Taiwan Travelogue: Day 1: NingXia Night Market
After a quick shower and freshen up at H132 Hostel, (you can read my review about it here), we took a nice 20min or so stroll towards Ning Xia Night market. It's not a very big market, it's about the length of one streeth, and you can easily finish walking it in half an hour or so, but why would you want to do that?? The whole point of a night market is to stuff yourself silly, and that's what we did.
You know you've reached when you've seen this.
This is how small the lane is and yet there are annoying motorists that drive INTO the market, not giving a shit about your safety, and you're supposed to jump out of the way when you hear the engine -_- am so annoyed seriously. That's Taiwan for you!
When you first walk in, there are a bunch of game stalls that I didn't try. Did watch people playing some though!
Kids playing, our local night markets should have more games like these!
There's this stall where people pick our mahjong tiles to match the ones on the table. I don't really get the whole point of the game, especially for kids but I think they are getting training to learn how to "feel" the tiles, at a young age. Lol.
Prawn and fish catching! They don't cook the prawns for you immediately after, so you have to bring them home and cook your prize yourself, unlike in spoilt Singapore.
Ning Xia market isn't as touristy as the other markets due to its sheer size, but it's where you get lots of locals pigging out on a hot, sweaty evening. And you know, I'll go wherever the locals go :p
Ai-yu jelly was everywhere! You've got to try them when you're in Taiwan :)
I randomly joined the queues to snack on some grub before I had a proper meal!
This stall had a REALLY long queue which I couldn't afford the time to try :( If you're at Ning Xia and you spot this, be sure to grab one and let me know how it is!!
There are shops along the streets (with aircon) which we decided to try for our dinner.
I was kinda craving beef noodles because... well it's Taiwan, and so we walked into this popular beef noodle joint. I am a HUGE fan of beef plus beef tendon, so this is my bowl of soup. It was only about SGD$4 but seriously I could not finish it. The remainder of the trip we took note to share 2 to a bowl of beef noodles, but our greedy selves kept forgetting.
Was sooooooo full after that!! It's easy to gain weight in Taiwan, sigh.
Here's the beef noodle stall I ate at! It's really good and their noodles are handmade. There are seats at the basement with aircon too (it really was too hot in Taiwan, especially at the night market)
The next morning, I snooped around H132 Hostel for a bit before we checked out. For a more detailed review, check out this post.
On the top floor of H132 hostel, there is a nice chill out area where friends and mingle, have a smoke, or...do their laundry.
Laundry is coin operated here, but I didn't check the prices.
There's also a secret room which I was tempted to check out but it looked dirty so I didn't. Lol.
It's really spacious and neat, I really would recommend staying in H132 hostel again.
However, I had to check out as I made reservations at a swanky new hotel downtown, which I will be blogging about soon. Stay tuned!
