Dainty Diva
Monday, May 22, 2006
I am finally here to blog about my Taipei trip cos i wanna add photographs... want to settle this trip before blogging about my Malacca trip... just got the photos from Xingxuan... and as I am too lazy to blog from scratch, i 'stole' this summary from Xingxuan... a modified version, including photographs...
8th May 2006
After unloading our luggages in the hotel room, we went to have our first meal in Taipei. Roamed around Ximending and saw this really nice cafe-like restaurant. The whole place was decorated with shells, sand, and fishes. Its like you are dining under water. The coolest part is that their benches are actually swings and thus, we could eat and swing at the same time. Its a really nice place to hang out but they don't allow photography so no pictures to show you what it looks like. After exploring Ximending for a while, we decided to take a peek at Shilin night market. At Shilin, we bought some hair accessories and ear-rings. To be more specific, I was the one doing the buying... haha.. but many people commented that the hairbands i bought are beautiful! =) We ended the day with dinner at Ximending... Ah Zong Mian Xian was highly recommended so we decided to try. Really yummy!! It was so nice that we decided to eat it again the next day, but we had a hard time finding the stall again! Wahaha~
The yummy Ah Zong Mian XianGuess what she was armed with? A PIECE OF TISSUE PAPER!! My goodness...She came with a piece of tissue paper to catch the cockcroach~ Needless to say... the cockcroach escaped... and we couldn't locate it ever again... We tried to psycho ourselves to sleep... and it was the worst night for XX cos she practically woke up every hour to make sure the cockroach was nowhere near us... once morning came, we quickly packed up and wait for them to give us another room... The hotel staff are really nice, as they were the ones who offered to give us a change of room... kudos to them!
9th May 2006
We spent this day shopping... Went 101 Shopping Mall, Hou Che Zhan (wholesalers area) and Wu Fen Pu... and climbed many flights of stairs too...
Look at the long flight of stairs!! and we climbed... 
Taipei 101Continued to explore their supermarkets... Went searching for unique flavors of Lays and Pocky... Hee... their Lays have all sorts of flavors: Grilled Hokkaido Crab, Grilled black pepper ribs etc etc... actually taste quite nice... Other then buying lots of watches (damn heavy!) at Hou Che Zhan and the unique flavors of chips and pocky, we didnt actually buy much... Most of the stuff we bought were presents for our friends and relatives... We are such nice people... (xuan, i absolutely agree!)
Pocky, Lays Chips...
Our purchases, not at pasar malam!
But I must say, we were really quite smart... Wu Fen Pu and Hou Che Zhan are not places that are easily accessible and we managed to find them by taking MRT and buses... Really not bad.. Quite an achievement~ Of course, the credits goes mostly to Shuyi (Thanks ger!)... But i must admit that Taiwan is relatively easy to navigate lah, so not much credits to me also.. haa
Our purchases, not at pasar malam!10th May 2006
We have a guided tour on this day. The tour guide was a interesting person, shared quite a bit with us... but he sounded a little 'se' as well... We visited places like CKS Memorial Hall, National Palace Misuem and Jiu Fen...
It was a day of splurging... We bought lotsa pastries, like Tai yang bing, Mochi, Tie Dan...
Took some pictures of the places of interest... And Jiu Fen is a really nice place!! Met a lady selling tea leaves and we sat there chatting and drinking tea... it was a relaxing experience... but we couldn't stay long since we were with a tour... But it really arouses our interest to pick up Cha Dao... Hee...
Oh! I forgot to mention that there were people from NTU who were also in that tour... one of them was Lucinda, my 1st 3months JC classmate! Fancy meeting people we know in Taipei... In the same guided tour too... It's quite a nice experience... At least got people to help us take photos~ Wahaha! Ended the day at Shilin night market... Ate all kinds of food... I finally tried the smelly toufu! XX don't dare to eat but fortunately bumped into a couple from our guided tour and the auntie treated me to smelly toufu cos she wanted to try as well! Really quite nice... We bought a lot of food and were too full to actually finish all of it... And we had a lot of things to pack... spent like 2 hours stuffing all our purchases! Went with one luggage and came back with two, packed to the brim... i was so worried we need to pay taxes for excess baggage but fortunately not..
*more photos coming* (still lacking Day 3/4) - Taiwan Photo Album
Password still applies: taipeitrip
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~