My Taiwan log, Day 1
So confession time, I’ve been to Taiwan last year once, but I’ll be honest and say that it wasn’t my best trip, reason being I was homesick and I didn’t had much friends to accompany me much throughout the trip, that and we followed a tourgroup which meant heaps of rushing and also heaps of going up mountains and sight seeing places that made me feel really really sick throughout the trip. Ever since then, Taiwan hasn’t not been on my must go-back-to-visit list. It wasn’t till Nate was so persistent about wanting to visit Taipei for the bookstores. Nate has always loved reading, even more when it’s books that can help him gain knowledge, but he has never been a fan of english books, so finding good books here has been relatively difficult since they are not very up to date. I finally gave in when AirAsia was having their buy one free one promo. This meant the Taiwan trip was very much reasonable of a price to fly to, even if it’s just to spend a good weekend there just browsing through books.
It was rainy the day we left, initially quite worried about the weather but it worked out to our advantage. Though our flight was delayed for an hour the journey took an hour lesser than expected so we arrived just on time!
I like evening flights, it’s usually really relaxing and since I’m still quite wide awake(I don’t usually go to bed during the evenings HAH) it’s just nice to sit and chill, read a book and if you are like us who didn’t had time to plan the trip before hand, that good few hours always come super in handy.
Of course you need something to keep your hands and lip moisturize throughout the flight, I always find these 2 works super well for me
We’ve decided to go around Taiwan using their MRT lines, this means the MRT card will be mega important for the trip. I had one that was given to me by my mom and man the card is so convenient! From station to station it was only charging us from RM1.60-RM4 depending on the stops you make but you can also use the card for purchasing stuff at their 7-11.
We arrived at our hotel, and to be honest we were a little disappointed at the rooms. It was waay WAY smaller than what we saw in pictures and it just didn’t feel that comfortable. The service however was really good and the location of the hotel was mega nice. We were about 10 minutes walk away from Taipei Main station(about 30 seconds walk to the tunnel that leads to the station) and just literally a few seconds walk away from heaps of restaurants and convi stores. It did serve our trip well since we were constatly out sightseeing and just couldnt justify paying any more for hotels esp since we were hardly spending any time there.
This is the room, and just really all you can see once u open the door
and a decent size mirror if you need to apply makeup and stuff in the mornings.
The toilet was a tad small, but very clean so thumbs up for it. The only thing I didn’t really like as much was the scent of the towel. I don’t know whether they were using a different softener(Nate says it’s Genmaicha scented) but honestly it smelled like someone just smoked on it =.=
Other stufff that came in really handy
For more details of the hotel click *here*
and since we arrived at midnight, we decided to just drop by 7-11 to purchase a few drinks.
then off to bed it was and the next day came really soon. The thing about the rooms here I soon found out, had no windows =.= This means it was extremely important to set your alarm clock or you won’t even realise what time it is!
So the morning view was like this. We had bread and toast just from the shop down the road from the hotel and started our itinerary for the day.
I had heaps to eat in Taiwan, and to be honest I was quite surprised I didn’t put on any weight while I was there. I know for a sure fact it’s all credit given to the staircases to the MRT stations. Mannnn, we had to go tru steps like that at least 10 times a day, and with all the walking around it wasn’t difficult to burn all the extra calories. I kid you not the first few times was a little of a nightmare, getting up just this flight of staircase was enough to make us stop for a few times to catch a breather.
From Taipei Main Station to the District area was approx 6 station, the stop is at 市政府, and when you reach, it takes about a 5 minutes walk to get to Taipei 101.
We didn’t wanna go up the tower so we did take some compulsory tourist photos HAH.
Did some shopping around the area, they have some good items that was very reasonably priced and we head off to BeiTou, 北投, which is the last stop on the red line. We intiially thought it was gonna cost us quite alot since there was heaps of station but the price came up to only about 40TWD! Super worth it!
Of course I had to make sure I was loaded with food and snacks, I think you can tell from Nate’s face that he was a little regretting that he brought his backpack HAHA. I just needed to be sure I had food if I’m doing so much walking! There’s a 7-11 store just out the station so if you need to grab a bottle of water you can always do so upon arrival.
We came to Taipei just right after their national day, this meant that most of the people were also on holidays hence explaining the crowd! It was good tho since it only means that most shops are open for us to visit.
Nate very soon enough found his fav store. He didn’t even offer me any =.=
If you are wondering why Nate’s face was a little off it was because he was having a brainfreeze moment. HAh this is what you get for not sharing your ice cream!
So after all the food we ate, we decided to not waste the beautiful weather. Was contemplating whether to actually walk around the place and we saw they had rental bikes!
The bike rental goes from 40TWD to 60TWD depending on which model of the bike you are renting. Me and Nate decided to go for a Tandem because Nate wouldn’t trust me with anything that has wheels and someone just had to take videos yo =p
and yes I took all these while I was on the bike! Took a little getting used to(and heck lot of trust on Nate’s cycling skills)…that and I had heaps of stares from people since I was holding a huge camera taking photos while the bike was still moving!
I reckon renting a bike was the best way to go around it. The weather was beautiful and with the seabreeze, it was just ah-mazing. You can of course take the ferry to go across to the fishermans jetty.
We however(Nate to be specific since he’s the one cycling) decided to stay where we were and cycle around the area for a good hour.
Once that was done, we went back and stop by Shilin station for the night markets. Had heaps to try but some of the more worth mentioning foods are the grilled potatoes
Mee sua, oh I love mee sua! I loved this but Nate and Chris thought they were a little mediocre and reckons we could have had better ones in KL.
and fried milk. yup, you’ve read it right, these are all milk, no idea how they make them but I def recommend them if you around the area!
I know these 2 def enjoyed it!
So that’s pretty much for our day 1, and a rather long blogpost already so I shall stop here and continue tomorrow again. Till then!
2 more days till the weekends!
