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.
