Night Market & Chinese Temples

The night market was a huge highlight of my trip in Taiwan. Imagine a mall mixed with the fair...it's a very long line of tents outside and there are soo many people everywhere! It is huge and there is everything for sale from umbrellas to purses to carnival food...and really nasty unidentifiable food too. And the shoes! It is a girls' shoe heaven! You never know what you might see, people dressed up and standing on stools yelling into a microphone to try and get people to come into their stores, and the strange thing is it seems to work! We went to the night market 3 or 4 times and each time we discovered some new alley full of wonderful shops where we got to bargain to our hearts' content:) All of the girls at the market wear colored contacts and fake eyelashes so long that they look like Venus flytraps, they are very blinky! In the picture of me with the two girls, you can see the one on the far right is sporting these snuffleupagus lashes! (By the way I loved those girls, they worked at my favorite boutique "Miss Baby" where I discovered several gems!) I found it very interesting that all of the mannequins in the shops are white with big heads of blond curly hair. Another thing that I loved in Taiwan is there are beautiful Chinese temples EVERYWHERE. They are very elaborate and my favorite one is tucked into the hill where my sister lives so we would pass it everyday. There is a big furnace where they burn fake money for good luck (what?) and at night it glows a strange shade of red that is borderline creepy! I had to get out one night and take pictures, I was a little scared but don't worry, the smell of burning incense calmed me down, haha!