10D9N Taiwan Trip: Fengjia Night Market, Taichung Part 1
"Our hopes and expectations, black holes and revelations."
Hello everyone! Today is such a hot day but since it's holiday after all, I'm not complaining. Anything is better than a day stuck in the office. And I can always hydrate myself with a cup of Mango Green Tea from Gong Cha. Seriously, I'm so grateful that all these Taiwanese/ Hong Kong's bubble tea stalls are entering Singapore market because there's no way I can endure the heat of Singapore's forever summer without turning on the air con (which is not allowed by the tenancy agreement since I'm just a cheapo tenant). Bubble tea saves my body and my soul. Hahaha omg, I sound like I'm about to create a cult. #bubbleteaforlife
One can't help not thinking back about Taiwan when talking about bubble tea. So let's dive straight into one of most bustling night markets in Taiwan, Fengjia Night Market.
Fengjia Night Market is the biggest night market in Taiwan and it is super popular with both locals and tourists. This was my first time at Fengjia Night Market though because despite being in Taiwan for 7 months back in 2013, I have not had the chance to go to Taichung. Probably partly due to the fact that I was not really confident in conversing in Mandarin and Taichung does not really have the convenient of subway which means you have to converse with either cab driver/ anyone who drive you around here. Now, I still don't have the required level of conversing professionally with people but I have gathered enough heck-care attitude with my super basic Mandarin and decided to just go by with it in Taichung.
The heck-care decision was worth it though because otherwise, I would not be able to join the queue for this yummy fried squid in Fengjia Night market. Tee-hee.
There are so many flavours available for the fried squid although all of these flavours are basically in powder form. I find it so tourist friendly for the stall owner to show the English translation for each flavour. Otherwise, tourist with crappy Mandarin like me can probably only understand flavour number 4 because of the character "Hai" which means sea, which most likely lead to "Seaweed" flavour, which I don't mind. XD
Anyway, we really went for seaweed flavour at the end. Voila, the powdery seaweed fried squid to satisfy your taste bud. It's chewy, salty and sea-weedy (does such word exist?) at the same time. Serve as a great snacks while waiting or queuing for other food which is swarmed by more people.
We were actually in the midst of waiting for another food while ordering the fried squid. The neighboring Cheese Chicken stall is so popular with the crowd, the stall owner has to keep the order in check by tracking the order manually via pen and paper on his notebook.
To be honest with you, I can't help to be lured by this Cheese Chicken stall because of the picture alone. The picture of the fried chicken filled with oozing cheese can make any passerby at Fengjia Night Market drool and join the queue. You will be given a number and the stall owner will call out your number (in Mandarin of course, so you better learn the basic numbering in Mandarin) once your fried chicken is ready for collection.
Totally don't know how the real food blogger manage to capture Instagram worthy picture of street food because I already have difficulty in carrying all my stuff plus my phone and the fried chicken is so piping hot. So yeah, here you go, my best-shot fried chicken. I did not even bother to try to capture the oozing cheesy moment because I was so busy eating it. Hahaha. #failed
Fengjia Night Market is located at:
Fengjia Road, Xitun District
Taichung City 407
Opening hours:
5PM to late (Daily)