Monday, May 09, 2005
Mission Taiwan accomplished!Four days have since passed since I embarked on my trip to Taipei on Thursday morning and it is really a pity that I hadn’t extended my trip by another couple of days. There really is so much to see and shop in Taiwan and the weather sure is nice. Although temperature can go up to 30 + degree Celsius, humidity is so much lower so you don’t find yourself wet with perspiration and the first rays of the morning sun actually appears around 5 in the morning.
It is amazing how orderly the people in Taiwan are. People really kept to the left when taking the escalator and really did their part in helping to recycle thrash. There were some people who actually washed their plastic bottles before taking them to be recycled. It sure is a pity that the keep right on escalator movement at MRT stations did not really take off and I guess you would most probably find people throwing trash in the recycling bins here in Singapore.
In this short trip, we managed to visit some of the more interesting places in Taipei such as Dan Shui, Shi Lin, Bei Tou, and Wan Hua as listed in brief below.
Thursday: 5th May 05Met up with the rest of the gang and had lunch. We landed at the Taipei Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport and met up with Lee Teng before proceeding to our hotel, Royal Castle at Cheng Du Road which is 10 minutes walk from Xi Men Ding
We had our dinner at Xi men ding after settling our luggage and went on to take a walk at Shi Lin. It was there I had my first taste of Chou Dou fu and it definitely is going to be the last time I tasted it. 3 hours is definitely not enough to cover the entire night market and there is still so much to be seen…
From Xi Men Ding, we went to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall over at Zhong Zheng which is also the political center of Taipei City. It sure is a magnificent building illuminated by the red lights in the Taipei night. The streets however were empty with barely any traffic in the Taipei night.
We then went to Party World KTV near our hotel and sang till the morning… and when we stumbled out of the KTV at five in the morning, we were greeted by the soft rays of the sun. it was actually daylight at five!!!
Friday: 6th May 9, 2005After waking up around noon we went to Zhong Xiao East Road and had Ma La Huo Guo for late lunch. It sure took us a good hour or so to locate the store that was recommended in Meilin’s guidebook. Along the way we also visited Jay Chou’s antique store OMNI.
We went to the Taipei 101 Mall and it was there I picked up a recipe book at Page 1, a bookstore very similar to Kinokunia for my mom for mother’s day. We didn’t go up to the viewing point of the mall because of the 15 dollars that we had to pay.
That night, we went to Wu Fen Pu which is some sort of a giant wholesale clothing market located in Taipei. Though there were many outlets (it is definitely an understatement), I still think the clothes found in Shi Lin were nicer and ended up just getting an Abercrombie and Fitch top and flip-flop.
We went to the 24 hour bookstore, Eslite after our shopping trip after which the girls went back to the hotel. The guys and I went back to Xi Men Ding for a walk to check out what there was to offer. We ended up exploring the cyber café that was recommended in Meilin’s guide book as well as a few of the dingy Movie centers.
Saturday: 7th May, 2005We went to Bei Tou which is located in the northwestern part of Taipei, a place famous for its sulfur springs and spas.
When they say hot spring, they really mean that the water is hot! We barely lasted fifteen minutes in the 42 degree Celsius water.
After the soak, we went to Dan Shui where Yu Ren Ma Tou is located. It was like childhood revisited where we found ourselves playing games that we once played in our younger days.
That night we visited the Miramar Ferris wheel, the second largest in the world. At 110m at its highest point and 70m in diameter, the wheel takes about 17 minutes to do a single circuit and we had to wait something like an hour for our turn.
We also went to the Taipei Ministry of Sound (MOS) which was located right next to the Miramar Shopping Complex. It is some what similar to Singapore’s Zouk on a Friday or Saturday night but much grander and posh. The crowd however was a bit the let down and the Deejay sure could have been better.
That night, we gave Lee Teng an early birthday celebration at the hotel since he will be away in America for the next 2 months for his work and travel trip. Lucky bugger... : P
It will definitely be a night he will remember for sometime with all the medicated oil, Tabasco sauce, soft drink and Colgate we poured on him.
Sunday: 08th May, 2005We went to Xi Men Ding for some last minute shopping after taking into consideration of the time constraint (we had to catch the 6pm flight). It was the first time that we had really explored Xi Men Ding and there really was too much for us to see in one afternoon… we left our hotel at about 3.45pm and made it to the airport around 4.30.
We did some real last minute shopping of surveniors at the airport gift shop and the sales assistants must really have thought of us as mad buying as many as 10 boxes of biscuits at one go. We really found ourselves running like mad to catch the plane (The flight was scheduled to be at 5.55 and it was like 5.50 when we finally checked in).
JIONG TING ♥
Monday, May 09, 2005
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