TAIPEI - Tong Hua Night Market & Other Randomness

OOTD: Sweater: TAIPEI STREET VENDOR, Shorts: F21, TIGHTS: DKNY, Shoes: NORDSTROM RACK, Handbag: CHANEL

Me: "You're cold Hubby? I share my scarf with you :)"

Macaron Wedding Cake FTW!

Heart shaped Macarons!!

#DYING

Lu Rou Fan, Fried Pork Chop, Meatball Soup, Veggies in meat sauce & Passionfruit Fruit Juice Tea

SOOO OBSESSED w/ Chatime Passionfruit Fruit Tea Juice it's sooo so good and they use real passionfruit to make it.  Makes all the difference in the world!

"Wheel Biscuits" w/ BOBA!!!! 

Yup chewy QQ boba!!

The outside is basically egg puff batter.  Light buttery and sweet!

But the inside is where it's at!! 

QQ BOBA BALLS!!  

So amazing.. and the heat from the griddle melts them and makes them ooey, gooey and tastes almost caramel like!  So crazy delicious.

Blazer shopping w/ the Hubs at his favorite G Star Raw store!

#CoupleSelfie

Tonkatsu Ramen (with LOTS AND LOTS of chili oil) w/ Pork Belly & Par Boiled Egg w/ a side of Chicken Karaage

NOM.

Eyelashes galore!

5 boxes for $1000 TWD which is about $30 USD.  Which is a STEAL considering each box contains 10 pairs.. which works out to 60 cents a pair!!!  (What's really crazy is I've spent $6 dollars for a pair of Ardell's UGH.  10x the price. When I think about it like that it's so ridiculous.  And I absolutely refuse to ever buy another pair of drugstore lashes!)  

The quality is pretty decent too I've used a few pairs already they're very soft and pliable and I've gotten about 3 uses out of one pair!

"OHHHHHHHH"

Chawanmushi Galore!!!

So happy with her Chawanmushi!

What do you mean you don't need a furry Tiger backpack??

Secret speakeasy built behind a coffee shop!!

Would have no idea there was even a bar hidden behind the closed coffee shop!

Playing with fire!

Continued the festivities Taiwan style at 7-11 w/ fruit beer!!

Yakult (Yogurt drink) for me since I'm so hardcore hahahahahahahahaha.

Best line of the night - "MAKE IT RAIN COINS!!"

Causing trouble in 7-11 lol. 

Why are their promotional items so freakin' cute??!

Excitedly opening up her prize!

Yay :)

These are the wedding favors guests receive in Taiwan.. they should do this in the states this is amazing!!

Matcha Green Tea doughnut & White choco rose w/ various nuts shaped heart

So happy with her elephant metal chopsticks haha.

Selfies because we can.. and because we're in a super baller apartment that actually has a phenomenal view of 101!!!!

Thanks for having us over Miles!!!  

To this day Lucas cannot stop talking about Glenfiddich UGH he's like super obsessed now. 

Street market finds!

Love my sweaters ($500 TWD = $15 USD) been living in them this winter in Germany!!!

Palak Paneer, Chicken Tikki Masala, Basmati Rice & Paratha

Formosa Chang!!! 

(Thanks for the rec Wei-Wei!)

Ok so my absolute favorite Taiwanese dish is called "Lu Rou Fan".. it's practically a national dish.  It's minced pork braised in a soy based sauce over rice.  SOOO yummy and comforting.. you can find it EVERYWHERE.. literally every street vendor sells it.  But there's this chain in Taiwan called Formosa Changs that makes it with braised Pork Belly.

Yeah I'm talking about a giant chunk of braised melty fatty pork belly.  Everywhere else just uses regular minced pork.. but not this place.  It's INSANELY delicious soooo fragrant and the fat from the pork belly just melts all over the rice.

Fried Pork Chop, Various mixed veggies, Shredded Pork over rice

This is my form of comfort food.  It makes my belly happy :).

There's quite a few Formosa Chang's throughout Taipei but there just so happened to be one right next to WuFenPu which is Taipei's garmet district.  It's HUGE and you can literally shop for DAYS and not go through the whole thing. (I shopped for about 6 hours and in between had to stop and take The Hubs to Formosa Chang's to feed him because he was getting really realllllly cranky haha.)

My haul from WuFenPu!

Army green cargo vest!  I love it.. it's hard to tell from the picture but it's actually a mixed material vest. Faux leather panels and then the pockets are made out of a chiffon material.  And the other piece is a light weight black trench.  To which the Hubs said "Looks cool.. looks like something a hairdresser would wear" -___-

N-EE-WAYS.  These were $500 TWD ($15 USD) a piece!

Wool dress for $700 TWD ($21 USD) and a Tweed Blazer for $1500 TWD ($50 USD) which is admittedly on the pricey side.. but it was so cute and let's be honest if I bought this at Zara's it's be 2x the price!!!

Stocked up on 7-11 goodies for Germany (admittedly a lot of things got eaten en route back to Germany wahahaha. But in our defense we traveled about 30+ hours to get from Taipei back to Frankfurt!

Iced coffee, fresh squeezed orange juice, Scallion egg wrap pancake w/ ham, Pork & Egg sandwich and Fried Radish Cake

Last breakfast in Taipei makin' it count!!

Eva Air Check in counter!

WTF SO EFFIN' CUTE!

OK EVERY AIRPORT SHOULD HAVE THIS.  

One of my biggest pet peeves is getting all of my luggage onto a push cart and then realizing that I need to go to another freakin' floor and I cannot take the push cart up the escalator obviously AND you're not allowed to push it into the elevator.  So then you have to unload ALL of your luggage and get onto the elevator/escalator just to go get another push cart. OMGGGG.

End Rant.

Had to tear myself away from this MCM popup shop in DutyFree.

LITERALLY.HAD.TO.TEAR.MYSELF.AWAY.

But did pick up this little kit from SK-II!!

This is my first time trying SK-II.. I basically went from using drugstore to La Mer and never really tried anything in between because I really love using La Mer. 

(My skin is REALLY annoying I have sensitive/combination/oily skin.. and breakout REALLY easily.. and now because of my age I'm also starting to get really dry patches... in other words my skin hates me.

Anyways I've had really amazing results with La Mer Moisturizing Gel Cream but have been feeling for awhile that it's not moisturizing enough for the winter months and my eczema flares.  When I started using it I was living in San Francisco and it was perfect year round because there's no real winter there. I tried a sample of the original La Mer Moisturizer but it's much much too rich for my skin.

I did however notice at Duty Free that La Mer has a new Soft Cream supposedly a less heavy version of the original but more moisturizing then the Gel Cream.. has anybody tried that out??) 

Anyways the prices in DutyFree are amazing.  This set cost $3500 TWD ($120 USD).

I checked the prices of the same SK-II moisturizer (btw it's called "Stempower" in Asia but in the US it's called "Essential Power") same size and everything it retails for $205 bucks at Nordstroms/Neimans!  

And you don't get any of the other stuff (It came w/ deluxe samples of Facial Treatment Clear Lotion & Facial Treatment Essence)!  Crazy.  I just need to reiterate how much I love Duty Free hahaha.

Ok my review of the SK-II - honestly I was about to jump ship after only using it for about a week or so I swear my pores got bigger (although Hubs said it was all in my head) but I did break out a lot more than normal.  However I hate wasting product so I forced myself to continue using it and I'm glad I did!!  After about a month of using it continuously my skin seems to have adapted to it and now I've been really loving my SK-II moisturizer it's significantly calmed the redness around my nose and my eczema spots and most importantly my skins completely cleared up.  It's also REALLY REALLY moisturizing which is perfect for Germany right now.  However I can tell that it would be too moisturizing for me in the summer months and then I'll most definitely switch back to using my La Mer Gel Moisturizer.  

Whelps that wraps up my Taipei posts!! :)  

Hope you enjoyed "traveling" with me!!!