Yilan Trip Pt. 2

You know how irritated you get when you have a tune or song stuck in your head and you can't for the life of you remember what it is? That's how I've been feeling for the past several weeks with one song in particular. And I don't really have anyone in Taiwan that I could just sing it to and have them recognize it. I suppose I could sing it for Steph tomorrow and see if that helps. The software that has you sing into it so it can recognize and tell you the name of the song doesn't work for me. Apparently I sing too crappily.

So after the concert at the water park, we rushed out so we could get to the Luodong Night Market before the evening rush set in. It was about a half hour bike ride into Luodong from Zhongshan and when we finally got there, I was hungry. We split up and I went to many brightly lit areas and stores, so don't worry about my safety. I'm one of the hyper-paranoid types who would scream at the top of her lungs if there was an attacker. Besides, the place was packed, so there would be witnesses.

Anyway, one of the biggest lessons I've learned here is that you should never release me into a night market unsupervised if you don't want me to be dazzled by the sales and spend all my money. Everything here is so cheap that it's easy to be blinded by the 100 kwai sales (3-4 US dollars) for clothes and dirt cheap food. The only thing that reigned me in was the thought that I was somehow going to have to get all those bags home and I didn't want to burden anyone else with my crap, so I stopped after a while and wandered back towards where we were meeting up.

One thing I thought was funny happened when I was ordering food from a vendor who knew a bit of English and she started asking me if I wanted "paper" with my food. I had no idea what she was talking about or why I would want paper on my baked potato or whatever it was I was ordering. It wasn't until she held up a jar of pepper that I realized what she meant and corrected her. Apparently, this is a common mistake because Yu has had a hard time distinguishing between "paper" and "pepper" in American restaurants. English vowels are tough for the Chinese as Chinese tones are tough for us Americans.

Most of what I bought was exercise clothes and socks since I've recently started going to Tai Chi in the mornings (if I can drag myself out of bed anyways) and I wanted something comfortable to move in. By the time night fell, the streets were so crowded that I had to move with the crowd to avoid getting overwhelmed. So, I finally ducked out and made my way back.

Several street views of the night market.

Down this way there was a rock concert going on at the blue stage.
So many lights. @_@ At least there's a McDonald's to light the way even if I can't read the one million signs in Chinese.
In this picture, there is food on your left and a sexy lingerie store to the right of where I am standing. Yeah, that's all in good fun.

After that, all that was left was to go to the train station and go home. We got back at around 10 PM, just about time to go to bed.

Before I end this post, I want to say a few words about the night market that we have a couple blocks away from our apartment. It's a lot smaller than the Luodong night market or the one in Taipei, but it has really good food. I've made it my goal to try every stall there at least once, no matter how disgusting the food may sound. Most of it has been delicious so far. Also, our night market sells mostly food with a small arcade area and a stand that sells hair ties, unlike the Luodong market which was a low-scale mall. Maybe that's for the best; I won't be so tempted to spend all my money in one place this way.

This is a stand where you can pick and choose ingredients to put in a small basket that will then be cooked up. I haven't tried this particular place yet since when I go it usually has a huge line. :(

A very blurry picture of onions over fried squid balls. They are sweet and very good.
A view of one of the aisles of the night market at night. On a weekend night, it will be so crowded you won't be able to see the signs.

The cook making the squid balls.

This fruit stand is a favorite of Steph and mine. Their juice is always fresh and good. It's weird that they aren't more popular. They have samples out in front and everything. Oh well, shorter lines mean more for us.