Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Day 2 in taiwan

The second day was coincidentally the Lunar 15th day of the 7th month. Prayers and rituals may be common in Singapore, but have you seen this in Orchard road?


This is right smacked at the centre of XIMENDING outside a japanese restaurant that i had dinner the previous night. And almost 80% of the other shops had some form of prayers held in front of the shop, shopping malls included.


Had Korean food for lunch and it was quite nice. Set lunches aren't very cheap....
If i'm not wrong 165NT for this ($ 8?)


Fried udon with yummy seafood


Took the train and saw this.....

In Singapore we have priority seats, and in taiwan they have it too.

If you are feeling unwell, you can approach the counters and ask for a sticker to paste it on.



Alighted at Xin Dian Station, walked diagonally left to a bus stop and take bus number to WU LAI for their natural hot spring. Tickets collected upon boarding.


Final stop is the destination, get down the bus and beware of touting taxi drivers who want to bring you on a ride to the waterfall. Definitely its going to be impressive but its not where i was going. So we went walking by the river, reached the main streets of shops which is called 老街, cross the bridge and look for a staircase that goes downwards. On the way you should be able to see lanes of hot spring hotels.



Upon reaching i was at first quite stunned because all of them looks like ah peh and ah ma....
but look closer, there are other young people as well.

The people there made buckets out of detergent containers and they looked clean enough to be used. We sat by this pool of hot spring water.... it was steaming hot by the sides. I tried to put my toes in and was a scalded....


Pictures of me....



you can get changed and dip urself into the hot spring but i didnt becos nobody did except the old ah ma....
so we soaked our feets in and had a hot hot dip..... I was sweating from then for the whole day.
After nearly an hour its time for food!
This is 山猪肉 that is supposedly banned in singapore. It is common in taiwan because they can hunt it from their forest. Yummy!

Back to the station after that....

Took the train to travel to our next destination. The network is simple just make sure you are waiting at the correct side of the platform.

Get down at Houshanpi station and follow the sign boards to the exit, see 胡须章 thats famous for selling 鲁肉饭 walk straight and cross the road to get to wu fen pu
!After some shopping at wu fen pu, walked towards the direction of 松山车站 and cut across and you get to Raohe night market.


3 inch burger. 1 for 19NT. Lots of flabours to choose from. Bun was soft, meat was tender.



Baked potato and tapioca. This is the first time i've eaten something like this. adding the tapioca added a sweet taste to the potato which was good. The cheese was thick and chewy and the boss was generous with ham....
The best thing of taiwan would be the fried mushrooms. I tried those from singapore shi lin. the batter was overly thick and tasteless, covered the natural juicy mushrooms' taste. Those in taiwan was much better! the batter was evenly coated, tasted real crispy, they added 五香powder to the mushrooms and it was so juicy that one bite and the juice comes spurting out!
and look at the generous portions, it was over flowing. Plus u get to choose 3 varieties of mushrooms!


Taiwan has this thick thick soup that is similar to the texture of shark fin soup. This is actually 肉羹. It has some meat balls inside with a bit of spinach, carrots, eggs. i felt it tasted more like mee sua soup without the mee sua. But nonetheless it was great! Piping hot and spicy!


We bought 1 litre milk tea that is super huge. look at the proportion! bigger than the face!
And what? Did i hear wrongly that its cheaper than KOI in Singapore?


If anyone watched 食尚玩家 hosted by shasha, she did a series on raohe night market and this is the very much raved 胡椒饼 that was recommended. It was super hot and had to be cooled down to be eaten. The skin is rather flaky and the ingredients inside had this special peppery taste that blended well with the meat and is very fragrant. I had some problems biting it though cos of braces.

We sat outside a temple to finish our food and this was wad we saw. The left over flags to put on prayer tables the day before had to be burnt.

Went back to the room, searched thru the channel and see what i found?
This show is called 学校没教的事. The girls are actually promoting sex toys! And customers get to call in to enquire things like how to use it..... omy.....

Before heading to bed i drank this, which was recommended by my taiwan fren. Its suppose to be a fibre drink to aid digestion. Drink 1 bottle of this and you will head to the toilet before the day ends.

These are my loots from taiwan 五分埔.... almost all at 100NT each.

Supper was cup noodles!

Next up? Water theme park? Shilin night market? Luxy?

Monday, October 11, 2010

Taiwan Day 1


Taiwan for 8 days was worth a whole year of hard work teaching tuition.

Flew Jetstar because the other airlines were either too expensive or didn't have the time slots.

Jet star was good, flew early and back late.



Upon reaching, we took the city express to Taipei itself.

Counters were located at a corner, with obvious sign boards.

Took the 国光客运as it is the shortest duration, most frequent and cheapest.

Each ticket is 125NT (S$5.40) and takes 55mintues to reach Taipei main stn.





The first impressions in Taiwan......



They have lanes specially for bikes, or cars.



This is so Hong Kong......



This is my apartment. Basically we stay in privated rented rooms, not hotels, they are usually targetting locals who travel from maybe Tai nan to Taipei for holiday to stay. The rates are definitely cheaper. Less than S$60 a night.







I stay in the heart of taipei at ximending, the most vibrant part of the city. 2 streets away from the bustling centre.

The rest of the day was spent sleeping because we woke at 4am to the airport, took a 4 hour plane, 1 hour bus ride and was dead tired.


Woke for dinner to meet my BOSS. Had japanese food and its their treat! Shall post foodie stuff in simplelovesimplefood.

Went to 中正纪念堂 to look at night scenaries.... Take a stroll and soak into the holiday mood....



Basically there's a concert hall and a memorial place there.

Jus like esplanade, young people gather to practice dancing at the open areas.


The grand structures is very grand and displayed a strong sense of chinese culture that i felt was great. And felt was missing from our local scene.


Headed to 师大 for their night market. Take the train to the Taiwan Teacher Academy Stn and exit, walk along the school till the end and you can see the night market. It took about 10 minutes because the school was huge.


Had oyster omelette. Unlike Singapore's version of the crispy and eggy, taiwan's is starchy and mushy served with a slightly sour sauce. thumbs down......



Some loots from the night market. First day is still warming up. Bought these super hairy ones from 2 young girls who were super friendly. This cost 150NT. (S$6.50)



Tata, end of Day 1. Will be back for more updates.











Saturday, October 2, 2010

Detective Dee + Ippudo + 4 Fingers Bonchon

Went to watch Detective Dee... Li Bing Bing is DAMN CHIO!!!! She got the traditional chinese shu nu look. She didnt even have thick makeup on.. so envious!
The show is alright but i think too many twists liao.. abit luan. And the graphics abit fake...
I give it 3.5/5!


Us!

Went to Ippudo for ramen after movie as we didn't eat lunch... The place is classy and nice!

Blurry shot of the interior... I still haven really figure out how to use my new cam. The auto focus abit wonky...


Dennis~

Moi~

My Akamaru Ramen with Ni-Tamago! $17
The black thing is soya sauce and the red paste is bean sauce. Something different... the soup is full of bits of pork fat? Super sinful..

Then we walk walk walk around and went to ION for more food x_x
Dennis bought some waffle thingy with cream from Marvelous cream, forgot to take pic.
Den we went to look for a drink


Happy Lemon! So happy and cute


Its bery cute! from Taiwan, and got alot of special flavours


After making our orders, they give us this cute tag with a queue number... the girl's hair is a lemon shape! So cute.

Although there is alot of ppl, but after queuing for Koi, this is nothing. haha

Yay our drinks!
I ordered Green Tea with Rock Salt and Cheese ($3.50)
Dennis ordered Lemon Tea with seaweed pearls ($2.50)

The girl instructed that for my drink I have to drink it from the cup and cannot use straw.
I understand why.... cos the white thing is cheese!!! All I can say is that its a unique taste. Haha
Dennis's lemon tea w seaweed pearl is very refreshing and nicer than mine. The seaweed pearl taste more like agar agar to me. Don't have fishy smell at all.

Then we went shopping and didn't take any pics and ate dinner!


4 Fingers Bonchon Chrispy Chicken!


This device will blink if our food is ready!


We ordered 1 6pc chicken combo and 1 chicken sandwich combo.
Combo consists of the usual drink and fries...

From Left: Mysterious awesome sauce, ketchup, thai sweet chilli


The usual photo taking again.....



The fries has seasoning!!!! I think its seaweed.
Got put effort leh.... not like normal fast food the fries is just there for the sake of being there. Or some fast food even charge more for seasoning -_-


This is the awesome chicken sandwich with kimchi flavoured(i think) coleslaw. The buns are FRIED. Super sinful but it taste like fried mantou and crispy hot. Together with the cool coleslaw and chicken its perfect!
I like this more than their signature fried chicken!

This is the much raved-about chicken. Its actually fried chicken drenched in their sauce.
The spicy one is too salty and the soya sauce is too sweet i don't really like it.


Lastly, hairbands that i bought from Far East... 3 for $5! nice rite! yay love it.
Had a great day today =D