Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Raohe Night Market (Taipei Trip Day 2)

After visiting Taipei Zoo and Maokong Mountain, we continued our trip to Raohe Night Market. Raohe Night Market (饶河夜市) is one of the oldest night market in Taipei. It is located at Raohe Street in Songshan District, spreading 600 meters along Keelung River. How to go to Rauhe Night Market? Take MRT to Songshan Station, exit through gate 5,  and you will see the entrance of the night market at your right, on the other side of the road. It is just beside a beautiful temple- Songshan Ciyou Temple.

Raohe Night Market opens from 5 pm till midnight. Easy to reach, organized, clean, and not too big to get lost. Recommended by our friend, the pork rib herbal soup and black pepper bun are the must-try-food there. He actually mentioned another one- the stinky tofu, which we dared not try. Of course, we tried many other food and drinks along the street, including the grilled scallops, meat roll with spring onion and tofu fa. We reached the market at around 7 pm and stayed there for almost 2 hours.

Raohe Night Market is different from Huaxi Night Market- more stalls selling IT gadgets, handphone accessories, branded attires, beautifully packed local delicacies to trap tourists, souvenirs like key chains and fridge magnets, and more variety of food and drinks. Most importantly, it consists of one single street only, with the hawker stalls line up at the middle of the street, very organized in the way that we can see everything in a round trip, and it is almost impossible for visitors to get lost there. It is indeed a must visit night market in Taipei!

From Songshan MRT Station (upper left) we need to cross the road to Raohe Night Market. The entrance of the night market is located beside Ciyou Temple (upper right). The entrance was full of visitors upon our arrival around 7 pm (lower right). The entrance near the MRT station is the eastern entrance. There is another entrance on the western side.

Raohe Night Market is really crowdy. We need to squeeze through some chocking points due to the queueing people in front of the stalls.

Limited by space, there were just a few tables and chairs prepared for the customers to sit down and enjoy their food.

Food- we tried grilled scallops (upper row) and pork with onion roll (lower row). The grilled scallops tasted good. The pork with onion roll was special and the portioin was big, but tasted average.

Winter melon drink with brown sugar (upper left) and "ai-yu" jelly or can be translated as vegetarian gelatin (upper right) tasted good. Tofu fa tasted a bit different from our country style (lower right), and we didn't really like it. But there were many people waiting in front of the tofu fa stall, awaiting to be served.

The famous stall selling pork rib herbal soup was jammed with queueing visitors, and same thing happened to the most famous stall selling black pepper bun. We decided to make our life easier by visiting the stalls with shorter queueing line. Shorter queue is not an indication that they are not good. The pork rib herbal soup (upper row) and the black pepper bun (lower row) served by them tasted good as well!

Statue of owls- Mascot of Raohe Night Market, is erected at the western entrance.

We left the market at 9 pm with some fruits and black pepper buns packed back for supper. An advice from our friend- Raohe Night Market is a very very crowdy market. It will be good if we and keep our belongs safe from pick pockets. Although he couldn't recall when was the last case reported (rarely happened), but it's always better to be careful than sorry.

For our second day, the weather was good- sunny in the morning, a bit hazzy in the afternoon, and cooling at night. We would visit Yehliu Geological Park in Wanli District, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, Taipei 101, and Ximen Ding on our third day in Taipei. Let us bring you to Yehliu Geopark now.

More about our experience in Taipei:

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