Good morning, Taipei!

The blog is back because I will be exploring new places again this summer. I am interning in Taipei until August and then going to check out South Korea for a bit. I suppose this is the second segment of "Annie's adventures in continents that start with 'A'". There will be a lot of posts about food. It appears that Taipei/Taiwan has a strong food reputation because nearly every Asian person I have told that I am going to Taiwan responded with, "There's great food there". 

Early morning, 5:55AM. That's Taipei 101 in the background! And no, Taipei's air isn't that clear - I confess I adjusted the lighting in the photo. 

This morning I was up very early (jet lag) and headed on over to the popular 阜杭豆浆 for breakfast which was conveniently a five minute walk from where I was staying. Popular is an understatement - I got there by 6AM and there was already a very long line. You don't think it's that long, until you realize it swings around the corner, up a set of stairs to the second floor, and continues from there to the ordering counter. It was 7AM by the time I got to order, meaning I waited in line a full hour!

They sell cold/hot salty/sweet soymilk, you tiao (油条), shao bing (烧饼), dan bing (蛋饼) and also this thing I never heard of before called hou bing（厚饼) that they are well known for.

在做厚饼

I ordered hot, salt soy milk and hou bing (thick pancake? would be my terrible translation) with egg ("厚饼蛋"), which came to 63NT. Was it really good? Yes. Was it worth the hour long wait? Probably not, but no regrets. I'm not a big soymilk person but I quite liked the salty soymilk, which I never had before. I only previously had sweet and plain. I discovered in China that I am incapable of consuming any quantity of plain, unflavoured soymilk. The hou bing was very interesting, it was definitely a savoury bread but had a slightly sweet exterior.

I think the wait was extra long because it was a Saturday morning. It's definitely possible to get these things elsewhere but I like to follow the herd sometimes.

热豆浆和厚饼蛋