August in Review

This summer has just whizzed by without a post.  My apologies for slacking on the posting, but I've been trekking around Singapore and Asia with my visitors from the states.  So here's a "quick" run through all the things we did in August.

As you know, my sister was here for 5 weeks visiting.  We had a fabulous time and visited quite a few sites.  Of course one of the places we visited was the Singapore Zoo!

Being my second trip to the zoo, this time we planned the sights so we could catch some of the feeding times. The Singapore Zoo does a really great job of integrating their animal exhibits into the landscaping so that the animals are comfortable and not locked in cages.  The zoo also offers chances for people to get up close with the animals.

First, we walked to the kangaroo compound.  As soon as we walked in, a couple of kangaroos hopped right across our path.  We watched some families feed the kangaroos:

We missed the white rhino feeding time, but still got a good look at them.

We stopped by the orangutan exhibit for their chat session and got to take some pictures up close.  I think the orangutans are fast becoming my favorite animals.  They are so funny and the baby orangutans are just so cute.

Now for my favorite part of the visit - feeding the giant tortoises! You pay SGD$5 per family to go in to feed and pet the tortoises.

Hanging out on the giant tortoise waiting for feeding time to start.

Petting my new friend - who knew that tortoises liked being pet so much?

Andy and Julie and their new friend

Family portrait

Before leaving, we made one more stop at the Fragile Forest exhibit.  It's an enclosure you can enter with birds, lemurs, sloths and other animals roaming freely.  The lemurs were extra active that day and were doing crazy acrobatics jumping from branch to branch, whizzing by our heads.

Moments before taking this pic, the lemur flew by Andy's head onto the branch next to him.

Yikes! Definitely a little too close for comfort...

Then, Julie and I jetted off to Taiwan to visit our family.  I was lazy with picture taking so these were the only pics I took during the trip.

Julie and Grandma

Family Pic: L-R Big Aunt, Grandma, Third Aunt, Julie, Me - can you see the resemblance?

 

Sisters enjoying our awesome and cheap bubble tea

Here's a collage made from pictures taken on Julie's camera during our trip.  She, unlike me, wasn't lazy and carried her camera everywhere.

Captions: Pics 1-3: Din Tai Fung, 4-6: Fun on Orchard Rd., 7-8: Chinatown Silliness, 9-10: Posing with the Merlion, 11: Harry Potter, 12: Drink in a bag, 13-14: Clarke Quay, 15: Crystal Jade Noodles, 16-17: Sushi Express, 18: Science Center, 19: Indian Food @ Banana Leaf, 20: Family photo in Taiwan, 21: Korean food in Taiwan, 22: Angry Birds Cake, 23: Double fisting my bubble tea, 24: Cousins and Xiao Hei, 25: Julie "reading" at the market

So that, in a nutshell, was how I spent the month of August.

Good Eats

Just when you thought I was done blogging about Taiwan, I felt it deserved one more post - one dedicated solely to the glorious culinary delights I got to consume.  After all, eating is what Chinese people do best!

First, we start at the market - 

The fresh noodle lady at the market - fresh noodles are amazing!  Can't get this in the states.

The fish vendor 

Fruits and Veggies - forgot to get photos of my favorite exotic fruits - guava and rose apples!

Now, on to night market foods:

The grilled corn men - they take corn, grill it and coat it with Chinese BBQ sauce.  The kernels become chewy and are so tasty with the sauce.

Andy ready to chomp into his corn.

The stinky tofu lady - apparently she is one of the more famous stalls at the night market.  The tofu was so good! Very stinky, but crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

Owa Misua - rice noodle soup.  This stuff was amazing - made even better because it was chilly outside so the hot soup warmed me up.

Shaved snow ice - this stuff is way better than the traditional shaved ice.  They shave it in a magical way so that the ice feels soft and creamy in your mouth...almost like ice cream.

We went to the National Palace Museum and grabbed lunch in between browsing.  We had noodles, fried shrimp rolls, and other Taiwanese street snacks (I can't remember the names).

We spent a day in Danshui and ate some local specialties.  Stir fried noodles, some meat dumplings, tofu stuffed with vermicelli, and the famous Danshui fish ball soup.

For New Years Eve, we stayed in and had a big family dinner.  We had some yummy hot pot and my uncle pulled out all the stops and got two lobsters! 

My little cousin, anxiously ready to dip into the goods.

Now I'm finally done posting about my trip to Taiwan....a couple of weeks after the fact! Anyway, better late than never.  One more thing to share - I finally opened up a Flickr account and will be posting my pics in albums there.  I had noticed my pictures were not very clear when I loaded them straight to blogger so I did some testing and found that they look much better when I load them from Flickr.  So now you can go to this album to check out all the pics!

Chinese New Year: Taiwan Version cont'd

Now, for the other part of our trip to Taiwan...

On New Year's Eve, we spent the day wandering around the International Flora Expo.   Apparently, it's the must see event in Taiwan this year.  There are certain exhibitions that you have to wait in line at 5 a.m. to get tickets to enter.  We obviously did not do that, but we checked out the outdoor displays and exhibitions with short lines.

Floral Whales

I thought it was pretty cool that they had water spraying out of the whale.

Cactus land!

This was a poem with a translation....I think the meaning was definitely lost in translation...

It reminds me of those funny sweatshirt/sweatpant outfits from Taiwan that my mom used to make me wear when I was little....They would say things like "Happy bear always fun" or "Lover is in the air" or something to that effect.

I think maybe they should've hired a better translator...

Here are some close ups of the flowers.  Roses and orchids are my favorites!

The chess player bushes...If you notice in the left background, they even have grass bricks!

In the middle of the exhibition, there were some fake mini-mountains we climbed.

There were fields and fields of flowers, smelled so good!

They even had these funny flowers made out of plastic spoons!

After the Flora Expo, we had hot pot dinner with the family and played mahjong all night.

Playing Mahjong was great for Andy learning Chinese - he now knows not only how to say the numbers 1-9, but he can read them in Chinese too!  Not to mention he can read North, East, South, West, (though hasn't quite matched the characters to meanings) and a few other characters...You never know when you might use those words....

Here's the whole family

After dinner, we went downstairs and lit some sparklers and roman candles.

Here I was trying to write "Love", but instead, I got "Lovo"....close enough I suppose.  I kinda like this picture because there's so much going on.  I'm trying to write a message, my cousin is watching while someone else is shooting off some fireworks.  

During the rest of our stay, we visited a couple more places.

Here's Taipei 101 - the world's second tallest building.  I took this picture one night when we walked by, but we visited during the daytime and went to the top.

Here's Andy checking out the view on top of Taipei 101.


My little cousin taking a look with a little help from the binoculars.

Saw this person walking her dog in the Taipei 101 area...I can't believe someone actually put shoes on their dog...or should I say - I can't believe they actually MAKE shoes for dogs...

We also went to Beitou where there are the famous hot springs.  This is the view of the Thermal Valley.  They used to be able to boil eggs in this, but it's fenced off now since it's too hot...the water was actually bubbling it was so hot!

We had a really fun time in Taiwan and enjoyed spending time with friends and family.  I pretty much ate the entire trip and am now having withdrawal from some of my favorite foods.  I'm pretty sure I gained quite a few pounds over the couple of weeks - now I understand why people were warning me about Chinese New Year being a crazy time.  It's pretty much like Thanksgiving and Christmas combined in the states!  Being away from my family in the states is tough, but being able to spend time with my family in Taiwan really made me feel alot better.  For now, I'm fueled up with family love until the next visit!