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Taipei, Taiwan (Part 2)
We did so much in so little time while in Taipei. Maybe because we had nothing else to do, maybe because traveling around was so easy, it was such an action-packed trip, I had to split into two posts. The first post I wrote highlighted the biggest, most memorable activities: Taipei 101 and the Taipei Zoo. (If you haven’t read that yet, go do so.) I am going to quickly talk about four other things we did while in Taiwan. In no particular order, they are:
#1. 228 Peace Memorial Park
This place is very meaningful to the Taiwanese people. It’s a memorial for all the people who fought for independence from Communist China. It was very fertile. There were so many flourishing plants, I forgot I was in the middle of a big city. While the main purpose of the park was to have statues, small temples, and plaques, there was also an outdoor place to work out and a play set.
Right next to the playground was an “acupuncture walk.”
It was a wide stretch of side walk that was covered in smooth black rocks. The idea is that if you walk on these very smooth yet very pokey rocks, then you will get great health benefits. There was a sign saying what part of the foot attributed to what other body part. Walking on it with shoes: easy. Walking on it with socks: quite uncomfortable. Walking on it with bare feet: extreme pain. I went on it probably seven times (I have very tough feet from stepping on bees all the time). Selah posted a video on our youtube channel of my dad trying it.
Also within the park, there were a couple museums.
#2. The Museums
These huge, victorian style buildings had many floors and rooms showing Taiwan’s rich history; more history than you might expect from a tiny little country like Taiwan. All the wars, all their trade, how their flag came to be: and that is only a little bit of it. The first one went to covered all that and even had a huge aviation section.
The second museum had an entire old-fashioned bank vault in it. We got to walk around it and explore the low ceilings and rows and rows of cabinets. There were also lots of stuffed animals and bugs and dinosaurs. This museum was much less “Taiwan” and more “Science and History.”
The third museum was far away and we had very little time. We spent an hour in it. The whole museum was basically a palace. A huge towering building filled with artifacts and such. It was a little boring to us kids so we just played “Which Antique Vase is Uglier?”
Even though it was kinda boring, I am glad we went. The thing that these museums showed me and my family was that culture is different than politics. China and Taiwan have very similar cultures, but they are very different countries.
#3. Shun Chui Tang
Speaking of Taiwan’s history, did you know the first “boba” was invented in Taiwan? The idea and creation of tapioca pearls in milk tea started in a little tea shop called Shun Chui Tang. Only now it isn’t a little tea shop doing experiments anymore. It is a big, fancy restaurant chain.
We went to one of the locations while in Taipei. Now, I do not care for milk tea at all. It tastes like curdled milk. And I do not especially like boba. Tapioca pearls are gross and chewy.
The first time I ever had boba was in China. I did not know that there were pearls in it and I thought they just had big straws over there. I take a big sip and five pearls hit the roof of my mouth and I don’t expect it. But that is not the worst part. You have probably heard that Chinese eat everything. Well they do, and I seriously thought for a long time that there were FISH EYEBALLS IN MY DRINK! Not a good experience.
My family did not have this childhood trauma or the same opinions of the taste, so we went anyhow.
I got a lemon tea. No milk. No boba. Delicious. Everyone else: Milk tea, Milk Tea, Milk Tea, Milk Tea, and more Milk Tea. Then my dad saw a brown sugar milk tea so we “had to get that, too.”
So sweet. Blech!
#4. The Market
Living in Thailand, we are no strangers to crowded market, yet very few compared to this market: so busy, so loud, so good! The street food in Taiwan is the best on the planet. Almost everything we ate was amazing! My favorite thing was probably the deep-fried roti with green onions. These were so greasy and buttery and oniony. We ate some and then went back for seconds, they were so freaking good.
Speaking of green onions, we also got a green onion pizza. It was called pizza, but the “crust” was a lot like a crepe and it was folded like a taco. Green onion roti taco? I have no idea but I know that they are probably eaten in Heaven. While I watched them make it, every single ingredient added looked delicious. The cheese, the sauce, the meat. And then the finishing touch: green onions. But not just a garnish. No, this was a heaping pile of chives. Like falling out the sides with green onions. It was a pile two inches high. Perfect.
We also got a lot of Tangulu. If you haven’t heard of Tangulu, I know you don’t watch tiktok or youtube. Tangulu is conquering those right now. All it is is fruit (usually strawberries or grapes but any fruit will do) and simple syrup. They get the sugar syrup really hot and roll the skewered fruit in it. It quickly cools down and then it is as hard as a rock. When you bite into it you nearly break your teeth and squirt juice all over. The flavor was really good and the strawberries were my favorite, but I did not like how sticky it was and how it coated my teeth with sugar. Still, it was good and definitely Selah’s favorite.
There was so much more. We had good beef. It was expensive, but who cares? My dad stood in a line for a long time to get some stir-fried king mushrooms. They were a little disappointing (way too much sauce), but there was so much good food that we kinda forgot about those.
I didn’t have any of it because I was already full from other stuff, but we also grabbed a Korean Cheese Dog. Same thing as a corn dog, but instead of a sausage inside, there was a cheese stick.
We had a fun trip to Taiwan, despite the VISA problems not being fixed.
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Taipei, Taiwan
It has been a very long smokey season in Chiang Mai and the air is hot and dry and cough-inducing. We had to go somewhere for our VISAs: so why not go to a big city for some fresh air?
Several weeks ago (I haven’t posted in a while!), we went to Taipei to try again applying for our family’s non-immigrant VISAs. That part of the trip was unsuccessful, but almost every other aspect of our weeklong trip was great. Jeremiah is writing a post about one event in Taiwan that threatened to ruin our trip. (Link to Jeremiah’s Post Here). We would walk several blocks to the Thailand Economic Trade Center each morning and give the people behind the desk our paperwork. It would take many hours to process, so we would leave to go enjoy Taiwan before going back to the Thailand Economic Trade Center later that day for our paperwork and let-downs.
Now for some non-gloomy things we did: The first day, we were sitting in the park near the building we had just dropped our paperwork into and then our parents said we had a plan and we walked to the nearest Metro. Although Chiang Mai is a big city, there are no Metro stations, so Taipei was interesting just because of their HUGE underground train system. None of us had been on a Subway train since we were in Hong Kong after adopting Tallulah five years ago. It was nice and well organized and it made traveling around the city easier.
Taipei was very orderly and organized which all of us agreed was a nice change of pace compared to “no-rules do whatever you want Chiang Mai.” There were green paths on the street for people to walk on and a bike lane on the sidewalk. And that was nothing compared to the escalators.
So perfect. So organized. Everyone stood on the right side of the escalator so that those in a hurry could pass on the left.
I digress. As I was saying, we left the park and walked a short distance to the next Metro station. That day we started off our trip with one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced: Taipei 101. If you haven’t heard of Taipei 101 then you should look it up. It is the world’s 11th tallest building at 1667 feet high! We took the metro station right to Taipei 101 and immediately hopped in an elevator up to the seventh floor. On the seventh floor, we got our tickets and we ushered into a really nice elevator. Much better than the one at our hotel that loved to close on people. When we were traveling up, faster than I thought was mechanically possible, the lights in the elevator dimmed and showed fake constelations on the ceiling. The screen on the wall showed floor numbers changing nearly as fast a stopwatch. Then we hit the 89th floor: The Observation Deck. It was awesome. It was cold and covered in windows that gave us a full 360 view of Taipei.
We saw mountains and skyscrapers and buildings that were made to look cool just for us tourists.
Yes the middle one is an Apple Store shaped like a Laptop Computer.
The next day, we went to Taipei Zoo.
The Zoo had its own Metro station so it was very easy to get there. Wait, no it wasn’t! Before we went to the Zoo, my dad had to go get something from our hotel room and he was going to get on the Metro closest to our hotel and hop on a train and meet us at the next stop. The “little” disaster that happened earlier in the morning had slowed down the trains and only a few passed, so crammed with passengers I was worried someone would suffocate. (Again, Jeremiah is writing about the “little disaster“). Only three trains came through before we found Dad. (The train going the opposite way came at least 10 times!) Dad had decided it would take too long and be too crowded when he saw the trains by his metro so he decided to quickly walk (run) to our Metro station instead. By the time he got there, the “traffic” had sped up and trains were moving normally. We hopped on and went to the Zoo.
The Taipei Zoo is the largest zoo in Asia. It is huge. All of us were exhausted walking around it. It is so big we had to go to it twice to see everything! The second day, though, we went to the North America section and were disgusted by this guy.
It is hard to tell but this is an American Bison. We are used to seeing skinny cows but none compare to this creature. I am sure when, in Genesis, Pharaoh has a dream of seven fat cows being eaten by the sickest, skinny cows, he was seeing this buffalo as one of the “famine cows.”
Anyway, one thing that is cool about Asian Zoos are that they can have more outdoor exhibits because the weather outside is the weather in the animal’s natural habitat. They have the indoor penguins and pandas and that’s about it.
The name above intrigued me so I looked it up and apparently this breed of penguin, the Jackass Penguin, are called Jackass because they sound like donkeys. Weird.
They had every kind of elephant (which I didn’t take any pictures of because there are plenty of elephants in Chiang Mai), every kind of bear,
and a ton of wild spiders everywhere. (It’s really hard to tell, but the first spider is really close to the camera right in the center of the photo!)
Speaking of spiders, they’re a few things that the Taipei Zoo had that, in my opinion, beat almost every other Zoo. Their Insectarium was probably the most filled and informative Insectarium I have ever seen. Their butterfly room had only a few species of Butterfly and I thought that was it but it kept going on and on and on. There were small bugs crawling around the walkways like praying mantis and ants. (The “leaves” on the tree in the 3rd photo are butterflies!)
There were butterflies and wasps and bees flying around. Fun fact we learned at a bee farm, asian bees are not aggressive. Seriously, it is crazy. When we went to the bee farm, I expected us to put on hazmat/beekeeper suits and not to touch any bees but they would just pick up a bee and set in our ungloved hands. Not a single sting.
Anyways, the coolest part of the zoo was definitely the Pangolin Dome.
The whole time we were there, we wanted to see the Pangolins. They are a rare and endangered animal that is kind of a mix between an armadillo and an anteater. They are really cool and really cute. Except the Pangolin Dome had no pangolins! We saw one sleeping in another exhibit but that was it. What a let down!
Even though it was called the Pangolin Dome, it was home to many, many more animals than that. It was, as the name suggests, a big chain dome full of trees and plants. We walked on a windy concrete path and was immediately met by these two HUGE birds just right next to us. (That dark thing in the tree is called a “Great Argus”, and it was as long as a young child!)
The one on the railing, the Great Cussarow, looked like it would lunge at any moment.
Right after we passed those birds, we were met by two or three little Cotton-Topped Tamarins. Now, I don’t really care for monkeys. I think they are ugly, creepy, and grosser than most animals. Same with koalas. But if I had to get a monkey I would definitely want it to be these guys. They were small and brown and orange in color, but their highlighting feature was their mane of pure white hair. They look like the coolest little rockstars ever. Plus, they weren’t shy. My dad set his hand on the railing and one of them just walked over it to impress the other tourists.
Also in the Pangolin Dome was a little “Kingdoms of the Night” exhibit. (If you don’t know what “Kingdoms of the Night” is, go to the Henry Doorly Zoo under the desert dome). They call it The Nocturnal Zone. There was a lemur and a loris and a monkey but that was it. This room was so dark we had to feel along the walls to find our way out into the light. There was also an “Amazon river” with a GIANT FISH and a some stingrays and other creatures of the Amazon.
In addition to the two that met us at the entrance, there were several other beautiful birds flying around. Scarlet Ibis, Blue Macaws, Red-and-Blue Lorikeets, and Bee-eaters were some of the birds you could see.
There were so many animals in this place that we didn’t even see! Their website says there was a two-toed sloth climbing around. We saw some tortoise but there were so many of those, scattered throughout the zoo. There was one building with practically every kind of lizard and turtle and tortoise in the world. Plus, the Iguana Tree. (I just looked it up, and the Pangolin Dome doesn’t have any pangolins but the is whole building is pangolin-shaped!)
There was no aquarium which is probably the only thing that makes Zoo #2 on my “Favorite Zoo’s List.” I know. You may think I am crazy but the Henry Doorly Zoo remains #1. I really loved the Insectarium and the whole Taipei Zoo was basically the Lied Jungle but the lack of an Aquarium and other indoor exhibits like that put it in number two.
It is close also because of this guy….
…who did something legendary! My dad looked at him and said, and I quote, “Wassup buddy?” and the monkey acknowledged him with the coolest “wassup head nod” ever!
A few weeks after we came back, we went to the Night Safari here in Chiang Mai. It was a Homeschool Co-op event and the Night Safari is probably #3 in my “Favorite Zoo’s List.” That is a story for a different post though.
There is so much more that happened in Taiwan so….
….To be continued…..
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An Unplanned Trip to Laos
I don’t believe in luck or in jinxes, but whenever my mom says that we have to take a “short” trip to the Immigration Office, it seems we are actually in for a whole lot more. For example, this last trip was supposed to take “maybe two hours” if we get there early enough to be first in the queue line. I mean, we’ve done this kind of extension before and it was fairly simple. Mom was even hoping we would get home early enough to have a normal day of school. So, we left at 6:30 A.M. and got home at midnight. Here’s how it went: (read in a James Bond British accent, if you have one)
It was an early Thursday morning. The weather, some of the nicest I have seen since the Big Move. We all got into clean, respectable clothes, for this was the standard. We left as the sun was coming up, shining the world in its eerie light. We were some of the very first to arrive, acquiring queue numbers that would set us among the first to travel to the counter. We had some time before the counters would open, so we found the necessary forms and filled out the paperwork needed for this visit. Then, paperwork completed, we sat in the empty plastic chairs, and waited about 45 minutes before the counters opened. By then, there were no empty chairs and people were forced to stand.
After a kind gentleman came out to tell the novices (a category the likes of which we are not in) how to proceed, our queue number was called. My mother, my sisters, and I went to the counter and confidently passed them our passports and paperwork. They were supposed to look at them and verify the validity before handing them back and sending us on to the next set of chairs and row of counters with a new queue number in hand. But our life is not one of ease, for when we spoke to the dear officer behind the counter, he informed us we could only be permitted another 30 days in the fine country of Thailand if we first left the country at the border. So, accepting our ill-timed fate, we left and sat on the steps of the office, waiting for my father and brother to get their situations worked out (fortunately for them, they have VISAs of a different sort). My father then needed to stand in yet another line at yet another window for yet another process. While waiting for him to finish, my mother, siblings, and I went to the nearest 7 ELEVEn (which is, in fact, spelled as such) to get some snacks to satisfy our grumbling stomachs. This was the second time getting our sustenance from a petrol station that day, for we had earlier purchased fruit from a stand at a petrol station for our morning meal.
Our father met us, and from there we all left for another unexpected adventure. We piled in the car and left town to drive through the mountains of Chiangmai. By and by the hours went, though we all knew we still had several more kilometers to go. We stopped at a third petrol station to use the loo and to find our lunch. Fortunately, this was one of the fancier PTTs. Fancier meaning there was the popular KFC in addition to the Five Star Chicken vendor, Dunkin’ Donuts stand, Cafe Amazon, and, of course, 7 ELEVEn. Yet again, we ventured forward, this time making a dreadful mess in the car with a huge bucket of fried chicken in the middle seat.
Fast forward the hours passed. After several devices died and our only entertainment was staring out at the mountains, and we finally got to the border. Memories filled our brains from our previous failed trip to the Laos border (that fateful trip, we ended up turning back empty-handed and flying to Malaysia the next day). When we stepped out of the car, we immediately coughed and gagged for fresh air for the dreaded smoky season had already hit that region quite hard. We walked the short walk to the border from the parking lot and got in line behind the small hoard of backpackers that were there ahead of us. Leaving the father and brother behind, we journeyed to a new country. We each, in turn, handed the men our passports, scanned our fingerprints, and stared awkwardly at the face-surveying camera, before walking to the bus stop.
After a small wait, we climbed into the bus and drove for a singular minute over a wide river before stopping at another structure exactly like the one we had just left: that one in Thailand, this one in Laos. Leaving the bus, we stood in yet another line behind yet another counter. Upon discovering it to be the wrong line, we began again: another line, another counter. After handing over a pile of cash in exchange for Laotian VISAs and entry stamps in our passports (the likes of which would prove we left Thailand for a few minutes) back to the bus stop we headed. We were done standing and waiting, now we could sit and wait. After 30 minutes or so, we could board the next bus headed for Thailand. The scenery was beautiful for we were right by the mountains and they looked right out of a painting, especially with a film of smoke covering everything the naked eye could see. We boarded the bus and ventured back to Thailand.
Everything went rather smoothly after that. We drove another grueling 5 1/2 hours home in the dark, with leftover fried chicken and 7 ELEVEn for our supper. We did have the good fortune to find a 7 ELEVEn with an ice cream cooler, so our day was topped off with Thai quality ice cream for dessert.
We came home at midnight and immediately fell asleep. That was the end of it. Ha! It might never be the end of it. Nevertheless, this adventure is over, and a new one is coming. I can feel it.
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Prik Pao Cheese Chips
Hope you had a good Christmas Break! Since it was Christmas Break, I haven’t made a chip post in a while so I am fixing that today. Today isn’t my first day trying these. The first time I saw these was when we were eating dinner at ZOE with the short-term team that was there last November. They had a table full of Thai treats and our friend Ben pointed these out as his favorite. My dad was impressed with these and got them again. Today, I tried them again in order to write a critique for you. And here we are.
Jeremiah and Tallulah really like these. In fact, as I write this, Jeremiah is waiting for me to give him the rest of the bag. Now, for the flavor: Prik Pao, for those of you who don’t know, is a spicy-sweet relish or paste type sauce that is made with charred chilis, shallots, and garlic mixed with dried shrimp, fish sauce, tamarind paste, palm sugar, and–in keeping with Thai tradition–lots of oil then cooked in more oil. If you don’t know what cheese is: your loss. With these chips, it is very hard to pinpoint an exact flavor, but you can get both the Prik Pao and the Cheese at the same time. The cheese tastes like swiss (which is what the picture shows) and the Prik Pao tastes like every ingredient I have listed. I love the spiciness of the Prik along with the garlic and shallot flavor. I can even get some of the dried shrimp. These chips would be one of my favorites if it weren’t for the cheese flavor which I feel shouldn’t be there. Without the cheese, these chips would for sure be on the podium for favorite Thai chips.
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The Big C
We go to The Gathering Church here in Chiang Mai. The Gathering and several other churches meet at Payap University which happens to be really close to Big C Extra. So almost every Sunday, we go to church and then leave to go to Big C for lunch and shopping for the next week.
The closest thing I can compare Big C to in America is a big Walmart, but it is completely different (like everything else in Thailand). There are several little businesses in Big C, such as, Pizza Hut, Swenson’s, Dairy Queen, Black Canyon Coffee, KFC (which is very popular here for some reason), and even some non-food related businesses, such as phone stores, jewelry stores, clothing stores, Watson’s (like Walgreen’s), and a couple small toy booths. I guess I could have compared Big C to a small mall but Big C itself is like a Walmart with a food court, and I don’t think any malls in America include a Walmart.
When we go to Big C (I am seeing how many times I can write Big C in one post), we always go straight to the food court and get our cards, each with 100 baht. In the food court, there are several booths along the side, almost every one with its own dish that the other places don’t and several individually owned booths in the middle. While my parents often get food from the middle booths, the rest of us have one or two main places or dishes we eat. Tallulah has a favorite place with a really nice lady working there. It has lots of sushi and other Japanese and Korean food, but Tallulah always gets Yakisoba, which is a dish with very thick noodles, vegetables, meat and a sweetish sauce made of soy sauce, ketchup, and other seasonings (according to Google). If you have met Tallulah, you know that she doesn’t really speak many words, but she gets Yakisoba every time so when Tallulah walks up to the booth, the lady smiles and confirms with me that she wants “one Yakisoba.” The answer is always yes. Almost nothing makes Tallulah happier than handing someone her card and bringing food back to our table.
But that’s just Tallulah. I always help her order, which works out because the yakisoba booth is in between the Pad Thai stand and the Khao Mon Gai Thot stand. My favorites.
I may have told you before, but Pad Thai is the national dish of Thailand. It is a saucy rice noodle dish with dried shrimp and always comes with bean sprouts, chives, chili flakes, sugar, and a lime. Usually it is also covered in an omelet. ข้าวไก่ทอด translated is “fried chicken with rice” and it is actually, drumroll please……..fried chicken with rice! Except the rice is cooked in the chicken broth for more flavor and I always cover the dish in a sweet chili sauce.
Jeremiah always gets BonChon chicken which I believe is Korean sweet and spicy chicken and rice. Nothing more to say there, really. Selah loves a good Pad Thai (as long as it has no dried shrimp: she has this thing about not liking to see little eyeballs on the food she’s eating. I know right? Weird.) Dad likes to get ส้มตำ or ข้าวซอย. I have told you about ส้มตำ in an other post, so check out the link. ข้าวซอย is spicy noodle soup usually with a drumstick and some crispy noodles on top, as you can see from the picture below. And mom changes everyday so she doesn’t have a usual. Although, she does like the fresh samosas that one of the middle stands make.
Now, every Sunday we have a 100 baht budget to buy whatever food we want (100 baht is about $3). All the meals above are around 45-70 baht. Unless I decide to change it up, my usual meals are both 50 baht. This means I always have 50 baht left over, which is perfect for my dessert. After we return the cards and get our cash back, I go to the smoothie guy’s booth. I do this every single time we go to Big C so, of course, I have a usual smoothie and the guy knows it. Whenever I walk up there, the man smiles and says, “Lemon-Coconut, no milk,” then I smile and nod and he makes it faster than lightning: check out the video! He has two blenders and a huge cooler full of ice behind him, along with piles of coconuts and other fruits. He also has two clean garbage cans: one full of water and the other for dumping water into. After he is done making a smoothie, he will clean the blender by quickly dipping the blender in the trash can with water, giving it a swish, then dumping the fruit residue water into the other can. That way he can make smoothies without them tasting like the ones he made before and it is super fast. My lime juice (Thai people call both lemons and limes “lemons”) and coconut water smoothie only cost 30 baht and is full to the brim so it always lasts till we get to the car. However, smoothies aren’t the only thing we can have as dessert. And I still have 20 baht left!
There are two mini waffle stands, one on the top floor and the other on the bottom. While I like the ones downstairs better, especially the cashew and and cranberry ones, they are more than double the price of the ones upstairs which has more variety. The ones upstairs are only 10 baht, no matter if you get a plain original, strawberry jelly, or chocolate filled one, while the ones downstairs are all 22 baht with no filled waffles. At both places, after you pick your waffle, they put it back into the waffle iron for a few seconds and then put it in the bag: nice and hot.
Selah’s favorite dessert, over all other Thai desserts, is Roti. There is a Roti stand right next to the smoothie stand and he is great. Roti is a kind of like a crispy crepe with countless different toppings, such as chocolate, sweet and condensed milk, bananas, sweet corn, pandan custard (made from coconut leaves and coconut milk), butter, peanut butter, etc. Roti is hard to make, but the guy at Big C is a pro and kind of a show off. I think Selah has a video of him tossing it till it almost brushes the ceiling and then folding in up on a really hot, oily pan.
There is one other dessert option that we indulge in every trip that I should mention: Ice cream! While there is a Swenson’s (which we never eat at), Dairy Queen is a cheap easy way to fill your hankering for ice cream. A small one scoop cone is only 12 baht. Upgrade it even farther and get a two scoop cone for ฿20 or a huge three scoop for ฿25 baht! Pay a little more and you can have the cone dipped in chocolate! There are also 5 different sizes of blizzard but they are a bit pricier so we only get them on special occasions. Dairy Queens are very common here but they don’t sell meals like they do in America. While some locations may offer hot dogs, the only reason to go there is for the ice cream. We always stop at Dairy Queen on our way out, but often we need to do some shopping first.
Like I said before Big C is like a Walmart. That is because it is. A big store that sells everything from clothes to food to toys to bikes. Usually after we eat we head to the store part of Big C and grab a cart which Tallulah sits in until we get to the produce on the other side of the store ’cause by then she is bored of the cart. Since we usually have Homeschool Co-op on Monday we pick up food for our picnic lunch the next day at Big C. Apples, bread, eggs, little pomelo salad kits, mama noodles (Thai ramen), etc. There are also displays of stinky raw meat like pork is but it also has tons of fish, shrimp, crab, and squid/octopus (very common).
Big C is one of our favorite places to go to eat because all the options. As a bonus, we also get all our groceries at the same time. Definitely one of my favorite places in Thailand.
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Double Whammy
It has been quite a while since I last made a post, and these chips were in our cupboard forever waiting for me to try them, so I thought I would make a double-post today.
Stir Fried Shrimp with Chili and Garlic Flavor
As soon as you open a bag of these Stir-Fried Shrimp and Chili and Garlic Chips, you are blasted with an unappetizing aroma. Selah knew what they smelled like right away. She said, and I quote, “Ew! Those smell like fish food!” She is one hundred percent correct. They smell horrible, but the taste actually isn’t that bad. These are the spiciest chips I have eaten so far, but not too painful to not eat them. Not even close. I immediately get a lot of strong shrimp flavor and a decent amount Thai chili, but I barely taste any garlic.
So not the worst and not the best. 7/10
Boat Noodles Chips (ก๋วยเตียว)
I didn’t know what “boat noodles” were until I read ก๋วยเตียว. The Thai characters are saying Guay Tiaw, which is a clear soup with the pork, chicken, or beef bones, and is seasoned with salt and pepper, garlic, cilantro, and some sugar. The picture on the chip bag makes Guay Tiaw look disgusting because it shows the kind of Guay Tiaw with blood broth. I haven’t tried that kind, and I am not sure I ever will. I have only had ก๋วยเตียว with clear broth and duck meat. Duck meat seems pretty popular in Asia, I saw it a lot in China as a meal option and I see it a lot here in Thailand, too.
I haven’t eaten Guay Tiaw in a while so I didn’t know what to expect when I tried the chip version. They smell like all the other weird flavors of chips. Gross. They aren’t as gross as they smell, but they don’t taste very good either. There is a little spice from the pepper and a brothy taste.
Not the best. Not the worst. We still have seaweed chips keeping the last slot. 6/10
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A Murder in Malaysia
We saw a murder on the street in front of the Royal Thai Consulate in Penang, Malaysia. I wasn’t able to get a good picture but that wasn’t the only crazy thing we saw. We also saw two (or three, we aren’t sure) wild monkeys walking on the telephone lines and eating by the trash cans. We did get some pictures of them:
While we went to Malaysia to apply for a new visa, the best part of the trip was seeing all the wildlife from the window of our hotel. We were on the eighteenth floor of a 29 floor apartment building. We watched the dirty river below us as giant monitor lizards, at least 5 feet long, swam. It made it a little scary to see people working (clearing a fallen tree) and playing in that river with those dinosaurs in the water.
We also watched a Brahminy Kite swoop down and grab dead fish floating on the surface. We watched a couple of bright blue–I mean bright blue–Kingfishers fly from tree to tree. There were small white Egrets walking along the shore. My dad kept seeing Blacknaped Orioles flying below us, but I never saw them. Even though we saw all of these cool tropical birds, my favorites were these small, green and blue parakeets flying all over the trees. They might have been Monk Parakeets (my dad had a pet one growing up and thought they looked the same). Dad has told me about a lot of his pets growing up but he always held Buddy (the parakeet) as his favorite.
I did not expect to see so much wildlife on this quick trip to a big city.
P.S. Did you know a flock of ravens is called a Murder?
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101 Guppies
My dad has many jobs at Zoe International. At the beginning, one of them was designing a water filtration system for fish and frogs (for the kids to eat). One day, when he looked into one of the pools that they were going to put frogs in, he saw a couple dozen guppies in there. To this day we have no idea how they got there. Maybe some eggs were in the water and maybe a bird dropped some in there, but there were a ton of guppies in there. My dad got a small net and a movie popcorn box and filled it with water. Then, he caught about thirty and put them in the bucket.
They were in there for about two weeks before Dad got a fish tank for them.
We put in our living room and my dad filled it with aquatic plants. We wanted an all-natural tank so we selected a few of the fish to stay and dumped the others in the canal behind our house. Since then, the fish have given birth and so have the snails that got in because of the plants. (I am not a very good photographer but if you look closely at these pictures you should see tons of little babies.
We aren’t done yet. We added some algae eaters to the hundreds of creatures in our tank. We added an ugly Suckermouth Catfish named Argus Filch and two pretty Siamese cleaner fish named Bobby and Kreacher. We also added several shrimp but they’re impossibly good at hiding considering that they are bright yellow and blue.
The guppies are not the first pet fish we have had in Thailand. Only a few weeks after we got here we stopped by a fish market and bought a beta fish we named Malfoy. We didn’t want to be late for some baptisms at Zoe that day, so Malfoy swam contentedly in a coffee cup in our car while during the baptisms. When we got home, we put him in a small vase with a floating plant on our kitchen table. Sadly, the beautiful Malfoy died one morning for an unknown reason and the dining room table was empty for a few months. Fortunately, when my dad went to the market for the cleaner fish he also got Bellatrix Lestrange, a small dark blue beta fish who only cost one baht ($0.03 !!!!!!!!!)
Still, while Malfoy was our first indoor pet fish, he wasn’t our first fish in Thailand. Week one we noticed that there were big fish in our canal. We have a big canal that goes through our neighborhood and right behind our house. In it there are giant, bright orange koi fish and numerous other fish we cannot identify. Almost every morning at around 6:30 our neighbor dumps a bunch of fish food off her patio and watches as a mass of wiggling fins goes crazy right under the surface of the water.
P.S. I do not have pictures of the koi fish in the canal because they are very camera shy.
P.P.S. We have had several pet fish in America and we know what we are doing (for the most part).
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Joni & Friends International Special Needs Retreat
A few weeks ago we went to this family retreat and I was chosen to tell you about it. We heard about it from our friends and they told us it’s the highlight of their year. The camp is for families with kids with disabilities or special needs. This one was specifically designed to support Missionary families. We got to go since Tallulah has Down Syndrome. Four other kids at the camp also had Down Syndrome. There were fifteen families there from all over the world (South Africa, Taiwan, Cambodia, and all over Thailand) and all of them had kids with disabilities.
The retreat was Tuesday evening until Saturday afternoon. It was at a resort on a mountain and it was really nice. We shared a duplex cabin with another family but we had the bigger side. As soon as we looked around we found out we would be sharing the cabin with tree frogs and hundreds of ants but that isn’t very different from our house in Doi Saket (trade the frogs for countless geckos) so we didn’t care too much after we took the tree frog off the wall of Mom and Dad’s room. Although the frogs outside the windows every night were extremely loud. During the day, the frogs sounded like small dogs yapping from inside a house.
The camp is designed to give the parents a break, so every kid had an assigned buddy to spend the week with. Right when we got there we met our buddies.
As you can see, Tallulah loved her buddy Leighanna.
My buddy Andrei was was sixteen and liked reading and playing games. He did not enjoy dancing and that was completely fine with me. We watched the dance party together.
Jeremiah had a lot of fun with Nathan and Selah loved Brenna.
We were with our buddies at every meal, devotions, and during afternoon activities. After breakfast each morning, we would go to the meeting room and worship. After the parents left for their morning sessions, the teens would go into the neighboring building. There we would play games, watch videos, and make silly reenactments to bible stories. After morning activities we went back to the main building for lunch. Then from 1:00 to 4:00 we had free time to do what ever we wanted with our buddies: swimming, hike up to the cafe, play games, or just talk. Then the buddies would have time off for an hour to shower or change before dinner.
After dinner, we would go and do a group activity. One night we had a huge Minute to Win It competition. Tallulah had a ton of fun playing the Hungry Hungry Hippos game. Having people cheer her on while she mopped up the floor with her shirt was sure Tallulah’s idea of a good time. Jeremiah’s very flexible nose was put to good use in the cookie face challenge. Selah played a good toilet paper mummy, and dad finally put his skill of balloon blowing to good use.
The next night, there was a formal dinner for the parents while the kids had dinner and a dance party.
The last night was a talent show. There was everything from singing to reciting things from memory (like basketball players, car models, or pi) to magic to comedy skits! Selah and Tallulah did a clogging dance. There was also a Dad Joke Contest….and my dad won.
Overall it was a ton of fun and we will definitely go next year.
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100 Flavors
A little while back we went on a little family trip to Doi Suthep, the biggest mountain in Chiang Mai, right after church. We drove up the windy roads all the way to the temple on top, making a few stops at the markets and towns along the way. The temple was huge. After climbing a ton of stairs, we were high enough to watch planes land and take off from the airport below us. There were souvenir shops and coffee shops and restaurants and great view points all the way up and down the mountain. We ate dinner at Beast Burger, which has the best burgers we have had since we moved. But my favorite part of the trip by far was 100 Flavors.
Our Thai Teacher recommended this little place and it sounded fun. We had it for dessert after our burgers. We found it in a back alley road in a crowded area of town. It wasn’t very big but it was nice and clean. As soon as we walked in we saw four freezers with dozens of flavors. A man was standing right by this big sliding door with the pictures and names of several different flavors that this place has made.
The man told us there were around ninety flavors available and told us a little about the flavors. There are three different categories of flavors: sweet and creamy, sorbet, and savory. The sweet and creamy is what you think of when you hear ice cream. That is where you get your basic vanilla and chocolate (though they didn’t have anything so plain as vanilla or chocolate). The sorbet is the sour fruit flavors like raspberry, lemon, and blackberry (though they didn’t have anything so plain as raspberry, lemon, or blackberry either). And the savory is where you get your savory and spicy like Khao Soi (spicy noodle soup), or Pad Gra Pow (spicy ground pork and basil), or ramen (they did have these flavors). He also told us that this place has created well over 1,000 flavors of frozen cream.
We got a family pack of 15 different flavors but they gave us two free flavors as well, so we tried 17 different flavors. We all had our favorites and we could agree for the most part what flavors were worth coming again and what were “steer clear.” There were too many flavors to recall but my favorites were Charcoal Mint Chocolate Chip, Seven Flowers Sorbet, Cappuccino, Mocha, and a couple more on the tip of my tongue. This was my second time having charcoal ice cream and I love it every time. It barely affects the taste, but the color is really cool and it actually has health benefits. And I just love Mint Chocolate Chip. The Seven Flowers Sorbet tasted exactly like sour Berry Bing Su (shaved frozen milk and berry sauce, although there are several different things like chocolate you can use). And the Cappuccino ice cream tasted like Cappuccino ice cream. And the Mocha was almost the same thing but with chocolate. Even though some of the flavors didn’t seem original, they had so many fun flavors like Avatar Way of Water, which was maple syrup and chocolate chip dyed bright blue, and Spider-man, which was Thai buttercream (would not recommend), and so much more. They were almost all delicious.
