Aside from the longer LRT ride, getting up earlier and slightly longer working hours, I'm doing good (fingers crossed).
So, .....
Taipei 101
I have finally decided to post a short entry on my latest trip to Taiwan.
I decided to join 2 of friends for a trip to Taiwan since I'm gonna have a month break before joining the new company.
Taiwan was never my choice of holiday destination, I don't really know why.
Taiwan to me is loads of street food, street shopping, temples, pagodas, and more temples.....not my top places to go when traveling.
Maybe...yes, maybe being a Banana person, being educated at sekolah kebangsaan and brought up by Banana parents and surrounded by Banana friends....I must say that I don't find the country appealing, at all.
So does China and Korea. I also don't know why.
I used to felt the same for Bangkok, but my view changed after I visited the country couple of years ago.
So, I thought maybe Taiwan would not be that bad la after all.
Thanks to Janet Hsieh in her "Fun Taiwan" I finally made my decision.
So I packed my bags and off I go.
Our plane tickets showed our seating....40 D E F & G.
When we boarded the plane, guess what ?!
We were given the best economic class seat......next to the emergency exit !!! and we didn't ask for it. I thought these seats were reserved for the senior citizen.
Plenty of leg room and I secretly thought how nice if we were given seats like this for trip to Europe of maybe USA !
A good start to my trip, I thought.
Watched 1 1/2 movie before the plan landed at Taipei.
Boarded the coach and our tour guide took us for our dinner at some popular night market.
From then on, to me most of my trip mostly went downhill.
The famous Taiwan crispy chicken, extremely long queue to get one turned out to be very salty with plenty of MSG and the chicken....mostly covered in flour and skin.
bad bad bad....
Our tour leader and tour guide started to talk in Mandarin. I sat and looked outside the window while waiting for them to switch to English.
Then I realised, they only talk in Mandarin and I'm going to be super duper blur the entire 1 week of my stay in Taiwan.
Oh boy am I gonna have a great trip !
Nevermind, if the tour guide could speak English when every single one (except) me in the entire group can at least understand mandarin.
I lost count of the many factories the tour brought us to...Ling Zhi factory, Jade & Marble factory, Pearl factory, another shop selling those fengshui bottomless tiger, etc etc etc.....crap crap crap.
Our 7 hours bus journey down to Kaoshiung at the edge of the cliff was breathtaking. Till now, I'm not sure why our coach was so bumpy...maybe we sat at the back or is it the road? All I know is after the 7 hours I felt like my intestine and stomach got dislocated elsewhere.
Shopping for clothes was a blast to me. Bought loads of clothes at dirt cheap price....average about Taiwan 250 (about RM25). My friend bought a 3/4 jeans at only Taiwan 250 !
Cheap aside, I thought anyone could even find any clothing items here....I could find unimaginable selection of fashion here, from the conventional, boring type to the tasteful yet sweet to the downright quirky type....and everything else in between.
But at the price, I won't complain on the material used and their quality.
I give this trip a 2 (on a scale of 1 to 10) .
Since everything from the sign board to my tour is in Mandarin I can only talk about Taiwan from the scenes and sight that I saw and the food I tasted.
Face Mask is a must buy cos it is super cheap here. Similar face mask sold at triple the price at Guardian/Watson. The rest are some of the food junks I bought, most of it I did not open up to eat until now.