heehee i am back in singapore! had a really great 5-day taipei food tasting and shopping trip! bought lotsa stuffs back :D oh and the good thing about the trip was that the weather forecast was wrong! there was no rain throughout the entire trip except the little drizzle when we were at taipei 101. heh

ok firstly jetstar service is actually quite good, even though the seats were actually very crampy. however i had the luxury of sitting by the aisle so can stretch my legs. yah so next time must try to get aisle seats again. oh and during the flights there and back we did not experience much turbulence, which was supposed quite good, but it gets abit boring by the 3rd hour without much entertainment in my bag. HAHAHA luckily the flight was only 4h40min if not we would have been bored to death.

alright i think when we arrived at taoyuan airport it was around 6 but the sun had already set, so it was actually quite dark. after we took the tour bus and reached royal castle hotel at about 8, we set off for ximending :D (hee hee i actually went to ximending for like one third of the trip.) ximending had this huge plaza near the station and it was really windy over there! hahaha very comfortable breeze i would say.

managed to find a sports apparels shop which sells shoes and clothes at highly discounted prices. ok la the stuffs there are quite off-season ones but they still look very attractive yah. bought a pair of grey adidas shoes there :D oh and there were these BIG chicken cutlets with very spicy chilli powder and BIG bubble teas which is used to soothe the mouth after eating the chicken.

oh also had fried and steams dumplings, and donuts and MASSIVE fried hot dogs which can be found at up to 10 inches long at some places. yeah so many things to eat already on the first night HAHA then we went to huaxi street night market at around 11 but most of the shops were closed. however the place was still wafting with the scent of smelly toufu. EEE. i did not eat any smelly toufu there. no betel nuts too. haha

ok i think we went back to our hotel at about 12 plus. it was 5 minutes away from ximen station but we discovered that there were hotels cheaper and nearer to the station in the vicinity. screw paulene our travel agent. ok maybe no need to screw her cuz royal castle hotel staffs were REALLY VERY FRIENDLY. yah especially the manager, and the reception people and the housekeeper. which means everyone working there were friendly la. however the room was a little too small for 3 guys yah. daniel, yy and i were in 802 while mel, bran and andy were in 803.

ok DAY 2

couldn't really sleep well the past night cuz daniel was snoring. woke up at 5 plus and decided to put on my noise-reducing ear phones and managed to sleep at about 6 plus. hahah so when i woke up i gave daniel a piece of my mind. but he then told me that he couldn't sleep till 3 becuz of MY snoring. HAHAH i don't even know that i snore...oh well. :P

ok hotel breakfast was kinda sucky. we had "a wide array of continental and western cuisines" as melvin and brandon put it. had bread with ham and egg and porridge with veggies and pork floss. ok that was pretty much the kind of food we had for the rest of the days.

we set off for taipei main station at around 10 and the underground mall was pretty good. bought lotsa pastries and nougats there. and the pastries from liyi biscuit shop were actually delivered to our hotel on our last day without any delivery charges. saw the female lift operators of shinkong mitsukoshi with the signature taiwanese 'huan ying guan ling!' too...


ok then went to 228 peace park and ntu hospital station to go to yuanling street for shoes. 228 peace park was windy. yah that's all. yah then we had yonghe soya milk which actually is OK only lor.

mel and bran bought leather shoes at yuanling st after like 2 hours of sourcing around for the best deals, but i did not really fancy that place la. heehee had a big, nice bowl of pork cutlet rice at a japanese restaurant there though. :D





after which we went to back to our hotel to put our stuffs, and then set off for gongguan and shida night market - i was just too tired and felt abit sickly, so decided to walk around ximending by myself. got back to the hotel by 11 and watched tv. they then came back at around 1 plus in the morning and i had to open the door for them. poor me can't sleep properly... :(



day 3 was the most enjoyable i think. we went to danshui and shilin night market.





danshui is a very pretty coastal town with lotsa nice food and great scenery. went to this traditional goods shop and the lady boss said that daniel looks like he is one of the indigenous people. we actually wanted to walk all the way from the mrt station to fisherman's wharf and lovers' bridge but gave up half way. hahaha but when we took the bus we realised how long the walk would have taken. maybe an hour to walk 5 km? haha melvin was complaining about the amount of cam-whoring that we had, like 1 every 3 footsteps.

HAHA anyway had ah-gei noodles which consists of fish paste, tofu and vermicelli for lunch. it wasn't very filling, so we went back to danshui old street and had dumpling soup and more bubble tea. the pearls actually filled up half of the entire cup! how amazing... HHAHA then danshui had this market whereby i bought a cap and a pair of specs. :D


hahah we bought SOOO many things we had to go back to the hotel to put our stuffs first. then we were off to shiling night market!