Day 6, Thursday 21 Aug

At the break of dawn, EK and I borrowed the hotel’s bicycles and cycled to the pier to catch the morning sights of Sun Moon Lake. It was apparently said to be beautiful, but we found it ok only. Nothing fantastic as the sun rise was blocked by the mountains so it was practically bright when we finally saw the sun.

>>Bubble Tea...Anyone?

After breakfast and a relaxing cup of coffee on the hotel’s private jetty, we met the tour group for a walk around the town and to visit a place selling all sorts of health supplements – Ling Zi (some rare mushroom), deer penis, royal jelly, etc. When all of us finally got out of this commission trap, we set off for our journey towards Taipei!

>>Pure Bliss

Of course we made several stops along the way, with the first being wenwu temple 文武廟.

>>See the cute little animals on the corners of their roof? SO CUTE!!!

Then, we visited Formasa Aboriginal Culture Village 九族文化村 for a morning of fun. It not only had an Aboriginal Culture Village introducing the 9 tribes of Taiwan and their living environment, they had amusement park rides as well.

>>The Entrance Pic...

First stop, we visited the beautiful garden, which reminded me of Swiss/Austria or somewhere european...definitely a non-asian impression.

>>All Aboard!

>>Who...Who...

>>Crab Fight!

>>The Peacock Dance

EK, not being into these rides left me to experience the only ride I really wanted to experience: Space Mountain. I have heard the ‘Space Mountain’ in Disneyland is one you can’t miss, and I assumed this was probably a copy of it. I was pleasantly disappointed, and I’m sure the much appraised ‘Space Mountain’ is far better than this! Unless of course I’ve outgrown these rides and they no longer have exciting factor.

>>The only ride EK takes...

EK and I proceeded to explore the nine villages, taking the cable car up the mountain and making our way slowly down.

When we finally visited all 9 villages (nothing really fantastic), we saw this awesome water ride! Surprisingly, EK wanted to ride it too. He said water-rides were not as life threatening. What the?!

Unfortunately, we were out of time as we had to catch the cable car back up the mountain to catch a tribal song and dance performance, which we enjoyed and found entertaining.

Making our way down the hill the second time, we were so tempted to try that water-ride, but our deadline was up and we had to gather. So obediently, we met the group. There’s this old couple in our group and they are forever the last with the old man’s walking difficulties. So here we were, the group of us, waiting for these 2 again. EK and I felt more bummed that we didn’t go for our ride.

When everyone gathered, up we went on the bus and headed to TAIPEI!

Upon entering Taipei, it was already dark.

>>The warm welcome of Taipei Traffic

Our first stop was dinner at Hai Pa Wang Restaurant 海霸王. After a good meal, we headed on to Xi Men Ding西門町for SHOPPING. First stop was to a Taiwan snack shop, but we didn’t buy anything from there. EK and I couldn’t wait to start shopping. We finally broke away from the group and walked Xi Men Ding. I loved Xi Men Ding. The clothes were young and nice, not too expensive either. The atmosphere was lively, and the place buzzed with people.

>>Welcome to Xi Men Ding!

We didn’t buy too many things on our first trip as we were coming back to stay at a hotel in Xi Men Ding on our extension of 3 days. EK bought a nice work shirt, and I bought a pair of pink sneakers from a funky teenage shop. The salesgirl was very friendly, answering our many questions about where to find good food and the places for clubbing. Before rejoining the rest of the group, we had mango ice shavings 芒果冰. I thought it was going to be YUM and something I’d love, but turns out, the ice was frozen milk shavings…which put me off since I don’t like milk. Nevertheless, I ate several spoonfuls of it and am proud of it. EK loved it terribly though, but then again, he loves milk.

>>Yucky yucky milky!

That night, after checking in to our hotel, EK and I decided to explore the area around the hotel. Shops were closing, but we just wanted to make use of our time in Taiwan and see as much as we could. We saw cars, traffic lights, mini-marts, 3 seven-elevens on that short span of a few roads, video rental shops, 24 hour massage parlors, etc.

We got back to the hotel around 1am in the morning and hit the sacks.

Day 7, Friday 22 Aug

We departed our hotel at 8.30am. Initially, the first stop was Yang Ming Shan National Park 陽明山國家公園 to admire flowers and greenery, but there weren’t any flowers during this season, so we collectively gave that a skip, in exchange for a shopping excursion to Miramar Entertainment Centre.

Obviously, shops weren’t open that early, so we headed to Tamshui to see the famous Fisherman’s Wharf 漁人碼頭, a filming site in Meteor Garden. Honestly, I couldn’t recall which part of Meteor Garden was filmed on this bridge, but nevertheless, it was a pretty bridge. We proceeded on to Tamshui old streets 淡水老街 to walk the shops.

>>Now where exactly was Meteor Garden filmed?

We bought a small packet of the famous "Iron eggs" – black eggs which have been stewed in a mix of herbs and spices until pickled. It’s a very weird and chewy texture…definitely doesn’t make me crave for it to eat seconds.

>>Super chewy things...

As we left, EK bought his milk tea while I bought Ah Gei (crystal noodles stuffed in fried bean curd, served with a mild hot sauce). I couldn’t leave Tamshui without tasting the famous Ah Gei, but I really don’t understand why it is famous. The pinkish sauce was just plain weird, and it was rather blend. I took one bite and threw the rest away.

>>The weird things Taiwanese appreciates

Upon boarding the bus, I discovered I was given a very memorable souvenir of Taiwan – sandfly bites!!! SO MANY OF THEM! I don’t know if it was at Fisherman’s wharf or was it at Tamshui old streets, but it was at one of these places I got bitten and possibly scarred for life! 68 bites on my left leg and 60 on my right, enough to scare any person away!!! URGH! And to think, just that morning, EK was commenting on how smooth and nice my legs were. And now this!!!

>>My legs!!! RUINED!!! Can you count the bites?!

So that made me all upset and I gave the next stop a miss while EK went down to tour the temple. A few others also remained on the bus and gave the temple a miss.

>>It was actually quite pretty...

Following that, we headed back towards the city for lunch at one of the themed restaurants in Taiwan called Five Cent Driftwood Restaurant 五角船板. The outside looked like remains of a shipwreck cum a tribal house. The inside had weathered pieces of driftwood, Chinese stone sculptures, antiques, welded metal, and chunky, rough wooden tables and chairs. It was truly a unique experience and our cameras, like many others, were going off like a dog let off its leash.




After lunch, our tour guide took us to another 2 commission earning places. The first stop a feng shui house to have our feng shui predicted. Practically the whole tour group ended up buying a bit of feng shui back, EK and myself included. We were first shocked at the lady’s ability of reading our personalities just from our names and birthdates, and then later impressed when she could pin-point stuff so true about ourselves. We pondered very very long and hard whether to get that piece of jade. I argued with myself that we didn’t need a piece of dragon-shaped jade to change our fate. We just need to work hard in order to achieve our goals in life. EK on the other hand fell in love with the dragon. He’s been looking for a pretty dragon-shaped jade and never seemed to find one as nice or pretty. When he was showed this black piece of jade, he liked it, but the price was also very pretty. My white dragon-shaped jade was about half the size of EK’s, and also half the price. We deliberated for a very long time, until the salesgirl was about to give-up, and I could see a look of jealousy when her colleagues were making sales (our tour group seems to be a very rich bunch). After thinking and thinking and thinking over it, EK finally bought his and was successfully persuaded by the salesgirl to buy one for me and the salesgirl did her ritual of cleaning the jade with a leaf and some “feng shui” water. “Thankfully my saliva didn’t go to waste,” thought the salesgirl.

The second stop was a tea house. Where we sat quietly like students, and listened to her talk about how special their tea was, which really tasted like normal tea. I think this was the first place no one from the tour group bought anything. Perhaps it was partly due to the fact that our wallets bore holes from the feng shui experience.

Finally, we could proceed on with the actual Taiwan sightseeing/shopping, depends how you see it, and we visited first the promised Miramar Entertainment Park 美麗華百樂園. This was the filming site for a Taiwanese drama called Why Why Love, staring one of EK’s favourite Taiwanese celebrity, Rainie Yang. So the first thing we did was to take a picture of us in front of the mall, to leave our mark!

>>Same place!

Following that, we raced up to the top floor to ride the ferris wheel! We wanted to take the completely transparent carriage, so we waited in line while empty carriages spun past. We figured since we’re here, might as well wait for the rare transparent carriage, there were only 2 transparent carriages in the entire wheel.




After the ride, we weren’t left with much time to shop around. We asked the salesgirls which shop Rainie worked in in the drama but no one knew! Weird! Seems like it was just another show to them, no one took notice. However, we did find another filming spot and took photos there before assembling.

>>Rainie was here, riding this escalator...

>>Ooops...same building, different escalator...

>>And she got her heart broken here...

>>Ooops again...same building, opposite bridge!

>>And they met here...

>>Almost...same steps, different angle! Hahaha

We proceeded to Taipei 101 (101大樓), arriving close to sunset. EK and I didn’t go up to the viewing gallery as the others in our group, but instead, we walked the branded shops: LV, D&G, Gucci, Vivien Westwood, Prada, Dior, etc. As we weren’t after any branded goods, we ended up finding Taipei 101 boring.


After Taipei 101, we proceeded for dinner at another simple restaurant before heading to Shihlin Night Market士林夜市, where we shopped and ate somemore. Shopping wasn’t great coz I found Shihlin a big mess and it was tough job searching through the different clothes hanging on the racks in every store to find something I like. After a while, I got real bored with searching. But the food made up for it, with the yummy fried and juicy chicken cutlet, the sweet and can’t get any sweeter fruits, bubble tea and so on. We left Shihlin at 11pm and returned to our hotel room to pack our luggages till 1+am in the morning. We were changing hotel the next morning and embarking on our 3 day free-and-easy tour of Taiwan!

>>The most memorable part of Shihlin...Hao Da Ji Pa!

Day 8, Saturday 23 Aug

Bright and early the next morning, we checked out, got a cab and proceeded to our new hotel to check in and leave our luggage with the concierge.

Then, we headed to Xi Men station to catch the metro across town to Shihlin station, and then caught a public bus to visit the National Palace Museum故宮博物院.
>>Buying our tickets, how independent of me!

>>Figuring out which train to take...

>>Waiting for the train...
The museum was nice and interesting. EK and I forgot about the time and walked every single floor, and every single exhibition room. We didn’t notice until it was 2+pm and our tummies were getting hungry. We decided to have a light snack at the café before continuing on with the rest of the exhibition.

>>The only pics we were allowed to take coz the museum did not allow cameras inside...sigh
To our horror, it was pouring cats and dogs outside. So we ended up taking a long tea break. When we had finished the entire museum and walked several rounds around the large museum shop, we realized that the rain wasn’t going to stop, so ever-so-brilliant me suggested we catch a cab to New York New York 紐約紐約 and shop till the rain stops. At least were indoors and also visiting a place that was on my places-to-go list. Why? It was mentioned in Meteor Garden, when San Cai went on her first date with Hua Ze Lei, they went New York New York. DUH!
>>The paper bag says all!
So shopping we went and I absolutely LOVE New York New York!!! Especially during sale season when they are trying to clear their summer collection!! United Colours of Benetton was going at 90% discount – I bought 1 top and 1 pants and had to find reasons not to buy the other 2 tops I wanted to get. Other shops were going at 50% and 70% discount! It was AMAZING. New York New York is like a large 6 or was it 7 storey department store, with little individual shops inside selling young fashion labels from all around. EK bought a shirt at 50% off while I fell head over heels for this patent leather bag going at 20% off for new arrivals, but it was still too expensive for me to afford. SIGH.

We moved on to the next big shopping mall or should I say mallS!!!! Thanks to the genius who thought of sheltered passes which connected New York New York to ShinKong Mitsukoshi新光三越, we didn’t need to get wet and found another shopping paradise. ShinKong Mitsukoshi – I LOVED it more than New York New York!! Made up of 4 massive malls side by side to each other, each mall was special in its own way. There was one building only for high fashion, with individual stores carrying brands such as Boss, BCBG Max Azria, Versace, etc. We gave this one a quick browse before heading to the other building, carrying the kind of fashion labels more suited to our tastes and income bracket such as MNG, T-Touch, Ralph Lauren, DKNY (oh, I fell in love with a gold bag going at 50% off – sob, it was still $300 after discount…). There were other local brands with awesome designs. I fell in love with a young fashion label called Poupine – designed in France, made in Taiwan (http://www.poupine.com.tw/). The clothes were cute, funky, young and had bold colours – just the kind of style I like. I ended up buying 1 pair of jeans and 1 high-waisted shorts for work.

We didn’t realize the time until the shops were closing! With 2 more malls of ShinKong Mitsukoshi to cover, we rushed over to one which was more of a department store concept, but we only had 10 minutes to browse before fatigue overcame us and the shops were closing. We grabbed a cab back to our hotel and caught a nap. Our night was not over but we were too tired, we needed to recharge.

At around midnight, we left our hotel and grabbed a cab back to the vicinity of New York New York. We were going to a club called Room 18, located at the basement of Neo 19, a building just one block away from New York New York. The club was okay, I’m not into the clubbing scene, but EK said that those who could dance danced a lot better than those in Singapore, but there was also a relatively large group who bobbed along to the music as well. It was a good experience, and we only left the club close to 4am in the morning.