Our First Night Market Experience

Tonight Nathan took us to a Night Market for the first time. Lot's to see, lot's being sold, lot's of weird foods- much of which you wish you hadn't seen! As our family went along we were quite the spectacle, understandably. My OB told me yesterday that the birth rate here has dropped significantly over the last few years and the average family has 1.1 children. So being Western and then having more than our fair share of children, we get some looks.
We tried some of this juice, we chose the green lemon one (not lime after all) and it is the coldest drink I have been served in Taiwan so far and it was delicious. DELICIOUS I TELL YOU! We also had these little dough balls and like all baked goodies here they aren't usually very sweet anyway but these were just fried dough that had a hint of sweet to it and they were surprisingly addictive.
The best find of the night were these little bug catching nets. We went swimming with playgroup a week ago and the children all spent most of time with nets catching bugs (mostly grasshoppers thankfully) out in the grass. At $1 each I felt great about the purchase.
There are beautiful fresh fruit stands everywhere throughout the market. They cut it up for you right there. We made it about 5 paces away from the stand we bought some fruit from before our wagon train was halted so Nathan could share with the kids who were acting like starving baby birds. Fruit here is so good it is definitely like dessert.

Nathan thought we should go to this area that is all kinds of different Chinese foods and have dinner there. Let's just say I was less than willing. Well, we walked through this giant tented area for about 3 minutes before Nathan said over his shoulder, "We've got to get out of here!" I was so completely thankful and relieved. The horrors that I witnessed both sight and smell were so offensive I was too paralyzed to even use my camera, where would I start? And it was so crowded and gross, GROSS, GROSS! There is a food here called "Stinky Tofu" which is rotten tofu I believe, I never actually saw it, but I smelled it and it burned the nose hairs clean outta my nose, not even kidding. The kids wanted out too. It was bad. Poor Nathan was apologizing to all of us, kinda funny. We will have to find a better place to try some food next time- and I will take pictures. I'm sorry, I really was just focused on getting out of there.
Instead we went to our favorite Dumpling restaurant. Ahhh, safety. You can double click the pic, it's pretty cool how they make the dumplings. Thankfully they smell just fine. After we spent all week getting our children to bed early we kind of blew it tonight cuz we didn't even have dinner until an hour past their bedtime and they were all pooped but had enjoyed the outing... except for when Kenna about put Nathan and I over the edge when leaving the market with net and treats in hand she had the gal to say, "I thought you said we were gonna do something fun!" We tried to remember how truly tired they were but I really hate it when they do that. Especially when they have "fun" in hand. Other than the nightmare that was the food tent, I'm gonna give the Night Market a thumbs up.