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.. Not to mention the fact that I conveniently forgot about this once I started working. If you wanna read all that have been posted, pls click on Taiwan Adventure category here, or on the left sidebar.

And so yet after another boring night watching tv in room, we headed back to Hualien on a coach, with me as usual stopping just short of OD-ing on motion sickness medicine. So long as it works. Back at Hualien, we stopped by a muachee 麻署 store. Make it a big store, with the photos and autographs of many celebrities. It’s essentially their factory as well, where they make the daily muachee, which unfortunately can only be kept for a day or so. The pre-packed ones can be kept for 3 mths i think. Bought those, pretty good stuff, which my family and carlin can attest to.

We planned on taking a train back up north to Taipei to complete our circumnavigation of the whole island. There was a thought of going to this town called Su’ao 苏奥 about 50km north of Hualien. This indescript town has the only cold springs in Taiwan, but the train schedule was not favourable since we didnt wanna end up reaching Taipei at 2am with no accommodation. So yet another place got sacrificed.


An often understated delicacy in Taiwan is the railway food 火车便当. The main reason i guess is that different regions have their food prepared by different stations. The main stations i think are Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung and Hualien. I think i managed to try all 4 and the best were those from Kaohsiung and Hualien. (The above variant was from Hualien.) Another interesting thing is the packaging, always the idyllic kampong feel to it. Typically the box would contain a large piece of pork chop, with some ham and 2 veg. More than often u will find a darksauce egg inside.


Damn good but damn hard to eat with chopsticks on a moving train, fuck!

Back in Taipei, we checked out another hostel that came well-recommended, called Happy Family Hostels. The boss was not around and only a middle-aged Japanese lady was there watching tv. Using our superior communication skills, ie hand signals and some broken english, we understood finally that the boss wasn’t ard but we could wait for a while. Eventually we got our room and it’s definitely a bit more rundown compared to TaiwanMex, though the very few occupants meant that we got dibs most of the time on the PC.

The final 2 days in Taipei was for Ronghua to cheong his shopping and for me to check out some locations. That doesn’t mean that i have no shopping, so we headed to Gongguan 公馆 which was located near the campus of NTU 台湾国立大学. This was recommended by Huili for cheap shopping and we were mainly hunting for sports apparel. Bought the nike jersey for ziwei and the adidas classic jacket for my sister here. Thereafter we went our separate ways to explore. I passed by this shop in the area.

Looks like a familiar shop at Lor 9 Geylang hor

Realised that Shida Night Market 师大夜市 was nearby, so i took the MRT for 1 stop to go in search of good food (again). Tried the oyster mee sua…wah piang, better than the Ximending/Shilin’s one. Same goes for the mango sundae crepe…nice

Sights of Shida: I really should have brought my tripod with me to Taiwan..

Walked past one of the hostels for Shida 师范大学, piang is this hostel or prison?

Check out the 2m wall and iron rods on top..

Lonely Planet said that there’s a famous ice desert shop 冰店 nearby, so while eating my mango sundae crepe in the very light drizzle, i walked in the general direction, hoping to find the shop. In any case, failure to find the shop would mean that i will pass by Din Tai Fung 鼎泰丰 and the idea of dumplings on a chiily night seems very much agreeable as well. Needless to say, i failed to find both, or rather i didn’t even realise that i already walked past the general area and ended up very near to CKS Memorial Square 中正纪念堂..

best liaoz…..

Of course the key word for this trip is ADAPTING. Wound up going in to take photos, some of the shaky shots were taken while standing n trying to keep still. The more stable shots were done by resting the cam at the foot of the giant flagpole or the top of the path lighting.

Shaky pic of CKS Memorial


View of the gate, concert hall on right, theatre on left, and giant tek-koh flagpole in centre


Concert hall in all its splendour


The gate to the memorial square


Final shot of the memorial

Decided to walk further west in the direction of Ximending and passed by the Presidential Residence 总统府， 2 pics of its beauty by night.



They have real guards, ie. not the wayang type with fanciful drills, armed with assault rifles, M16s I believe. Then again, very much important, considering that 阿扁 is as popular in Taiwan as George W. Bush is in USA.

The guard was friendly enough to direct me to Ximending, where i restarted my neverending quest for good food. Attempt to find the delicious pork rib noodles 排骨面 which we had with Boon Liang when he was here. For those of you who never went there before, the so-called Ximending is actually an intersection of 8 streets. The whole area was developed during the Japanese occupation and it eventually became a predestrian-only shopping hub. Not just are there 8 streets, each street supports its own network of small lanes and alleys. This means that I got lost again while navigating thru the small lanes. Then again, the last time we weren’t purposely hunting for that place, more like we stumbled upon it. So i gave up after 1 hour. 10pm I stopped for a longan drink @ this famous longan drink place, and walked abit more, thinking wat else can i eat here. Then, paydirt! Found it…

That proved to be the last strenuous activity of the day. Hot spring again tomorrow!