Tea in Asia: Day 2 - Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Here's the second installment of my trip to Asia…

After a hectic first day, two Kaohsiung Hospitality College* (KHC) students greeted us with a smile and a welcoming breakfast.

*As mentioned in the previous post, the KHC has since been awarded the university title. It is currently called the National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism.

I didn’t have an appetite that morning, but I needed fuel for the day. Plus, I'm sure the KHC students worked hard to put all of this together. And just look how good the tray of breakfast looked!

There were bacon-wrapped asparagus spears, “breakfast sausages” which were essentially hot dogs, baby corn, and mushrooms. I liked the slices of toast, too! They tasted homemade. Or maybe that’s just what Taiwanese bread tastes like – either way, it was sweet and fluffy.

I got the delicious mango jello. The jello was so delicate and almost pudding-like. I loved this!

Breakfast was quickly ended with a cup or two of coffee.

We met up with the group in the lobby and then headed to the Dream Mall. It was another hot and humid day. As soon as we got outside of the air-conditioned building, I felt like someone sprayed us with water. Gross!

Lead by our guides, Coco, Denise and their friend Murphy, our group took the super-clean and efficient Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit (KMRT). We were all amazed at how nice the KMRT was. You aren’t allowed to eat, drink, or even chew gum within the KMRT, so that's probably why it wasn't dirty.

We took a group picture inside the Dream Mall lobby, rode the Ferris wheel, walked around the mall. We got hungry. We got lost looking for the food court. We rode up and down the escalators looking for the main food court, got lost some more, and then finally found our way there.

By the time we decided what we wanted to eat, we only had half an hour before we had to leave the mall. There was a large variety of different things to eat. Everything was cheap, too. 

AB ordered the wonton soup with a side of more wontons. Hahaa!

CPR (hehee.. those are great initials) had the breaded chicken with a honey mustard dipping sauce. Her meal included rice and a little plum, a shredded salad with another plum, a small cup of strawberry jello, a bowl of light broth, and a cup of tea.

I got a noodle dish. (Any surprise there?) It included a seaweed soup, pickled cabbage (almost like a kimchi), and a fountain drink. Oh, I forgot to mention that AB and I also got a milk tea with pearls. My noodle dish was a bit of a let down cause I thought I ordered a bowl of noodle soup. Ah well. The milk tea was good though!

We left the Dream Mall and headed toward the Cijin District. We met up with another guide, rented some bicycles outside one of the KMRT stations (I think it was the Sizihwan Station) and rode onto the motorcycle-packed Cijin-Gushan ferry. Once we arrived on the peninsula, we rode along the MiaoQian Road where we briefly visited one of the temples. We continued up the road and turned onto the QiJin 3^rd Road, passing many food hawkers along the way. We rode along the QiJin Coast Park and then turned back around. I wished we had more time to get off and have a picnic in the park.

Anyway, we biked to the base of the Cihou lighthouse and fort. I was too tired to make the hike up, so I stayed behind with a few other people. I do regret not going up.

Once the main group came back down, we hopped onto our bikes and went to the former British Consulate at Takao. Oh man, the stairs to get up was quite the work out. I could’ve sworn I heard the Rocky theme song as I began climbing the stairs. My quads were burning after the first flight of stairs. Hahaa, so weak!

The sun had set when we began having dinner at the café. I didn’t have an appetite. I was just too exhausted to eat anything, so I just rehydrated with some juice and shared a slice of cake with NG. There was also a couple behind our table that were making out all night. Get a room!

Anyway, I did take a quick shot of someone else’s dinner though. I don’t remember who’s it was, but SS, AO, and JV all ordered this. It looks like a chicken stir-fry with rice and veggies, a pumpkin soup, and a slice of cake.

After dinner, we headed back down the stairs and biked into the night. We returned the rented bicycles and then went back to the KHC for a much needed shower and a good night’s sleep.

This was one of my favouite parts of the whole trip. Sharing the roads with the locals made me feel like I wasn’t such a foreigner. I felt almost at home as we biked around the Cijin District. The only things I was missing was a giant tinted Asian visor, a basket on my bike, and a facemask.

Tea in Asia: Day 1 - Hong Kong and Taiwan

Last year, I had the opportunity to travel to Asia last year with Humber College. The trip was organized as part of a study-abroad program as well as a trip for the tourism students.

Humber College and the Kaohsiung Hospitality College* have had an exchange program for a few years. Our group was going to their school as representatives of Humber. Although I wanted to eat some amazing things and photograph everything, I knew that this trip wasn’t planned that way.

*The school has since earned the university title and is now called the National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism. I’ll be referring to the school as the KHC (Kaohsiung Hospitality College) from now on, because that’s what it was called last year.


Note: All of the following parts in the "Tea in Asia 2010" series can be found here.

~*~

My journey began May 3^rd, 2010. I took a flight to Toronto from Ottawa that evening and then early the next morning, my flight departed for Hong Kong. We arrived at the International Hong Kong Airport around 5am on May 5^th. It was a harsh 16+ hour trip from home – and we weren’t even in Taiwan yet. Our flight to Kaohsiung was scheduled for 9am, so we had to kill time until then. It sucked that our layover was so short. I would’ve loved to venture outside of the airport.

Other than a few other travelers, the Hong Kong airport was empty. I had never gone overseas before so everything was new and exciting to me. I wandered the airport with JV while most of our group tried to sleep off the jet lag. We window-shopped and I took pictures – nothing too exciting. Two hours went by. The shopkeepers began opening their shops, the smell of food hung in the air, and our stomachs began to grumble.

Since it was my first time in Hong Kong, I wanted to eat something Chinese to start off my journey. The more adventurous people in our group had congee and lo mai gai for breakfast, while other people enjoyed Burger King. Psh… not for me!

My first meal in Asia was… a plate of noodles. Oh ya!

While most of the food stalls were open by 7am, the one JV and I wanted to eat from wasn’t. I swear they were teasing us. We watched the ladies open up the stalls, we saw them wiping down the counters, we saw the chefs preparing food; we saw the chefs put out some dishes on the counter, and then we saw them begin to eat. Wait, what? They aren’t open yet? Well, I guess they needed to eat breakfast themselves first. It was torture. JV and I had to sit with our backs to them.

They eventually finished with their breakfast and began serving customers. We ordered two plates of the rice noodles with beef. I also got the milk tea to wash everything down. After a bit of a wait, our plates were ready to be devoured.

Breakfast is served.

The two plates of noodles looked mighty pretty and smelt amazing! I remember that there the noodles glistened with a bit too much oil, but they were smoky from the wok hei and it wasn’t overly salty. Looking at the time stamps on the pictures, JV and I polished our noodles in less than twenty minutes! After breakfast, we met up with the group, grabbed our belongings and boarded our flight to Kaohsiung.

We arrived in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, around 11am. The heat and humidity hit me pretty hard. I wasn’t used to this weather. I felt like I was in a sauna. Okay, it wasn’t that humid but it felt like it. Our group met up with our tour guides and then rode our air-conditioned bus to the KHC.

The KHC graciously hosted us at their school for the duration of our stay in Kaohsiung. The floor that we stayed in looked like a hotel. There were card keys and everything. The KHC students in the hotel management program ran everything on that floor. They were amazing!

We had a brief chance to freshen up before we were taken on a guide through their school.

We interrupted quite a few classes, but the students and teachers didn’t mind – at least they didn’t show it. I felt bad. Anyway, one of the classes we barged into was the barista class. The teacher gave us a pretty great speech in such a short notice. He was quite funny, too. The small class began making us cups of cappuccino, with the teacher leading the way of course.

Update

I'm disappointed that I didn't get any blogging done in over a month, but I'm going to make up for it! I'll be blogging about my short trip to Taiwan and Beijing that I took almost a year ago. And since I waited so long to write about it all, I'm just going to be writing (and posting) about each day as if it happened earlier in the day.

My journey began on May 3rd, but I didn't land in Hong Kong until May 5th, 2010. The first article is scheduled to be published in the early hours of May 5th. (Holy crap, has it been a year already?) Until then, here are a few pictures...


Steamed red bean-filled buns at Din Tai Fung.


Wontons and boba milk tea (original milk tea with pearls) at the Dream Mall.


Stinky tofu at the Shilin Night Market.


Huge chicken cutlets at the Shilin Night Market.


Hot and sour soup in Beijing.


Peking duck in Beijing.

Back from Taiwan!

It's been months since my last post, so here's a quick teaser from our trip to Taiwan.  More pics and descriptions to come!