Taiwan Day 1 & 2

This post has been lagging because I have been really busy these days at work. Today I forced Weeliem to go for Korean food with me for lunch but we reached there, pushed and pulled the door and saw the sign that says Seoul Garden closed on Sunday! So we walked over to Gurney Plaza for the BBQ buffet at the other Seoul Garden. Hmmmph..

So now let me bring you along on the journey to Taiwan in spring. I will try to make a comprehensive post.

Oh no, the first day when we arrived in Taoyuan International Airport, it was raining. We took the bus to Ximen directly, got down right in front of the MRT station NT$125. We had to pull our luggages in the rain with just one umbrella to where we stayed, Colormix about 7 minutes walk away.

After dropping our luggages, we went back to the MRT station and purchased Easycard at the price of NT$500 which contains usable value of NT$400 and deposit NT$100. We were supposed to get another Easycard from our friends but they were still at somewhere busy with their errands and could not meet up today. Anyway, we can still take from them on day 3 where we are going to have a trip together. The Easycard was redeemed in Singapore because Taiwan is having some sort of tourism promotion where you show the proof of your coming travel and they will give you a NT$50 Easycard. The best part of this card is that it doesn't have any deposit in it and you can keep the card as souvenir. I have mine with me still and the card is very pretty! Special edition from Taiwan tourism. The MRT station in Taiwan is very well mantained, just like Singapore and Hong Kong. I still don't understand why we can't do the same good job to the Komuter stations in Klang valley.




Anyway, our first stop was Long Shan temple. The route is pretty easy, just got down at Longshan temple MRT station and followed the direction on sign boards. It was raining pretty heavily so you could not see many people outside the temple.




We had this plan earlier that we wanted to eat beef noodle. How can you not eating the famous beef noodle of Taiwan when you came here right? We googled and found this shop called 688 (Niu Papa) at somwhere so we purposely got down at Zong Xiao Dun Gua station and walked around 20 minutes trying to locate the place.



We ordered different bowl of beef noodle, mine was spicy type NT$300 and Weeliem's one was the normal one NT$200. This shop sells some very expensive beef noodle, watch the price list at the menu NT$10000. The beef noodle here was not as good, we found a better one at Shilin market the next day where it was way cheaper ! NT$100.




After dinner, we took the MRT to Taipei City Hall station and boarded a free shuttle to Taipei 101. It was still raining and getting heavier and this makes photo shooting at outdoor really difficult. We walked to some 100 to 200 metres away or more to get some pretty good shoot of the building but the mist was covering much of the top pointy portion.




That's the end of our day 1 journey.

On day 2, we started out journey around 8am , took the MRT to Taipei Main Station and boarded bus from there to Yangming Shan.


The weather was cold that day added up we were going to the high land.



It was so hard to take a photo of us because we did not have tripod and we didn't want to give our camera to the China tourist.


Cherry blossoms


This is the famous flower clock which I think look nothing special. We saw the same clock at Little Swiss Garden in Qingjing.



After Yangming Shan, we took a cab to Beitou. Sight seeing mostly. Here's a quite entertaining fountain. I felt stupid for paying so much attention to it. Haha


This is a pretty unique building, I think a library or something



The next photo is nothing relevant in showcasing the nice places in Beitou but I think I look pretty natural in the photo, so why not?



Beitou Thermal Valley was closed that day, not sure why so we just managed to snatch a photo with the sign outside the place. What a waste to come so far for not a complete trip. :P


Not all of their trains are this pretty. We saw this very artistic painted train and quickly took a photo with it. The train conductor even waited until we finish shooting only he asked the driver to start moving. So kind of them.



Then, we took the train and went to Danshui. We strolled along the Danshui old street, ate some food. A-gei ball is so not nice but we ate a very yummy onion fried biscuit. We didn't want to walk some more so we just took a ferry to Fisherman Wharf instead of taking the bus.


Day 2 was a super long day and a tiring one. We still go shopping at Shilin market after that so you can guess I won't be able to shop much. I was too physically and mentally exhausted.

A photo of some kids wearing and makeup as ghost promoting a new movie or drama.. Not so sure. Never bother to ask, I was too tired. She looked straight into Weeliem's camera so that he could take a good photo of her