Taiwan

As I promised earlier, this is a a more in-depth explanation about my holiday trip to Taiwan

No pictures of Taiwan Taoyuan Airport as we felt that it was not as pretty as e thought. I finally found out that we arrived at the old terminal as we flew in from Hong Kong. If you came from western countries or Japan or Korea(I think) then you will see the new terminal which is nicer.

Day One
After being stuck in the jam for almost 2hours we finally arrived at our hotel. We quickly freshened up and left for the famous Shilin Night Market
This is the night market. Next to it is the food centre. There are a lot of stalls but mostly they offer the same delicacies namely lu rou fan, fried oyster, fried noodles, steaks, and of course the famous pearl tea, that is something not to be missed. I highly recommend the Famous Fried Chicken. It is very long..maybe about 20cm long..and very very crispy and it only costs TWD50 which is equivalent to Rm5. It is so big that even with 3 people sharing, we couldn't finish it. The night market is packed. It is actually one very long lane that offers anything a person can think of..from pets to underwears and laser pointers. You can see lots of tourist here as well. Unfortunately, we didn't get anything here. After the night market we went to some night clubs. There is one called room 18, where a lot of celebs go to, the club is big and have nice interiors. Too bad we didn't bring along our cameras. We went back to the same place after a few days but guess what...It closed down for renovation.

Day Two
Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. The place is really big. That day, the wind was strong and it rained a little. So we were all shivering..
We went SHOPPING after that at the famous Xi Men Ding. Can you believe that we shopped for nearly 12 hours from 11am to about 10.30pm. There were so many shops and believe me..the things there are really cheap.

This was what we came back to the hotel with. Notice how many pairs of shoes we bought in just one day? By the end of the trip the three of us bought 15pairs of shoes and we had to lug it from Taiwan to Hong Kong and then back to Penang.

Day Three
The third involved a lot of walking, running, and braving the rain.

Yang Ming Shan National Park. It is named after the founder Mr. Wang Yang Ming. Coincidentally, there was a flower show going on. So we got to see a lot of flowers that we didn't even knew existed or mistakenly took it as vegetables.

Next we went to Xin Beitou for its hotspring. We rented a private room(so we didn't have to strip naked in front of unknown people). It is a different experience from swimming. There is one hotspring that is outdoors and they don't separate the gents and the ladies. So everyone goes in wearing their bathing suits.This was what our private pool looked like.This is the surroundings of Xin Beitou

Next destination: Danshui Fisherman's Wharf
I think some of you might recognise it from taiwan drama series. Although it is quite far away, but the view you get from the place is really nice.

We nearly froze to death while waiting for our caricature to be drawn. I'm really amazed at how the girl lasted the evening sitting there and drawing.





After dinner we rushed to Taipei 101. It was already 8.50pm when we took
the taxiand found out that last entrance was at 9.15pm.
My two friends ran up 5 floors as they couldn't wait for the lift. Me, being too lazy waited for it and managed to reach before them. hahaaha..so much for their effort running. The night view from the top is magnificent.






Then we went to the nearby Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall.







On the way, coincidentally(again) there was some lantern
exihibition going on. So we took photos again.










Ok. I'm lost for words now. So I'll update the rest of my trip next time..

All I can say is that the transport system in Taiwan is really good and efficient. You don't even need a car to get around. The MRT and buses connect even to the most deserted/far away places and the fares are quite reasonable. You just need a map to navigate yourself around. If you don't know or lost, all you need to do is just ask around preferably in mandarin although there was this one time a girl came over to help us and she just automatically spoke in english. Maybe she sensed that we had difficulty asking the right question from an uncle