Return to Chaos

After a couple of very quiet and relaxing days we had to leave The Chateau and return to Taipei. We drove back to the high speed rail station near Kaoshung and hopped aboard a train almost at once. We travelled Business Class this time because Shu-Min did not want to wait in the long line for Coach Class tickets. At $60US per seat, the trip was still very affordable! Let's hear it for Government Subsidized Railroads!

The return to Taipei was like jumping from a soothing bath into a pot of water on a rolling boil. The crowds and noise and rush of this place drained away all my tranquility and left me empty, confused, and a little upset, actually. The four of us rushed from HSR to subway to metro to meet up with Cher and Tom for lunch at a place who's name I never heard and probably wouldn't have remembered if I did hear it. It was an interesting place with a "menu" out front that consisted of samples of all the the available dishes. You just scanned over the selection and pointed to or called out what you wanted to the waiter who hovered nearby. I was still in my sensory overload phase and barely remembered to snap a few pictures of the menu and the avalanche of food that arrived at the table afterward. How can six people eat so much food and still be rail thin???

After lunch we went to the bank to cash some travelers checks then went tea shopping and to Eslite, a huge book store. I should have gotten pictures of the bookstore, people were sitting everywhere on stairs and in aisles reading books and magazines. No chairs anywhere. It was again, sad to say, more overload for me as I stepped gingerly around people. I gave up soon enough and retreated to a corner, plopped down, and listened to my iphone for a bit. After that, we got lost, briefly, on the buses, then made it back to Cher's place, traded dirty laundry for freshly washed clothes, and hitched a ride back to the hotel with Chunnan's sister Shu-Jen, her husband (name unknown), and their son Stanley.

Checking back into the hotel (we gave our room for the time away at the Chateau) was like coming home. We got the same room as before though, oddly, our king size bed was now two twin beds. Still, I felt a little of the stress fade as we entered. A visit to the facilities and a nice hot shower calmed me down and a couple of hours of quiet reflection got me all settled again and I was ready for the evening...a visit to the Shilin Night Market.

Chunnan reviews the Menu at Hao Chi, the restaurant where we had lunch.

The first salvo of food included a big cast iron post filled with hot coals. I thought that odd, but I was a bit dazed so didn't question it too much, then the waitress brought out a bowl of live shrimp and dumped them into the pot and quickly covered them with a glass lid to stop them from jumping out while they cooked. Other dished shown are sauteed green beans, snails, drunken chicken, and sliced squid balls.

Once they were done, she came back and picked them out one by one and then carried away the coal pot leaving us with freshly barbecued shrimp.

Because Shu-Min brings many of his clients here for lunch, he is known to the owners and, I suppose, I was seen as an out-of-town client. To make am impression they gave us their most expensive dish gratis, a stew of in-the-shell fresh water scallops in gravy with onions and other veggies. I had a couple of the scallops and they were ok, but I think I prefer sea scallops. Also shown here is a big bowl of bamboo shoots and a green onion omelet. I'm sure there was more, but I missed getting pictures of it all.