September 16, 2012

Went "Shrimping" last night...have been recently accused of going on too long with my entries, so to keep it brief, found an article on "Shrimping" that describes the experience perfectly.  Scroll to the bottom of the post (or click on this link) to read this persons account of her "Murderous Shrimping Date" for a detailed description, or disregard if you don't have time. 

Our cousin Sharon, her husband Lucas and son Marcus (DeeDee) took us shrimping Saturday night after dinner and these places are not on any tour guide.  About a 15 minute drive from our apartment is the Shrimping District and there were at least 10 of these places all lined up on this little stretch of road...as it was a Saturday night, you can imagine that they were jammed with people.  Bizarre fun...some snaps.

The sign out front...no Bing Translation available...but I do recognize the charachter for shrimp

The bait...mini-shrimps and chicken liver

These two were obviously on a date (note the "snack" dog in the bag) 

Drinking and chain smoking encouraged

Carolyn's first kill.  Kinda nervous as she quickly developed a taste for blood and caught the most shrimp in our group 

Paul only got one shrimp...felt the shrimp were conspiring against him...but kept his spirits up (with our cousin Marcus, age 4)

This is the lady that ran the show...hard to see, but her hair color matched her purple shirt.  She was pissed that I took her picture.  Also notice the liquor bottles and Buddha statue in the background

Impaling the (still alive) shrimp on wooden skewers...proper style was from ass to mouth.  Reminded me a bit of my colonoscopy

Into the salt marinade...shrimps are still alive and kicking at this point

Just out of the oven and then eaten caveman style with a side of soy sauce and wasabbi.  Quite good...only problem is we weren't very good fishermen and figure each one cost about 4 bucks.  We'll be more efficient next time.

 

Since our shrimping prowess was lacking, we were still a bit peckish after our plate of $4ea shrimp.  Right outside of the "Shrimporium" was a sausage vendor food cart.  We've become big fans of these carts, but as we were with some locals, were exposed for the first time to the gambling that goes along with them.  You can buy a sausage for NT$30 (equal to one USD), but if you put up NT$50 and beat vendor at the dice game, you get two sausages.  You are also free to then go double or nothing if you win.  If you lose, you lose your 50 bucks and get nothing.  Here is how the game works...you each roll 4 dice and if two are the same number, you total the value of the other two die and that's your number.  Then the vendor does the same and whoever has the higher value wins.  Didn't have the look, but had the total feel of a craps table in Vegas on weekend the night of a huge prizefight...ELECTRIC.  Unfortunately,and also much like Vegas, it ended up being a US 7 dollar hot dog.

Murderous Shrimping Date
Taipei, Taiwan
On a trip to Taiwan, my friend Zac took us shrimping. What is shrimping? Exactly what it sounds like” fishing for shrimp, with hooks and bait. These are not your normal little shrimp you find in: the grocery store, these are huge suckers from Thailand, about the size of a hotdog, with claws. If you come back in your next life as a Thai shrimp in Taiwan, it means you screwed up big somewhere in life; and God has a funny sense of humor.
Life in a Taiwanese shrimp farm, begins nice and comfortably, the shrimp are hatched and live their lives fully taken care of with food and warm water.

It’s Huge!

Shrimp grow quickly at temperatures of about 68° F, (yes I am a bio geek at heart), since these guys are big they probably have lived 6 or more months in a nice warm, pool, with no worries. Shrimp can reach full size in just a few months and have a max life span of about 2 years. Some time after they reach full size they are taken out of their warm pools, and dumped into big cement pools of brown yucky water. Here people come and pay money to fish for shrimp, in the middle of a huge city, by the hour!! Whatever you get you can keep.

You get a pole with hooks, and a plate of bait, chicken liver, and dried little shrimps, and a pocket knife, to help bait your hook, and then you sit and wait. They offer beer, drinks, snacks and things There were grandparents, families, friends, and I think even a few dates going on there. How romantic. Picture plastic deck chairs, around a gross shallow swimming pool with brown water; all of this in a tin roofed shack.
Eventually you see the floater of your pole go down, and then you wait for the shrimp to take the bait and get caught. This is a bit harder than you think, if you pull up right way, the shrimp just gets away with a nice yummy liver dinner. You have to wait till he swallows the bait, and hook; then pull him up.
These suckers are big, with claws!! You have to hold the claws back as you yank the hook out of his mouth, and get him into the bag with the rest of the shrimp that you’ve caught.

Dinner

Once you are done catching all the shrimp of want, you then get to wash and clean then and Rrrrriiippp off their claws. Once you’ve washed and cleaned them, they are still alive, just clawless, you take a skewer and impale them from the ass up to the head. Then when you poor shrimp is wringling but can’t really move because he’s impaled on a skewer, you dip him in a pole of salt, and sick him in the over to roast, alive! So the shimp, in the last day, has been taken from his home, dumped into a pool of cool, yucky water, thought he found a wonderful liver meal, swallowed a hook with his meal, had the hook if not part of his mouth, and stomach ripped out, had his claws ripped off, been impaled up the ass to his head, dipped in salt and cooked alive. And finally eaten with soy sauce and wasabi. Yummy.