Our Indulgences in Taiwan - Part 5 Ximending and Dan Shui

These are probably more commonly known places in Taipei - Ximending (西門町) and Dan Shui (淡水). Ximending was actually where our hotel was, we stayed at Westgate hotel which is fairly new and just 5 minutes from the Ximen MRT station. Although it's less than 6 months old, we were slightly disappointed that despite clean rooms and good service the dining area was infested with mozzies. That was quite a spoiler. But anyway let's focus more on the good food we found around the area instead.

Firstly, of course the famous Ah Zhong Mian Xian / Mee Sua. The queue nowadays seem much more manageable, we were there at about 3pm and got our big bowl of meesua pretty quickly. Still a favourite, remember to add more vinegar and chilli!

Then, along some of the main streets within Ximending you will find some peddling hawkers (unknown whether they are legal or not) but this friendly uncle was selling Cong Jua Bing (葱抓餅). It's like a roti prata with spring onions but you can choose what you want to be wrapped inside the 'prata skin'. We chose to have pork floss, and it was pretty yummy!

On one of the days where we got sick of the hotel breakfast, we decided to venture out into the vicinity and found this little local stall which sells a variety of dan bing (蛋餅). This is a typical local breakfast dish, again something similar to roti prata but the skin is thinner and has egg mixed into it. They also add on a sweet-savory sauce on top making it a great tasting combination.

A good way to end any day is pop into one of the many convenience stores and grab some Taiwan beer. These are a few we bought, personal favourite is the Grape flavour in the middle. Tastes like a fizzy grape juice!

Moving on to Dan Shui (淡水), we didn't eat much in the area because honestly there's nothing much to eat. We found the old street over rated, not sure is it because we were there on a Monday and it was drizzling so many stalls were not opened. The only snack we got was a taro biscuit, essentially 2 pieces of butter biscuit with taro paste in between. Not bad tasting but was kind of grossed out by the black oil it was being fried in. But for that moment we just decided to adopt the mentality of dirty-eat-dirty-grow-up, literally.

After that we took a walk to the Fisherman's Wharf (漁人碼頭), but along the way we saw 2 boars being chained to the outside of a stall selling betel nuts. Here's one of them, the other one is further in the background if you can spot it.

May look a bit fierce, but rather I found them quite poor thing. Have no idea why would anyone want to keep them chained up like that.

And the finale for the evening, great scenery at Fisherman's Wharf. Although it's not as vibrant as I last remembered it to be many years back where there were some musicians peddling their songs and so on, it was still a great place for some nice pictures.

Here concludes our experiences at Ximending and Dan Shui, we'll be sharing our one-day itinerary to Shifen-Jiufen-Keelung in the next post.