This is a daily chronicle of my trip to Taiwan from 9th to 24th May 2006 with Ronghua and partially Boon Liang. I am trying to blog about all 15 days, so it takes time..sorry.. If you wanna read all that have been posted, pls click on Taiwan Adventure category here, or on the left sidebar.

And so it was the start of the Taiwan adventure..special thanks goes out to huixian, shuhua and her fren for coming from the chalet nearby to see us off. At that point of time, we have only booked the accomodation for our 1st nite in Taipei. Whatever happens after that, it’s pretty que sera sera all the way.

The flight was good and we reached Taipei on schedule. Then we took like 10 mins to raid the brochures counter for all the relevant and irrelevant maps and guides. This local mobile company, 台湾大哥大 gives out free sim cards @ the arrival hall to tourists with NT99 value inside, which is a pretty good deal i guess. You can top up as much as u like later. Wasn’t surprising that the bus that we took to the city centre was full of Singaporeans, and most of them got off at Ximending cos they booked hotels from jetstar asia’s hotel site and end up staying in Hotel Rainbow (1st of potentially lap-sap hotel names) and Hotel New World (same name as the one that collapsed in sg in 1986). The bus driver was left with me and ronghua and we were headed to Taipei Main Station in the heart of the city. He happened to be hungry and hence jio us to go with him “又好吃，又便宜” The driver happily parked on the side of a road, effectively blocking the lane and brought us to eat kong4 ba4 rice (the 3 layer fatty pork) and pork rib rice, which cost like NT80, pretty good deal. I got the pork rib rice…

1st meal in Taiwan

Little did the driver expect to get summoned by traffic police, NT3600..

Taiwanmex hostel is damn hard to find, supposedly near Zhongshan MRT. I think we walked past it twice b4 we could find it. And the room was er… small to say the least. As long as the double-decker bed, and as wide as 2 beds, you can guess how much space there is left in the room for us to stuff our belongings. Who cares, got clean bed and aircon, i shall not complain.

The nite was still young and we took the train a few stops down to Shilin Night Market. Many Singaporeans know this place by its reputation (and being big fans of 十字路口) It wasn’t as much of a food paradise than a place where u can buy cheap clothes and accessories. There was this pet shop lane, which was pretty interesting…


Clockwise from top-left: Kitty disturbed from sleep. Squabbling puppies. 粉圆冰. Legalised porno section in VCD shop.

Who can forget the XXL 香鸡排, the one where the auntie told ronghua that they dun cut the 鸡排 for you and it’s their principle. We ripped it into 2 pieces on our own eventually. The idea of sharing food is to ensure that we maintain more stomach space to try more stuff..

This was eventually washed down with Taiwan Beer.

Plans for Day 2: Go to Sun Moon Lake