I just came home from a movie. Yup, I went out and caught Death Note 2:The Last Name.

The movie's basically adapted from a Japanese manga. I don't watch Japanese manga, but the thought of 3 people possessing the ability to kill others simply by writing their names and picturing their faces on a notebook was too hard to resist. I went in there expecting some intelligent action.

All I got was one intelligent (and manipulative) Kira (the person holding onto the Death Note), one bimbotic Kira and one pawn of a Kira. *yawns*

I will not try to spoil it for you but it's hard when the ending is already all over the Internet. Let's just say that the 2 female Kiras lacked brains of their own and the male one was the only smart one of the 3.

And then there's L. The guy who tries to name the Kira/s. Intelligent without a doubt, but very creepy guy. How much of the budget was spent on this guy's eyeliner I will never know.Cute mask though.

The whole movie is basically about L versus Light (male Kira). And Light's obsession to become the world's newest god. In the process, he starts sacrificing people near and dear to him; his original girlfriend and even his father.

Anyway, the movie's not that bad, I'm just disappointed by the lack of intelligent and believable female characters.

After the movie, we tried making our way home from Marina Square. Now Marina Square is located near the CBD and Orchard Road (our shopping belt), so it's a pretty lively place with lots of customers for cab drivers. Not to mention it was 11.30pm and we were at a taxi stand so we should have been prime targets for cab drivers. No, that wasn't enough. Cab drivers were all over the place, cruising and waiting for the midnight surcharge to kick in (double the cab fare), on top of the surcharge we would have gotten by boarding the cab from a stand as opposed to flagging it down by the side of the road AND waiting for calls from their operators telling them of potential customers trying to book cabs (additional surcharge). TRIPLE WHAMMY!

Whoever said cab drivers were dumb?

Anyway, we got lucky when a cabby rushing to make it to Pasir Ris dropped by the taxi stand and REFUSED to pick up anyone not going to Pasir Ris (not even Tampines, which is virtually 5 minutes away). This meant that no one in the queue before us qualified and we somewhat jumped the queue. When we boarded, the boyfriend asked if he could drop at Loyang (which is as good as in Pasir Ris) and then Tampines and the cabby said no (rather vehemently too). Then the boyfriend asked about Tampines then Loyang and we got another no, this more more frustrated. In the end, we dropped at Loyang and the boyfriend walked home. Anal, anal cab driver!!! Perhaps he was rushing to hand over the cab to the next shift, which is often the case here. Cab drivers don't own the cars they drive, they rent it. And when they do, they lease it out to other drivers when they're not using the cab.

Round 1A of CORS (our local bidding system in the university I attend, we bid for modules/classes. It's like auctioning for classes you want to take) has ended and I've gotten my economics module. Now to hope I can get my general education and sociology modules in the later rounds *crosses fingers*. Got outbidded for my anatomy module, needed 701 points which I wasn't willing to waste. New and supposedly protected students like me pay 701 points and the seniors pay 22! So much for protection. Don't protect us! We'll simply pwn the seniors!!! This explains why a Science student is bidding for so many Arts modules. Stressful stuff, bidding.

Yes, the Taiwan earthquake has gotten to us, in case you still haven't noticed. The internet isn't back to being normal though there has been a vast improvement since this morning.

I've gotten my results and I have to say I am pleased. I won't tell you what it is for now because it's the kind of results people would kill me for if they knew. So SHHHHHH.....

Right, I'm going off for now....

Day 6: (Finally, right?)

Ton Pu - Taichung

We left the hot spring village (Ton Pu) and made our way down the mountain (like I mentioned, Taiwan is extremely mountainous). We reached our next pit stop almost 2 hours later, at the heart of Taiwan, the epicentre of Taiwan's disastrous earthquake back in the year 1999, the Sun Moon Lake.

Named the Sun Moon Lake due to the existence of an island in the middle of the lake which separated the huge lake into 2, the top half resembling the sun and the bottom half a crescent moon. However, the Japanese constructed a dam (I almost typed damn lol), causing the island to shrink to the size of 20 buses. The earthquake further shrunk the island to the size of 5 miserable TREES. Hence it no longer looks like an island.

Anyway, it's a HUGE lake (of course I don't think it's anywhere as big as Lake Toba which is reputed to be HUMONGOUS). Well, we spent some time in the toilets there (one of the cleanest public toilets I saw in Taiwan!!!), followed by some photo-taking before boarding the bus again. Too bad we didn't get the chance to cruise the lake, I thought it would have been very nice if we did but alas, we didn't.

What followed was a trip to the Peacock Garden, thus named for the sheer number and variety of peacocks they keep in there. It was there that I learnt that peacocks are horribly whiny and LOUD birds. Their shrill calls would resonant throughout the entire garden. But there were thought nice snow white peacocks though, why don't we see them around in Singapore?

We then visited Wen Wu Temple. The day we went so coincided with some HUGE temple festivity and the place was PACKED. HUGE and pretty impressive looking temple and a HUGE tianlu/pixiu. Being respectful, I did not take photos of anything under a roof but I did take some photos of the temple's exterior, as well as its HUGE tianlu. Did some praying and then skirted our way out of the vicinity. Went for lunch which was pretty good, save it for the chicken. There is something about Taiwanese chicken, their meat won't detach from the bones and their skin won't detach from the meat. o.O Weird, I know!!!

Anyway, we continued with our journey and I went strawberry picking! We ended up at a strawberry farm and I picked 8 sing dollars worth of strawberries. Expensive, considering that it wasn't a lot. We can get a good box of Australian strawberries here for a little over $2 and what I picked certainly didn't amount to 4 boxes of strawberries, so I complained a little to the tour guide who said that the supply was limited as it was still the start of the season. DAMN!!!!! But the strawberries were SWEET.

Then it was off to the Earthquake Museum, located on the premises of what used to be a school, with a field that now has a fault line running through it. The one thing they are definitely thankful for is that the quake occurred in the early hours of the morning, when no students were in school, as the quake had caused the classrooms to effectively collapse, at the same time, raising one half of the field relative to the other half. The museum was built to educate and remind the Taiwanese of the destruction caused by the quake, just so no one would forget what it did to the country back then.

From the museum, it was a short trip into Tai Chung, the 3rd largest city in the country. We spent some time in the Fong Jia Night Market, located next to the Fong Jia University. Had lots of Taiwanese snacks (their BBQ chicken steak is oh-so-good!) Walked around, bought NOTHING. Ok, I did buy something, I bought a replacement toner from the Face Shop. *Grins*

We then checked into our hotel.

Day 7:

Taichung - Taipei

This day is rather simple. We more or less just made our way back to Taipei. Got up, had breakfast and boarded the bus back to Taipei, making no stops till we reached Yang Ming Shan (very near Taipei). Saw a clock made of flowers. Turns out the authorities actually specially plant flowers in seasons like winter so tourists have something to look at other than bare trees. Lol.

Then it was off to lunch, which was DISAPPOINTING. We were supposed to get steamboat. We were supposed to try Taiwan's notoriously spicy Mala steamboat only to find that the soup bases were tasteless. My parents added so much soy sauce as seasoning that the soup tasted like SOY SAUCE. o.O

Disappointing.

Anyway, we went to the National Palace Museum which houses a collection of Chinese artefacts (the China Chinese sort). I preferred Beijing o.O Well, everything felt like a copy of what we say in China, except it was less grand. We then headed over to some government-endorsed store selling tianlu made of jade. Spent time there where it was determined that my mum gave me a bad, bad, BAD Chinese name but her craving for curry fish head (which pushed my induced birth date back by 1 day) gave me a good birthday. LOL.

Right, once we were done, we headed over to the Miramar Shopping Centre which has a Ferris Wheel. No, we didn't sit in that, and had one of the most expensive dinners in the whole of our trip there. After dinner, we headed over to a bakery that sells DELICIOUS (I cannot stress this enough) pineapple pastries. And we bought SEVEN boxes. Hahahaha. Right, and then we checked into our hotel and rested.

I shall not waste time by describing what we did on Day 8 'cause it was the day we took an afternoon flight back to Singapore.

But lemme relate one AMUSING incident on the plane. I was getting served and was getting my lunch when the male flight attendant said, "Excuse me, are you crew?".

I didn't catch what he said and replied, "What?".

And he repeated, "Are you crew? As in cabin crew on holiday?"

I FINALLY understood him and hastily explained "Oh no.. no.. sorry.. no.."

And he said "Oh, you look like one"

o.O!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My dad, being evil, then said (to me), "I think he needs glasses. You're too short."

FINE. I know I'm short, please stop stating the obvious!!! But I have a lookalike (maybe a taller clone?) walking about on board SIA flights. ROFLOL.

Oh yes, did you know that Singapore Airlines serves Haagen Dazs ice cream on board some of their flight? Yup, I had Haagen Dazs on my flight back. YUM.

P.S. I will add the photos when I actually feel like it. ;)

I went out for dinner and a short night out with some friends from secondary school. That means that we've known each other since 2000, a good 7 years.

Dropped by Swensens (I was 3rd there, and I was PUNCTUAL).Spent some time standing around as the Swensens staff failed to even acknowledge our existence. After a while, we finally got our seats for 10 and sat there and pondered over what to order as the rest came filtering in.

I ordered a Coit Tower and shared the fries with June. =)

Anyway, we did some talking and catching up, followed by the gift exchange. Everyone started passing gifts they got for the group as well. I gave all of them a keychain from Taiwan as well as a mochi because I didn't have enough to give everyone a common denomination.

Photos!


A Group Photo


My Stash


Sarah's gift, from Australia. Kangaroo Leather!


See? It's even genuine!


My present from the gift exchange. A necklace from Lisa. Thanks!!!


Xing Qi's gift. Read the words. I wonder if she's trying to be funny or sarcastic. Guess I'll return the favour in her farewell thingy then.


My other early birthday present from Elaine. A Freezer Mug.


My other half of my early birthday present from Elaine. A pen, with my name on it. Thanks Elaine! For remembering!

People started leaving around 7pm (June...*frowns*..hahaha, well I hope you enjoyed your steamboat). So we paid the bill and left, walked around the shopping mall before deciding to have a drink at Starbucks (where we met a junior of ours who is working as a barista there). Chatted a little more before finally deciding to leave.

Simple gathering but at least it happened.

And about the early birthday present from my boyfriend that I mentioned a couple of entries back, here it is:

Hahaha, I did something outrageous today.

Firstly, my parents did the outrageous thing by dragging me to this Christmas party organised by their ex-colleagues, which essentially mean that I would be surrounded by a group of retirees or people that are on the verge of retiring.

I went, and found that that it wasn't even a party, it was a freaky BBQ!! I dislike BBQs because they are so MUCH hassle. You have to buy the food, prepare the food, marinate the freaking chicken wings and then people sit around not really knowing what to say to each other. Then everyone breaks apart and goes off with their respective mini-cliques. It's pretty meaningless.

Alright, so I went, found out it was a BBQ, and to my brother's horror, there were no chicken wings! What kind of BBQ doesn't have chicken wings?????

To top it off, there were 4 POTS of chicken curry. Now if the cooked food (noodles, glutinous rice (?!?!??!!), sweet and sour fish and broccoli) were tasty, I would pretty much just shut up. But they weren't, so I won't shut up.

Let's start with the curry; tasteless and OILY. Nice and oily, ok. Tasteless and oily? NOT GOOD.

The noodles? Pale, bland-looking, bland-tasting... UGH!!!!

Glutinous rice? I didn't even dare try that.

Sweet and sour fish? More pineapples, cucumbers and tomatoes than fish. I could hardly find any fish.

Broccoli; a little too salty......Ewww...

So I ended up running off to Parkway Parade (where I'll be going AGAIN tomorrow) and camped out at MPH for 2 hours.

Anyway, thanks Charles for keeping me entertained during the extremely boring BBQ.

Should I bother charging my camera battery for tomorrow? I don't think so, I'm just too lazy. I just can't be bothered. I think I still have a good hour or two left in the battery.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. What will you be doing on the eve of Christmas? I'll be having a (hopefully) nice dinner with some friends from my secondary school. I'm hoping it doesn't get marred by anything unpleasant.

My birthday's around the corner again. No pangs of anticipation. I kind of dread it. Onto more random stuff, Death Note 2 seems interesting. I'd like to see how 3 different people would play God. Japanese flick though.

Had a rather impromptu day today.

First, the heater guy sprang in the somewhat early hours of the morning. He came at nine, and I, barely awake, had to settle the heater issue. Then he was done at 9.50am and out I was by 10.10am, for another impromptu gathering with Charles.

Haha thanks for the movie and lunch Charles!!!!

After meeting up with Charles, I ended up at Orchard (another impromptu thing) to meet the boyfriend, who then gave me my early birthday present (a watch). See? What an impromptu day!

I'm a little annoyed 'cause the boyfriend will be on course for the whole of next week and I was actually looking forward to spending some time with him. That won't be happening anytime soon, obviously.

It's been cold the past few days, by Singapore standards that is. And it's been raining, non-stop.

It rains heavily, heavy enough to send my dogs scurrying into any available bedroom. Then it stops, only for it to start again in a couple of hours. Today, it rained non-stop, starting from late last night. The weather is great to sleep in, but depressing if you're awake. Gloomy skies.. maybe it's a good thing that I just slept about 3 quarters of the day away.

I know I haven't been blogging about the trip and I'm missing out the last 2 days. Hang in there alright? I'll get to it when I'm in the mood, and that probably requires some respite from the monsoon season.

I'm a little fed up, for a couple of reasons really.

I cannot stand how I'm supposed to meet up with people I haven't seen in a long time, only for details to remain absent. I have 3 supposed gatherings this week and 1 more next week. Of which, only 1 is finalised (somewhat but I am on the verge of doing a boycott should anyone complain because it was only confirmed after I put a rush job to it and made 5 people decide for a group of 12). 1 is unconfirmed but slated to go through, I'm pending a discussion with the other party who is stuck in an army camp (go figure, but I'm not annoyed by that one 'cause he has a good reason). The last of which is a meeting with my ex-colleagues from my days at the auditing firm. They've been talking about going out ever since I was in Taiwan and here I am, barely 2 days to the supposedly meeting, with absolutely no details. I shall most probably give that one a skip 'cause I can't be bothered to give a shit about people who expect to hold me in limbo. And the last one? The one next week? I don't know if I really want to go.. People issues, again.

The other (more minor) reason has to do with a more prickly issue of theists. I won't go into details, if you're that interested, you can ask me directly. Trust me, it's not something nice to hear so if you're unable to stomach it, don't even bother asking.

Day 5:

We left Kaoshiung on Friday morning and took a short bus journey to a Lingzhi retail centre. Well, needless to say, we didn't buy anything from there because we are obviously not Lingzhi consumers and we were glad to be out of that place and soon headed for Fo Guang Shan, supposedly the centre of Buddhism in southern Taiwan. What I will admit is that that place has a LOT of Buddha artefacts.



This is the first thing we saw after entering Fo Guang Shan. It's a statue of Kwan Yin (the Goddess of Mercy). It's said that if you make a wish upon a coin and throw it into the pond, in the process hitting the bell, your wish will come true. I missed the first time round but made no mistake in the 2nd, as to whether my wish came true, I still don't know, but I will on the 27th.



Have you seen such a HUGE statue of a standing Buddha? I haven't, although I have a feeling that the statue of the sleeping Buddha in Thailand is bigger. By the way, the fold across my torso isn't due to the extensive amount of lipids I possess, it's the fold of the fabric.



Then again, have you ever seen so many statues of Buddha in one place? Perhaps. But I haven't. This is less than half the total number they actually have!


This place supposedly houses 500 Arhats (I doubt it but there's a LOT). Obviously, it'll take a photographic genius to capture all 500 of them in an upclose position so I've made do with a smaller angle and so shall you.

Other than take photos, we did some praying and stuff like that but since no photography was allowed in the temples, let me just mention, just for the record, that they have a HUGE statue of a tianlu/pixiu made of jade in the temple. HUGE I tell you. HUGE!!!

Then it was off to lunch, which was in Tainan, which meant an arduous journey for our butts. When we finally reached, we realised that the food wasn't going to be very savoury. We had yam (prefer the Singapore version), oyster omelette (Singapore's version is still nicer), oyster porridge (what the hell?!?!?!), guan cai ban (Shilin's version was nicer and still I thought it was overrated), something that resembled Soon Kueh (except that Soon Kueh is nicer), prawn rolls (the only extremely nice thing about lunch) and beancurd (cold, with red bean soup, which I don't like. I like my hot beancurd with ordinary syrup which we eventually found in Taichung for... SGD$2 when it goes for 50cents here).

Post-lunch, it was off to the train station. We took this dreadful-looking train where passengers look like they would fall over any second to a COW farm.



See what I mean by cow farm? COWS!




Of course, cows weren't the only things they kept, they had horses, rabbits, chickens, turkeys as well as other types of poultry.

I have to admit though, the cow's milk was nice and we came back with 6 packets of milk candy, 2 bags, 1 pencil case, 2 keychains and 3 milk ice cream (I decided to skip it).

By the time we came back from the farm, it was almost 4pm and the sun would start to set in an hour's time but we were still a good 3 hours from our pit stop (sounds like the Amazing Race now).

Hence, the guide made some calls and managed to arrange for an additional stop on route to the hotel. An orange farm!



Please don't be mistaken. This isn't a Sunkist kind of orange farm, it's the mandarin orange kind of farm. The weird thing is that the green oranges were actually pretty sweet! We tried their freshly squeezed orange juice, for which they used 90% green oranges and it came up to be the sweetest orange juice I've had in years (I hardly consume it, you see). No sugar added.

We got to cut oranges from the trees and bought some, which was rather cheap. SGD$2 for 2kg is cheap by Singapore standard, I should think.

And so we continued on the journey, stopping by this temple which an earthquake in 1999 reduced its original 3 storeys to its current 1 storey. It simply crumbled and collasped. No pictures as the flash couldn't capture the entire scene.

From the temple, after an additional 90mins, we FINALLY reached the hotel. Our hotel was situated in a hot spring village and hence had access to a hot spring. After dinner, we had a hasty decision to use the hot spring and jumped into their man-made hot spring spa (supposedly filled with water from the spring).

I am proud to say that I was the first person among my family to dare to jump into the hottest pool, as well as the first person to endure the coldest one for over 5 minutes without jumping out. Although I must say I was the last to even enter the coldest pool. In total, we spent slightly over an hour in the hot spring. Nice experience though.

That basically marks the end of Day 5. =)

Christmas is coming around again, but this year there is no anticipation building up from within. Instead I feel jaded. Sigh.

Yesterday I went out with the boyfriend and got him his early Christmas present. Now for all battle game loving geeks out there, I got him Medieval 2, ok? Because he wanted it and I'm bad at buying gifts so I'd rather he tell me what he wanted and I do the job of paying for it.

Ok, 99% of the time I have a sweet, understanding and caring boyfriend. I know that. Then he gets a new game and goes gaga. Like all other boys. In order to let him continue gaga-ing over his new toy, I'm sitting here, at home, in front of my desktop which is FINALLY up and running again (the graphics card self-destructed), feeling awfully jaded. What a great way to spend my Saturday morning. Could have gone with my dad to my aunt's church wedding (the wedding dinner is tomorrow) but I would have fallen asleep there. Right now, as I'm typing this, I bet he's plotting how to get the Papal State's Inquisitor assasinated. Erm IN THE GAME, not in real life, ok? In the GAME, the moment he got his assasin, he started assasinating merchants and diplomats from other factions, none of which were his rivals (all neutral or allies). I am a nice persion and TRIED to DISCOURAGE him, so I didn't goad him on, ok?

Just to entertain myself, I shall go on a CSI frenzy.

And I need to lose weight. Lots and lots of weight.

Day 4:

The long and arduous to Kaohsiung, the 2nd largest city in Taiwan. We set off early in the morning and got ready for a 7 hour bus journey to the 2nd largest city in Taiwan.

There isn't much to report for this day. Serious.

We sat on the bus for hours before we hit our first toilet stop, the Tropic of Cancer Marker.


See? The Tropic of Cancer!

Then we sat on the bus some more, listened to more folklore stories about immortials having rendevous with each other and the heavenly knights hunting them down, eventually leading to the formation of some caves in the area which we did not stop by so I only got a passing shot of the cave in the bus. Since it was of dubious quality, I decided not to post it up here.

What we did stop by was the island they were supposedly having the rendevous on. Folklore has it that the heavens struck the rock the 2 lovers were on splitting it into 3 (eventually).



The rendevous island

After more time on the bus, we ended up in a place where the water was supposed to run upwards, against the force of gravity. Now I was expecting something grander, like a whole river doing that. Instead, I saw a tiny drain of water doing this gravity-defying act, well it didn't defy anything, the general direction of things still saw the water flowing downwards. What a farce.... And the stream was really tiny, like some 30cm in width. ARGH.

I couldn't be bothered anymore and slept the rest of the journey into Kaohsiung (lol). We ended up in Kaohsiung's Sin Jia Jiang Night Market and it was almost the same as the other night markets. Same thing, same kinds of food so I won't waste time explaining.

Dinner was alright I guess, not fantastic either and we finally retired to the hotel rooms for our rest. There you go! Day 4!

Day 3: (tried doing it earlier in the day only for Firefox to crash. ARGH)

Alright, here is Day 3, as promised. We set off in the late morning, after a slightly better 2nd breakfast in Taiwan (still not fantastic). We boarded the bus (not before I waved the little piglet a quick goodbye) and made our way to Hualien.

As the trip to Hualien would involve lots of mountains, twists and turns, the tour guide expected some people (ok, most people) to end up with motion sickness. So it was down to a temple in Nafanau for the tourists to do some exploring and praying while the guide trooped down to a local convenience store in search of medication to prevent motion sickness.



Here is the said temple, or part of the said temple from the outside as it was disrespectful to take pictures in temples so I'd rather not offend the believers. The last thing I needed was the local Taiwanese chasing after me with their slabs of peanut candy. Yes, the local delicacy there was this pretty delightful popiah ( as we call it in Singapore) with shredded peanut candy plus a large scoop of ice cream to accompany it. Nothing like their little dessert to wash your motion sickness medication down. Not that I'm prone to getting car sick, I'm just prone to getting air sick, especially when I end up in the aisle seat (yuck). Note to people travelling with me next time, let me have the window seat unless you want a green-looking girl seated next to you who MAY barf on you any second of the flight.

After the temple, it was off to the motion-sickness inducing roads. True enough, people started getting nauseous. My brother was one of them (he turned completely green in the face in Langkawi hahahahahahahaha). Me? I was fine, I know what to do if I feel just a tat carsick; I chew gum. Yes, I chew gum. Chewing gum helps me forget that I'm feeling a lil carsick as I'm too busy chewing. Anyway, I did fine, my brother turned into a 'merlion'.

We stopped by a tiny town for lunch and the food was BAD. It was way BAD, so bad that you couldn't possibly find such horrible food in Singapore, except in someone's home that is. The vegetable tasted WEIRD. And that constituted a good one-third of the meal. I don't like tomatoes and had them as DESSERT.

I was glad that lunch was over and we headed to the Taroko National Park. Now it's supposedly very beautiful but I didn't really think so, maybe winter has a way of uglifying the place. I always thought winter was a nice time of the year, to see snow covered places, maybe except in places where it doesn't snow, like in the flatter parts of Taiwan.



This particular rock in the National Park is supposed to resemble an Indian man's head. However, as the picture was taken at high tide, part of his chin has been submerged. It should be too hard to make our his eyes and nose. Go ahead, take a good look, can you see the Indian man gorging on water?

We made our way to a different part of the National Park to collect apparently lucky spring water (I laugh and you shall see why later).

There was quite a distance to trot on foot to the spring water collection point, some parts of which were shrouded in complete darkness. It's times like these that I'm thankful to have a phone with a built in light. Hence, I had a mini torch while the others fumbled around, stumbling all over the place. Anyway, we made it, collected the water and made our way back to the bus.

What followed was a long sit in the bus to Hualien. The tour guide had arranged for an additional viewing of the Ah Mei tribe's traditional dance. Now we thought we would get to see real Ah Mei tribesmen dancing, what we got were FAKE ones dancing. DISAPPOINTING!!!



See? FAKE tribesmen dancing!!!

After the fake dance, we finally checked into the hotel. I loved that hotel, definitely 5*, with a GREAT European buffet dinner. I had the BEST meal in Taiwan there. LOVE it. The breakfast wasn't too bad as well.

In case you're still wondering why I scoffed at the 'lucky spring water', my mum drank it, only for it to give her an itchy face!!! So much for luck!

Day 2:

As I mentioned yesterday, the 4* hotel that we stayed at on the first night, turns out to be more of a 3* hotel. Breakfast wasn't particularly enjoyable plus their Taiwan Porridge (Taiwanese Taiwan Porridge) was no where as good as the Singaporean version. Anyway, after some delays from ONE PARTICULARLY IRRITATING family, we finally set off.

You would find that out of the 8 days I spent in Taiwan, some 60-70% of the time was spent on the bus travelling from one place to another. We would spent 40mins to 2 hours to the next location if we're lucky, or as long as 4 hours on the bus when we're not, and end up spending 15mins to 2hours (if it's a night market) at the next venue. I spent some time on the bus wondering if I would end up with DVT given the extended hours spent on the bus not moving at all.

Alright, first stop CKS Memorial Hall. It looks like a rip-off of Beijing's Tiantan (google it if you want to know how it looks like). We go there and look at the architecture and can't help but NOT BE AMAZED because I've been to Beijing and liked that one better. But they do have this HUGE statue of CKS and some carvings. Well, see for yourself.


Here's the entrance


Here's the Memorial Hall


And here's the huge statue I was talking about

Unimpressed, I left and after an excruciating bus ride, ended up in YehLiu. Yehliu is right next to the Pacific Ocean (I think?) and has some pretty interesting rock formations we were there to see.

There were the mushroom-shaped rocks:


One of which looked a little like someone's butt:


And one that looked like a woman's head:

Well this woman has a story behind her. Legend has it that the King of the Sea (I think) was so besotted with this Chinese goddess that he asked her to marry him. Of course, she would reject him and he ended up carving this particular rock for her.

After Yehliu, we endured another painful journey to Jiufen. However, Jiufen was easily the best place to go in Taiwan. Jiufen is really a small mountainous village set along the east of Taiwan. We did loads of shopping there, I brought back 4 packets of Mochi, a bracelet and a box of sun biscuits. My family bought an additional 4 packets of Mochi, 4 packets of peanuts, 4 packets of mango pudding, 1 box of sunbiscuits, 1 chess set and 3 packets of dried longans. The food there was unbelievably good as well. We tried their special fishballs with minched pork, mushroom or octopus in the centre and it was heavenly. Imagine eating hot piping, HUGE fishballs at 16 degree Celsius, sipping the hot piping soup, biting into the scalding hot fishballs as the gravy from the minced pork oozed out as you expose the entire portion. Simply addictive. Also imagine, sitting at a small table with 6 other people, holding onto a small paper bowl filled with piping hot rice drenched with a rich soy-sauce gravy specked with bits of fatty minced pork over your rice. If that isn't enough, imagine sitting in an empty shop and devouring a small of hot dessert containing red bean soup (my mum ate the beats and the sweet potato) with balls made from glutinous rice and sweet potato. Absolutely divine. That in a nutshell, is Jiufen for you. We didn't have time to explore every nook and cranny, although I wish we did. Be warned though, that place is extremely crowded. As the Taiwanese put it in English, "people mountain, people sea".

For our last destination which would also be the rest stop for the night, we heeded to Yilan, an area with one of the largest areas of flat land in Taiwan. Yilan is mainly an agricultural city, with lots of padi farmers. In Yilan, up on one of their mountains, sits the Yilan Shangri-La Leisure Farm. Now don't be fooled by its name, it has nothing to do with the Shangri-La that we all recognise. It's simply a name. Being a tourist destination, the orchard-hotel had most of its fruits plucked clean from the trees before we arrived. By the time we got there, there were only the tiny, obviously still growing guava fruits left to look at.


My little piglet friend at Yilan Shangri-La

On one of the rocky, dangerous looking bridges in the farm


A friendly duckling at the farm

Alright, that was a summary of Day 2 of my trip, I'll try to handle Day 3 when i find the time.

Day 1:

The day started abnormally early as we had to be at the airport BY 6am to catch the 8am flight out of Singapore to Chiang Kai Shek (CKS) International Airport. As I've mentioned, CKS is situated in Taoyuan, one entire state away from the nearest major city, Taipei. The flight was uneventful although I would say that the food served by SIA was well..... nothing fanciful this time round (I've had better food on Thai Airways and Air New Zealand).

On arrival at CKS, we spotted our tour leader, Ah Xiang (xiang as in fragrant in Chinese). After a long wait at the airport for the remaining 28 people in the tour group (some of whom would serve to irritate me for the rest of the trip), we loaded our luggage and set off for our first destination; the tallest building in the world (for now), Taipei 101.


Taipei 101's shopping area from the inside

Taipei 101 was basically just another shopping mall that we could see in Singapore, except that it happens to be the tallest building in the world. Shop-wise, it is extremely similar to Suntec City, for its sheer size and the type of shops seen in it. Very expensive stuff in there as well, plus the food wasn't all that impressive. We have better food in Suntec City =P


Martry's Shrine

After spending time in the world's tallest building, we head over to Martyr's Shrine to watch the hourly changing of guards ceremony. For one, I think they look weird marching.... they march with ONE LEG raised 90 degree whenever that foot took a step with the other leg moving normally. They were famed for the precision shown whenever they threw their rifles in the air (supposedly) but we saw none of that. To me, it was a little boring, I've seen better at foot drill competitions at the secondary school level in Singapore. Lol. However, it was a great honour for those selected to perform duty there so I've really got nothing to say. I was hoping for something a little more spectacular and impressive and didn't exactly get that.

By the time we were done there, it was about 4.50pm and it being early winter in Taipei, the sun was barely in the sky. We took the bus over to Shilin Night Market, arriving past 5pm by then the sun had already begun setting. I must say though, the things in Taiwan cannot be considered cheap because they are not. The prices there are comparable to Singapore. We were there at the wrong season so all the thick woollen clothing and long sleeved shirts came out, none of which were suitable for Singapore's climate. The shoes were horrendous looking (which came as a major disappointment as I came home with NOT A SINGLE pair of shoes). After hardly spending ANY money in the shopping area of Shilin, we headed for the food section. Here's what we tried:

1. Chicken Steak : Nice, very nice, especially, in the cold weather, has lots of bones though
2. Da Pao Bao Xiao Pao (Big bun wrapped around a smaller bun?): We tried the one with peanut BUT couldn't taste ANY peanut at all and were left wondering if they added peanuts in the first place. Nothing fanciful.
3. Guan Cai Ban (Coffin board?): It's this bread that has been deep fried, after the deep frying process, a flap is removed to create an indentation. Some filling is then used to fill this indentation. The flap is then replaced. The fillings then to differ according to the type of meat used. It was ok, but my family didn't really like it. I found it ok, neither liking it nor disliking it.
4. Oyster Omelette: After hearing all the hype about this particular delicacy from the tour guide on the bus, we decided to try it and was disappointed. It was waaaaaaay too starchy and the oysters didn't taste fresh.
5. Mango Dessert: On the verge of defeat, we decided to give the food at Shilin one last chance at redemption and settled on dessert. It was basically lots of mango, shaven ice and one big scoop of mango ice cream put together. And it was heavenly. Easily the best item of the day. Despite the valiant effort put in by this particular dish, it wasn't enough to salvage all the misses made by the other dishes earlier on. In the end, I would give Shilin Night Market a score of 2/5.

Overhyped and not particularly enjoyable.

We then checked into out supposedly 4* hotel only to find that the facilities and the room resembled a 3* hotel. As we found out on Day 2, the food in the hotel.... was not the least bit satisfactory. Definitely a 3* hotel.

Just so you know, after my long 8-day absence (that probably wasn't even felt), I'm now home. I touched down in Singapore's Changi International Airport at 6.10pm on board SQ871 this evening. So it's pretty obvious by now that I made it home in one piece, safe and sound.

Taiwan, in short, was the land of the squat toilets to me, 8 days there was enough to make me worship pedestal toilets, mainly because the squat toilets outnumber pedestal toilets by a factor of 20, at least. It is the country that has 70% of its land covered in hills and mountains. It's the first country I've been to where their international airport isn't even in a major city (it's one state away from the capital, Taipei). It's the first country where I did some 25% of my shopping all in the airport's duty free shops because the night markets were disappointing.

Alright, I will be doing a more in-depth description of my trip, but let me transfer my photos first, alright? Cya then

I'm leaving for Taiwan in about 15 hours' time. I thought that I should just come in here and make a short post before I leave for the next 8 days. So till then, see ya;)