Itinerary: Homeschool, Raohe Night Market
After 3-4 days of running out first thing in the morning, we finally took it easy today and had a 3 hour work period at home. It’s been hard getting the kids to homeschool because it takes so many days for them to get into the routine and we haven’t had days like that.
Because Astroboy is sick once again, I made him take a nap as he doesn’t breath well at night and keeps jerking awake. After our nap, we took the bus down the hill and went to 7-eleven to pick up my train tickets to Hsin Chu this Sunday for a family gathering.
I’m still trying to figure out the train e-ticketing system. What I did today was to download the 台鐵 app and reserved 3 tickets. Apparently you can reserve a specific train or any train within a time frame? Not sure how that works. The app allowed me to pay online with US credit card, specifying whether or not they are children’s tickets during that time. Then I went to pick up the tickets at 7-eleven’s iBon and putting in the reservation number. There’s a handling fee of $8 per ticket.
However, apparently you can pay for train tickets with your Easy card 悠遊卡 and it’s 10% off the ticket price of the slowest train (區間車) even if you ride the fastest train (自強號). But I don’t understand how that works if you want to reserve your ticket in advance. More research is needed.
In any case, after the busy week, Fleur and I decided we need some Night Market time! 饒河夜市 Raohe Night Market is super far away from us but it’s on the green line and requires no transfers. The night market is just across the street from the MRT, super convenient.
We got there around 6pm and walked about 1/4 of the night market before turning back at 7:15. Good thing we’d decided when we would head back ahead of time, otherwise we’d be there the whole night. It was such a fun place!
We trie d a bunch of different food, pepper meat bun 胡椒餅, Taiwanese sausage, super delicious and not too sweet winter melon tea (冬瓜茶), stinky tofu, etc. Before we left, I let the kids play some night market game at a store. I played a game of air hockey with Astroboy and because it was an arcade game, after a minute, it drops a bunch of little hockey chips for you to just hit into the other slot. Much more fun than a regular air hockey!
Amazingly another week has come and gone. Not sure if we’ll take it easy tomorrow or do another day of outing. So many places to go and not enough time before we have to go back!
