The Night Market

Every town worth it's salt, in Taiwan, has at least one night market.  Tainan has a bunch.  To explain, a night market is just a big area with lots of street food, clothing peddlers and fair games that is only open at night, and usually only on certain days of the week.  They are often just PACKED with people, but not always.  It's a very common place for Taiwanese people to go for fun on the weekends and sometimes during the week.  

To a foreigner unaccustomed to Taiwanese cuisine, they can be a bit daunting, espeeeeecially because of the smells.  As for the visuals, I'll let you see for yourself!

Shrimp:

Most seafood in Taiwan is served completely intact - eyes, tails, bones, feelers, etc.  It can be a bit off putting.  You just have to get over it!

I really don't know for sure, but they seem to be some kind of snail in a shell.  As a side note, a very popular snack is these little tiny fish (eyes, etc. still there of course), seasoned and dried.  My kids at school are always eating them and offering them to me.

Lots of things are fried in big woks of oil.

One thing we sometimes like is the fruit and veggies they sell.  Although, our experience with fruit here hasn't been stellar and sometimes they put something on the fruit that we don't like.  It's always a gamble.

Hello Kitty is alive and very well here.

You choose a stick and they grill it for you.

Chicken butts possibly?  Your guess.

Chicken or duck heads and and necks.

Blood rice - not that bad actually.  Just quite salty.

A lot of meat is this color because of something they do to it.  We usually don't like the taste when it's this color.

Chicken feet.  Very popular.  They like the bones and tendons and fat here often more than they like the meat.

They have these at 711 too.  I still haven't figured out what most of it is, but it sure looks nasty.

Intestines I think?

Eating area.

Squid.  Very popular.

I had never seen this before and had no idea what it was.  The guy saw me stop and stare at it and started saying, "Hello!  Welcome to Taiwan!" over and over again.  He was super nice.  He let me take pictures and then gave me one for free.  They were oysters!  Not bad, but VERY salty.

Games.

I really miss American food.