Last night we visited the Rui Feng night market. Night markets are an integral part of life in Taiwan, opening around 5pm and shutting down around 2am, where everyone goes to eat, buy cheap chotchke, and play arcade games (like the ones you'd see at a county fair). We arrived on the early side so we wouldn't be too overwhelmed by the crush of people.

We were a group of about 10 westerners and drew quite a bit of attention. One of the new faculty, Natasha, is a tall, blond woman who speaks very good Mandarin (much to the surprise of the locals), so she and the veteran faculty member, Phil, who also speaks Mandarin and acted as our tour guide, were very helpful.

We bought a couple of umbrellas (for both the sun and rain, which seem to occur in equal amounts over the course of the day) and won 2 little stuffed animals and a piece of candy. We clearly need to work on our gaming skills.

At the market before it got too crowded.

In addition to mango ice cream we had some "stinky tofu" (a Taiwanese specialty and not as bad as it sounds), barbecued veggies and fresh guava.