Taiwan

We just got back from a weekend in Taipei and it was my favorite place we have been so far! I decided I love all things Taiwanese and Long Long was born there so it was fun to go back to her homeland. Plus, her friend went with us/hosted us and his brother is a famous Taiwanese movie star so he took us to all his favorite "hot spots." It was an amazing time!

This picture was specifically a posed shot (taken for the blog) as soon as we arrived in the airport. Long and Steph were good sports and the fact that we all wore purple was a coincidence.

Our hotel's beautiful tree put me in the Christmas spirit!

We put our bags down and hit the night food markets which is what Taiwan is known for. It's like thousands of booths with all this great food. Whoa! The food was so good! So so good! Picture the fair with no rides or rednecks and all food booths...that's what it was like.

This guy was my favorite and sort of tasted like a cajun fillet chicken biscuit from Bojangles without the biscuit. Lawdy, it was yummy!

There was beautiful fresh fruit everywhere but we opted for more unhealthy picks this night.

Here you can get a sense of how many booths were set up! Hundreds!

These were strawberries with a candy apple coating. Duh right? I was LOVING these!

An unfortunate misspelling of t-shirt....

Fish balls. They were surprisingly really good but maybe my palate is changing...

Devin (to no one's surprise) liked the fish balls.

My palate has NOT changed enough for me to try these guys....yowsers

Ok, this is not meant to be a picture of me...check out the girl's outfit in the background. Awesome. Pure awesomeness. I just love that she is all trended out but still sporting the face mask. As if her mom was like, "you can wear that outfit, but you have to wear your mask" and she actually obeyed her. Maybe teenagers in Taiwan are more obedient than I was but I would NOT have been caught dead sporting my furry knee high boots with a mask in high school...TSC

This was our movie star friend. We said he reminds us of Jackie Chan but I think that's because that's the only other Chinese movie star we know. He is the NICEST guy alive!!!

Y'all, the cabs had karaoke IN THEM! WHAT?!?!?!? Funnest thing ever. I wanted to just keep driving all over town. They call karaoke "K-TV" there and it's very popular. I think I was supposed to be Taiwanese. The back of our seats had the screens with the words.

All dressed up ready to go to dinner where we went to the best sushi restaurant I've ever been to. The guy on the very right was our wonderful host for the week. Such a great guide!

We went to K-TV that night as well. This is Nick who they tell us is like the Justin Timberlake of Taiwan. We didn't believe them really until we left the Karaoke place and saw the paparazzi outside and then saw him on the cover of a magazine at the airport. So, we got a free concert!

We enjoyed a very Taiwanese breakfast one morning of dumplings and rice soup with some Chinese pastries. Long was explaining what everything was to us here....

This is the guy that made them for us.....

Taipei Street

Scooters everywhere....

The last few pictures are famous temples of some sort. Long Long complains I don't listen to her enough when she explains the culture. "I don't really remember, I wasn't paying attention." I'm kidding, that is a movie quote from an old classic. :)

Megan's Visit

A "tai-tai" is the word they use for all the xpat wives that come to Hong Kong and don't work. It means a lady of leisure or a lady who lunches. So, as an official tai-tai, I have also been deemed the "Tammy Tour guide" of the group since I have time to explore and figure out the ins and outs of finding new places, restaurants and sight-seeing spots. And the true reward of being a tai-tai and a "Tammy Tour guide" is getting to show visitors the city when they come. My sister-in-law, Megan just left us and we had a BLAST!!! It was SO FUN to wander around the city with her and boy, was she a trooper. Here's the two Longs on our first outing.

We took her to the big buddha because well, it's just so big.

And you get to ride the cable cars over the water to see it....here's the clan on our way

Megan and Devin in front of the Buddha before ascending the gajillion stairs to see it up close

And then, duh, we went to get Megan her fish pedicure, because that's what we make visitors do. I figured she'd be more of a trooper than I was but it was still pretty classic.

Can't you just hear her? "So, wait? What is this going to feel like?"

Wait for it...wait for it...yep, there it is. Horrible. It's going to feel horrible.

But the view from where you hike to get to the fish is the best. It never gets old.

Doesn't this picture look like a fake backdrop? Like, "A Night To Remember-Prom '96" I love it! So surreal.

Devin took off a couple of days and we went hiking on our favorite trail that leads us to Shek-O beach where we enjoyed a Thai lunch and then came and lounged on these rocks like lizards and just soaked up the sun. The weather during the day is 75 almost every day now so it's beautiful!

I made Megan get amongst it in the bamboo. She was such a good sport.

Megan and Devin on the hike....

The next day we took a ferry to Lamma Island which is known for it's seafood restaurants and we went hiking AGAIN after eating at Devin's FAVORITE hole in the wall lunch spot. To get to the restaurant you go through this really seedy market area where I always think, we could be going to eat Indian today, or we could be going to die. Either one is a possibility at this point. But, I must say, the food is incredible there. Some of the best Indian I've ever had. As you can tell from our 20 empty plates on the table. Ha!

Lamma Island

We found these RANDOM mops on our hiking path....who knows

We ran across this little old man watering his plants. I love him.

And we ran across this unknown fruit....

Again, I made Megan go stand by this thing because it just looked so Chinese. I kept saying that so much she started saying "TSC" for "That's So Chinese." We used the saying out...

That's the mountain we hiked along.

Crabs ready to be feasted on at this seafood restaurant.

That night we went to the horse races which are HUGE here in Hong Kong!

It's so cool because behind the track you can see the city lights.

Look at how many people were there! I said a million. Devin corrected me to guess maybe 20,000. I speak in hyperbole. He speaks in reality. It is what it is.

We snacked on kabobs....

The horses were so so beautiful!

Look! I got a picture of them coming around the finish! It was so cool!

So, I asked if animal prints were still in the other day and then I saw this leopard jumpsuit and got my answer. Apparently, they are in here.

The next day we took to the seas. We rented a kayak to take around the South China Sea. It was classic because the night before while we were making Devin call some guy to set up our kayaking day Devin, in his ever present logical state, asked if we had ever kayaked in our lives. We looked at each other and then back at Devin and said nope. But, I knew we could do it. We did! It rocked! In the picture below you can see where we started from. We went for a while out there and rested on some little islands we found. It was pretty surreal and awesome!

Megan's last night here (sniff, sob, sniff) we went to the Night Markets. I made her take a bunch of pictures because it was all so Chinese. See, I do say it a lot. "TSC"

We finished the shopping night off with a beer and some spicy szechuan dinner. We get a kick out of how big the glasses are that they serve Hoegaarden in. It's as big as her poor face.

To say I was not ready for Megan to go is an understatement. What a fabulously fun week! Thanks for coming, Megs. I love you so very much!