| Today, Koggy almost turned into a Dragon... no joke... read 'til the end and you'll get it... It was the Dragon Boat Festival (roarrrr!!!) and it was Koggy's first time to celebrate a traditional holiday here in Taiwan! So how better to celebrate the day than with the locals and do what they do, right? We headed out to Taoyuan county visit a local friend of ours and her family... we took the TRA (Taiwan's main train network) this time around... just like the HSR (Taiwan's bullet train), the TRA was nice and clean and prompt... it took us about half an hour to get to Taoyuan station where we were greeted and pick up by our lovely hosts....  |
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| Piggy admiring the size & interior of Taipei Main Station |
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| The cute sign that greeted us as we disembarked at the platform at Taoyuan |
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| Posing with our tickets ^_^ |
We arrived at the Chen's family cozy home and were absolutely taken aback! Mrs. Chen had prepared a smorgasbord of authentic Taiwanese vegetarian home-cooked dishes for us AND also prepared two types of zong zi (sticky-rice packets) from the day before! What a treat!
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| Clockwise (R-L): Alkaline-water zongzi, plums, purple chinese snake beans, dou jia (stit-fried taiwanese melon), stir-fried beancurd & green chilies, wintermelon & water-chesnut soup, savory northern style zongzi, layered tofu stew, taiwanese purple eggplant dish, "monkey-head" mushroom stew (Mrs. Chen's specialty!), taiwanese pickled sweet plums |
It was all so interesting and yummyyyyyyyyyyy!!! Especially Mrs. Chen's "Monkey-head" mushroom dish! It was so unique and tasty... the texture was really quite "meaty"...
As we were eating lunch, more of the Chen's extended family arrived (they came over especially when they heard us 'overseas guests' were visiting for the day - we feel so honored!)... Mrs. Chen's youngest sister & her family (it was so sweet, they took turns trying their best to translate different bits of the tale) told us about the origins of the Festival... zongzi has always been eaten during Duanwu Jie (the Festival's chinese name - fifth day of the fifth month on the lunar calender) to commemorate the patriotic death of a famous poet, Qu Yuan. The legend is that packets of rice were thrown into the Miluo river to stop the fish from eating the poet's body and the local people paddled out on their boats and banged on their drums to scare the fish away.
So ever since then, the custom is to make zongzi and hold dragon boat races every year during Duanwu Jie... and in Taiwan, the plums are in season so here it is also customary to eat lots of plums during this time of year ^_^
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| Amongst the Festival's special foods... |
After lunch we enjoyed each other's company and chatted (while Mrs. Chen continued to "magically" make food and drinks appear in front of us... There wasn't a moment we didn't have something in our hands (& mouths... hahaha)
We thought the munching today was limited to as long as we were at the Chens' humble abode, but NOOOOOO... Mr. Chen insisted on taking Koggy check out Zhongli night market... to do what? to EAT yet AGAIN (believe it or not, Koggy was actually starting to "slow down" at this stage)...
ON THE WAY to the night market (yep, we weren't even at the destination yet...)
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| Mrs Chen wanted to let us try some authentic Hakka delicacies, so Mr. Chen drove us to Liu Mama's... and there they had the most colourful Hakka veggie-buns we'd ever seen! |
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| All the buns were made fresh on-site and not left on display for too long |
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| a rainbow of flavours and colours! |
These Hakka Taiwanese veggie buns are all hand made from scratch on site (the 24 hour kitchen is right next door to the shop). One of the main ingredients is a dark green plant, known as "ngeh bahn" in Hakkanese, that is mixed in with sticky rice and molded until it reaches the consistency of....you guessed it, MOCHI [Taiwanese people are just as crazy about their muo shu (mandarin for mochi as they are for their sago pearls (found in milk teas)] and then stuffed with a combination of shredded daikon, preserved veg, baby dried shrimp, and with/without minced pork inside.
A must-try if you ever go to Zhongli!
After forging through some traffic and carpark "hunting" we finally arrived at the bustling night market and got straight into it...
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| We found our favorite fried milk (and they had them in strawberry & chocolate too!!!) |
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The Chens' treated us to bowls of stinky tofu soups... which were a nice variation to the usually fried stinky tofu we see everywhere else... which came with mounds of lightly pickled sweet cabbage... Piggy had the original "mala" one and Koala had the not-spicy-but-already-too-spicy-for-her version... Lovely authentic flavours, but left Koala a bit thirstier than the Australian outback ;)
Unfortunately, we had to rush through and didn't get to see the whole night market because we had to catch our train home to Taipei... but, we'll definitely go back and visit that bustling place when we get a chance! (maybe with XXS next time? *wink wink*)
*BURP*
And maybe by then, we'll have a more "DRAGON-sized" tummy to bring back! Koggy's tummy has yet to be stretched to match the eating capacity of the Taiwanese... LOL...
All in all, what a memorable day! One that our tummies will definitely NOT forget for a longggggggggg time ;)
Thank you so much Chen family for your amazing hospitality! Zai Jian!
*'0'* & ^'(00)'^
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