January 19

Today I took the MRT to Danshui with Larry, Terry and Peter, and we met Larry's girlfriend Eva there. It was a gorgeous day to go anywhere; the sun was shining and there was a nice ocean breeze. Danshui is a little ocean town that gets a lot of visitors to its carnival-like docks. You can buy Squid-on-a-Stick or aged eggs or any kind of sweets. There were a lot of couples walking around, I guess it is a popular destination to bring your sweatheart.

We took a pleasant boatride to Fisherman's Wharf, passing a couple boats on the way that had weddings onboard. It couldn't have been a nicer day for an outdoor wedding. There was a concert at the wharf so there was some nice music. Further down the wharf was a fish market that sold all kinds of seafood. I bought some spicy dried shrimp as a snack food. Yum! Around this time the sun started to set, so we stopped to take pictures and watch.

At this time some more tired folks went home while I met up with the ISU computer engineering students, Ben and Michael. We (Ben actually) decided to go to the Huaxi night market and eat some snake. Huaxi is famous for its shops speciallizing in drinks containing snake venom, blood, or bile and liquor. The drinks are supposed to promote health, and people pay a lot for them. I had some snake meat soup, and it wasn't too bad. There was a lot of bones in the snake meat, so it took a while to eat, but else was good.