The National Palace Museum (Part 1 out of ??)
I went with Bob and Phoebe to The National Palace Museum. It’s very big, and have many artifacts brought here by Chiang Kai-Shek. From what I managed to understand, Chiang Kai-Shek was the first Prime Minister of Taiwan. Like Idan said to be, he’s just like David Ben Gurion, only Chinese… In 1911 he rebelled against China and came with his big army to Taiwan to settle it. He brought all those Chinese treasures with him. By force, apparently. Bob thinks that it’s said that there might actually be more valuable artifacts here then in Chinese museums.
I saw ancient Calligraphy, ancient tea cups, ancient tea leaves, all sort of Jade stone, some looked like CD’s…, and part of the Miniature collection they have. Most of the tea stuff and the miniatures I found very nice. The miniatures are amazing. You can see a boat, with extreme detail make out of a Peach nut! I want to try and challenge my sister to make one of these. It’s looks like a very delicate, complex work, which takes a whole lot of time. She can probably do it and do it great. I’ve seen the stuff she makes.
You should really see pictures, in the gallery, AND you should really go there and see them yourself. Idan would have probably liked the actual museum much better then me, but I enjoy the conversations with Bob. It’s more fun doing the tourist activities here with a local, who’s also a friend. I’m sure most of it is very nice to Bob to, having been in the states for 10+ years…
We ran out of time and only, managed to do 2 out of 4 floors of the museum. There was a sausage stand outside, it’s basically something like corndogs. A Sausage covered with some dough, fried. Bob told me that most of these vendors would gamble with you over more hot dogs. They have dice there, and after you’ve bought one sausage, you can gamble with them and get one for free if you win. I think nothing happens if you lose. Bob says that these sausages are actually very cheap and the whole purpose of the gambling is just to get you buy the first one. Nice trick.
Bob went to some family thing, and I went back to the office, spend two hours here, watched an episode of “The Simpsons” and worked in these blog stories, Uploaded pictures, did some captioning. Talk to Lee on the ICQ, nothing too interesting.
Bob came by later and we went to the Keelung. Keelung is a Harbor city to the north of Taipei. It has some resemblance to Haifa. Mountains on your left and the sea and the harbor on your right. Both Keelunk and Haifa harbor sizes looks just about the same at the glance I manage take. I think Haifa’s is a bit bigger, mainly because there’s this big wheat grinding thing in the middle of the port with all the birds. If you’ve ever been to Haifa you obviously know what I’m talking about.
The reason we went to Keelung is to go to the Night Market. As I said it’s very popular, and one of the main activities of people. Taiwan night life is very rich, and I couldn’t believe there were actually traffic jams at 24:00 near the market. It starts looking to me as if all the night markets here, or markets in general look the same. Bob agrees, and according to him each has something unique you probably wouldn’t find in any other night market. I agree with bob on that. For instance There was only 1 Oyster-egg thing in this market, and it’s sauce looked different. Bob said it was actually not as good as in Taipei. Shih-Lin Night market had more then 5 of those (I stopped counting at 4 and then saw another one…).
I ate some fried chicken covered in flour noodles or something. They had onions in it. I love onions, especially fried onions. I told bob Assaf Razon’s the joke with the fried onion and cooking :
“A friend of Assaf’s didn’t know any recipes, and used to call his sister to ask her how to make stuff, after a while he would start the conversation to his sister by saying: ‘Ok, I’m frying onions, what now?’“.
I think I actually do that with my mom. I can tell this joke about myself too.
I bought something for Lee in the market. Let see if she can guess what it is by just looking at the pictures I took. Lets see you guess.
One thing that is different in these markets from Nachlat Binyamin, and why I think that there aren’t any night markets in Tel-aviv, is that in Tel-aviv, the second floor of the small buildings in the side of the market are residential. There are a few pubs in tel-aviv, like “The Balcony” but mostly they are residentials there. In here, the second floor is used for stores, and restaurants. The buildings look the same though. If they could just turn those buildings into commercial thingy’s in Nachlat Binyamin, I thing the night life in Tel Aviv could be much better. And they should have some food vendors there too, and not only in restaurants, like “Agadir Bar Burger”. I should talk to “Chuldi”.