第十天: Day 10 // Ohana Hangout

When I woke up this morning, I was so excited because today was the day the six of us in Taiwan would be reunited (Mark, Rae, Mike, Dawn, Eric and I). It was going to be such a good day!

Reunited at last!

Cool statues along the way to Taipei 101.

Taipei 101, we meet again!

Passing by Taipei City Hall.

I couldn't fit the whole building into the frame.

It's Luffy!

We took a stroll through the mall and then headed downstairs to the food court for lunch. There were chandeliers made from wineglasses hanging from the ceiling.

After 20 minutes of indecisiveness, I finally settled on ordering bibimbap. I'm glad it did because it tasted really good :)

Dessert Time

Mike, are you really going to eat all that by yourself??

Lunchtime happiness!

We went into a games store and Mark was giggling to himself about this. Can you see what's so funny?

The duck mobile is based on the Batman films. Really? Intimidating indeed!

I thought I lost this purse!

Girl swag

Boy swag....?

It's true. We decided to watch movies in Taiwan. 

This was the first thing the boys did when they saw this huge statue in the cinemas. 

Boys will be boys.

Shops inside the cinema building

In Taiwan, you have the option for sweet popcorn. I was a little nervous about it since I'm not a big fan of kettle corn and prefer the regular salty kind over caramel but I was surprised to find that it was only lightly sugared and enjoyable to eat. We ended up getting half sweet on top and the regular salty on the bottom.

After the movie, we strolled around the mall nearby. This is Mike and his huge arm span that's able to hold two people on each side. 

Attempting to walk like that.

Catching a taxi to the Raohe St. Night Market. This would be the first time for all of us!

The moon! I figured since I had a picture of the sun, I should have one for the moon.

Reunited to our favorite game...

Competition to beat high score!

Strolling

The impossible vending machine at the arcade:

Won my cute octopus on first try!

我很聰明！

It's Ivan!

We finally got to meet up with Ivan after many years. He was our Taiwan tour guide when our group came down for missions.

Ivan has a funny sense of humor. He always overfeeds us and tells us things that we don't know whether to believe or not. 

Time for the arcade!

Mike gears up for the Punch Machine. Outrageous clobbering.

Hoop Fest!

Dawn and I were playing this game where you have to throw in as many balls possible into the hippo's mouth. Afterwards, we noticed the top score for the game was 400. Even with Ivan and Mark on the sidelines helping us throw, we weren't anywhere close to 400 and the balls kept getting stop if there were too many at a time so how was that even possible?? Then Mike came along and had this brilliant idea...

420! We beat the store record!

I also can't believe I sound like a chicken in the background... do I sound like that in real life??

 Night market wouldn't be complete with even more eating. 

It was so much fun to meet up with Ivan again and catch up and today was indeed a fun day. I will say that Raohe St. Market was my least favorite night market. It wasn't very pleasant to walk down the aisles (there's only two aisles, which make a big loop through) since many food vendors are lined up in the middle of the street and the heat is constant. A good escape into AC is to hide into the actual stores that are on the outskirts of the aisles as you go. The area also seemed more polluted, especially when we were on the main road to catch the bus. There were times when the smell of stinky tofu was overpowering. There were a lot of food vendors but I wouldn't put them into consideration since the last two night markets had quite a bit of food vendors as well. I will say that I had many good finds here but if given the choice, I would pass up on this night market and head to the other ones.