2007-07-16 18:36. BL

Elephant Park restaurant dishes 2007-07-16 18:05

Unsure about the exact location but the restaurant's website lists Taipei county restaurant as being in Shihding

象園餐廳 台北石碇

台北 石碇鄉
ShihDing Township., Taipei County

http://hipage.hinet.net/05-2394242/

This restaurant was between Yingge event earlier and Taipei 101 later. Before arriving here we went through tunnels, one called Xue3 San tunnel, guides said it was 2600 m long.

written by  monex on July 16, 2007 from Shihding Township 石碇鄉, Taiwan
from the travel blog: 2007 Overseas Compatriot Youth Taiwan 5th Study Tour (2007海外青年台灣觀摩團第5梯次)
tagged Restaurant, Taipei, Elephant, Dinner and Squid
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

2007-07-25 18:57. BW

Dinner 2007-07-25 18:31

This restaurant was either part of or right outside the area called the Treasure Island Shopping Mall 金銀島購物中心 - looked more like a theme park than a shopping mall from the outside.

written by  monex on July 25, 2007 from Treasure Island Shopping Mall 金銀島購物中心, Taiwan
from the travel blog: 2007 Overseas Compatriot Youth Taiwan 5th Study Tour (2007海外青年台灣觀摩團第5梯次)
tagged Kaohsiung, Dinner and TreasureIslandShoppingMall
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

2007-07-26 19:50. BL.

Walking across park to water 2007-07-26 18:33

Dinner by the water now dark 2007-07-26 19:14

Kaohsiung City streets 2007-07-27 14:38

2007-07-27 14:38. We drove through Kaohsiung City 高雄市 streets, looking for the AIG Insurance building to sign off and receive cheque.

2007-07-27 14:54. Inside the bank which printed the cheque, only a few blocks away.

2007-07-27 15:00. Finished exchanging cheque for cash after presenting my passport and signature.

Cash buying tickets 2007-07-27 15:42

2007-07-27 15:42. in Kaohsiung City, High Speed Rail Zuoying Station 高鐵左營站, helped Cash buy tickets at the ticket machines for some of the students who would take the HSR home.

2007-07-27 16:24. Back to the official tour. Cash parked the car at the Kaohsiung Sugar Industry Culture Park Area 高雄糖業文化園區, and used the two-way radio to figure out how to rejoin the rest of the tour group.

Roof gun ports for lawless times 2007-07-27 16:42

Small train ride to dinner area 2007-07-27 17:36

2007-07-27 17:07. Park tour guides brought us to [高雄] 橋頭糖廠博物館, a small building with exhibits and a film about the historic sugar industry.

2007-07-27 17:35. Getting on the 50-percent-width train for a ride through the park back to the dinner area.

2007-07-27 17:57. BingGe demonstrated how to carefully dig our dinners out of our dirt mounds. While I was away on my Kaohsiung City errand, everyone else here had placed aluminum and newspaper-wrapped chicken, corn, yam, and eggs into their team’s designated pit in the dirt area right beside the tables. I think the next step was they started fires in each pit, then covered it, creating dirt mounds. This was left alone to slowly cook for a few hours so that it would be ready by the time we came back after touring the park.

Each team digging for their dinner 2007-07-27 18:14

No lights at tables, later was dark 2007-07-27 18:14

2007-07-27 18:11. Helping our team dig out, then unwrap the food from the newspaper and alumninum foil. Food was ready if the yam, which takes the longest, was ready. Corn was delicious and easy, chicken was delicious but difficult to manage with only hands and napkins, no knives or forks were available. This buried cooking method supposedly preserves the flavour but I didn’t notice the difference. Yam and eggs weren’t so great because the majority of them from our mound were damaged and dirty from digging. The park did not have lights, so towards the end after sunset so we would have eaten dinner in total darkness had it not been for someone with one of those compact crank-powered lights. We just ate in near-darkness.

2007-07-27 19:05. Done eating dinner.

2007-07-27 19:22. In the parking lot, members of bus B present a gift they made to their bus driver. This was the last day that we would see our bus drivers, who have been with us these past 3 weeks.

2007-07-27 19:37. BL

Bus B's gift to their bus driver 2007-07-27 19:22

Kaohsiung Sugar Industry Cultural Park Area
高雄糖業文化園區

had:
Scrap metal art sculptures, an ice treats shop, former trains

橋頭糖廠
Ciaotou Sugar Refinery (historic)

[高雄] 橋頭糖廠博物館
A sugar industry museum

五分車
The small 50 percent width train.

Ciaotou Township, Kaohsiung County

Anaerobic dirt-mound "BBQ" dinner.

Tip 1: With the buried cooking method, dig as an archaeologist would, gently brushing dirt aside, preferably before hunger creeps in and causes fast but careless digging.

Tip 2: Get a compact crank-powered light.

Other: Found a helpful map major Taiwan attractions http://map.travelog.com.tw/googlemap/

written by  monex on July 27, 2007 from Kaohsiung Sugar Industry Culture Park Area 高雄糖業文化園區, Taiwan
from the travel blog: 2007 Overseas Compatriot Youth Taiwan 5th Study Tour (2007海外青年台灣觀摩團第5梯次)
tagged Dinner, DirtMound, BBQ, SugarPark and Ciaotou
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

2007-07-12 19:04. BW

We were somewhere in Hualien City beside the loud airport, and when leaving the restaurant our bus drove past National Hualien University of Education 國立花蓮教育大學 which is in Hualien City.
http://www.nhlue.edu.tw/page/campus.htm#6

written by  monex on July 12, 2007 from Hua-lien, Taiwan
from the travel blog: 2007 Overseas Compatriot Youth Taiwan 5th Study Tour (2007海外青年台灣觀摩團第5梯次)
tagged Restaurant, HuaLien and Dinner
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

On Saturday I had a truly Welsh cultural experience! I went to a traditional Welsh music workshop to meet harpists (and play!) and as soon as I walked in I realized that not only was I the only American there, I was one of the very very few who did not speak Welsh. Thus, all of the group announcements were in Welsh, and the performances at the end of the day were entirely explained in Welsh, so I had no idea what was going on for about half of the day. Fortunately the harp lessons were in English.
The harp instructor, Elin, is Welsh and plays the triple strung harp. She has played for Bill Clinton! She doesn't really read music and teaches by ear like all traditional Celtic instructors. She explained that she prefers learning and teaching by ear because notes and meter are too restrictive, and you should be improvising and embellishing as with tradition anyway. She also let me play on her triple harp (this is super exciting!) and it is kind of like staring at an M. C. Escher drawing without your glasses on. Her harp, particularly, was difficult, as some of the coloring on the C and F strings had totally faded so most of the strings were white, and in the middle C octave for the right hand both the G and the F were black strings (usually only the F strings are black) so it was extremely difficult to differentiate the notes! She said she just doesn't look at the strings anymore. I wish I had that luxury! (I expect that all of you understood that rant after my extensive (unasked for) tutelage of harp construction!)
So...with every different kind of harp there are new tools you suddenly have at your disposal. With a lever harp you can easily have only one accidental, say in the upper octave, and immediately play a chord without that accidental. With the pedal harp chromaticism is much much easier, and you can do cool things like pedal slides and glissandos. With triple strung harps you have three rows of strings: on either side the rows are exactly the same diatonic collection, while the middle row contains the chromatic notes (like the black keys on a piano).
Here is a picture! http://www.marytriola.com/pics/TripleStrings.jpg
This means that you can play the same diatonic thing at the same time in the same range. Or you can do this really cool echo-y thing by playing the notes of a melody in your right hand, and playing the same notes in the same octave with your left hand but slightly off beat. AWESOME.

My flat started a really cool tradition last Sunday. Georgina, who was here last semester and actually knows what is going on, cooked us traditional English hot pot and ginger snaps, which were amazing. We decided to make Sunday nights Cultural Dinner night, and we would take turns cooking! Last night Freddy, who was born in Ecuador but moved to Chicago in middle school, couldn't decide between Ecuadorian food or American food, but ran out of time so he cooked pasta with two different sauces and made broccoli, and served fruit salad and chocolate cake for desert (his cooking was super fancy and we're a little worried that he raised the bar too high!). Next week we're going to have German currywurst (?) which should be fun.

Hwyl!

written by  outlawedwings on February 2, 2009 from Bangor, United Kingdom
from the travel blog: triple_strung_heart
tagged Dinner, TripleStrungHarps, WelshMusic and PunkRock
Send a Compliment

---

1 comment...

[And it's time for dinner...]

written by  prrrrl on March 20, 2012 from Beijing, China
from the travel blog: Beijing 2012 II
tagged Food, Dinner, FAST, Fever and Digesting
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...