS unit, we arrived on a narrow road sandwiched between the South China Sea, and the jungle.  The GPS said we were only 100m away from our destination but there was literally nothing in site.  Then all of a sudden cut into the jungle was a clearing and there it was.  The Taoyuan Animal Protection Education Garden.  We had reached our destination :)

Niki parked the car and went into the building while I took out the puppy box and placed it in the shade.  Some of the puppies had had little "accidents" in the box so I proceeded with cleaning and letting them wander around a little bit.  They stayed close which was nice.

About 5 minutes later Niki came back with bad news.  I guess the puppies were too young (they were about a month old) and they needed to be old enough to not need milk.  So probably in another month would be better to come back.  Crap!  So we drove all the way out there for nothing.  At least the puppies got to go for a nice air conditioned car ride.

We drove back much quicker now that we knew the way, and we put the puppies back into their little fort in the field.  I can't really imagine taking all those puppies into the car in a month because of their size.  We're not really sure what to do but in a week or two we'll give it some more thought.  I'll keep you updated!

Dog rescue plan A: Fail

Niki was concerned about the puppies welfare so we decided to go out this morning and get all the puppies into a box to take to a puppy place where they will have a chance for adoption.

We awoke at 9am and headed to 7-11 to buy some milk and some packing tape to fix up a large box to put the puppies into.  We lined the box with plastic and newspaper and headed down the road to the spot we found the puppies the previous night.

It was quiet and no sign of the puppies.  hrmm... we started calling and whistling and within a minute we could start to hear little puppy sounds coming from the bush.  We continued calling for several minutes but no puppies were coming out!

Now you may be wondering why we didn't just go and grab them, but you see, the puppies had their own puppy castle.  It was quite a good setup!  There is a small downward embankment into the field and leaning against the embankment are 3 slabs of concrete (maybe 3' x 3' x 6").  In addition to the concrete there is also an old wooden ladder that has grown over with foliage, but provides a nice little covered area as well.  All the puppies were hiding underneath the darn concrete things, and we didn't want to disturb it (for fear of crushing the puppies underneath) and also, it was really deep in the foliage and it was hard to even move around in there.

I went around the other side and there was another easier entrance into the puppy castle.  I knelt down and started calling for the puppies.  Soon one emerged!  I quickly snatched him up and passed him to Niki who then gave him some milk and put him in the big box.  I managed to coax out 3 more, but unfortunately the rest stayed put!

We gave the 4 puppies milk and water, and soon their mommy came by and we fed her as well.  We thought the mommy would coax the puppies out for us, but she was not cooperating :S  After about 45 minutes of trying we accepted defeat, and let the puppies stay in there with the intention of coming back in the evening (it was just too bloody hot outside we think).  We put the 4 puppies back in their home and headed back inside.

putting the puppy back into his castle

Plan B commences tonight!  stay tuned for an update.

Puppies!

As I mentioned previously in my blog, Ali and Nikki go out every night or two with a bag of dog food and water to feed 4 of the local stray dogs.  They knew that one of the dogs had just had babies because of the large boobies (do you call them udders on dogs?  That doesn't sound right.. but boobies also doesn't sound right...).

We had been wondering when we were going to see the puppies and night after night we didn't see or hear anythying. UNTIL NOW!

Johan had left the house in his car and he called me from his cell phone saying "woah! puppies!  They're chasing my car!  Come outside!"  Nikki, Ali, and I dropped everything and frantically tried to open the new bag of dog food we had just purchased today.  Several minutes passed before we made it onto the street.  Johan was gone and there were no puppies in sight.

We walked down the road to the usual spot where we feed the dogs.  We suddenly heard a puppy sound and out of the field a little brown puppy crawled.  He was wagging his tail and making cute little squeaky noises.  He b-lined it to the food pile and the water bowl we had set out.  About 15 seconds later we heard some more squeaking coming from the field, and a little dark black/brown doggie shuffled out of the field!  It only took about another 10 seconds before a whole crowd of puppies started emerging from behind the bushes and out and over a little hill towards us!  Sooo many puppies.  We counted 12 puppies but we could also hear a frantic puppy cry from inside the field.  This crying went on for a few minutes so I decided to venture into the field to find the little guy and bring him out.  Now this field isn't like.. a grass field.  It's more like brambles and the grass is like 6 feet tall and there's dried trees etc in there amongst the gravel and rocks and dirt.  It took several minutes of navigating the foliage before I could see the little guy whimpering under a little log in the shadows.  It was beyond my reach so I started calling for him.

Meanwhile a handful of the puppies had seen that I had gone into the bush and followed me in.  This ended up working perfect because I had half a dozen puppies around my feet, wagging their tails and licking my feet.  This helped coax the little guy out and when he was within arms reach I snatched him up and brought him out to the rest of the family.  He was a lot smaller than the other puppies so we felt he really needed to eat some food.  Oddly enough once we brought the little runt out, a few minutes later the mommy dog picked up the runt in her mouth and carried it around the corner and plopped it into another den.

this is the other den!

By this time maybe 30 minutes had elapsed.  All our food was eaten and the dish of water was half finished.  We thought it was time to go inside.  We left the water dish close to the puppy den and headed back inside to check the internet to see about getting the puppies adopted.  I'll update as the story unfolds :P

ps - you will have to excuse the dark video but I didn't have a chance to lighten it tonight.

Blessing in disguise?

I just got off the phone with the Taiwan Immigration Agency and apparently I cannot renew my Taiwan Visitor Visa if my intent is just for touring around and sight seeing (I do not have a workers visa,  or a visa for religious practices, etc.).  So what does this mean?  Well it means that I think I'll take a vacation from my vacation to somewhere else cool!

My top picks right now are Cambodia and Vietnam.  Main reason being apart from Hong Kong, those are the cheapest places to go AND they just-so-happen to be my number 1 pick in Asia anyways :D  I was trying to decide which place would be more fun but then I realized that they are both small neighbouring countries so maybe I can do both in 1 trip :)  Anyways I'll give this some more thought but regardless I need to leave the country by Sept 11 because of the expired Visa.  It's a bit of a pain, but I think I'm going to spin it as a great opportunity to see some other places I've always been dying to check out!

Longshan Temple

Well we were going to stay home today, but Peggy (Johan's sister) invited us up to her house today for diner.  She lives near the Xinden City Office Area, which is near the very south of the green transit line in Taipei.

Johan and I headed up around 3pm, and before we headed to Peggy's place Johan wanted to go to the gym for a few hours.  I figured since I had a few spare hours, that I'd go to the Immigration Office to see about extending my Visa.  Johan and I headed our separate ways with Johan going to Guting, and me going to Xianomen.

When I arrived at my destination I walked out of the MRT, figured out my bearings despite the terrible signage/maps, and headed towards the Office.  The walk was only 5 minutes from the MRT, but when I saw the gates on the door I realized it was Sunday, and they were closed.  crap!  Well that was a waste of a trip :P  Luckily, I had my Tapie tourist map with me and the immigration office was only perhaps a 30 min walk away from the Longshan Temple district.  I could have gone back onto the MRT to get to Longshan but I decided to walk.  It was a great walk even though it must have been in the 30's.

Some of the streets on the way to Longshan

Within 30 minutes I arrived at my destination: Longshan Temple!  There were so many people around!  And all around the temple were lots of little markets with food.  I love how everywhere in Taiwan there's just tons of places to eat good cheap street food.

I made my way from across the street towards the temple.  There was traditional Chinese music being played from somewhere in the distance and random bursts of firework explosions would emanating from the surrounding area (though I could never see the source).  No one paid much attention to the fireworks so I presumed that it is a regular occurrence.

As I stepped through the outer gates into the temple there was a large common area leading up to the temple doors.  To the right was a large rock wall with water falls spilling over them.  To the left was a small pond with a fountain.  I proceeded to the temple doors.

Now this photo of the temple doors doesn't look like it's very busy here, but that's because everyone is packed inside :)

As I walked through the doors into the temple all the street sounds diminished and the air was filled with the sound of 100's of people chanting in mandarin.  There were multitudes of candles lit all around the place, and tables of food offerings such as watermelons, other various fruits and snacks.  After snapping some photos I started paying attention to the rituals that were performed at the temple.  I wanted to partake in the activities to get the full experience.  After observing for a few minutes I picked a random stranger and sort of followed him through the temple, copying him to see what he was doing.

First thing you do is visit a monk who is distributing packs of incense sticks (she gives you a bundle.  maybe 7 incense sticks at one time).  Once you get the sticks, you go to this small station where there are several small flames that allow you to light your sticks.  Once they are all lit, you blow out the flame and you hold the sticks out in front of you between your finger tips.  I realized later that it's better to hold the sticks slightly above from the base because the base of the sticks has this red powder and gets your hands all red.

Then you slowly walk around the temple visiting numerous key spots in the temple, which are usually marked by a large cauldron full of fire and ash.  You say a little prayer while you put the incense sticks up to your forehead multiple times.  Once you are finished, you take one of the sticks and toss it down into the cauldron. You want to try and toss it down so that it sticks into the ash at the bottom like a javelin would stick out of the ground.  You repeat this process at the various cauldrons until you have no more incense sticks.

It was a truly unique wonderful experience to partake in and I'm looking forward to taking my parents and Eliza here :)  (After getting home and looking through the pictures I realized I didn't take a whole lot of pictures of the inside of the temple.  The main reason is because I wanted to go through the whole "experience" without interruption from taking pictures.  So I only took a few pictures at the very beginning and then the very end of the temple.  When  I go back perhaps I can take some more pictures of the inside for you :D)

The instant I stepped back outside the temple onto the street, the street noises filled my ears.  I was really amazed how much the temple could block out all the noise pollution.  Either that or I was just blown away by the inside that I didn't pay attention to the street traffic.

Anyways the surrounding area is known to have many older buildings and more night market stuff so I wandered around the area for the next hour or so.  I saw on the map that we were really close to the Dahan river, which is a large river running through Taipei.  I thought I'd go check it out.  The closer I got to the river the less people there were.  I crossed a large street under an elevated highway and there it was!  The Dahan river.. err... marsh?  There wasn't actually any "river" that I could see, but it was a huge span of long grass and vegetation.  I snapped some photos and figured I'd head back through the night market to the MRT station to meet Johan at Guting

Johan and I had perfect timing and we met inside the MRT station to take the green line to Xinden City Office to have diner at Peggy's appartment.  The ride was about 10 minutes and it felt nice to sit down after walking for a while.

Once we arrived at the Xinden City Office MRT station, we stepped out of the station, and literally right above the station was peggy's appartment.  It was so convenient!  It's like stepping outside of the Granville street skytrain station and then your apartment is The Bay.

We took the elevator up to the 18th floor and Peggy and Joe welcomed us into their appartment.  It was a small place, less than 800 or 900 square feet, but it was really nicely furnished.  Apparently when they moved into the unit, they did a complete $40k renovation and changed the entire floor plan.  Their view was also phenomenal and next time we are back I will snap some photos.

Peggy had cooked us some rice with this ground pork topping,  some egg with shrimp, a green veggy (similar to spinach) and this type of fish.  I didn't get a picture but the fish was probably 8 inches long or so, and everyone got their own.  It was baked with only salt in the oven but it was really crispy and tasted great :)

After visiting for a few hours it was time to head home!  Jeff wanted to hang out so him and I went to 7-11 to grab some drinks before heading back to the apartment.  It was pouring rain so my roommates, Jeff, and Rebecca hung out in the lobby chit-chatting and eating some snacks until 1am or so.  Even though I can't understand most of the conversation, I quite enjoy being a part of them.  I sometimes feel like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation where they go out on the town to some bars and karaoke with the japanese youth and they don't really know what's going on, but that's part of the fun :D

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