Four Foreigners in Taiwan Ultimate Lunar New Year Experience! We ate a $10,000 Banquet!

How did this happen? Good question, Eddie. How indeed did this happen? Well, all thanks to Airbnb, we have found ourselves dressed in traditional Lunar New Year's clothes in an exquisite Taiwanese mansion at a secret location somewhere in Taiwan with a luxury New Year's Eve banquet in front of us to celebrate the Lunar New Year as the loving foreign family that we are. But before we get to that scrumptious selection of traditional Taiwanese New Year foods, let's rewind a little bit back to the start of the trip and I'll let you three take up the story from here. So we're at the train station with a few minutes to go, having all we've been told is we're at the train station for 2.30. Yes, Happy New Year. It's that time of year again. We are super excited. I'm taking these guys on a special family trip. This is my Taiwan family standing right beside me. So what I'm gonna do is take them on a secret family trip. They have no idea where they're going. Any clues? I only guessed north. But apart from that, I had no clue. I had a feeling we were gonna go to the south. I thought we were going to Nantou. I don't know why. Probably because we're taking the train to Nantou where there's no train line. Is there? And then Alan gave all of us our little hongbaos. We are gonna be giving these guys the ultimate Lunar New Year experience, which as we all know, has one very common tradition. How's about your very first hongbao? Your first. Choose one. Got a hongbao. Whipped it open. Going north-south. Going north. Pretty cool. And we found out we're going to Hsinchu. Hsinchu? Okay. Do you know I've never been to Hsinchu? You've never been to Hsinchu? No. You've been to Hsinchu? No. Ever been to Hsinchu? No, never been to Hsinchu. That's right. All three of my brothers have never visited Hsinchu before. So after a short train journey, we found ourselves in the Windy City as it's known. About to enter our luxury Airbnb for the weekend. And then we arrived and we saw this massive building. And I was like, this is where we're staying. I couldn't believe it. And then we come in. So when we came in, it really felt like we're coming into someone's family home. So they would come in with loving open arms saying, please come into our house. Welcome. See how we live in Hsinchu. Good Lord, it's massive. Massive indeed, Kiwi. But before our tour, just to be safe, the first thing I did was to give everybody, including behind the scenes team members, a COVID test. And we all wore masks when required and disinfected upon coming into the house each time. But once the tests were complete, it was time to have a look around our new family home. Actually, this is bigger than my apartment. Oh, way bigger. This is actually our apartment. Oh my goodness. Bedroom number one. Look at the size of it. It's got a sofa in the bedroom. Wow. That is pretty impressive for a bathroom. Very modern. Yes, Prozzie, modern whilst retaining a real traditional Taiwanese essence is how I would describe the theme of this incredibly luxurious and classy home. Classy, that is, until Prozzie and Kiwi had arrived. Doesn't look like it's the first time I've asked you two together. And as this was actually the first time for any of us to stay in an Airbnb, I asked the guys their opinions of Airbnb compared to the places they would typically stay when traveling around Taiwan. Well, how is the Airbnb better than a place you would normally stay? A lot bigger for one. It also feels a lot more homely. And so to have Airbnb have a place like this where all of us can get together and have our own family time, I think it would be lovely because you do have to have a family, quote unquote. I think just this Bogstown Hotel, there's a million things you share with loads of other people. But this is our place. This is our home for a couple of days. The hotel's kind of like, yeah, same old kind of recycle rooms kind of thing. You know, it's all the same. But this is, yeah, like the decor's pretty cool. It's got a very homely feel. OK, so that's enough about the Airbnb for now. We were hungry and it was time to get out and experience some traditional Taiwanese atmosphere and more importantly, some traditional Taiwanese grub. OK, so traditional Xinjiu buffet. We've got baowan, oerjie, qiroufan, dongwan mifen. This one is incredibly traditional to Xinjiu. Then some salted pork, which is one of Prozzie's favorites. And then some chicken, like chicken kind of spring rolls. Get your bowl, got your chopsticks. Let's get involved. The temple market food was delicious and sitting around the table, eating, laughing and joking with family in a bustling night market such as this is definitely an activity many Taiwanese families will take part in at some stage of the Lunar New Year holiday. But as this video is all about giving my friends a traditional home style family Lunar New Year experience, we headed home for the evening. I hope we'll get back to the house. So after a short five minute walk from the temple to our Airbnb, we entered into a rather fierce game of Monopoly where there would be a special prize for the winner. We'll be playing for a real red envelope this time. Guess what's inside? A puppy. Is it a bike? No. What did you say? Train ticket to Taichung. This is your train ticket back to Taichung. No puppies, train tickets or bikes inside this red envelope. Keep watching to find out what was inside. But it wasn't long before the family style teasing started. Can we all agree that I'm having the worst luck of any of us? In YouTube and life, yeah. And first to be eliminated was Prozzie. One, two, three, four, five, six. How much? $975. That doesn't even make any sense. It's out. You're out. Followed swiftly by Eddie. Eight. Where does that put me? In trouble. Not in trouble, out. Leaving me and Kiwi to fight it out. Yeah, like now. Then I can see. But ultimately, the New Zealander was no match for the economic power of the Brit and I humbly donated my prize to whoever could guess my weight. Prozzie guessed correctly, took the envelope and will open it towards the end of the video. But in preparation for our huge feast the following day, we all headed to bed early and woke up ready for what was to be Okay, good morning, boys. Happy New Year. Well, you may have noticed there's a couple of guests have joined us. We have hired a couple of chefs to cook us the perfect Chinese New Year dinner. I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be awesome. There's going to be so many dishes. Some you've tried before, some you've not tried before, some traditional and some with a modern twist. I'm going to give the chef a hand, cook a couple of dishes and then we'll eat together. How's about that? Sounds good to me. You guys get sat down and then we'll have a feast. A feast was most certainly underway. Our chef was incredibly patient and allowed me and Prozzie to prepare these delicious looking chicken mince stuffed radish roots. Sometimes things in life are just not even, right? Sometimes one is bigger than the other. And I'm not sure what she was thinking, but she even let me loose on a blowtorch to scorch the mullet roe in its gaoliang marinade, for which I had to tease her just a little bit. You're wasting the gaoliang. What are you doing? My heart is broken. And then she asked me a question every Taiwanese person loves to ask foreigners. To be fair, she might have had a point in questioning my chopstick skill abilities, but after giving Eddie a go at toasting the mullet roe, the cooking was done and it was finally time to sit down, relax and enjoy this exquisite Lunar New Year's banquet as a family and see that amazing chopstick magic one more time. But before we get to the food, there is one thing that this dinner needs to make it a little bit more traditional. A wave of my magic chopstick. How did this happen? Magically transform us into something more traditional. I think we look great. Oh, this is cool. It feels very authentic. But before we get to the food, it's hongbao time. We're going to win one hongbao. I've got a question for you based on Lunar New Year tradition. Last year and this year is the year of which animal? I'm going with the ox. And this year is the tiger. Nice. OK, Eddie, for you, Lunar New Year question. What animal are you? 1998, right? I'm tiger. It is tiger. This is Eddie's year. Eddie's going to have a lucky year this year. And Prozzie, for you, a little bit more challenging. I don't know anything. You know how many Zodiac animals there are? Twelve. I'll go with nine. Nine animals. Ox, tiger, rat. Did we come to a consensus on the fish? No fish. Dog, horse, dragon, monkey. Yeah. Snake. Yeah, bingo. Nice one. Shrimp. Rabbit. Yeah. OK, so time for the starter, which is going to be. So the cheese and the apple and the cheese and the mullet roe was, I think, one of my favourite things. Cheers, guys. Xin nian kuai le. Considering it was my first time to eat it, I was pleasantly surprised. Oh, I like it with the apple a lot. You've got the saltiness of the fish with all the mullet roe. I don't think I've tasted anything like that before. Mullet is interesting. No. Well, I've had cheese and I've had apple, but I've had nothing quite like that mullet roe. It was salty, but when you get something that's too salty, this was not that. This was perfect in every way. Every dish that we're going to eat today has some kind of meaning towards Lunar New Year. The meaning behind this one is, because it's a sack of eggs that come from the fish, it's to wish your family blessings and many offspring. Fertility. I'll have ten of them then, please. Okay, so on to the next dish. This is also mullet roe over the top, but this is salty egg flavoured shrimp. Oh, yes. The mullet roe and shrimp and garlic. God damn. And this has a similar meaning because it's covered in mullet roe. It again represents fertility. The garlic with shrimp is so good. They shaved like a whole, it wasn't like a thin piece of garlic. It was like a clove that you'd eat with the garlic. That was incredible. That's amazing. That's really good. Oh, the garlic really helps. Oh, wow. Yeah, I like shrimp and garlic. Easy pleaser for me. It's like, okay, I'm just having shrimp and then you have the garlic, already an improvement, and then you add that little finish, that finesse of the mullet roe to create a shrimp unlike anything else. Let's go for our third dish. So the radish and chicken was really interesting. I didn't think that those two things would go together, but you know what I mean? Every ige lobo yo ige kong, as some people might say. Oh, wow. That's yum. The chicken and the mushroom are amazing together. That's like a massive chicken meatball. Oh, wow. For four ingredients, there's so much going on in this. The meat was good. The scallop was the, what's that thing in the crown? The jewel of the crown. But the best is the scallop on top. You just grab a bit of scallop, bit of chicken. If you can get into the radish, all of those things together. It's really unique. We don't really have those flavors. We don't really eat those things in the West, but it's something you'd really have to try here in Taiwan. I don't really know. It's very rustic. It's really, really good. It's an orchestra of flavors that all come together to create that perfect concerto of a dish. Apparently, I'm told, radish means cai tou, which basically means good luck in Chinese. You certainly feel it eating this. It's lovely. So what kind of ribs are these? Do you know? These are tenzu paigu, which is like orange flavor or orange juice ribs. And the meaning behind that is, as we all know, oranges are very lucky at Chinese New Year. I think it's just an excuse to make some delicious ribs. The orange ribs were sublime. Oh, man, that is delicious. Oh, the orange juice is so good. Oh, wow. I love ribs. Glad you like them. Yo, chef, this is banging. This one's banging. The orange juice sauce that they made, that was incredible. It paired so well. And they also, I think, had some yellow and red peppers that added more sweetness to the whole thing. This one looks a little like bok choy. It's not bok choy. It's mustard greens. And because of the length this one grows to, it's longevity of life. It was so long and you just had to keep eating it to live longer. That was good. But it was, yeah, it was an interesting experience. Because it represents longevity of life, you can't just bite it and leave half in your bowl. You have to go for it and keep eating until you've finished it. Don't bite it. I'm feeling longer already. I'm super interested to try these fried dumplings. Oh, you have the dumplings? Yeah, yeah. They've got a hat on. You never usually have them with the, I don't know how you describe it, the little hat, the dumpling hat that he gave them. Fried dumplings. I mean, what can you say about fried dumplings? They're standard, delicious. You just can't go wrong with fried dumplings. I don't know how you fully describe it. But when you have that, yeah, so a little bit of crunch, not like too much, just enough crunchiness already to make it a bit of a special dumpling. The shape looks like a golden ingot. You know, those little money earring things that they have. So it represents wealth and good fortune. And the next one, this is something I recognize. This is one of my favorite things to eat with beef noodles. Well, I'm a banjin, banrou kind of guy. And I love the beef tendon. Beef tendon was surprisingly, it felt like I was eating beef noodle soup. And the meaning behind this comes from beef. Beef in Chinese is yóu. And yóu also has a homonym, which means to turn around. So if you're not having much luck in your life, eating this will turn things around. Quick, give me more, give me more, give me more. Some chili pepper in there as well, yeah. I like it. It's like nice and faint spice, lovely. That little tingle on the tongue. Glides over. I was really surprised by it. So you look at it, you think, oh, it can be just a bunch of fat. Who wants that? But you eat it, you think, actually, this is rather lovely. This is really nice. Really good, really tasty. That's nice. I like the spice. Was he going to help us over with that soup? Come on, big boy. Come on, lad. Yeah. I did not believe there was a whole bird in there. And she was a soft bird. So we were at some chicken soup. And they just put this massive pot in front of me. And all of a sudden there is just a chicken straight up with these, and I wasn't expecting clams inside. This is scallops, garlic, clams, and chicken soup. And the reason for this one being on the table at a Lunar New Year banquet is because the Taiwanese pronunciation for chicken, anybody care to guess? Gay? Yeah, pretty good. Not bad. The Taiwanese pronunciation for home sounds very similar to the pronunciation for chicken, which is exactly what we're doing in this video. My Taiwanese family coming together. Cheers. Here's to family coming together. It's the exact thing you'd want to eat during this time of year because it's so cold. And so a nice bit of hot chicken soup was to die for. Oh, that's delicious. Oh, my goodness. Oh, that's clammy. That's delicious. That's lovely. That broth is stunning. I want a blanket. Makes me want to snuggle. OK, so it's time for dessert. Yeah, so the pineapple and cinnamon was the one thing I think no one was expecting. I mean, who pairs cinnamon and pineapple? And the meaning behind this one again comes from the Taiwanese translation of pineapple, which is on life, which means luck is coming your way. I don't know how this happens. You put the ice cream on it. You have the cinnamon and the pineapple. You get an apple pie. I don't know how they turned a pineapple into an apple crumble, but they did. It smells good. Oh, interesting. It tastes like apple pie. A brilliant dessert. It's so simple, but so delicious. It's just it's ingenious because it's so simple. OK, so just in case there's a little bit of room left in your tummy. So after having all of that amazing food, the Nian Gao came at a left field and just punched you in the face. It's sweet. Is it bitter? Is it sour? There's something there. That is one of the most interesting different flavors I've ever had in a soup. And then you said, oh, there's booze in it. Interestingly, this one's got to match the rice. This one's got rice wine in it. Yeah, the booze. Yeah, that was that's not a bad way to finish a meal. I quite like that. You put it in your mouth and you're like, oh, it's sweet. And then you're like, oh, no, it's definitely not sweet. Then the bitterness comes in and then there's rice in it. It's definitely something I think if you get the chance, you should try it. I've never seen it before, actually. I think that's time for us to say goodbye. Thanks to all of you for watching to the very end. Happy New Year to you guys. I really appreciate you being in my life. And I really hope the Year of the Tiger brings you all and everybody watching lots of wealth, prosperity and fortune. All that's left to say is Happy New Year. Thanks for watching. As for now, as always, I'll see you next time in my life in Taiwan. Bye bye. And I've got two tickets. Scratch off these bad boys. Wow, Alan's really diversified his gift giving. I won nothing. I won a hundred.