Ma La For Guo, Xi Men Ding - Taipei Trip Day 2

After we did some shopping at the supermarket in Taipei 101 and New York New York we took a cab back to the hotel to put down our goods and rest for a while before we head to Xi Men Ding again. We are going to have Ma La For Guo tonight.
At the hotel we refresh ourself, then gather at Paul and Shirley room.

View from Shirley and Paul hotel room

City Train Railway

We then make a move, took a cab to Xi Men Ding, reach there around 5:30pm. We are still feeling full, so we wanted to do some window shopping and have our dinner around 7:00pm.

Xi Men Ding

 We were so tempted to buy this!

Shirley wanted to have the crepe yesterday but we were to full, when we passed by this crepe shop again, she said she wanna have it now, haha. We order strawberry and red bean crepe NT$80

We shared the crepe. Then we pass by the dessert shop, yeah, dessert our favourite. Weather is cold today, we were actually searching for hot desserts and we found it!

This lady boss was quite rude and unfriendly, regretted eating here

Shirley order- Red bean, green bean and taro ball dessert (hot), NT$60

I order- Red Bean and Taro Ball dessert (hot), NT$50

Now we wanted to search for famous bakery, wanted to buy take away. First we found a local Taiwanese pastry and delicacy shop, went in and buy take away. Then we found Dobos Bakery, we bought one Polo Bun and Green Tea Red Bean Roll. At last we found Olympia, this was introduced on Super Taste-Astro Channel 317 before, many awarded pastries and bread, they don't even allow Super Taste to filmed them. We took some photos secretly, felt like a spy, haha.

This Sandwiches are fast selling product(also shown on Super Taste and highly recommended), disappeared within 3 minutes time, NT$28

We ate this at the hotel room, never regretted buying it, best sandwich we ever had, bread is soft, ham is good, everything so balance, no word can describe it, so simple and yet so good.

 Yeah! Satisfied now. Going for dinner

We didn't make any booking in advance, so we have to wait for seat available, we are suppose to get a table around 8:40pm, that's about 2 hour waiting time, we still agreed to wait cause it's really cold outside. We sit and chatted while waiting for table, so lucky, at 7:40pm we manage to get a table and have our dinner

We chose 2 type of soup base, Ma La Soup and Clear Herbal Soup

Then we go and pick our food for steamboat, buffet style

Thin slices of meat-choices of chicken, beef, pork and lamb- place your order to the waiting staffs

This is the Flavoring for clear soup

Unlimited supply of softdrink and beer, pick your drink from the fridge
Dessert: Ice Cream from Haagen-Dazs and Movenpick; and other pastries

We felt so satisfied, great meal, great friends. Time to catch a cab back to the hotel. Nope, we are not done yet, still have take away food, yeah!

Fruits from Taipei 101 Supermarket. 2 mango (NT$151), custard apple (NT$190), 4 jambu air (NT$160). Fruits are so expensive in Taiwan. Custard apple was the best one, different from the one we had in Malaysia, flesh are more smooth but smell wise Malaysia one stronger. Mango not sweet enough, hmmm..bit sour and jambu air nothing special, ours better.

This are from the Local Delicacy Shop since 1949. Pineapple tart was really nice, we just bought 2 pieces, regretted, cause we look down on it, thought it will not be good, end up we like it so much, chewy pineapple filling. All those Ru Yak also really good, not salty, with a hints of spices flavour and not dry, clean as well.

From Dobos Bakery

Green Tea Roll with Red Bean filling

Yummmy...this is good, cake is soft and not dry, cream is so milky and love the red bean and green tea smell...yummm

Polo Bun, not good

All this come from this bakery "Olympia"

Best ever! Make sure you drop by this bakery and buy/try as many as you can, so so...good...heaven

Ok, that's it for today! Back to our room. Time to shower and hit the sack....Zzzz
Goodnite Taipei

Today's Meditation:
Children are curious and are risk takers.They have lots of courage. 
They venture out into a world that is immense and dangerous.
A child initially trusts life and the processes of life.

John Bradshaw

Wouldn't it be great to continue to have these kinds of qualities? Wouldn't it be great to live life like it's a great adventure full of wonderful and potentially dangerous things, but trusting that life will take care of us? The processes of life are very important to us, and we learn very little if we don't trust those processes. Some things take much longer than we think they should, and we try to hurry the processes along on our schedule instead of on life's schedule.

If we trusted the processes more, we'd have more courage. We wouldn't see the risks as these immense, terrible obstacles that hold us back; instead, we'd be able to face them knowing that life was behind us, and that no matter what the outcome, we'd learn and grow from our experience.

Somehow as we grow and we gain more "knowledge," we lose our curiosity. We take things for granted, and we stop taking risks because we think we know all that we need to know. But when we act this way, we've stopped living and we've begun existing. There's too much in this world for us to ignore it and stop learning from it, but we somehow like our comfort zones more than we like the possibility of taking important risks.

I have to remind myself constantly: trust life. As I remind myself more, it becomes more natural to me, but I still have to force myself to do some things that seem to be outside of my comfort areas. My goal is to get back to a point at which I do things because they're outside of my comfort area, and that will be a very good point to reach. Because then I'll be able to relate much more easily to the kids who are our best teachers.

If children are to keep alive their inborn sense of wonder, 
they need the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, 
rediscovering with them the joy, excitement, 
and mystery of the world we live in.

Rachel Carson