BBG’s Taiwan Journal

As you may recall, Baby Bro's girlfriend ("BBG") went to Taiwan over her winter break and took lots of pictures documenting her trip and the food she ate.  She's been doing a Taiwan journal to share her adventures with you.  Unfortunately, she's been pretty busy with school, so she hasn't had much time to work on her journal.  She took around 500 photos…many of them of delicious food and I can't wait until she gets a chance to share them with you.  Here is a short journal entry she was able to write.  Her first journal entry can be found here.

Day 1a: Airport
& Jhubei Breakfast

Monday,
December 21, 2009

3:08
AM

So we landed in
Taipei at around 6am local time. First order of business for me was to find a
bathroom to go to, but I didn't find one until right before this temperature
checker booth that you have to walk through before you can get to customs. Not
to mention, the bathroom was tiny! At least they were all American style. 🙂
But I had to do a lot of squishing and hopping in order to close my door while
bringing my check-in luggage and my backpack in the stall. -_-

The temperature
checking booth I think is for the purpose of catching people with fevers and
stuff. So you don't bring diseases into Taiwan! I think it's very interesting
watching myself walk past as a blue/green/yellow/orange person. I think red was
the bad color. 😛

I went through
customs, (quite fast since I have a Taiwan passport. 🙂 ) and went down the
escalator to all the luggage claims. For some reason, I waited for at least 45
minutes for my 2 pieces of luggage to come out. The rate of luggage coming out
was quite erratic and slow for some reason. Usually they come out really fast.
Weird.

Taiwan doesn't
have all that non-sense of having another TSA official check your customs sheet
and stuff, so once I got my luggage, I just walked right on out! 🙂 There's
booths for people who need to declare stuff, but for people who don't, once you
pick up your luggage, it's free sailing from there.

My dad then picked
me up and took me to the parking garage. Word of warning: You will be unable to
cart your luggage all the way to your car. For some reason, the airport is
very.. protective of their carts? Outside the exits from the airport into the
parking garage, there are tons of bars in and little bump-thingys, preventing
someone from rolling the cart to the cars. Additionally, not only are you
unable to cart your luggage to your car, you have to lift each piece of your
luggage over the bumps because the space in between them is reeeeally narrow.
Quite annoying.

Taiwan weather was
actually unnaturally cold when I arrived. I think the temperatures for the
first couple days I was there were averaging 50s-60s. Usually when I go,
they're more like 70s. Brrr.

Anyhow, when I
arrived at my parent's condo in Jhubei (about an hour away from the airport,
north of Hsinchu), my mom fed me another breakfast/meal. 🙂

This
is a blurry picture of a microwaved frozen rice hamburger [????] my
parents bought from Costco (yes, they have costco in Taiwan).  Between the rice "buns" is beef and
onions, although Costco also sells them with pork. I thought this was pretty
delicious. Not too salty, and the rice was very good – not overcooked or mushy.
My mom says that on the weekends, my brother eats 2-3 of them in the morning.
🙂 I wish I could do that.

You can actually
get these type of hamburgers in every fast food joint in Taiwan I believe. I
think that these are definitely better tasting and healthier than these fat
cheeseburgers we get in the US.

My mom is also a
health.. Let's just say very very healthy. She gave me this fish broth made of
frozen fish concentrate I guess that she says costs $10 a bowl. Gourmet prices
aside, all I can say is that this definitely tasted very "healthy." Very
very bitter. And fishy. >< That mass of green onions did not hide the
taste at all. +sigh+

This meal tided me
over for a couple hours until we were going to eat and buy lunch for my brother
at school. (Taiwan students don't get a break until Chinese New Year –
February-ish. So while I was shopping and enjoying myself around Taiwan, real
Taiwanese students are still in school. Easy way for the locals to recognize
I'm a foreigner. :P)

To be continued…

-BBG