Covered in Stardust: Taipei Day 7: Around Ximending & Mala Hotpot (西門町)

We stayed at a hotel just 3 minutes away from the Ximending shopping street, where there's an Eslite 116 building, two multi-storey Watsons stores, a couple of KTVs, Magazine Freak, Sasa, The Faceshop and Etude House. Prices for Korean products are still on the high side, even though Taiwan is much nearer to Korea than Singapore is. You would likely need 2 hours or more to wander around the area and browse the shops.

I'm not sure if the Watsons stores here are open 24 hours, but I needed to get some stuff after 12 midnight and found them still open for business. There's also a rather large Daiso on the 5th level, and you can get Froyoyo at the ground level.

Here's one of the two Magazine Freak stores I went to, the other one being at Taipei Main Station. You can get your monthly fix of Taiwanese and Japanese magazines here. They do sell art, craft, and cooking books too, as well as manga. There's even a bargain bin on the upper level, where some Japanese magazines go for as low as NT109 due to defects with the GWPs.

We came across a photoshoot which seemed more for a magazine than an actual wedding.

You can get the popular Ah-Chung Mian Xian here.

Crispy flavour-enhanced chicken nuggets from Ji Guang Xiang Xiang Ji.

Green tea frozen yoghurt with aloe vera cubes and mochi from Froyoyo. There are 2 tables outside the yoghurt store and if you happen to dine-in, listen out for the song that's playing. It goes 'yo..yofroyo'. It's so cute.

They have a couple of flavours and toppings to choose from, and we tried the mango yoghurt with mango cubes & cornflakes. Nice and refreshing, but not much different from those we can get in Singapore.

There is a mall, FE21, just across the road from our hotel, and it's like a smaller version of Shinkong Mitsukoshi. Similar to OG maybe? They were having a sale and every morning, way before opening time, a long queue would form outside their doors. I overheard a customer asking a staff about the free gift and found out it was a tote.

We decided that we were going to have hotpot for dinner even before we reached Taipei, and since Le Ye BBQ and Hotpot was one of the recommended places, we had our first hotpot experience there. All I can say is, we were disappointed. The soup base was mediocre, and the place was a little tacky.

On the other hand, we enjoyed our wonderful dining experience at Mala Hotpot, located on the 2nd floor of the Holiday KTV building. You can't miss the bright orange facade, if you walk all the way to the end of the Ximending shopping street. It is just across the road.

Certified Angus beef. Sounds good to me!

A twin, or yin yang pot. We chose a collagen soup base and a spicy soup base.

I was looking forward to crunching on these collagen cubes, only to find out that they melt and disappear when heated, leaving me to down bowls of MSG laden soup just to get 2% closer to achieving beautiful skin.

The spicy soup base was fiery hot. It's the kind of spiciness that numbs your lips and tongue, though I have not yet come across any that can stand up to the one at Chong Ching Hotpot. Then again, it might be because we had cowardly asked for medium spiciness, to avoid getting diarrhea on the flight home.