Shilin Night Market

Since it was still early by the time I completed my little exploration of Danshui, I made my way down to Shihlin Night Market (士林夜市) for dinner. Thinking about how I was finally going to meet the original Shilin chicken cutlet and all sorts of wonderful typical Taiwanese snacks for dinner, I couldn't help but grinned stupidly to myself while on the way there. 

#1 Scene at Shilin Night Market

The first thought that came into my head when I finally stepped foot into the night market was:

THIS PLACE IS A FREAKING MAZE.

There were many rows of stalls selling all sorts of delicious-looking food (though truth be told, the assortment gets repetitive); I enjoyed sniffing at the different smells wafting through the thick and warm air as I made my way down the aisles, reading menus/signboards, dodging the hoards of visitors and trying to decide on what to have for dinner.

My first stop was at this stall that sold a snack with a really interesting name.

#2 棺材板.

#3 棺材板 - Yum yum yum

Literally translated, the name of this snack is 'coffin-board' (I think I'm just a sucker for dishes with such unique names lah). It's a piece of toast that's been deep-fried, hollowed-out and then filled with a creamy filling of your choice. I can't remember what filling I'd picked back there but I do remember it being really yummy - in fact, I think it's hard to go wrong with fried food. Agree? 

#4 Squid in thick soup 生炒花枝 

The squid was fresh and the (really) thick broth was tasty in an underrated way; like most Taiwanese food, the flavours are usually slightly blander than what we're used to in Singapore (and Hong Kong too). Anyhow, a piping hot bowl of this will be perfect for me on a rainy day.

Other than the coffin-board and squid, I had a serving of the famed chicken cutlet too and... it was so good! Wasn't too used to having such a piece of jumbo-sized chicken served uncut (I think we're too spoilt here in Singapore hur) but I didn't have too much of a problem with that, my face could get dirty for all I cared. And sorry there's no picture of it since I was busy trying to gobble up that gigantic piece of chicken cutlet and the tiny crispy bits that dropped to the bottom of the paper-bag. Got myself a nice cooling cup of bitter-gourd juice to wash all the junk I had for dinner down after; acquired taste, I suppose.

One thing that I've realized from travelling solo is that there's a limit to how much food you want to try when you're all by yourself and that is really horrible, considering that I'm the sort of person who wants to try nearly everything off the local menu.

_

It was raining rather heavily after I was done with dinner so I decided to take a walk around the other side of the night market where the carnival-styled games stalls were. Was really impressed by this particular stall-holder whom I bought some tiny souvenirs from because of her multilingual abilities - Japanese, Mandarin and Hokkien. We had a good chat and she had the most adorable maltese puppy that looked like this:

#5 "Hello, my name is Niuniu. Why are you looking at me weird?"

#6

At one point in time, the stall-holder was talking to Niuniu and I heard her say to the puppy "你不要跟我sai nai!" when the puppy refused to do at her bidding; that was super cute hehe. I confirmed my observation that many Taiwanese are a bunch of dog-loving people after asking the stall-holder bout that.

#7 Bunnies waiting to be caught in the claw machine.

This reminds me of the term '夹娃娃' that I learnt from Audrey back in HK; it's an euphemism for abortion. Doesn't sound too cute anymore now that I know that meaning :x