Taiwan Holiday - Day 3

Day 3 [National Palace Museum - Ximending - Taipei 101]

Day 3 was a Saturday so I chose to go for the city sights. Our first stop of the day was the National Palace Museum. We took the MRT to Shilin Station. Supposed to take a bus to the museum but we narrowly missed it so ended up taking a cab (RM13). In hindsight, should have just waited for the next bus.

From the Taiwan Tourism website: The National Palace Museum houses the world's largest collection of priceless Chinese art treasures, one which spans China's nearly 5,000-year history. Most of the museum's 620,000 art objects were part of the Chinese imperial collection, which began over 1,000 years ago in the early Song dynasty.

One of the most famous exhibits was the Jadeite Cabbage (photo from Google Image) -

From breakfast time, I already told hubby that the Jadeite Cabbage was the item that I wanted to see most. So, his first comment when we reached the exhibit was "What..... so small one ah??" It was less than 20 cm high ;)

After a few hours at the museum we went to the Shilin station for lunch. Went to a small shop and ordered beef noodles, yam cake, fish ball soup and milk tea with custard (approx RM30). It was unexpectedly yummy!!!! Slurp!

Lunch - beef noodles

Lunch - yam cake and fish ball soup

After lunch, we took the MRT to Ximending. Wow...... the Ximending Pedestrian Area was just huggggeeee!!! Very hip and happening place especially for the younger crowd.

Views of Ximending

The super tall ice-cream ;)

Happy Elyssa when she saw the ice-cream

Street Stage Performance

"Human Statues"

We tried this frog jelly drink

The famous Ay-Chung Taiwanese mee sua.
No tables and had to queue up but it was so yummy!!! Much better than the mee sua I had at Shilin Night Market. I regretted not ordering a second bowl. No photo of my mee sua cos I had to hold the spoon in one hand and the bowl in the other hand :)

Red House Theatre

Our Pasta dinner with a view of the pedestrian street

We left Ximending around 7pm then headed to Taipei 101. Was just thinking of seeing the tower but then last minute decided to go up to the observatory tower (RM40 each) since we were already there.

Taipei 101

No charge for Elyssa as she was below the 115 mark

Elyssa and I with the Damper Baby

With the real damper (used to reduced mechanical vibrations)

The view from the observatory deck was just breathtaking! My simple camera just couldn't capture the night shots properly but here's one anyway-

View from Taipei 101 tower

Headed back to the hotel after that as we had to pack our bags. Had to catch an early train the next morning for a 2D,1N trip to the Taroko National Park. When I did my planning, that was the main highlight of my Taiwan trip and it definitely lived up to my expectations!!

- End of Day 2-

Taiwan Holiday - Day 2

Day 2 [Jinguashih - Jiufen - Raohe Night Market]

After a quick breakfast at the hotel, we headed to Jinguashih/Jiufen for a day trip out of Taipei. Following the guide book, we took a train to the Ruifang station (only RM5 each for the 50 minute trip. We were a bit lost at first but a lady with a "volunteer" vest at the station showed us how to buy tickets and which platform to go to) then took the bus straight to the Gold Ecological Park in Jinguashih.

Elyssa and I in the tunnel @ Ruifang Train Station

(such a nice looking tunnel!)

@ the Gold Ecological Park, Jinguashih
We just loved this beautiful park (no entrance fee) where part of it used to be a gold and copper mine Spent pretty much half a day there including a leisurely lunch. It was a darn hot day though.

Walking around the park
(they even had strollers on loan which came in really handy cos the park was huge)

Elyssa and I walking on the mining cart tracks

Hubby fooling around with Elyssa

With a 220kg bar of SOLID GOLD !!

Original tunnel entrance to the gold mine

Our lunch

We ordered the Miner's Lunch Box Set ( RM16). Interesting packaging and the metal container, scarf and chopsticks were ours to bring back ;)

After the Gold Ecological Park, we hopped on the bus for a 15 minute ride to JiuFen. Jiufen is a direct translation of "9 portions" - during the first years of the Qing Dynasty, the village housed nine families thus the village would request "9 portions" everytime shipments arrived from town. This place was also used as a model for the anime movie Spirited Away.

The narrow road

Managed to take a photo of our bus and an oncoming bus trying to pass each other on the road.

Scenery taken from the bus

Jinshan Street at Jiufen

How nice to be Elyssa. Whenever tired, just zzzzzz on daddy's chest :)

While Elyssa slept, we had this yam/sweet potato/green bean dessert.

Pretty good. The balls were placed on top of shaved ice.


Grilled mushrooms


Enjoying tea at one of the tea houses

Elyssa drinking her tea

Ah-Mei teahouse

Another view of the street at JiuFen

Old Cinema

After JiuFen, (between the two towns, we enjoyed Jinguashih more) we took a bus back to Taipei. On the way back, we stopped at the Raohe Street Night Market.

Our Dinner - herbal chicken claypot soups
Not from the night market stalls but at one of the small restaurants cos we needed to use the loo :) Looks good but it was actually quite tasteless

Octopus at the night market. Reminded me of worldcup-predicting Paul the Octopus ;)

Bought some stuff from the night market then took the train back to our hotel. An enjoyable day!

- End of Day 2 -

Taiwan Holiday - Day 1

We are back!

If I have to use one word to describe the Taiwan holiday, it would be "AMAZING" !!! We enjoyed it so much that the 8 days, 7 nights were just not enough. I actually called up the airlines to extend our trip but unfortunately there were no more tickets available. (well, reading the papers this morning about typhoon in Taiwan, this may have been a blessing instead)

We were actually very, very impressed with Taiwan. The sights and sounds itself were great. Couple that with good public transport, litter-free streets, clean toilets (with toilet paper!), yummy food and tourist info centre at all major stations, we just loved it!

I have sooo much to write so I'm going to split this into a multi-part post. Probably one post per day that I was there. Well...... assuming I don't get tired of writing. I'm in a bit of a long-winded mood today, so I shall add in the pre-planning phase as well for this Day 1 post.



Pre-planning
I did spend quite a bit of time researching for this trip. After all, travelling on a free&easy trip with a young child needs more planning than joining a tour group or backpacking with friends. I discovered that blogs and travel forums were wonderful sources of information. But of course, there were always conflicting opinions thus decisions still need to be made. After hubby kept saying "up to you lah.... you decide" I gave up asking him and just planned on my own ;)

So before flying off, I already had in mind the day-to-day itinerary plus other basic info such as which bus to take, directions to the hotel, where to buy MRT pass etc. I've also made bookings for :
1) Flight tickets (I redeemed my MAS Enrich points, but taxes still came up to RM420 EACH)
2) Accommodation - 2 separate hotels
3) Interstate train tickets
4) Tour guide for 1 day

All the planning made my very excited about the trip !!


Day 1 [Flight to Taipei - Longshan Temple - Shilin Night Market]
Our flight was at 9.30am. I thought I had to carry a sleeping Elyssa to the cab (6.45am) but she was wide-awake when we got ready. She was so excited that she was going to sit in an aeroplane :)

Oh yeah, 2 weeks before our flight, I got an unexpected complimentary upgrade from Enrich Silver to Enrich Gold. Yippeee yay........ priority check in and access to the Golden Lounge even with our Economy class tickets!!

Breakfast at the MAS Golden Lounge

Elyssa enjoying the food

Toilet and shower facilities at the lounge

Elyssa and I in the plane

My meal - sambal prawn nasi lemak

Hubby's meal - chicken omelette

Elyssa's kid meal

Mid way through the flight, Elyssa got restless.

Luckily, a cupful of cornflakes worked wonders :)

We arrived at Taipei around 2pm. Took the Kuo Kuong bus (RM12.50 per person only for the one hour journey. Taxi would have been around RM130) straight to the Taipei Main Station. From there, we walked to our hotel - Say Love Hotel. We couldn't find the lift so poor hubby carried our huge luggage bag+ handcarry trolley bag from the MRT station up to the street level. Kudos to him!

By the time we checked into the hotel room and freshened up a bit, it was almost 5.30pm already. We bought our MRT pass (RM50 with RM10 deposit) then went to Longshan Temple which was 2 stops away.

Longshan Temple
This temple is listed as a tourist spot but it's also actively used as a place of worship by locals. What struck me most was the degree of their belief. I saw a lady praying aloud fervently with her eyes closed and with tears flowing freely down her cheeks. I also saw many middle aged ladies sitting around the temple praying softly while fingering the prayer beads. And when I glanced around at the facial expression of the worshippers, I could see that they have strong belief in their religion. Or maybe the worshippers I have seen before in M'sia are just more reserved in showing emotions.

Elyssa and I in front of the temple

After Longshan temple, our next destination was the Shilin Night Market. Even though it was a week night, it was still pretty crowded.

.

Our dinner - Pork Rice, Chicken Rice and Bitter Gourd Soup (RM9)

It was pretty good but the old uncle manning the store was a little weird. Not exactly the best service (with my smattering Mandarin, I didn't know what to order and he didn't know what I wanted) but at least we still got our food in the end.

We tried a couple more things (no photos) like the Taiwanese Mee Sua and Papaya Milkshake. Somehow it was a little disappointing. Nice food but not exactly great. Maybe I was expecting a little more after all the hype about Shilin Night Market. Or maybe we were just tired after our flight.

We left around 9+pm to go back to our hotel. Near the hotel, we saw a building which had a "Daiso" sign. RM4 flat price instead of RM5 in M'sia so we decided to just drop in. Oh my.... I was shocked cos it was just HUGE !!! I thought the S'pore outlet was already huge but this one was way larger. Kinda like walking into a Jusco supermarket. They were already closing so I just grabbed some hairclips for Elyssa.


--- End of Day 1 ---

Going for a HOLIDAY !!

Will be flying off soon for a holiday in Taiwan. Yippeeee Yay !!!

One week of free n easy holiday with hubby and Elyssa. I'm soooo excited :)