Day 6 (3/1/07) - Shopping day then TPE --> SIN

It rained this morning, and it was not a mere drizzle. it was the sort of rain that u must hold umbrella. actually we were really lucky, out of so many days we were here, it only rained on two days, the first was the day when we were at National Palace museum, but it was quite a light drizzle, and then today. if it had rained yesterday or day before, it would have spoiled our trip to YMS and to Jiufen. i finally got to eat mian xian in Taipei! i have been looking around for the famous Ah Zong Mian xian in XMD, but din see it anywhere, although i did see one in Shilin night market on the first night. in the end i settled for slice fish mian xian, which did satisfy my craving.

As we probably only had time to go and shop at one place, we decided to go to the Zhong Xiao Fuxing Station area as we saw an Espirit there that day we were there. the Espirit was three storeys high. actually we noticed that a lot of the shops occupy a few levels, it's sth like instead of occupying space in a 'linear' manner, they occupy space in a 'vertical' manner. i saw a Watsons which was three storeys high, KFC which was 3 storeys high and a Macdonald's which was 4 storeys high during my stay in Taipei. Anyway, there were quite a lot of cheap buys on the 3rd storey of Espirit. we managed to get some pretty nice long sleeved T-shirts at rather cheap prices. later we went over to the 2nd sogo (NOT the one at exit 2, it's either exit 3 or 4) where we continued shoppin for a while before we made our way back to the hotel. on our way back we walked past Ximending and we realized that this is actually the only time other than the first day when we actually walked thru XMD in the daytime. there are actually quite a lot of interesting shops selling nice shoes, bags but no more chance to look already. in fact after reading and hearing so many things abt XMD we only realized now that we din actually explore XMD properly and this place was so close to our hotel. such is the irony of life - the closer sth is to u, the more likely u are to overlook it. haha.

It has been a long time since the family went on a holiday trip together and it was really quite fun on the whole. at least i am sure if i had gone with frens, it's likely that we may not have gone YMS or National Palace museum and we would have spent a lot more time shopping. that's the diff between gg with frens and family - the sort of places u visit will tend to be different. although i have always been indifferent towards hiking - as in i dun dislike it but i dun pay special attention to it either - i found the day at YMS to be quite an eye opener and it was more interesting than i expected. Of course when u travel in a big group there are bound to be disagreements, slight misunderstandings, but between family members we dun take such things to heart for long. so travelling with family is always a new experience in itself ;)

My regrets... din shop enough, din buy enough things and din eat enough. actually even their food courts are quite interesting, they like to sell things in set meals. oh and i should have bought more Taiyang bing for myself, esp the one with many different flavours. maybe next time?

Day 5 (2/1/07) Yang Ming Shan

today the plan was to go up Yang Ming Shan. we took bus 260 from ximending but had to wait 45 min for it. My sis commented that there seemed to be some sort of curse cuz every single bus that we wanted to take, we seem fated to have to wait very long for it and this was already the third day in a row. first was the bus to national palace museum that day, then the jiufen-keelung bus that never came, and now this. i saw so many bus 307 and 601 that i can already remember that 307 goes from banqiao to somewhere while 601 goes from tianmu to somewhere. it turned out that the bus to YMS comes every 1 h, so apparently we missed the bus which started out at 9 am from the terminal, so we now have to wait for the 10am bus.

At the very last stop which we alighted at Yang Ming Shan, we got some useful advice from a bus engineer there. there was a YMS bus 108 that goes around all the stops in YMS and for NT$60, u can hop-on and hop-off the bus unlimited times. if u dun want to buy the unlimited ticket, each time u hop on the bus, it's NT$15. we were advised not to buy the unlimited ticket cuz according to the bus engineer it was already late morning then (it was around 11.30am) so there was no way we can go to 4 places, he said it was better to go to 2 places at the most and walk those two places thoroughly rather than to go everywhere but touch and go. so we decided to make our way to zhu zi hu (literally translated: bamboo lake) where there were supposed to be lots of restaurants and a very large nursery of a type of white flower (Hai3 yu4). when we were waiting for the bus, there was a black dog running around and it kept sniffing at a lady there. she said it was because she has 3 dogs at home so the dog was drawn to her because of the dog smell on her. then she told us there was another brown dog in YMS which sometimes boarded the bus but gets chased off the bus by the driver halfway up the mountain. we din see the brown dog around that day so we thought maybe it was already somewhere in the mountains and making its way down right now...

at zhuzihu, which was the 4th stop, we had to walk a distance before we reached a small eatery, but at that time it was still quite early so we decided not to eat lunch yet. we asked for directions from the lady boss and my parents sorta promised that we will eat there later when we come back. it was actually pretty cold up there. after so many days in Taipei, i think today was the day i really felt cold, to the extent i actually regretted not bringing my big green windbreaker, in the end i wore two scarves. i never realized the scarf was such a wonderful invention until today. after walking for abt 20 min down a rather deserted mountain road, we finally came to the nursery. actually to be honest, we were expecting to see a very big patch of nice white flowers, but no leh. there wasn't a big patch and there were more leaves than flowers so i din really think it was very nice. but still we took some photos here and there, enjoyed the air, walked around the little shops there. there were a number of restaurants there which actually looked visually more appealing than the very first eatery we came across. i guess a lot of pple would probably have decided to eat here instead of walking back to that eatery, but we decided to keep our promise. in the end we had quite a satisfying lunch.

after lunch, we went to the next place we aim to go: leng3 shui3 keng1 (cold water creek). on the bus, we saw the mist outside getting thicker and thicker. we originally wanted to go to this place called meng4 huan4 hu2 (dream lake) recommended by the bus engineer because there was a special type of grass there, but we turned back halfway because there were warning signboards of possible landslides in bad weather. it was drizzling slightly already, and it was really quite a long walk to the lake. so we went down another trekking path and came to this old suspension bridge which supposedly cannot take more than 10 pple at one time and there was another warning which stated 'Pls pass quickly for ur safety'. this was our last stop at YMS, we caught the bus 108 back to the YMS terminal and took bus 260 back to Taipei main station. My feeling of YMS is that this is a nice peaceful place, pple who like nature and trekking will enjoy it. i thought it might be boring but in the end it turned out to be quite enjoyable. i guess it matters who u go with.

it was our last night in Taipei, so we decided to do some last minute shopping. my brother had been thoroughly bored when he followed us around the previous night so he chose not to follow us but to go back with my parents. we went to Wu Fen Pu, alighting at Houshanpi station. that place was a fashion destrict, supposedly some of the shops there were the distributors of clothes. there wasn't really much clothes to buy cuz the clothes on sale were still geared towards winter wear. lots of long sleeve T-shirts, but also lots of rather trendy looking jackets and trenchcoats which we won't have chance of wearing in singapore. after shopping in wufenpu we went to Raohe night market which was nearby. for some reason i liked it better than shilin, maybe it's because there were less pple here and the chicken i ate here tasted better than the one i ate at shilin. there was a store selling many different flavours of tong2 luo2 shao1, doraemon's fav food. i considered very long whether or not to buy, but in the end decided not to, cuz i think i bought quite lot of things already. we caught the train back from songshan train station to taipei main station. the train was quite comfortable and was only NT$18 which was even less than the minimum fare for the MRT. and it was much faster to go by train to Taipei main station then take MRT back to XMD, rather than to walk all the way back to Houshanpi MRT station to take the MRT.

we spent the night packing, squeezing stuff into our bags, throwing away shoe boxes and packagings to create more space.

Day 4 (1/1/07) Jiufen

It's the new year! can't believe i am writing 07 in the date. anyway there were already lots of pple on the street at 9 plus. i think some of them probably just came from taipei city hall.

today is Keelung / Jiufen day. from keelung we decided to go directly to Jiufen and to explore keelung later when we come back later. at jiufen we walked along the jiufen old street and saw lota of interesting stuff such as sweet peanut icecream, yam balls, and alot of the usual cakes such as yam cake, green bean paste cake and the usual pineapple cake. in fact i thought the pineapple cake here was so much nicer than those i bought at shilin that day. at least its crust wins handsdown. the shop which i tasted the very nice pineapple cake was called Li3 Yi4 bing3 dian4. i wish i could buy more but i rem i had already bought quite a lot stuff. there was also very nice beef noodles there. at least the soup there really tasted like proper beef noodle soup.

at abt 3.30 pm we wanted to start gg back to keelung but at the busstop where there was suppose to be a bus to take to keelung, we waited very long but the only bus we kept seeing was the bus 826 that goes from carpark no. 9 to shui3 nan2 something. in the end we gave up and took the bus to taipei zhongxiao fuxing station although we had already bought return tickets from keelung to taipei. but the bus was so crowded that we only managed to get onto the third bus. all in all, we spent 1.5 hrs waiting. the bus journey to taipei took close to 2 h. today we spent more time travelling and waiting than actually walking and sightseeing. but no one expected the jiufen-keelung bus to be totally non-existent and we were not the onnly ones complaining in the queue. a better option may have been to take the bus to ruifang station. then take train to taipei main or to songshan statio, then can even go Raohe night market which is juz directly opp songshan station. in the end we din get to go to keelung at all.

at night we had quite a good time shopping ar Zhong Xiao Fuxing (ZXFX) area. there are two sogos there but the 2nd one seems nicer (the one at exit 3 or 4). hmm... must go back there on the last day.

Day 3 (31/12/06): National Palace Museum this morning for breakfast, we tried the fan4 tuan2 from the same roadside stall that we went yesterday. it was veyr nice and full of ingredients - there was some meat, you2 tiao2, egg, pork floss and was nice and warm, perfect to eat in this cold weather! after that we set off for the national palace museum (or gu4 gong1), taking bus 304. it was the first time we taking a bus since we came here. their buses are quite interesting, there are a lot of funny messages on the bus, such as asking u to give up ur seat to the needy, and some other stuff. the journey was quite long.

at the museum, i ran into Diana and Stephanie from DBoat. so qiao3! anyway, we entered the museum at around 11.30 and only emerged at 5 pm (the closing time). actually similar to my experiences in Europe's museums, there are so many things to
see that after a while everything looks similar. and cuz it was a weekend and new year eve somemore, it was very very crowded and moving abt was quite a problem. my sis made a very funny comment when we entered one of the exhibition halls. she exclaimed "what? more bowls?!" we have been seeing bowls, jugs, vases, plates, in general containers of all shapes and sizes and a comment like this from my sis was so candid yet it voiced out exactly what was in our minds. we saw bowls with bluish-green glaze, bluish-white glaze with brown spots, with tinge of purple, bowls with flower patterns... it seems a lot of these works came from the sung dynasty. also saw jade and ivory carvings, some of which are really quite incredible. u have to look thru a magnifying glass to see the intricacies. and if u consider that in those tdays tools are not that sophisticated, kudos to them.. my dad was looking for the famous jade carving of a cabbage with a grasshopper and another insect on it. when we found it, there was already a big crowd surrounding the showcase. presumably everyone must be trying to identify the grasshopper and the other insect. by the time we came out from the museum it was already 5 pm. we managed to squeeze onto a bus which goes to taipei main station.

that night the four of us wanted to go and experience the countdown at the Taipei city hall, maybe not to stay all the way till the end but to see and experience the
feeling of new year in Taipei. i've not been to any countdown in singapore so i can't really make a fair comparison, but i have never seen a more scary crowd before in my life. there was a concert gg on at Taipei city hall and as early as 8 something, there was already a crowd building up and pple were sitting in the streets. by the time we came out of Shinkong Mitsukoshi at 10.30 pm, it was already impossible to cross over to the other side cuz apparently they blocked off an area for someone's autograph session (none of us could hear whose autograph session it was, my sisters heard mian4 xian4 (Vermicelli?!)), then we had to detour. when we saw the way the crowd was building up, we decided we'll go back before it gets impossible to squeeze our way out. the feeling i got was >99% of the pple were gg towards city hall and <1% were trying to squeeze out to get to the MRT station. if u belong to the minority, too bad... u have to fight ur way thru and be agressive abt it. in fact we were not even sure if we were gg the correct way. i was praying with all my heart that we were on the right path otherwise i really cannot imagine squeezing back into the crowd. when we finally got to city hall station, they had already closed it cuz there were too many pple coming out, so they did not allow anyone to enter. we had to walk down to the SYS memorial station. even one station away, the crowd was still swarming out and we had to go down to the next exit which was goodness knows where. and there was no order on the streets at all, pedestrians were crossing at will and the traffic police were trying their best to control the traffic, blowing whistles, pushing pple back, but they were severly outnumbered. in fact i heard someone commenting in chinese "the traffic police is gg mad soon" whcih i totally agreed. it took us ~1h to squeeze from city hall to get into the SYS station safely. ximen station was almost deserted when we got off there, probably everyone has swarmed to the Taipei city hall. I've never appreciated an empty station more than now.

i think to go for a countdown like this, be prepared to stay there the whole night. if u intend to go back, better start making ur way home earlier if u dun wanna drown in the crowd.

Day 2 (30/12/06)

Today we went to danshui. on the way to ximen station, we passed by a lot of street hawkers selling food. ok, from tmr onwards, we can dun eat anything then come out liao. we bought dan4 bing3 (omelette wrapped with a prata-like sheet outside, cut into smaller pieces and sprayed with sauce), shu3 bing3 (which was like macdonald hash brown, in fact it's exactly the same), carrot cake and soya bean milk. oh i quite like the sauce in the dan4 bing3 and the soya bean milk was not too sweet, juz nice. on the way we passed by east dragon hotel. it was quite near Rainbow hotel and also at quite a good location in XMD, so next time can also consider this place.


it was quite a long journey to danshui. at danshui, we walked along danshui old street (lao3 jie1). i must say that the traffic here is really quite horrendous. there were so many pple on motorbikes and they could be riding on any ridable path. very often they would zoom out from some unexpected corner and u would have to keep to the side to avoid them. motorbikes in danshui was like bicycles in Amsterdam but the diff is that in Amsterdam there were designated cycling tracks but here there weren't any. so pedestrians and motorbikes share the road and it;s always the former giving way to the latter. we entered this market like street but i thik it was a bad time to go there cuz it was a saturday morning and i presuyme a lot of pple were doing their marketing. there were a lot of stalls selling fried stuff and the usual lu3 wei4, easy for pple to dabao and eat for the rest of the day i guess.

For lunch we ate at this food place beside the river. we ate fish ball soup, Ah gei3
and smelly beancurd. Ah gei3 is actually a very big beancurd with glassy noodles (tung hoon) stuffed inside. previously i only heard of it but never knew what it was. smelly beancurd was actaully not that smelly after all, but i still thout it tasted weird. dun really like it... along the streets in danshui everywhere there were stalls selling food like sotong balls (called hua1 zhi1 wan2), sweet potato balls (di4 gua1 qiu2), star fruit juice, fried quail's eggs, fried prawn rolls, pig blood cake (it's called zhu1 xue3 gao1, but i am not sure is it really pig's blood?) .
we tried the fried quail's egg and this very tall ice cream which was supposedly low in carbo. when i ate it i can see why it's low carbo... there was almost no milk taste in it.

we were debating whether to go to fisherman's wharf. other than the fact that it was the place where they filmed meteor garden and there was the famous lover's bridge, i din really know anything abt it. it juz seems to be the sort of place that all tourist to Taiwan would definitely make a trip to when they go to danshui. but mum seemed pretty interested in taking a boat ride, so off we went to this place called ba1 li3 zuo3 an4 (literally translated it means 8 miles left shore), the 2-way boat
ride cost NT$40. oh by the way if u see the word quan2 piao4 (full ticket) it means adult ticket and ban4 piao4 (half ticket) it means child ticket. initially we thought quan2 piao4 means two way and ban4 piao4 means one way. that brought us to the question of what was the difference from lai2 hui2 piao4 (to and fro ticket) then? took us a while to figure out. At the very least, the traffic at this unknown place was very much less messy than danshui. here there were many pple on bicycles too but there was also an wooden path whcih they 'advised' pedestrians in the form of a sign to use to avoid collision. quite thoughtful right? in the first place there were not so many pple around, i guess because as i have said, this place is relatively lesser known, probably fisherman's wharf would
be as bad as danshui. like in danshui, this ba1 li3 zuo3 an4 had a whole street selling food and souvenirs. a lot of stallholders are happy to invite u to try their food first (huan1 ying2 shi4 chi1!) in the end we ended trying quite a lot of stuff. we bought fried sotong strips, cuttlefish, and we bought donuts and butterfly from this stall which had very long queue and a very nice smell coming from it.

in the end we spent the whole afternoon at a previously unknown place and i could see that my parents, esp my mum, really liked the place.

at night we had dinner at small eatery along xining south road. i asked for beef soup noodles (niu2 rou4 tang1 mian4, NT$50) while CY asked for beef noodles (NT$80) but which was also placed under the soup category in the menu. we were wondering what was the difference. it turned out that mine was juz soup with noodles, presumably the soup was cooked with beef inside and the noodles was served with the soup only and no meat. but i saw CY's beef noodles n was glad i din ask for that cuz the beef actually had quite a lot of fat in it, the layers were quite obvious, very different from the beef noodles in singapore.

we walked to the huaxi street night market after dinner. it was quite a long walk along many dark and dead streets, should have taken the mrt instead. there were
quite a lot of foodstuffs at the night market like di4 gua1 qiu2 and the usual night market fare like sotong balls, fired quail eggs and smelly beancurd. this night market is also called snake alley night market. because trhere were a number of restaurants selling snake soup and in one of the restaurants they were actually abt to give a live show of a snake eating a rabbit. we actually saw the rabbit in the same enclosure as the snake but the snake was not yet eating maybe cuz it's not yet meal time, but the rabbit seemed to be trying to climb out of the glass enclosure. it was quite sad to see the rabbit struggling for survival but its fate was already sealed. honestly how can anyone bear to stay to see the eating show? we certainly din and we walked on. there seemed to be a lot more variety of food here than at shilin. there many stalls selling soup, noodles, porridge. but i guess i can't really compare cuz i din really cover shilin that comprehensively.

meant to go XMD to experience the hustle but by the time we got back to the XMD area, it was already close to midnight, i guess this has to wait another day.

Day 1- 29/12/06 SIN --> TPE

The start of my holiday! On arrival at CKS airport, we were looking for the sign that would point to the Freego bus, but before we could find such a sign, my dad had been persuaded into taking a 7-seater private mini van which cost NT$1400. we felt a bit bu4 shuang3 cuz we felt that the freego bus would have been cheaper and after we had spent time researching on it, now it was in vain (later we found out that taking freego bus would have cost $200 per person, so actually taking the van was not much more expensive). but anyway the good thing was my dad had a good time chatting with the driver. We also took the chance to fire a few questions at him about the place. we were thinking since we spent so much money, may as well get more info from him... haha.

Paradise hotel - pretty decent. the lady at the reception was quite friendly, they provided us with maps and told us the direction to Ximen station, and she tried to allocate us two rooms on the same floor although it meant that one of the rooms she gave us had two double beds. we actually booked two triple rooms and triple room includes a double bed and a single bed, so in a way we zhuan4 dao4. although there are no water boiling facilities in the room, there was a water cooler on every floor which could dispense hot and cold water, so it was not bad at all.

after dumping our stuff in the room, we set off in the direction of the ever famous ximending, however surprisingly we din really find much food stuff, there was lots of lu3 wei4 stalls around but what we wanted was somewhere we can sit down for a proper meal. after hunting for a long time, we finally came upon a small eatery along one of the streets leading towards Ximen station. there were actually no table for six, but a kind soul who was alone gave up her table to us and shifted to join up with another table, presumably with pple she din noe. me, XW and RW asked for lu3 rou4 fan4 while my parents and CY asked for e2 rou4 mian4 (goose meat noodles) which was actually duck meat noodles. we were quite surprised it was so cheap - only NT$20. when our food came, we finally realized why it was so cheap. the so-called lu3 rou4 fan4 is actually juz rice with lu3 zhi1, with some small bits of meat. i think their lu rou4 fan4 is like our chinese rice, u are suppose to order other stuff to go with it and not juz eat it alone. but of course if u want to save money, u can do that. we ordered veg, more goose meat (duck meat) and gong4 wan2 tang1 (soup with meat balls) and shark meat, but nobody could really appreciate the shark meat accept my dad, we suspect it's actually raw, but my dad insisted it's cooked. after our late lunch, we walked in the direction of Taipei main station. we realized that not all the roads were labelled on the map, esp the smaller roads, so we often din noe what road we were on. midway we stopped to eat dou4 hua1 at a shop. there was dou hua with ginger juice (jiang1 zhi1) which most of my family ate. i was more daring and tried this fen3 yuan2 with dou hua. but in the end the fen3 yuan2 turned out to be flour balls with no filling inside. en route to Taipei main station we passed by the presidential building as well as chong2 qing4 south road which was also nicknamed bookshop street.

Actually we felt that the area around Taipei main station had more things to see than the XMD area. there were quite a lot of shoe shops and clothes shops and definitely had more proper eating places than XMD, but maybe because it's only our first day here so we din really walk in the 'correct' areas in XMD. Anyway at Taipei main station we saw the tall shinkong mitsukoshi shopping centre (xin1 guang1 san1 yue4) and the east and west bus stations. the east station will be where we take the bus to Keelung. Taipei main station is quite tourist friendly cuz it stated very clearly which exit leads to where.

from Taipei main station we took the MRT to jian4 tan2 station to get to Shilin night market. it was so crowded that it was almost impossible to walk.we ate hot dog, you2 cong1 bing3 and pao4 bing1 (dessert that resembled crushed ice with topping). we actually wanted mango pao4 bing1 but the stall holder told me in a "how-come-u-dunno" tone "this is not the mango season!", in chinese of course. in the end we couldn't really appreciate the ingredients in the pao4 bing1, i could only recognize red bean, other than that i dunno what were the rest. we also ate the famous fried chicken but i dun think we bought from the famous stall. anyway, i am no chicken expert so it probably wouldn't make a difference to me. on the way back to the station we passed a whole street of food and we realized that juz now we were walking along the wrong street, no wonder there was so little food. anyway, i am sure there would be other chances to come to shilin again.

the mrt is really quite impressive, on the escalators, the taiwanese really bother to keep to one side (in taipei, the norm is to keep to the right and the left side is for pple who want to move quickly). i think if singaporeans bother to do that, i may not be late for my lesson so often, but of course that is also partly my own fault. on the platforms, there are lines drawn to indicate to pple to queue up and when the train doors open, one side is for commuters to come out and the other side is for commuters to go in. and there are station 'marshals' who help to control the crowd with their 'light sabres' at busier stations and during peak hours. so on the whole, the station was quite an orderly place. the only thing was i thought that the beeping sound to signal door closing seemed to start sounding very soon and pple will be scrambling in. but the station marshals will give the all clear signal so no one will get trapped. Oh and they have very nice mrt cards, we bought 6 single trip cards and we can have 6 different designs.

i guess lesson learnt at the end of the day is that something good always comes out of any seemingly unpleasant station.we were indignant abt taking the pricey private car ride to our hotel cuz at first we thought we could have taken the cheaper freego and it would have been a form of experience too. but in the end the whole family had a rather comfortable ride to the hotel and my dad certainly had a good chat with the driver and we also managed to get some free information as well. taking the airport shuttle would have been good if u were with a small group of frens and u are on budget. but gg with family is a different thing. actually there's really no need to scrimp so much, as long as everyone was comfortable, that was most impt.