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Monday, June 05, 2006
Taiwan Trip Day 1
You can tell i've been really procrastinating for this entry. haha~ i guess basically most of my frens hav asked me how was my trip, and i'll start dominating the whole conversation with how much i enjoyed and how interesting the place is. hopefully after blogging this down, the excitement of the trip will start to sink down (that is to say, i still cant get over the trip. haha~)
time to reveal the secrets which i've kept: my trip was from 14th to 22nd may 2006. Nine days. My destination was 台灣 (Taiwan), the whole of Taiwan, that is. for the record, within these nine days, we took 1.65GB of photos!! from myself, i tink i took up 1.1GB of space in my comp liao.
as i've previously mentioned, we took a jetstarasia budget plane to Taiwan, and i wouldn't call it one of the best plane trips i ever had. the seats were pretty crammed together like those seats on a Singapore bus, so there wasn't much leg space, especially if your bags is already occupying half of the space available for your legs. furthermore, we were positioned right at the back of the plane, so our seat-backs cannot be lowered due to the wall behind. and the whole plane is so darn small, that when we look at those big commercial planes from SIA or QANTAS, ours is like little chick looking at mother hen.
This is the whole plane, yes, it's THAT small
From left: Me, Mich and HP
From left: JH, Yeok and CL
In case you're asking who are they?, haha, yeok is my jc classmate, the guy is her bf and the rest are yeok's graduating frens. all of them are from WSC, er... i'm not. mmm...
after a bumpy 5 hours ride (there was turbulence), a mere 1 hour of sleep (due to turbulence and no leg space), and lots of rubbish written in my journal, we finally reached Taipei's CKS Internation Airport!
Looks very china and old school hor?
the six of us were really taking our time walking to the check out counter, asking security guards to help us take pictures and me taking weird videos (of yeok and jh running because the airport's aircon's very cold).
my butt was painful and my legs were numb from the plane ride, but we still hav to endure 1.5 hours of bus to the taipei city itself. oh gosh, my legs~~ but once the bus got to taipei, fwahh, all of us got overwhelmed by the lights! it was like... city of lights! the rest of the 0.5 hours was spent with our eyes glued to the windows trying to digest the different different stalls that are whooshing past us. i can't wait to check in to hotel, put down my bags and rush out to embrace this city of lights!!
This is just another ONE of the streets in taipei! whoot!
finally got settled down at our fan dian (hotel for u non-chinese speaking ppl) and rushed out. our hotel was at the edge of 西門盯 (ximending) so it was very convenient for us to just walk there. 西門盯 is like our bugis junction? the roads are blocked out and there are shops are the road side. the differences are that 西門盯 (1) is not sheltered (2) have natural wind blowing at us like air con which made the shopping experience very enjoyable (3) there are occasional motorbikes and scooters whizzing past us even tho the roads are blocked out to traffic.
The famous plaza at the entrance to 西門盯
The houses in taiwan are pretty amazing. They are so different from each other, yet, when u look at them altogether, there seem to be a certain style you can almost call the taiwan style. For example:
Doesn't the picture above look like the house is from Hong Kong? riight riight?
Anyway, we ate... and we ate. We were that hungry. No food served on budget airline lor! and so we indulge ourselves first with taiwan food! There's 阿宗麵線 (Ah Zong Mian Xian), which i didn't really enjoy until i started eating the organs (the sauce is weird, the Mian Xian is ok, the organs were heaven... everything has to be eaten together to enjoy that wonderful combination of flavours!).
Then, there's Taiwan style pasta. Ok, there's this Ah Beng looking guy who's serving the customers at the door, and when we walked in, he screamed out in the most boyish voice i've ever heard: 歡迎光臨！ woah~ that was damn scary! we were totally not used to this. the next few days sort of taught me that all young guys in Taiwan all spoke the same way... mmm.
And we had 奶茶! oh my god, i took a risk to order a drink that looks very foreign to me: 統一布丁奶茶, and it was fabulous. 統一布丁 is actually a kinda of jelly that is like half coffee and half dun noe what, and then it was added inside the 奶茶 to create a blend of taste that is something like a cross between mocha and fruit punch. damn weird! BUT damn nice!
ok, now that we're full, our eyes shifted from food stalls to other shops. the cd shops in taiwan are incredible, each one of them is like a HMV with so much variaties of music, and most prob due to the fact that each shop has the space of 3 storeys as well. haha~ i tried to find my "McDull" movie, found it in one vcd rental shop, but cannot buy it. argh~! oh oh, the vcd rental shop right? it is a shop that is like karaoke, where you book the room to watch the vcd you rented! cool hor?
then, there are shops like...
THESE! oh my god... you see them scattered all over the place in singapore, but in taiwan, they actually have stalls that operate these machines alone! at the back of the shop are speciality items for different anime/manga characters. and there are LOTS of doraemon stuff, plus many other anime/manga characters. i started my spree and bought doraemon figurines... tsk tsk, not a good start. i may end up buying more doraemon stuff than clothes and food.
we walked around a bit more, but discovered we were going around in circles. proceeded back to hotel to plan the next day and... rest! my legs started to complain by the time we were walking back, argh.
[to be continued]...
time to reveal the secrets which i've kept: my trip was from 14th to 22nd may 2006. Nine days. My destination was 台灣 (Taiwan), the whole of Taiwan, that is. for the record, within these nine days, we took 1.65GB of photos!! from myself, i tink i took up 1.1GB of space in my comp liao.
as i've previously mentioned, we took a jetstarasia budget plane to Taiwan, and i wouldn't call it one of the best plane trips i ever had. the seats were pretty crammed together like those seats on a Singapore bus, so there wasn't much leg space, especially if your bags is already occupying half of the space available for your legs. furthermore, we were positioned right at the back of the plane, so our seat-backs cannot be lowered due to the wall behind. and the whole plane is so darn small, that when we look at those big commercial planes from SIA or QANTAS, ours is like little chick looking at mother hen.
This is the whole plane, yes, it's THAT small
From left: Me, Mich and HP
From left: JH, Yeok and CL
In case you're asking who are they?, haha, yeok is my jc classmate, the guy is her bf and the rest are yeok's graduating frens. all of them are from WSC, er... i'm not. mmm...
after a bumpy 5 hours ride (there was turbulence), a mere 1 hour of sleep (due to turbulence and no leg space), and lots of rubbish written in my journal, we finally reached Taipei's CKS Internation Airport!
Looks very china and old school hor?
the six of us were really taking our time walking to the check out counter, asking security guards to help us take pictures and me taking weird videos (of yeok and jh running because the airport's aircon's very cold).
my butt was painful and my legs were numb from the plane ride, but we still hav to endure 1.5 hours of bus to the taipei city itself. oh gosh, my legs~~ but once the bus got to taipei, fwahh, all of us got overwhelmed by the lights! it was like... city of lights! the rest of the 0.5 hours was spent with our eyes glued to the windows trying to digest the different different stalls that are whooshing past us. i can't wait to check in to hotel, put down my bags and rush out to embrace this city of lights!!
This is just another ONE of the streets in taipei! whoot!
finally got settled down at our fan dian (hotel for u non-chinese speaking ppl) and rushed out. our hotel was at the edge of 西門盯 (ximending) so it was very convenient for us to just walk there. 西門盯 is like our bugis junction? the roads are blocked out and there are shops are the road side. the differences are that 西門盯 (1) is not sheltered (2) have natural wind blowing at us like air con which made the shopping experience very enjoyable (3) there are occasional motorbikes and scooters whizzing past us even tho the roads are blocked out to traffic.
The famous plaza at the entrance to 西門盯
The houses in taiwan are pretty amazing. They are so different from each other, yet, when u look at them altogether, there seem to be a certain style you can almost call the taiwan style. For example:
Doesn't the picture above look like the house is from Hong Kong? riight riight?
Anyway, we ate... and we ate. We were that hungry. No food served on budget airline lor! and so we indulge ourselves first with taiwan food! There's 阿宗麵線 (Ah Zong Mian Xian), which i didn't really enjoy until i started eating the organs (the sauce is weird, the Mian Xian is ok, the organs were heaven... everything has to be eaten together to enjoy that wonderful combination of flavours!).
Then, there's Taiwan style pasta. Ok, there's this Ah Beng looking guy who's serving the customers at the door, and when we walked in, he screamed out in the most boyish voice i've ever heard: 歡迎光臨！ woah~ that was damn scary! we were totally not used to this. the next few days sort of taught me that all young guys in Taiwan all spoke the same way... mmm.
And we had 奶茶! oh my god, i took a risk to order a drink that looks very foreign to me: 統一布丁奶茶, and it was fabulous. 統一布丁 is actually a kinda of jelly that is like half coffee and half dun noe what, and then it was added inside the 奶茶 to create a blend of taste that is something like a cross between mocha and fruit punch. damn weird! BUT damn nice!
ok, now that we're full, our eyes shifted from food stalls to other shops. the cd shops in taiwan are incredible, each one of them is like a HMV with so much variaties of music, and most prob due to the fact that each shop has the space of 3 storeys as well. haha~ i tried to find my "McDull" movie, found it in one vcd rental shop, but cannot buy it. argh~! oh oh, the vcd rental shop right? it is a shop that is like karaoke, where you book the room to watch the vcd you rented! cool hor?
then, there are shops like...
THESE! oh my god... you see them scattered all over the place in singapore, but in taiwan, they actually have stalls that operate these machines alone! at the back of the shop are speciality items for different anime/manga characters. and there are LOTS of doraemon stuff, plus many other anime/manga characters. i started my spree and bought doraemon figurines... tsk tsk, not a good start. i may end up buying more doraemon stuff than clothes and food.
we walked around a bit more, but discovered we were going around in circles. proceeded back to hotel to plan the next day and... rest! my legs started to complain by the time we were walking back, argh.
[to be continued]...
