Another night......another night market....

If you hadn't already guessed from my previous posts about Taipei - night markets are a huge part of life in Taiwan and they are a whole lot of fun.

I can't actually remeber the name of this market (terrible I know!) but it was described in the Lonely Planet as the most "dingy" night market in Taipei. I actually didn't think it was very dingy at all - it reminded me a lot of the markets I visited in Korea.

We started the night market eating as that's what most night markets are for! I bought one of these amazing chocolates and Rich bought a mini chocolate cake. It was so good!

Next up was a stop at an arcade - Rich always plays the basketball games and I always try to convince myself this time I WILL win something on the claw machine.After the arcade Rich wanted to get a cookie chicken pie - unfortunatly they were all out of cookie chicken pie (whatever chicken cookie pie is!).

Some more of the food at the markets - there is so much food at these markets, but sometimes I honestly don't know what it is! This stuff looked great - I think it's kind of ice shavings and you pick your own topping. But that's just my best guess!

Another one of these stalls where you choose a kebab and have it cooked for you - this one had a huge amount of choices of kebab. You put the kebab's you want in that little bucket and just hand it over to the stall holders for cooking.Shrines are absolutely everywhere in Taipei and there are shrines everywhere - including near markets. Here's one we saw on this particular night out.

Finally, to finish off, what I think is a low fi version of Doctor Fish. I'd like to try it out but I don't speak any Chinese so I don't know how to ask!

Shilin Night market

Rich and I usually head out on Saturday nights and see what's happening, one night quite recently we visited the Shilin Night Market which was quite an experience.

We have been to the Shida Night Market quite a lot as they are pretty near our apartment and there's a lot of great food and shopping over there. Our lonely planet told us the if Shida Night Market was Queen then Shilin was King so we thought it was really worth checking out.

I have to say Shida night market is always insanely busy - so I am not sure what that makes Shilin - maybe just pure chaos as you can see from the picture below. They are SO many people and so many stalls - it's a tide of shopping and eating madness.

I've noticed a lot of these stalls at nightmarkets and at street vendors around Taipei in general - I think the idea is to choose a kebab and they deep fry it for you but maybe there are other options too. This stall was pretty meaty - but it also had a lot of tofu options. I've also seen stalls like this with a lot of vegetable kebab's. I've even seen one that had a broccoli kebab - not sure how popular that would be though.
I took a photo of this as I've seen a couple of these stores around Taipei selling bongs and pipes - I just thought it's kind of interesting as when you fly into Taipei there is a voice over stating that if you are caught bringing drugs into the country then the punishment will be death. But then these stores seems to be trading pretty freely around town. Maybe they are smoking something that's not illegal? But the leaves in front of the store do look a whole lot like cannibis leaves.
Just some cute figurine's - you can buy these everywhere in Taipei. I often try and win them in claw machine's in arcade's but I always fail. I should just save my dollars and buy a few from a store like this.
Finally some saucy underwear - some of it's kind of Harajuku style (well it reminds me of Harajuku style at least). I just thought it was kind of crazy - especially the pictures accompaning the underwear.
So that's just a small taste of one of Taiwan's many night markets - pure craziness and always an adventure even if you don't buy a thing.