May 5: This day was going to be my Yongkang day. I already knew I wanted to go to Yongkang street because there was a ton of food spots there I wanted to try, and earlier in my trip when I told my grandma I wanted to eat beef noodle, both her and my mom recommended Yongkang beef noodle. Of course, in Taiwan beef noodle soup is everywhere, but it would be a good chance to check this off the food list while I was at it.
For breakfast, I had looked at the breakfast place’s menu and noticed they had chive pockets, and I asked my grandma if she thought they were good. She said they weren’t too great last she tried in her opinion, but said that she could get me one to try. She also thought I wanted to eat sweet fan tuan, but I later corrected her and told her I wanted a savory one. Speaking of, I never had a sweet one before…
I don’t know what my grandma’s standards are, but I found the chive pocket to be pretty good. The filling was pretty standard, with quite a lot, and the outside was nicely grilled and crispy. The size of the bun itself was quite large and satisfying. I had half of the sweet fan tuan, and it was like a cinnamon roll had an Asian cousin. The you tiao inside was soaked in like a cinammon sugar syrup or something, with the outside coated in standard rice. I would still prefer a normal savory one over this sweet one, but I’m glad I tried it.
I headed out a bit after to start my Yongkang day, and mainly spent the day strolling around the main street area, popping into small shops, and eating at my main food to-dos. My first stop was Yongkang knife cut noodles, but I arrived a bit earlier than their opening time, so I went a bit up the street and entered Zenique Tea. The inside is a super aesthetic tea shop, and they sold all sort of tea-related goods, including a bunch of different tea-flavored cookies and baked goods. I was going to go back later in the day to buy one or so, but I ended up forgetting…I also noticed a line/mini crowd forming at Smoothie House, a super famous and popular shaved ice place, but I actually think they weren’t open yet at that time either? Were people that desperate to get in when they open…?
Anyway, I just hung out the area for a bit, took a few pictures, and by the time I headed back to the restaurant, they were open. I already knew what I wanteed, and that was their jajiangmian with their knife cut noodles. I was going for beef noodles later anyway…I was glad to see that they offered small bowls of most of their noodle dishes! That way I wouldn’t have to pay a bunch and overstuff myself (it’d be a shame to waste food you know…).
It was really good! I’ve never had knife cut noodles that were just giant shavings of dough before, and they were super thick, chewy, and had hand-made, rustic texture to them (although they were cut by machine). Each strand was different, and went along with the sauce very nicely. It also really satisfied my jajang mian craving! I was also thankful that although hot, they weren’t soup noodles to start off my super hot day.
I was heading in the direction of Smoothie House again, and then I noticed it had an insane line, despite just opening. I had debated with myself whether to go there or the more low-key Taro place next door later, but since the line was long, I pressured myself into going. If there’s a line, it’s gotta be good right? (Ok I say that, but I’ve been before, so it’s not like I don’t know how it tastes.) I guess if you come to Taiwan, you just gotta go. Waiting in line would give me time to digest anyway…It didn’t take too long until I got to the front, and I ordered the special mango one, which is probably what they’re most famous for. I highly considered the mango one with boba, but I figured I didn’t need the extra carb, and just mango for one is enough. One order is huge enough for one person as it is already, and I highly recommend coming with a friend (I did finish mine though, because good food).
Gosh, that was so good and refreshing for a hot day (TMI, but I was sweating a whole bunch the whole day that the owner of the next place I went to pointed it out). It didn’t melt super fast though, which was nice, but I will say the shaved ice itself was a little icy. It was still soft, but I liked the super smooth texture of Mr. Chef a little more. The mango ice cream on top was super yummy, and a light creamy texture, and the mango chunks on the shaved ice itself were amazingly ripe and sweet. It also came with a small panna cotta on the side with mango syrup. It was super creamy and smooth, melt-in-your-mouth, and though it was texturally nice, personally I was just ok with it.
There were tourists speaking a whole bunch of different languages around me!
After I was done there, I headed back down the street to Qingtian Tea House, another traditional style tea house I found in the area. At first, after browsing the menu, I thought about getting the high mountain tea since that’s a Taiwan thing and what my mom always recommends, but then the owner came up to talk to me and tried to talk me out of selecting any of the right side of the menu, saying they were all Taiwan teas and you can get them anywhere in Taiwan, and instead pointed me to the left side, which was a bunch of Pu-er teas that you could only get at their tea house apparently. He advertsied that there was a variety, and allthough they can taste a little more bitter, they also supposedly have health benefits, which would also be beneficial since I was sweating buckets that day. I asked him to give me time to think about it, and then consulted my mom. She said that pu-er comes from a region in China (which makes it a little odd a tea house in Taiwan would advertise it I suppose), and usually is a little more bitter. I’ve only ever had it once in a milk tea form from a boba shop, and though I found the flavor that time interesting, I wouldn’t say it was my favorite. I wanted to get something good though, so I went with their Oriental Beauty Tea, which the lady that sat me down pointed out that their Oriental Beauty won some kind of award, so it has to be good, right?
Speaking of which, I was very thankful that they sat me across from the AC unit, and they even mentioned turning it on (this would also be useful for drinking hot tea). However, I was a little turned off with the experience because although my table was in a small, closed off nook of sorts, for whatever reason the art choice in my nook was, a little questionable (perhaps not safe for work)…the rest of the decor of the place was very in line with the tea house aesthetic, so I was a little dissapointed with my seat.
A little bit after I placed my order, a lady came out with my tea set, and started making my tea. I had three opportunities to smell the tea: one of just the leaves, one time after hot water was poured onto the leaves in the pot, and then one more time in the tall smell cup. It smelled really nice, and apparently for this tea you don’t want to use freshly boiled water, but a little bit cooler. She explained every step of the process really detailed and well, which I appreciated as part of the experience. She said I could get 7-8 pots worth out of it, so that’s what I did while I chilled. The owner even came by and even told me “So you ended up choosing the Oriental Beauty Tea, huh?”. I wonder if he was salty his advertising didn’t work.
When I had 8 pots worth, I decided I was done, and left the tea house. Now, I know the experiences themselves were a little different, but comparing this to A Mei in Jiufen, I think the base tea prices were relatively similar, and even though they both charged a water fee, since they exchanged the water twice for me, I think Qingtian charged me for each water exchange? Plus, I had to get everything out of my tea leaves here, whereas I got to take a whole bunch of my leftover unused tea home with me at Jiufen. Jiufen is also supposed to be more touristy too, but I think the money was a lot more well spent there compared to here…experience wise.
My next stop was this soy milk specialty shop down the street called Soypresso. They have a whole variety of soy milk goods, from different flavors of bottled soymilk, to small parfait cups, to fresh hot or iced soy milk. My goal was to get their soft serve, which I had seen a few places, and I was very interested in trying. I love soft serve, ice cream, and Taiwanese soy milk, so nothing’s stopping me here.
Oh my goodness (I sound like a broken record but) it was so good. It’s exactly how you would imagine it: Taiwanese soy milk, but in soft serve form. It was so creamy, but also very soy milk-y, and since Taiwanese soy milk is very distinct, I loved it very much. I also ate upstairs, where there was some more strong AC, and also Jpop playing. I later found out there’s two Soypressos like a block away from each other on Yongkang…go figure.
Brief food intermission and mild TMI…I needed to use the bathroom, and found a public one at a nearby park, and as I went to enter the ladies’ one, some guy just walks in right in front of me and I did a double take. I’m all for queer rights and I’m an avid supporter of the community, but when a middle-aged very masculine looking man entered the female bathroom (even if all he did was go in a stall) at the same time I did, I felt a little uncomfortable. I hoped to camp out in my stall until he left, but just as I was done and decided to leave, I saw the guy come out from his behind me. If somehow that guy was trans or something then I will spiritually apologize to them, but I have a feeling that isn’t the case…
Anyway, back to what I was doing. My mom’s go-to tea shop was down the street, so I was going there to buy her some high end tea. I told the clerk what I wanted, and that my dad often comes to buy tea for my mom (since my dad said if I mentioned it then they would know). Since I was a patron, the owner invited me to sit down and have a cup of free alishan oolong. I guess since I stayed long enough, he then offered an entire pot alishan to refill my cup. At some other point, I thinkk it might have been because he was serving a small group of other people, he offered me some lishan, which is like a grade higher and what my mom likes to drink.
After enjoying my free tea, I finally made my way to Yongkang Beef Noodle around 4pm or so to get some beef noodle on this trip. Since this place is pretty famous (did I mention they have Michelin stickers on their window?), I was hoping that going at an odd time would lessen the chance of a line. When the shop was in my line of sight, there was no line, but once I actually got there, coincidentally a few people started lining up in front of me. It moved pretty quickly though, and I ended up being sat at a table with a couple and I think the lady’s old mother speaking Japanese to her husband. Now, I’m not very good with spice, but I prefer the braised beef soup to the clean lighter version, so I attempted to ask for less spicy to the lady who took my order. I was also thankful that they had small sizes here too!
It hit the beef noodle craving, though it still was a little spicy for my liking. (I did bring water with me!) The beef was tender, and though I just got a pure beef (and didn’ intentionally order tendon or anything), there were a few chunks with some tendon parts attached. I’m not a huge tendon enthusiat, but I do appreciate small pieces with meat. Noodles were nice, tubular and somewhat thin, and chewy.
On my way to the last stop, I popped into some small artsy stores, including a handmade goods one. Since my Taiwan trip was ending, and I saw drink holders everywhere (seems like a very Taiwan thing), I caved and ended up buying myself a drink holder. It was cute, and were my favorite colors, so I figured why not be cool if I was going to get a whole bunch of milk teas.
Then I went to Tian Jin Green Onion Pancake, which all of a sudden got a line. It was one of my bookmarks, since I guess it’s pretty famous, and even my grandma said to get some. She mostly recommended I go here to buy frozen dough to take home with me, and I figured since I was here, I might as well get a fresh one.
I just got a regular plain one, and it was good. A nice, hot, fresh, flaky, green onion pancake.
May 6: On my second to last day, my grandma took me to a dim sum-esque restaurant called Kao Chi, because apparently they have a signature Shanghai style pan-fried bun on an iron plate, and she took my cousin here. We took the MRT to near the restaurant, and ordered that, a veg, and a few other dim sum items.
Brunch was pretty good, and I liked everything we had here!
She was very excited to bring me here, and also to our post-food sweets spot for tangyuan: Taiyi Milk King. Apparently this place is well known for tangyuan, as she’s heard about it and the neighbor recommended it for tangyuan too. My grandma got a hot red bean soup with tangyuan, and since it’s hot, I got my third shaved ice of the trip: a red bean tangyuan milk ice.
It was pretty nice, and everything went together very nicely. I do like filled tangyuan, but since the options were only black sesame, peanut, and red bean, I guess I could have gone with a red bean, but I spotted this one on the menu, and I much preferred just plain small ones. I say small because they were labeled that way, but they were pretty massive for “small” tangyuan. In fact, they were a litte less circular, and slightly tubular. Nevertheless, I loved how chewy and sweet rice-y they were. The ice itself didn’t have any flavor, but combined with the red bean, there was enough there and good texture. As the ice melted, it because a slightly cold soup as I mashed the giant ice chunks (as I saw others did), and there was a slight milky flavor then. We bought some for me to take home (though their frozen small tangyuan looked a little different than their fresh ones, but I diguress)!
We were both pretty full at that point, but my grandma wanted to take me to one last stop around the corner before we headed home: Lan Jia Gua Bao, a pretty famous bun place that I also had in my bookmarks. My grandma got two mixed fatty and lean meat buns (out of three options, just fatty meat, lean, or the mix, and mine just had meat and pickles. At that point, I really was not in the mood to eat anything, so we saved it to eat later for dinner.
We bussed home, with a whole bunch of leftovers in hand, and I just chilled at home for a bit. It was my last full day in Taiwan, and I still wanted to make the most of my time, but I was feeling kind of lazy. It also was kind of late afternoon, and by the time I went somewhere, I wouldn’t have much time to hang out wherever anyway. I was telling my dad that I wanted to eat Taiwanese popcorn chicken, and he mentioned that a shop around the corner sells it, along with other fried street food. Apparently, his favorite thing at the shop is their grilled corn. And so with a bit of stomach room and a need for energy, I decided to venture out to find some fried chicken and a milk tea for a caffeine boost.
The shop was essentially a whole bunch of ingredients laid out on an old street cart that had a frier and vat of oil built into it. You tell the lady what you want off their menu, weigh the items, and then chuck it all into the oil, finishing it with some fried basil at the end, and tossing it in some seasoning. I ordered the chicken, fishcake tempura, and squid. I had the option for baked or fried tempura, but I figured might as well get everything frief togther I suppose.
It looks kind of ugly, but it smelled amazing, and they do just fry everything right in front of you. I have to say, my favorite of the three had to be the tempura, then the squid, then the chicken. I liked the crispness on the outside yet still soft and sweet inside of the tempura. The squid was really good fried, and the chicken was crispy yes, but I feel like my expectations were a bit different? I wanted a bit more of crunch to the chicken, and also, some pieces had small bones still in them, which made it a little annoying to eat, as I had to find somewhere to put all the tiny bones.
Then I looked around the area for a boba shop that I haven’t tried yet, and found a Kebuke. I’ve seen it everywhere, and figured it was time to try it. You can read about my boba here!
After I got my boba, I raided a 7/11 as a last-minute snack run to take home, and also because I needed to find and eat this boba ice cream I’ve been looking for. I found not only one, but actually a few, but only bought the best looking one…
For dinner, I just had the gua bao reheated from earlier, with some fruit!
My grandma microwaved the gua bao from earlier, and it came out soft and warm, and saucy from all the meat sauce that soaked into the bun. The meat filling was just right, and one bun was pretty sizeable, along with all the filling. Also, fruit!
I kind of had to eat the ice cream that night, so I did, happily so. Oh my lord the boba ice cream was amazing. Read that here!
May 7: It was finally the end of Golden Week, and time to say goodbye to my grandma, and leave Taiwan…My grandma finally picked up a savory fan tuan from the breakfast place, and I liked it, until I kept tasting a peanut-y taste in my mouth. I suppose Taiwan likes peanuts so much it’ll put peanut powder in my favorite fan tuan…I tried to deal with it, but at some point it kind of overrode my liking for the rest of it, which was quite unfortunate…I had the rest of my unfinished dragonfruit from the night before, and since I didn’t finish my fan tuan, my grandma steamed a leftover cha siu bao for me.
Soon after, the taxi car that would take me to the airport arrived at 7:30, I said my farewells to my grandma, and off to the airport I went. I napped a bit in the car, and before I knew it, I was at the airport. I first dropped off my suitcase at the bag drop off (it turned out just slightly overweight so I had to take a few pineapple cakes out…), and then headed downstairs to drop off my rental wifi. Finally done with everything, I headed to security, which didn’t take too long, and immigration was also pretty fast.
I had about an hour or so left before my flight, and I spotted a Chun Sui Tang sign pointing to the food court…and you know it I have to get my last real boba in Taiwan before leaving. My cup was huge..but you can also read about the drink itself here.
I bought my boba, and then had to look for my gate…I’m not sure if I downloaded my digital boarding pass too early or something, but it said to “check at the airport”, and I tried looking at a bunch of boards, but I couldn’t seem to find what gate I was supposed to be at. I panicked for a second, but ended up searching it up online and found my gate. Turns out, I get a Hello Kitty plane again, and I got some better pictures of the outside this time!
We did board relatively on time, though we were on the runway for about an hour before we actually took off. I think because of that, “lunch” came out about an hour after we took off, which was pretty soon. I chose the Wok Fried Seafood with Sacha Sauce main whch came with rice, which came with an appetizer of Sesame Flavoured Pork Slices and Marinated Cucumbers, Fruit, and a Lemon Cranberry Cake. I mostly chose it because I didn’t want the other option; while the chicken was tempting, I did’t care for the creamy pasta.
Overall, it was fine I guess, lol. I actually enjoyed the appetizer, and it was on the cooler, refreshing side, with the acidic dressing. The actual main was ok, the vegetables a little mushy, the rice was kind of meh, and the seafood was not too bad for airplane food. I didn’t eat the shrimp, but the squid and fish I think were decently tender, the sauce was pretty good. The cake was interesting, and though I’m generally not a huge fan of either of the flavors, it was moist and fluffy. The bread that came with was pretty average too, but I generally like white bread..
After we landed, getting off the plane was relatively smooth, and then I had to go through immigration. Though my line (the re-entry permit line) was tehcnically the shortest, I had to wait a bit because someone further up was having some sort of complication, and it took them a while to pass through. I thought surely by the time I got out, I could grab my suitcase and go. However, once I actually did get out, it took forever for my suitcase to come out, to the point that I got nervous that maybe it got lost. Thankfully, I did spot it come out, and I rushed over to get it and pass through customs. I scanned my QR code, and I had neither anything to declare nor anything actully suspicious, when an officer stops me after I clear the customs gate and asks to check my suitcase. I don’t know if anyone else got stopped, but when I asked him if anything was wrong, he said nothing in particular, but because the G7 Summit in Hiroshima is happening, they were being a little more cautious about people coming in. Maybe it was my American passport?
I finally made it out, and met up with my boyfriend who came to pick me up! I wanted to get home as soon as possible, so we headed straight to get on the train to Sapporo.
By the time we got back, it would be a little bit until we could get on the next bus, and since I wanted to grab something to eat for later, I went to finally go try out the Sandria vending machine. Sandria is a popular 24 hour sandwich shop a bit south of the Susukino area, and they recently installed a vending machine a couple months ago in the station. Apparently when it first opened, there was an insane line. I got a ham katsu, and ate it later. It was ok, I guess, a good sandwich, but I didn’t eat it right away, so there’s that too.
And then we took the bus at 6 home! That’s it for my Taiwan adventures (for now…)! Part 1 was here. Part 2 was here.
Japan Excursions 
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