9.17.2007 Pingsi 平溪

Pingsi before my camera batteries died.

Labels: Roadtrip, Taiwan day trips

1.17.2006 Confucian temple (Jan 8th)

Location: Tainan, Taiwan
Date: January 8th 2006

Labels: Photography, Roadtrip, Tainan, taiwan

1.16.2006 last, last weekend in Tainan (ie Fear Factor round 2)

I spent last, last weekend (Jan 6th - 8th) down in Tainan (my favourite weekend getaway spot) visiting my friends Kelly and Aaron. The bestest hostesses evers!

rr

Saturday started with a day at the coolest water spa I've ever seen in my life. A lot of hotels and even apartment buildings will have mini water spas that consist of a hot tub and a smaller square shallow tub with various shaped spouts that shoot various pressures of water.... but this.... this was the Disney Land of the water spas. If only I had the water-proof case for my Powershot I could've taken some pictures.

The place was *huge*...... like the size of a football field at least I'm sure. It had saunas, steam rooms, mineral baths (calcium and magnesium), tea baths... we're not sure what scents but we're pretty sure they were rose, green tea, maybe ecualyptus and aloe??? and some blue one... there were scortching hot tubs, ice cube tubs, a lazy river, a huge pool thingie with all kinds of crazy various waterfalls to beat up your back and neck with. They had foot pads that blew intense bubbles at your feet underwater (I think some kind of bubble reflexology), bubble neck and back massages, a "dumpling" pool that was just bubble madness.... and a room where you could lay flat on your belly and have and insane pressure waterfall on you from head to toe. It feels insane.... like 10 people simutaneously digging their fingers into you and dragging them up and down your body. I think that's it? oh how can I forget about the oldschool hairdryers (video to come)

After the spa action we had some good good eats and then headed out for badminton!

I haven't played badminton since I was 12.... Kelly and I had our butts thoroughly whooped by Aaron's mom, and Kelly's friend Billy. It was a bit embarassing playing since one of the Taiwanese olypmic badminton players was playing in the court next to us. I got a clip of them playing (video clip) but unfortunately accidently deleted it. I didn't know badminton could be so violent but it seemed like they were playing ping pong more than badminton. Madness.

Later we headed out for ginger duck hotpot. Hot pot is my favourite thing in Taiwan. Depending you either have a community pot of boiling water (for your table) or your own personal pot, which you throw food into to boil. After it's cooked you dig it out and, yum, eat it.

All the flavours of everything being cooked all blend together and at the end you're left with an awesome soup. So ginger duck hot pot included *every*, I mean *every* part of the duck. I ate some craaaazy stuff again. I didn't eat duck kidney, brain, bill, or feet, but I pretty much tried everything else. Including intestines, yes again, and ducks blood, again.

And I tried fish blood rice cake, see: (surprisingly ok)

After the feast we headed back to Kell and Aaron's for some Uno playin' and beer drinkin' Grace had the cutest sweater ever on.

Sunday I started to come down with the most horrible cold I've had since I've been a kid but I got to have some great one-on-one time with Kelly and got to do more scooterin! We headed to the Confucious temple in the evening and I took quite a few pictures. I'll put them in a seperate post. Nothing too fancy but I was rushing.

I like this picture a lot. There's a lot of random stuff in Kelly and Aaron's place.

Labels: gastronomical adventures, relationships, Roadtrip, Tainan, taiwan