Xi Men Ding and Raohe Night Market - Taipei, Taiwan

After a full day rest I felt well enough to exert a bit. I told hubby let's check out Xi Men Ding. It was Friday evening and the weather has been misty since afternoon. But I already felt that we haven't been doing much so we needed to catch up.

We took a bus from a bus stop close to our hotel. Xi Men Ding isn't too far from our hotel Relax II, about 2 km away. But since I'm recovering from my back muscle injury I tried not to move too much.

Xi Men Ding was busy but not crowded. I guess the misty rain didn't help. Still plenty of tourists taking photo at the rainbow crossing of Xi Men Ding. I tried when we got there and when we left but still plenty of people. I gave up.

We only visited one souvenir shop near the entrance of Xi Men Ding. The souvenirs were typical and we have seen other places before. We were looking for some new ideas. But mainly were nougat crackers, pineapple cake, boba snack, keychains, postcards, etc. I supposed on a nice clear night there would be a few street performers but that night we only saw one. The crowd didn't stay for long and after a while everybody dispersed. I felt bad for the performer. 😞

We moved on and looked for a place for dinner instead. There was a place that sells oyster omelette (蚵仔煎). But there was a line and it's raining. So we went next door instead getting a portion of lu rou fan (braised pork belly with rice), oily tofu and tofu skin. The place was busy but we got our orders fast.

As we were enjoying dinner, an idea came to me. The night was still young and we haven't been to any night markets. Why don't we check one out after this. So I brought up the idea to hubby and he was fine with it. We finished our food and got going.

There's a MRT station just outside Xi Men Ding and we were pretty close to Raohe Night Market. When we arrived there it's still a bit misty. There was a Chinese Opera going on just across from the market. We didn't stop by. 😅

At the entrance of the market, there was a long line of people waiting for their share of the black pepper buns (胡椒餅). Later on I found out that that location was another branch of the famous Fuzhou pepper buns.

There were not too many people at the night market possibly because of the weather. We were pretty full from our dinner so we concentrated on dessert instead. We tried a tofu pudding dessert which I guess supposed to be served cold. We asked for it to be warm so the tofu pudding didn't have good texture.

Later on we found the peanut ice cream that has showed up at so many Taipei food to try. What makes it interesting was the usage of a skin (similar to popiah skin) to wrap up the ice cream along with shaved peanut and cilantro. Yes, you read it correctly, cilantro in ice cream. 😂

Just before we called it a night, we stopped by the stall at the entrance which sells pepper buns (胡椒餅). By now the line was gone so we just walked in and got two pepper buns. Still hot just out of their clay oven. I'm glad we got to try it that night because we never encountered them again afterwards.