We welcomed Year 2012 in a foreign land - Taipei.
Some important lessons I learnt from this trip:
- There is no need to plan out a very detailed itinerary prior to the trip, a rough one will do because it is always subject to changes (as usual).
- Google Map, 3G, wifi are very important things in foreign land, sadly, 3G is expensive if you are on Singapore's mobile plan in foreign land
- Smart phone is your best friend, it is needed for language translations, directions, conversion rates, etc
- Stay near a hotel with laundromats because you'll need to have your clothes washed after visiting all these night markets! Hotel's laundry services could be expensive.
- Always bring enough CASH
- American Express Credit Cards is not widely excepted in many places
- Don't attempt to visit a HK cafe in Taipei
- Don't attempt to have your final meal in the country, right in the airport
- Singapore's service industry needs to visit Taipei
Day 1
Always have enough sleep the night before, so that you don't look like a Zombie and enjoy the plane ride. I have already forgotten what it was like to sleep early before plane rides. I usually had to sleep late and wake up very early for flights because I only had time to pack my luggage the night before. I made huge effort to have my luggage packed a few days in advance, however, work commitments had caused me to work till close to 2am in the morning, and I'm supposed to meet Wei Chee at 5.30am in the airport, because I wanted to shop in the transit area of Terminal 3.
I had only 3 hours of sleep, and almost missed the time to wake up because I haven't set the alarm to include Weekends. Luckily the reminder I set the day before sounded, waking me up from my short 3 hours nap.
I skipped breakfast, skipped coffee and managed to reach the airport at 6am.
We checked in, managed to grab some food, and bought some essentials (ponchos - no used in the end; map of Taipei - because I had forgotten to pack it in). Wei Chee bought a new camera for his dad as a birthday gift and sent it back to his home via the mobile SingPost Post Office. How thoughtful of the airport to have such services!
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| A light Breakfast in the airport (T3) |
I caught none of the shows in the in-flight entertainment, instead, I took out my MacBook Pro, and started to continue the planning of the itinerary from where I stopped 2 weeks ago. The itinerary was subsequently planned every night, because there are always new things and places where we would like to visit.
There were a lot PRCs in the airport. The little girl (eurasian) was screaming at the top of her voice, rolling on the floor in tears, and the airport's ground crew decided to allow the family of 3 to cut the queue and have them at the next available customs counter.
We finally cleared customs, and was soon spotted by a Taxi driver who insisted that we follow him to the airport's carpark where his new Camry is parked, and bring us to our hotel. Touting is common in the airport. NT$1100 should be the average price to Taipei City; NT$1500 is over charging. Of course, you could choose to take a bus to Taipei City before you board a metro (since the MRT from Tao Yuan Intl Airport to the city is still under construction (ready only next year)).
The service at the Landis Taipei Hotel was awesome, and it's the best which I have experienced so far in my 28 years. No where in Singapore would you be able to experience such service. The view of the hotel was... well, there are better ones around. All in all, the facilities were great. The most awesome item in the hotel room was the toilet seat. No more waking up in the mornings to cold toilet seats! The seats were kept warm as long as there's electricity running in the room.
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| View from Room 1108 of The Landis Taipei Hotel |
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| The bathroom |
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| The Landis Taipei Hotel 亚都丽质 |
We wasted no time, and headed down to Taipei 101 area for dinner, and fireworks later at night. Many of the attractions here could be easily accessed via the metro. Thus, like what we did in Hong Kong, we bought the Easy card （悠游卡）. Each Adult card cost NT$500 (includes NT$100 deposit). This could be used for the boat rides at 渔人码头, or for purchases in convenient stores.
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| EasyCard 悠游卡 |
We snapped some pictures at 新光三越 area, looked at the poster board for recommendation where we could have meals, and finally decided to have our first meal in a japanese restaurant. I love steamboats, and they are especially my favorite in cold weathers!! The chill powder in the japanese restaurant was surprisingly more fragrant and flavorful than the ones we had in Singapore. yummy!
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| At 新光三越, ready to welcome Year 2012 |
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| Our Japanese Cuisine Dinner |
After dinner, we snapped more pictures. The amount of people at the area had increased significantly, the temperature had however dropped. It doesn't help in the light drizzle and wind! We found a telco store and Wei Chee got himself a SIM card so that we would have 3G on the go. I really wanted one too, but it was a requirement to have both the passport and IC presented for registration, which I supposed it is because Singaporeans are visa exempted when entering the country. Not sure if it was because there were so many people in the area, the free wifi and 3G network was really horrible. Starbucks felt like home in this cold weather and we just had to get some before we make our way to Taipei 101. Shopping centers in this area resemble Takashimaya or Wisma Atria.. feels like I'm back in Orchard road area. I bought myself a thicker jacket from a canadian brand store (which I wore through out the trip if temperatures were in the range of 17 deg C), and we continued snapping more pictures of the tallest building in Taiwan. We saw a little night market (small scale) while wondering around, and decided to have our first Taiwan's delicacy - the Taiwan sausage. It was full of lard, yummy nonetheless. A few roads around the iconic building had been closed off for the evening, and people had started to lay mats and newspapers to enjoy the music from the new year concert and wait for fireworks display. We saw people giving out free hugs and decided to get one before joining the crowd waiting for the fireworks. It was only 10pm, 2 hours away from Year 2012!
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| the crowd, getting 3G, getting Starbucks |
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| Here we are, with the tallest building in Taiwan! |
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| Joining in the fun! |
We were soon bored and began to contemplate if we should give the fireworks a miss so that we need not be stuck in the human jam when the celebration ended. Logical thoughts took over and we made our way back to the hotel at 11.30pm, 30minutes before the fireworks. The train ride back to the hotel was an insightful one. Taiwanese appreciate peace and quiet on public transport, and even had notices and announcements to remind commuters to lower their voices when on the phone and to lower the volume of their ear/headphones. Singapore should really look into the implementation of the same! The metro, like our MRT, had color codings and posters to encourage commuters to give up their seats to those who need them. In Singapore, you would see them occupied 80% of the time with those who don't really need them; In Taiwan, you would see them occupied 99% of the time with those who really needed them. Even in a packed train, these seats would be left empty. There were lines and markers on the floor of the platform, advising commuters to stand behind, queue to get in the train, and also waiting area for the ladies's safety when boarding the trains at night. Perhaps, the things I'm grateful about Singapore's MRT system are that the guys in SMRT constantly try their best to shorten train waiting times and that they hadn't got so many announcements which served as reminders.
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| Cellphone Etiquette |
We caught the fireworks in the 3 different countdown areas of Taiwan, and I thought that there was so much fireworks that Taipei 101 could have vanished in view. We were glad that we were back in the hotel, because the crowd waiting to get on the metro was crazy!
Day 2
We had breakfast near our hotel, before heading to the XingTianGong Temple. the fuzhou fish ball was really delicious and was nothing like what we have back in Singapore. It actually had some taste of fish in the pork filling, and it was really fragrant. I had pig liver soup, liver was really soft and smooth! One thing we noticed about the soup in Taipei was that the soup was clear and almost tasteless. The flavors will usually come only from the food. We went to the Temple after breakfast and were really clueless as to the procedures which we should take. Several old ladies were really helpful, but our mandarin and hokkien had hit the limit. After offering our prayers, we set by the temple to have some snacks from the mobile vehicle.
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| 街边小店 |
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| 路边摊 |
We went back to the hotel and dropped the offerings from the temple, before heading to the miniature museum. 3G was really useful as the museum was located in a really quiet place. The museum had an interesting display of dolls, houses, gardens, royal troops etc etc... but I would really still prefer
Cockington Green Gardens in Canberra, Australia.
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| Miniatures Museum of Taiwan |
Lunch was another japanese cuisine, since Hello Kitty restaurant was fully booked (so we made the reservation for another day). Shabu shabu was really worth while and that was our best meal in Taipei. Yes, I love soups and steamboats! Thinking of this still makes me drool! After lunch, we went round the SOGO near 忠孝复兴 station in search of some bike store/kiosk but found none. This shopping centre kinda reminded me of those in HK. lol. Then, we went to Da An station area, so that we could get Veggie's toy. Thanks to Veggie, we got to explore the suburb of Taipei, went to a normal book store, saw shops which we would usually see in our neighborhoods. It was nice to be part of them. :)
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| Best meal we had in Taipei |
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| gonna go get Veggie's stuff |
The skies got dark at 6pm, and we headed down to Shi Lin night market where we met up with Soo Bee and Jason. It was nice to walk round the market with friends, so that we could try the different food. Some of the popular and recommended eateries were over rated. Aint that nice.... In any case, we hadn't really visited the recommended stalls, what we did was just to get a taste of the country's eateries, it need not come from a popular stall. Since Koi originated from Taiwan, we decided to get one per couple. The taste wasn't that far off. Like what we liked to do in Singapore, we couldn't give the doll catcher machines a miss and Soo Bee was really good to have caught a soft toy!
There were so much people in the night market, so much frying etc, that our clothes really stunk. Sadly, there weren't any laundromat services near in our hotel.
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| KOI |
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| Night market foodies |
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| UFO catchers |
Day 3
The day we headed down to Jiu Fen（九份）. We woke up pretty early so that we could go get our train （台湾高铁）tickets to Rui Fang Station （瑞芳）. After which, we managed to get some 豆浆油条 for breakfast before the train arrived. We were quite glad that we got tickets that comes with reserved seats, so that we need not be standing through out the ride.
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| 豆浆油条 for breakfast! |
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| waiting for the arrival of the train |
We fell asleep and thankfully, we woke up in time before the train pulled into 瑞芳 station. We took a bumpy bus ride up to 九份 from 瑞芳 station. When we reached 九份, we got to take some pictures at one of their look out towers. As the presidential election was round the corner, we also caught President elect candidate Tsai Ing-Wen （蔡英文）'s convoy. They shot fire crackers every where (one had missed Wei Chee's face narrowly), and it was sad to see the old lady cleaner cleaning up the place after that. Interestingly, you have them (presidential elects) putting up commercials on buses, tissue papers and even TV commercials as part of their publicity.
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| enroute to Ruifang and Ruifang Station |
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| Ruifang Area |
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| look out tower at 九份 |
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| Cleaning up the mess after the presidential elect's convoy had gone pass :( |
九份老街 doesn't have credit card option as a mode of payment so be sure to bring enough CASH! I was thankful that I hid money all over the place, and was able to retrieve money for the food and souvenirs (Wei Chee called me Ms Chipmunk for this). The air was fresh here, and there were several coffee and tea houses which I would really love to visit! And, ocarinas!! How I wished I could buy more of those! I was also glad that I had a chance to be photographed in Ch'ing Dynasty's clothes and be some empress (though I would really prefer a princess), good experience! Sadly, the photographs printed from the shop's printer was really shady. Let's hope Wei Chee would upload some awesome pictures up on Facebook. I really loved the pictures he took on his Nikon! If we had more time and wasn't carrying so much stuff, I would really love to take the train down a station or 2 to release 天灯！Finally, we forego our train tickets and took a cab (NT$1000) back to Taipei.
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| foodies |
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| where the crowd is |
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| where the crowd don't really visit |
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| ocarinas for myself! |
Dinner was settled at some random restaurant near our hotel... not nice.....! lol
Day 4
We woke up really late that day, and were in an awkward timing before our appointment with Hello Kitty restaurant. Perhaps, we could have had a better breakfast if I hadn't mixed up the reservation time with Hello Kitty. One lesson learnt on this day was that we should never visit a HK cafe in Taipei if we don't want to experience the terrible drop in service standards! The food wasn't at all that fantastic and the choices were limited. Wei Chee had his favorite Almond milk drink (yucks!) and took a walk around the place trying to find BodyShop and then finally head down to Hello Kitty restaurant. Apparently, it is a must to order its set meals for more variety of food and there is a minimum expenditure requirement of NT$300 per head. We were more interested in the Hello Kitty theme desserts had therefore only ordered the dessert set and some ala carte small cakes. The jelly dessert at the end of the course was really.... worth the miss. lol. don't mind the sick pictures of us devouring kitty :p
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| light meal at HK cafe |
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| Hello Kitty restaurant |
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| kitty food |
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| arghhhhh |
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| decos |
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| pictures after meal |
After the kitty meal, we set off on the journey to look for the bike stores which he had really wanted to visit. We took the metro to 港乾 station and saw the kids having fun at the basketball court during the free period, an interesting wind mill (or so), ate a yummy spring onion cake 葱饼. The bike store was a really pathetic store and the service was really.... bad.... SG ones were much better!
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| navigating |
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| 葱饼 |
Luckily, Wei Chee manage to speak to an American who was patronizing the store earlier, and found out that there were more bike stores further (read: FAR) down the road. We walked for quite a while, saw some nice houses and wondered if the guys detached in Taiwan would get to stay in such houses, and finally found the stores. Sadly, he couldn't find what he wanted and only bought the chain. I found some nice looking black clovers too!!
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| nice houses/apartments |
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| more bike stores |
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| black clovers |
After that, we took a cab down to XiMenDing 西门町 area and tried the famous 阿宗面线 which was really mee sua with pig intestines. It was nice because the soft noodles could be firm and not easily mashed like those in Singapore. The gravy was good too, however, the craze about it may have been a little overrated.
There were several fashion stalls/shopping centers resembling Lucky Plaza and Far East Plaza/Shopping Centre in this area, but we soon head back to the hotel after the long day. Dinner was settled in a convenient store, where we had nice instant noodles (must haves in Taiwan), some what re-enacting those scenes in Taiwanese idol drams. hehe. Then we head back to the hotel and made an impromptu reservation with one of the hot spring resorts in 北投 for a night's stay the next day!
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| 西门町；阿宗面线 |
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| dinner in the convenient store |
Day 5
The weather man reported a drop in temperatures, with the lowest at 8 deg C in 北投／淡水 areas! And we are heading over there on this day for the hot spring! The day was so cold that I had 2 jackets on me and gloves. Really thankful to have the scarf and gloves from Soo Bee!! Anyways, we found out from the hotel staff, that there is actually a cafe near our restaurant selling 豆浆油条, and we head down to the cafe 洪记 for breakfast. We even got Ma Ying Jiu's （马英九 ）promo tissue paper on the way there!! The food was very oily.... much more oily than what we had in Day 2 near Taipei Train Station, but we ate them all anyway hehe. Then we set off to the hot spring resort, which required us to take the metro to 新北投. As usually, having Starbucks is like we're back at home, and we just had to get a cuppa! Due to the low temperature in the atmosphere, the drink was cooled down as soon as we reached our resort. As the check in time was 5pm, we managed to only lug our bags with the resort and went off to explore the place , took some nice pictures of the little river/estuary collecting discharges from the hot spring resorts, and to have the hotspring ramen as recommended by the hotel staff. No pictures of the ramen was taken, as it was prohibited by the restaurant. Despite that, Wei Chee had still insisted on taking the picture of the yummy hot spring egg.
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| breakfast at 洪记 |
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| double coat! |
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| starbucks! |
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| taking pictures along the way to the hot spring resort |
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| our hot spring resort |
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| hotspring egg & hotspring ramen place |
I have never seen a single actor/actress/director and whats not when we had our xmas holidays in hong kong last year, and here in 北投, we saw a director in a hot spring ramen restaurant and an actor right in our own resort. I don't know the name of the director, but I knew he had acted in some shows before too, with Jackie Chan, will update the post if I managed to find his picture!
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| Actor: 张善为 |
Since it is going to be a while before we could get our rooms, we took more pictures in the area, and then we took the metro down to 淡水 and had a relaxing walk around the area. The wind was strong when we reached the lovers' bridge, and i'm glad I had a thicker coat with me!! After enjoying 淡水 area, we took a cab back to the resort, brought the bags to our 2 sty resort room, and then had japanese cuisine for dinner again. The sake there was awesome, the best we had so far!! And then, its back to the resort for hot spring session.
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| pictures around the resort area |
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| yummies |
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| lovers' bridge |
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| finally back in the resort |
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| map food again! |
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| tissue pack we got in the day |
Day 6
We checked out of our resort and made our way to Taipei Medical University for our lunch at Jay Chou's restaurant, 义法厨房II. The deco was based on some of the movies which Jay Chou had acted in, with the main focus on the movie, 不能说的秘密. The pasta and soup was really awesome, and it was really nice to be in the restaurant, looking out at the future doctors and medical personnels.
Then we head back to the Landis again, and dropped our bags, before going back to XiMen Ding to explore the place again. We visited CD stores, Show Lou's fashion store, ate some food from some random stall and then went to a night market near Long Shan Si (recommended by Soo Bee) for some supper before finally head back to the hotel to book our HSR （高铁）tickets for the next day and rest for the day.
Day 7
We are getting closer and closer to 7 Jan 2012, we decided to pamper ourselves to business class cabin in the HSR and head down to Taichung in an attempt to visit another bike store. The tickets were purchased online the night before, interestingly, the HSR company would only accept American Express cards issued in Taiwan. How in convenient huh??
So, we retrieved our tickets at the train station and went back to the 豆浆油条 place and had breakfast before our train arrived. It was my first time taking a bullet train and I'm really excited! There was adequate leg space in business class cabin (Car 6), 2 seats on each side of the aisle, quiet, snacks and drinks were served, and we really felt like Kings and Queens while the train travelled at 284km/h. And again, we saw some taiwanese actresses, 白冰冰 (right in front of us) and 王彩桦 (some seat at the back) in the same cabin as us.
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| capture moments with the HSR |
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| actress 王彩桦 |
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| actress 白冰冰 |
About an hour later, the train pulled into Taichung （台中） station. Taichung HSR station looked like Changi airport! We thought we just arrived in an airport instead of a train station. It's really so much different from Taipei! Just to side track a little, back in Taipei, we were advised not to dispose off toilet papers into the toilet bowl, however, here in Taipei, there were no notices advising users to do the same, and it seems like people would simple dispose off the toilet papers into the towel bowls directly. Anyways, we took a cab and started our journey to Three Peaks Bicycle Company.
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| arrival in Taichung |
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| from Taichung HSR station to our destination |
Taichung is not a touristy place, and there was a different feel towards this city. The apartments and buildings seemed so much more beautiful, similar to those we saw at Taipei's Gang Qian 港乾 area, but a little more dense. Cab fare in Taichung was significantly more expensive than in Taipei. The taxi driver was nice to stop outside the store, which turned out to be a small 1 storey office, since it was rather difficult to flag for a taxi in this industrial area. We were done in a short 10min because they hadn't got what we wanted. And, the place was really an office, not a store per se. It was lucky for us, that the driver didn't decided to go off elsewhere, since we told him to come get us at 1.30pm, which would be more than an hour's wait. We went back to Taichung HSR station and changed our tickets for an earlier timing (originally to set off at 3pm) and went back to Taipei. Since we had some time, we went to the National Palace Museum, the attraction which we hadn't gone to the previous days (due to last minutes change of plans). No pictures were taken inside the exhibition area as photography was prohibited. The artifacts were interesting, paintings by Giuseppe Castiglione 郎世宁, an Italian Jesuit Brother who painted in the palace and served 3 emperors （康熙帝，雍正帝，乾隆帝）during the Ch'ing Dynasty. Here's some of his paintings available in the internet. He had been an awesome painter who could bring life to the paintings he painted. Jade exhibits were interesting too, but our legs got so tired, that we decided to leave the museum for dinner. Dinner was settled at where we had our first meal in Taipei. Japanese cuisine again yeah! After dinner, we went back to the hotel and packed our luggages, getting ready for our flight back to SG the next day.
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| so many people at the museum and 4.30pm was supposed to be the off peak hours! |
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| outside the museum |
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| Some of Giuseppe Castiglione's paintings |
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| Dinner at the same restaurant where we had our first meal in Taipei |
Day 8
Going home, no pictures were taken on the camera, all were taken on the iPhone and posted up on instagram.
We had Mcdonald's for breakfast, and we were surprised that it was so much cheaper than that sold in SG. Wei Chee pampered me to an hour of facial in Landis Taipei's Jurlique Day Spa. It felt really good and I fell asleep on and off during the session. After the session, I was given some cookies and tea, before we get ready to leave the hotel for the airport.
We had initially asked for a late check out, since our flight is late in the evening. In the end, we decided to head down to the airport earlier for some last minute shopping.
Surprisingly, the worst food we had was at the airport. The 豆浆 and 豆花 tested like it had cooked plastics in it. The ramen was awful. So it made me learn another lesson: always have your food in Taipei City before heading down to the airport!
Back at home, I was so glad that the next day is a weekend, and I don't need to go back to work until Wednesday! :D
There you go, here's the post which I spent 6 hours writing (inclusive of an hour dinner break) :) So tired from all the writing, it's time for bed!
Good night world!
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