day 10

we woke up super late again. around 11. then we had some late breakfast at my cousin's then i talked with my old grandma a bit. she's 93! and very, very cute. she only speaks taiwanese though, and my taiwanese is sort of nonexistant, but i managed to say a few things and we laughed a bit etc. however it was time to go to tucheng to meet my aunt karen and uncle.. king. (his last name is wang, which means king in chinese, so he calls himself king. hehe)

mm we took the MRT (getting pretty good at it, actually) and rode to meet my relatives, then went to eat teppanyaki, which um.. sort of hard to describe. there's a really large stove (?) where meat and stuff is cooked right in front of you. sort of like benihana's. it was also very good. there's almost nothing that doesn't taste good here except for odd things like tripe and pig tongue.

Yeah, to be honest I've liked almost everything I've had here. Only few exceptions are things that that are mostly made of glutin...not too crazy about that. And this Japanese fishball thing (narutos?). Yuck. But really, most everything is good.

After that they took us by car to the Hot Springs at Wulai. There was a resort sort of place where we rented two rooms by the river with the hot baths in them. One for Steph's aunt and uncle and one for Steph and I. There was a big tub in the center of the room, and three walls surrounding it. The third had a railing since we were pretty high up, and it opened out to the river so we could look at the view. We filled up the bath, and you could see the steam coming off the water it was so hot. (at least I thought it was hot...like PAINFULLY hot. Steph informs me otherwise.)

kari has a very low pain threshold. her hot is not hot and her cold is not cold. the lukewarm water to me was hot to her. the cold water to her was on the lower end of lukeworm. so unfortunately, i dipped myself in a warm bath and for kari it was super hot.

I DO NOT. Steph just has an unreasonablely high pain threshold. Seriously, the water was boiling. STEAM was coming off of it.

IF IT'S NOT STEAMING, ITS NOT HOT. DUH. IT'S SUPPOSED TO HAVE STEAM.

so yeah. at hot springs you don't go in with anything on. you have to be naked and all you have to cover you is a teeny towel. so kari was kind of iffy about it (i was used to it because i went to japan 2 years ago and went to their hot springs). but it didn't end up being awkward, except for the part where her hot was not hot.

I left my bathing suit in Banciao anyway, since we went straight from Taipei to Wulai. And Steph didn't have a bathing suit. But it was really ok. And the water felt really good once it cooled down a little bit. We got an hour in the room, because that's all we rented it for, and then we got out all pink. (red, in my case. actually quite red)

We then drank tea and coffee (I'm actually getting to quite like tea. Although coffee is still ick.) and Steph's aunt and uncle took our bags back to Banciao while we headed off to the Shilin Night Market by MRT.

it was really busy and full of food, jewelry, and just every imaginable vendor. kari got a cool pair of sunglasses (my pickkkk- i am so trendy. heehee) and we looked at more earrings and clothes. we had some really delicious almond drink, and a strawberry stick thing coated with sugar/honey hardened syrup. umm we also had sweet potato cooked a special way- i really liked this. yum. so basically, a lot more shopping. i saw a shaved ice restaurant, and kari has never tried it before, so i dragged her in. shaved ice is super good. it was flavored with condensed milk then over it we put red beans and peanuts.

then there was another portion that was just filled with tiny restaurants. MORE FOOD. GAH. i can't handle it anymore! there were some small gift shops too where we bought some presents for friends etc.

Finally we took the subway back and went to bed.