|
Friday, 29 June 2012
Taiwan Trip 2012!
Always been dreaming to go Taiwan to travel for years and finally my wish is granted! Went to Taiwan, Taipei with my mum, cousin and Eddie. Unluckily we went there during the rainy season and it was pretty bad as many places (esp the south side) had landslides and were flooded.
Glad that we only planned to travel at Taipei, which was the least affected out of all other regions in Taiwan. Throughout the one week trip I think we only had 3 days that's not raining. =3= Nevertheless, we still enjoy ourselves! :D
DAY 1
 Didn't sleep the whole night cos we had a super early flight at 6+am. Totally stoned in the airport from the lack of sleep. @@  Air ticket to Taiwan! I really feel tall people shouldn't take Jetstar Econ class.. the seat is so so so narrow i can barely move myself and my legs are practically sandwiched between my seat and the seat infront of me. zzz Jetstar, y u no design seat for tall people??? D:  Off we go! Too early.. so too lazy to makeup.. :p  Me and Eddie concealing our sleepy eyes with shades. haha.  Me and my mum!  =3=  Love this shot of us. hahaha. I cant remember what i was doing that ended up in this pose. lol. Showed more pics of Eddie here cos he's sick and he didn't go out with us for day 1, so he wont appear in the pics until day 2. lol.  Taking the car that came to fetch us and drove us to the hotel at 西门町. The driver was super friendly and he gave us the map of Taiwan. He also showed us all the nice attractions we can visit in Taipei and shared with us so many travel tips. Taiwan people y u all so nice one???  Our first meal at Taiwan, 阿宗面线~ Very very tasty! Its pretty famous in Taipei!  There's no proper tables and there's very limited chairs at the stall so many people like me had to stand around the stall to finish the 面线. lol.  Then we went to this famous 杨桃汤 stall to have our dessert. Basically its preserved starfruit with syrup that tasted sweet and sour. Very good choice to quench your thirst. :)  Our hotel at 西门町! Its a new hotel and everything in the hotel is super new and the staffs working there were so hardworking and friendly! The staffs will greet u every single time they see u and they were always very polite to us no matter what time of the day u approach them. Will come back again to this hotel if i travel in Taiwan again. :)  After we settled our stuffs at the hotel, we took a cab to 龙山寺, which is a station just beside the 西门 station. Its actually cheaper to take a cab to near places than taking train. I must say.. The temple is really the cleanest and most organised temple i've ever visited. The ventilation there was pretty good. Though there's many people there, its not squeezy at all and u won't feel suffocated from the burning joss sticks. Gave me a sense of zen over there. haha.  The temple is decorated with plenty nice carvings like this.  龙山寺 is also actually the place where the Taiwan movie 《艋舺》 was filmed.  We went to the night market at 华西街 to have our dinner. Out of all the night markets we visited in Taipei, this night market is the most traditional i should say. The things they sell were not very modernized, so nothing much to buy there. lol. But the food is good!  Our dinner 卤肉饭 and 虱目鱼汤. Tried at least 4 types of 卤肉饭 at Taiwan and i think this is one of the best i tried. Their 卤肉饭 comes in really small portion which is damn suitable for girls with small appetite.  虱目鱼汤~ the dish that i missed the most. T_T I dont think Singapore sell this fish... I want my 虱目鱼汤!!!!!!  大肠包小肠. Very filling cos the whole thing is mainly glutinous rice. Eat die me. X_X  Braised pig tendon! Nice until beyond description. haha. And the boss also gave us each a bowl of seaweed soup to go with the pork pork dishes we ordered. :)  Me with the pig trotter, intestines and tendons. Look machiam like a primary school kid here for excursion. lol.  U know the 台湾香肠 that Singapore's pasar malam usually sell? The real 台湾香肠 that i ate in the pic is like 100X better. Totally different from the one in Singapore. The stall even guarantee like "不好吃不收钱". lol. Cant forget the taste~ yum yum~~~ XD  And we da bao-ed 猪血汤 肉圆 back to the hotel that we were too full to finish in the end. LOL. DAY 2  Porridge with 肉松, the breakfast that the hotel provided and basically what i ate for all my breakfasts during the stay in Taiwan. Its not i very stingy dont want go outside eat breakfast, but 西门町 is really dead like Orchard will be like early in the morning. No shops opened at all in the morning. So i have to make do with the porridge. =.=  Had lunch at some mall's food court that i cant remember what name. lol. The set meals that they sell in Taiwan is in GINORMOUS portion and super delicious. Got 蚝煎, 肉羹汤 and stir-fried Kang Kong. Cant even finish everything. lol. Then we went to 五分埔, which is a shopping paradise for both guys and girls. The place feels like bugis street, but less crowded (maybe it was a weekday and its raining at that time) and perhaps 10X bigger than Bugis street? haha. I didnt take any photo there cos i was too busy looking out for nice clothes and bags... and...  帅哥. XD I must say Taiwan have plenty good looking sales assistants. XD This is like the only photo i took there. lol. Bought so many stuffs from this particular shop. Maybe this is y he agreed to take photo with me. LOL. After the satisfying shopping experience, we went to 士林夜市 to have our dinner. And i feel that this night market is most probably the most disappointing one. :( Cos the whole place felt so commercialized for tourists, and the food they sell are almost the same. Perhaps u can find at least 10 stalls selling 蚝煎 and 臭豆腐. =.=  Their sotong soup. Tasted very MEH~  蚝煎 that tasted not as good as the one i ate at the food court.  The only plate of 臭豆腐 that i tried during the Taiwan trip cos my mum cant stand the smell. LOL. But i think its ok leh... and it tasted not bad to me. If u don't mind the smell of the zoo in your mouth u can try this. hahaha.  Trying to act as if i cant stand the smell. ITS REALLY NOT AS BAD AS U THINK LA MUM. lol.  Happy with my shopping haul that im hugging. My arms got muscle ache the next day cos i bought too much stuffs and carried it the whole day. haha.  The 2nd bowl of 卤肉饭. Very meh~  Had 芒果冰 for dessert! Looks very nice but actually the mango wasn't sweet one. Deceiving looks.. cheat money only. lol.  Another deceiving pic. lol.  The clothes i bought at 五分埔. Could have bought more but my mum keep restricting me cos she say cannot anyhow buy under impulse. lol.  And and and! Bought this Elmo and cookie monster contact lens case too! CUTE RIGHT??? Bought it without second thought. Mum nag also must buy. haha. DAY 3  The next day we took 台铁 to 九份!  My cousin camwhoring with his DSLR on the train. lol.  After alighting from the train, we took a bus to 九份老街! The place is really cooling and luckily we went there quite early when its not very crowded. When we left in the afternoon its so crowded and noisy. Heng we left alrdy~  Had this quay that tasted exactly like the ang gu quay we had in Singapore. Just that its not red but green. lol.  Had the very famous 芋圆 over there. Its very similar to the tang yuan, very chewy and u can have it either hot or cold.  Uncle making the 芋圆 live.  Wanted to take a self shot with the dessert so asked eddie to take photo for me but my mum photobomb-ed me. LOL. Very gek so asked my mum take photo for me then...  Eddie photobomb-ed me. DAMN. =3=  Took a photo at this very nice 民宿. The owner of the house allowed me to go into his house to take photos. So nice of the uncle lo.. :)  The lazy cat that belongs to the owner of the 民宿. He became one of the attractions over there cos all the tourists were gathering around the cat to take pics. But the cat just continued sleeping like a boss. haha.  A stray dog wondering the street. Everybody's like ignoring him. How can ignore something so cute???? D:  Very yummy 螺肉~ don't care whether will stomachache or not also must eat. haha. 
A pic that made my legs not so thunder-thigh-ish. so must put here. haha.
 The street over there. Great place for photoshoots.  We went to a shop selling 陶笛. Its a traditional taiwan musical instruments with a very subtle sound that's very similar to owl's howls. They have so many designs in the shop!  A giant 陶笛 on display.  This is the 陶笛 that i bought. The appearance isn't very nice but it can produce very nice notes! I'm still trying very hard to master this instrument. LOL.  Waiting to transfer to 金瓜石 by bus~  And my mum decided to photobomb me again. LOL.  At 金瓜石 taking photo with “阿金伯”, the name of the statue in this pic. I never make up the name one hor.. if take closer look at the thing around his waist u can see his name. lol.  金瓜石 used to be a gold mining area owned by Japanese. We went into 四连栋, which is the house that the Japanese miners used to live in.  The interior of the house is all based on traditional jap style design. Really felt as if im in Japan when i entered the house.  Look for me! hahaha.  I dont know why i want to hide there. lol.  Here we go~! Actually the cart is stationary one. Can't even move at all. lol.   Took a pic with a mini waterfall there. Its actually quite big.. I think it seems to shrink in comparison with me. lol. =.=  Monster hairy caterpillars that manifested the whole tree. =S  We kept climbing staircase throughout the whole time over there, and here's one staircase that goes all the way down to where we started. We took a cab to 十份 cos we dont feel like waiting for the bus that seems like taking forever to come. lol. The cab driver that drove us is damn enthu about taking photographs for us and he brought us to various attractions along the way before we reach 十份. But we nearly had heart attacks by his driving skills. Im so grateful im still in one piece when i reach 十份. lol.  A very nice waterfall (cant remember name. =x) where couples love to go to take wedding photos. Maybe i can consider there too? :P Provided someone wants me la.. lol.  Then the cab driver drove us to 箐桐, a small place where people will write down their wishes on the bamboos and hang them there. Me wrote “让所有我爱的人身体健康". I think the best wish u can make is that all the people that u love are healthy and happy. :)  大家要身体健康哦！:D  And my cousin helped me to hang my bamboo~  The collection of wishes from people all around the world~  If you are adventurous enough, u can try throwing the bamboo and let it hang high up on the tree. After making our wishes at the 箐桐, we finally reached 十份. There's nothing much u can do there. The main activity to do there is to write your wishes on the 天灯 and send it rising up into the sky.  My mum writing her wishes~  Different side of the 天灯 has different colours and they represent different aspects of life. Like Blue is for job, yellow for wealth and pink for love... etc. So must write the correct wish at the correct side.  The place where we wrote our 天灯 is actually along the railway track. lol. So everyone along the railway have to siam away if there's an incoming train. lol.  Seriously i don't know what to write for wealth since my mum, my cousin and Eddie seem to filled up whatever nice wishes for wealth. So I wrote "pocket always full full full" and drew a 元宝. =.= I know i super bo 水准. lol.  After we finished writing the wishes, we lit the 天灯 and sent it rising into the air~ Hope what we wish for will come true!!!! :D   We went to 饶河夜市 at night~ This is the BEST night market that i went to. There's so many different types of good food and stuffs over there! A place that i highly recommend people to go.  They sell roasted pig just like that. So cool. Y Singapore no have? lol.  Actually i ate quite a number of different food over there but too lazy and tired to take photos. lol. DAY 4 It was raining the next day again~ =3= But we decided to continue our trip to 乌来.  The nice waterfall we saw before we took the cable car to the 乌来 mountain.  They have a big big cable car and there's less than 10 people (including us) taking the cable car cos its really raining pretty heavily, so i guess most people gave up the idea of going up.  They have normal adult ticket and student ticket! Even for foreigners like us, we can actually show them our student pass to get the student price. :D  Rainy day so took an emo shoot in the cable car. lol.  When we reach the mountain, my cousin and I spot this cool machine that does fortune telling. haha. Just put in 10yuan and the machine will drop one slip telling your fortune.  There's a lady figurine holding on to a tray and when u put in the money, the lady will move back into the house and come out again to drop the a slip of paper telling the fortune. I also went to try out. hahaha.  Some hoops game where u can drop the hoops into the poles with love, family, studies.. etc written on each of them. Cant seem to hoop to anyone of them for me. -__- 
Then then then, we went to this shelter that allows people to 求签 one. Normally when people 求签, u have to think of something u wanna ask for in your mind and draw a 签. The 签 will have a number on it and u have to look for the readings corresponding to your number.
And guess what i got?
 I got the 签王. I dont even have to look for a number, cos its written on the 签 that whatever things in my life will go according to how i want them to be. Muahahahaha. XD Damn lucky de lo.. XD  Wee~ me with the 签王 that i drew. :D  See the yellow dot on the bridge? That's me. LOL.  After we came back from 乌来, we had our lunch at a random restaurant and i ordered the pig trotter rice. The serving is damn huge and it comes with tofu and veg. Amazingly delicious and filling meal!  Taking the train back~ The MRT in Taipei is pretty similar to Singapore's one, but i think the weird part about the train is the orientation of their seats. The seats are arranged perpendicular to each other one.. like that will save space meh? lol. And its like what others said, nobody dares to sit on the priority seat no matter how packed the train is. Its as if the seat is cursed like that cos everyone will avoid it. haha. We went to 师大夜市, which is known to be the best night market in Taipei, but when we reached there, the whole place was pretty dead. I think most probably its raining so most shops were not open and there's not many people around. The food doesnt appeal to us so we went back to the hotel for early rest.  And we also celebrated my cousin birthday in the hotel! haha. Bought alot of snacks back that night. Really full die us.. lol. DAY 5 Next day we went to 淡水! And fortunately its not raining that day!  Wearing the shirt that i bought at 五分埔~ hehe.  One of the typical stall at 淡水老街 selling pork. No chilling system for chilling the pork. They just hang all the meat and organs around the stall. lol.  Nearly knock into this pig's brain dangling by the store. lol.  Drank 弹珠汽水~ basically its just soda water with a very cool marble trapped in the bottle. haha.  Had our lunch at a restaurant by the sea and this is 阿给. Its actually taupok with 冬粉 inside and topped with a special sweet sauce. Quite nice and filling~  Their 招牌炒米粉 that actually taste like the 炒米粉 that my mum cooked. LOL. My mum can open a restaurant alrdy. haha. 
And me and Eddie tried our luck on the darts game along the street. Its a simple game where u throw darts to burst the water balloons pinned on the board. The more the balloons u burst, the bigger prize u get.
 In exchange, after accumulating the balloons that me, my cousin and Eddie burst, we got a watermelon beach ball. LOL.  The drain covers at 淡水 are very interesting too!  Another drain cover~   Bought Jambu back too! The jambu that Taiwan sells is so much sweeter and juicier than those in Singapore. Don't just try their mangoes, try their jambu too! :D After visiting 淡水, we proceeded to 新北投, where its known for its hot spring~ 
Along the way to the hot spring, there's a museum showcasing all the different types of natives or what they called 原住民 in Taiwan. The museum is free admission, but we are only allowed to take photos on the 1st level (they have 3 levels), so this is the only photo that we took in the museum. lol.
 After a long walk, we finally reach the hot spring that they called the 底热谷. The water is about 90 degree Celsius, which explains for the steam above the water. Great place for breathe-taking photographs.  DAY 6 It rained the next day AGAIN. =.= And Eddie's sick again.. so he stayed in the hotel and the rest of us went shopping at 台北车站.  A stall selling nice watches. The stall sells so many cheap watches that i stood there for a million years to decide which one to buy. lol.  In the end i bought this metallic strap watch with purple face. hehe. 
Nice right??? Its water-proof and cost me around 15SGD only. hehehe.
 In the end i can't resist the nice design and bought another one with exactly the same design but bronze coloured. haha.  Just opposite the stall was a fortune-telling stall. Initially i didnt want to go for fortune-talking cos i'm quite skeptical about their accuracy. But that day we had too much time to kill and the fortune-telling was just around 5SGD so i thought maybe i'll just give it a try. haha.  The master did the fortune-talking using the strokes of my chinese name. Listening very attentive here. lol. And i must say.. he's damn zui!!! I didnt say anything about myself but he explained my character and described my past experience so accurately! I was like OMG. He even say... i'll meet my 姻缘 this year. AND he said if i missed it.. i'll wait for.. SIX FREAKING YEARS LATER. O_O ok.. he didnt said 'freaking'.. i was too shocked that i added that myself. =.= i was O_O O_O O_O throughout when he said that. I dont want to be single for 6 years!!! I'll die. ok. i wont die. Most probably i'll live very miserably. HOW TO SURVIVE 6 YEARS WITHOUT LOVE??? lol.  After the whole series of fortune-telling (my mum did one for herself and one for my bro. My cousin did one for himself and one for my other cousin), we had lunch at the mall's foodcourt. Had 猪血汤~ for hygiene purpose Singapore no longer sells 猪血. What a pity.. i also never lao sai after eating it what... Singapore, y u no sell 猪血 anymore?? D:  Gonna miss my 猪血汤~~~~ T_T We went shopping around the mall which is pretty much like Singapore's Takashimaya. At night, we went back to hotel and had our dinner at the famous Toilet restaurant!  Shit bread with corn soup that my mum ordered. haha.  Holding onto the shit bread. haha.  Eating the shit bread. lol. Actually its chocolate bun which tasted very ordinary. lol.  My toilet bowl of cheesy chicken cutlet set. Cant even finish it cos the set consist of the big big cutlet, rice, miso soup and veg.  My cousin 'vomiting' his curry chicken. lol.  Their sink. lol.  Complementary ice cream for dessert. I upgraded one of the ice cream to their signature ice cream for a few dollars and i kinda regretted it cos..  This is how big it was. @@ Me and mum cant even finish it lo. Eat die us. X_X  The aftermath of the ice cream after we tried very hard to finish whatever we could. Not very appetizing here liao... haha. DAY 7 Last day of the trip~ T_T We had our flight in the afternoon, so there's nothing much we can do. So i just wondered around the hotel area to see if there's anything i wanna buy last minute.  Drank the Taiwan beer that i bought the day before. Drank beer early in the morning. lol. The fruit beer tasted exactly like Jolly shandy to me. lol.  At the airport checking in!  The 2 guys looked damn dead. lol.  Me and my mum happily taking photos! :D  The stamps on the passport~  Had this rice ball that i bought at 7-11 on the plane for lunch. Its surprisingly tasty! Regretted for not buying more.. :(  Its. Damn. Nice. Dont doubt it Eddie. lol.  And the packet cake that i bought at 7-11 is damn nice too! Its totally different to those sold in Singapore! Its so soft and so fresh! Oh man~ thinking of it made me hungry now... zzz  This is all the food that i brought back! I really missed the convenient store over at Taiwan cos they really have a wide variety of food sold! The cup noodles are especially good. The really have meat inside the cup noodles one lo.. and the 鱼酥 from 淡水 is damn nice too!  The eyelashes and double eyelid stickers that i bought. They have shop that specially sells eyelashes. There's so many types to choose from that i just asked the shop assistant to give me the best one. haha. Its really good in quality and its very cheap too! But im having problems sticking lower lashes cos i've never use them before. =.= help pls! lol.  All the Elmo stuffs that i bought! hahaha. Cap, phone dust cap, ez link card sticker, keychain and contact lens case... cant have enough of Elmo! XD So that's all for my Taiwan trip! Gonna puke soon from the few hours of blogging this entry... X_X I really hope i can travel in Taiwan again! I love Taiwannnnnnnnnnnn~ <3 And ya.. i've changed my url of my blog cos im pretty sick of my previous url.. people will grow old ma.. if 20 years later im still blogging (provided blog is still the 'in' thing 20 years later. lol), and im still calling myself "Lynn the girl", im gonna to puke die myself before anyone else does. lol. So for the time being i'll be Elmolynn-cious! And tomorrow i'll be going to Bali!!!! Will blog again about the Bali trip and something AWESOME after i come back from Bali! :D |
Let me know u care
 Visit my past
 |
Lynn
 Affiliates
 Credits
 |