We (meaning my boyfriend and I) had dinner at Vivocity's No Signboard Seafood Restaurant. The woman at the left hand corner happens to the the rather grumpy service personnel in charge of our table. Notice that all the paintings on the wall are of crustaceans and shellfish? The view from Vivocity, overlooking the ferry terminal where 2 ferries were docked. Nice view.
The huge Christmas tree at Vivocity which actually looks rather ugly in the day. It's weird how shops there are starting to cater to the Lunar New Year crowd while the mall still has some Christmas decorations up and about.
The dinner group. We didn't plan to wear red on the same day. Rather I didn't plan it. I had mentioned to him that I was gonna wear that top the night before and the next thing I knew, he was in red too! The next day, I had worn the blue polo tee (that my squad mates had gotten me for my birthday) and when he went home to change that afternoon, he ended up wearing a BLUE shirt. Now who's the copycat? :p
After dinner, we walked around for a bit and then made our way to Mono (first time. Before that, I've never been in a club/ktv before)
I know I said I'd blog about this and a new year has come and I haven't. So here goes =P
It's pretty strange that I've been to quite a number of places but I've never even stepped into Indonesia, one of Singapore's closest neighbours. Until Christmas of '08 that is. My boyfriend and I went there for 2 days as part of a Christmas getaway and a short trip to celebrate my 21st birthday.
We left at 7.20am on the 25th (because he woke up late!) and headed for Harbourfront Centre. Got our tickets settled after realising that his year of birth had been altered to 2008 (I was apparently travelling with an infant *lol*) and that my name was wrong and so was my passport number. Since we still had time to spare, we went for breakfast at this Ya Kun-like place at Harbourfront Centre with really bad service *cough* Wang Cafe*cough*. In the last hour or so before we left for Batam, we were yelled at by the staff for not collecting our drinks. Anyway, we finally left for the ferry terminal and waited to board the ferry, sitting beside a Sikh family who later turned out to be our travelling companions. The 2 of us on the ferry while on the way to Batam!
After close to an hour, we finally docked at Batam Centre, got off and located the tour guide. First stop? The Polo Ralph Lauren store... which is actually pointless to the 2 of us; people who do not have the purchasing power to spend S$50 on a polo t-shirt, even if it were an original and even if it were S$20 cheaper than back in Singapore. We were then brought to one of the largest Buddhist temples in SE Asia. The Maha Vihara Buta Mantreya (there's a possible typo somewhere.. =s) temple.
Except it doesn't look anything like a temple, architecturally. If it weren't for the numerous statues, the smell of incense sticks burning and the presence of devotees, there was no way I'd peg it for a temple. In fact, the toilet looked more temple-like (with those traditional Chinese roofs) than the actual temple itself!
After the temple visit, it was time for LUNCH. The itininery said that we were going to a seafood restaurant for fresh seafood (which got me pretty excited) until I saw the REAL venue. A coffee-shop. A fly-infested coffeeshop. And it was definitely not by the sea-side. It was also most definitely not a seafood restaurant. After the initial disappointment gave way, the food was pretty enjoyable. In fact, the chicken was well-seasoned and cooked (it was VERY popular with the kids) and the prawns was pretty good (though not too fresh). Otherwise, the food was actually simple fare and wouldn't cost the tour agency much (what were we expecting from a FREE city tour? *rolls eyes*).
Our post-lunch initial plan of buying keropok and other local snacks fell through when we realised the mall the store was located within wasn't open till later in the day as it was Christmas, so we ended up spending 2 hours at Nongsa Hill Shopping Mall. After walking close to 2 rounds around the mall, I concluded that there was no shopping to be done clothes-wise for me in Batam whereas my boyfriend and I had an interesting encounter at the local departmental store while buying dress pants for him(2 for almost $40 I think). We were waiting in line at the cashier's (the only one that was operating while the other 3-5 were all CLOSED), holding onto 2 pairs of pants until he realised that everyone else wasn't holding onto anything but a white slip of paper. Curious, he asked an Indonesian Chinese woman in front if we needed it too and it turns out that we did! So she nicely informed the staff at the cashier about it, the staff took the pants from us and ran off to write out the invoice, only for them to spend the next 10 minutes trying to calculate the final sum *faints*, which they eventually figured out but didn't get to write down because we figured it'd be the next day by the time they actually wrote it down. While we got to hold onto that white slip of paper, a pink one was attached to our articles and placed in one of MANY cubbies at the cashier's. When we finally got to the front of the line, the cashier took our white slip of paper and proceed to hunt our article down, going from cubby to cubby in an attempt to match the 2 pieces of invoices. Only upon successfully matching the white and pink invoices would we then proceed to make payment. That experience took us 1 hour! Just to pay for 2 pairs of pants.
With the remaining 40 minutes, we went for A&W! A&W!!!!! Why did you leave Singapore!?!?! Ahh.. the fantastic waffle with a generous serving of ice cream. We spent 32700IDR on food!
After leaving Nongsa Hill Shopping Mall, we went to Batam City Square, which was frighteningly crowded because (I think) the local celebrities were holding some sort of event there. I felt that mall was rather messy and rowdy, feeling like a complicated jumble of Sim Lim Square and Far East Plaza. The 2nd mall solidified my earlier conclusion that I wasn't going to do any shopping in Batam while my boyfriend spent some S$5-6 getting his hair cut, washed and blowed.
The next destination was Win's Spa, supposedly one of the better spas around in Batam. The lady's corner (with the single rose and MUCH nicer box to place our trinkets within).
For S$50 per person, you'd be treated to a 2.5hr Indonesian massage, sauna, body scrub, body mask and milk bath. And if you're female, at the end of it all, you get this really interesting treatment where they literally sit u down on a stool with a hole in the middle, where they'd then place a small container of burning *whatever it is* under your butt. I AM NOT KIDDING. The whole time, I was too afraid to adjust my butt for fear of giving my butt 2nd to 3rd degree burns. It wasn't steam, it was PURE HEAT. And then ladies would also be given a tummy firming pill (lol).
By the time the spa session ended, it was almost 6.30pm Batam time and naturally we ended up going for dinner. Nasi Padang!
You'd walk into the eatery and the staff there would serve you a plate of EVERY available dish. From there, you would just eat whatever you felt like eating and they'd charge whatever you ate. So out of the 15 plates you see there, we finished 6 plates of dishes. It was GOOD. While there, we also had FRESHLY squeezed starfruit juice and mango juice. There was no lying as to the authenticity of the fruit juice, especially when the pulp and fibre of the fruit was still in the juice. So for 6 dishes, as much rice as you could possibly want, 2 bottles of mineral water and 2 glasses of juice, we paid for a little under S$10. Worth every cent if you asked me.
Since we still wanted (rather badly) to buy keropok and other snacks, we made the tour guide drive us to the mall which we missed earlier on in the day and ended up getting a HUGE bag full of chips and keropok. I love belinjau crackers. From then on, it was another 20-40 min car ride to the resort before we finally checked in, got our keys and entered the room close to 9pm (Batam time!)Comfy (inviting) bed!
I fell in love with this chair
After showering and changing, we watched a bit of Discovery Channel and fell asleep. The next morning, we got up, showered, changed and went down for breakfast, and were not disappointed. We were greeted by a sumptuous feast which beat ANY hotel I stayed at while in Yunnan. After seeing that the weather wasn't being kind on our initial plans to try the water sports there, exacerbated by the general aches my muscles were still suffering from, we gave water sports a miss (never expend all your energy running about on the first day before going for water sports!) and opted to explore the compound of the resort. The hiccup of the trip finally occurred on the 2nd day, just as we were to leave the resort and make our way to Batam Centre to collect our ferry tickets/boarding passes. The Batam travel agency was supposed to send a driver down to pick us up and drive us to the terminal at noon(Sg time). With that in mind, after exploring the premises of the resort, we went back to our room and watched the Discovery Channel before checking out at 11.40am(Sg time), afterwhich we utilised our welcome drinks coupons to redeem 2 glasses of orange syrup water while waiting for the driver. Before we knew it, noon(Sg time) came and gone and there was no sight of the driver. My boyfriend went to the front desk and spent the next 15mins trying to get hold of the travel agency, only to be told at 12.15pm(Sg time) that the driver was already on his way and would arrive in 10 minutes. 10 minutes came and went, still no driver, and still we waited. And when it was 12.45pm(Sg time), we agreed that there was no knowing whether the driver would ever arrive, we decided to have the resort's front desk call for a cab to take us to Batam Centre, incurring an additional expense of S$20. With that, we were finally on our way to Batam Centre, reaching there only closer to 2pm(Sg time). Since the stated ferry timing on the itininery (4.30pm Batam time) would mean we'd only reach Singapore close to 7pm, we really wanted to get on an earlier ferry out (why is part of the reason why we decided to hire a cab to take us to the ferry terminal) as the following day was still a working day for my boyfriend. And because we didn't wait for the driver, we were able to get ourselves boarding passes for the 3.30pm (Batam time) ferry back to Singapore, with an additional 2 hours left to eat and walk around Megamall, the largest mall in Batam which is connected to Batam Centre by an overhead bridge. Within those 2 hours, we managed to have a 2nd round at A&W! =D Too bad they didn't have any Coney dogs, would have loved to have one.
It was only till we were in Singapore waters (though my phone kept getting the Indonesian telecom network whereas my boyfriend was able to get on and stay on Singtel!) that we realised the Singapore travel agent we booked our trip with (a friend of my boyfriend's) was frantically looking for us. And so it turns out that the driver did turn up after we left, how late he was I really don't want to know, and so he (boyfriend) related how they left us in limbo, sitting in the hotel's lobby for close to an hour waiting for a driver that wasn't going to be on time.
Despite the hiccup due to the driver fiasco during the trip, it was still a good one; with fantastic food, nice snacks (I love Berlingau crackers, lol), a 2.5h spa session and of course, fantastic company. Too bad we didn't get to try the water sports though.
Don't worry, I didn't die or vanish from the face of the earth. I just didn't blog, for some reason.
Stopped with the reading for a while because it was seriously killing my bank account (but then again, I just spent $50 on books today =S). And with that, I started, or rather re-started, playing the SIMS 2.
So I've been sadistic to my Sims, because I've killed 2 townies just because I felt they were irritating and then I let my 2 1st-generation Sims "expire" due to old age (by the way, did you know if your Sims achieves the lifetime platinum aspiration status hula zombies appear when they die? And the Grim Reaper welcomes them to heaven with a cool drink? The Sim actually looks happy to die even as her family are crying). And then my Sim-dog died and I just saw its ghost last night, busy digging phantom holes and possessing chairs. I did something pretty spectacularly stupid by enraging grandpa ghostie by selling his bed and converting his bedroom to a band room. So he now turns on my stereo and tv whenever someone mourns for him (resulting in a stereo so damaged the PCs cannot manually repair the stereo and I now waste money on calling for the repairman). Oh, and he's gone psycho as he's going all out to scare his son-in-law. -.-
At least if he gets too annoying, I can just put the urn in my inventory. Lol.
Yes, that gives you a very nice description of what I've been up to. Lol.
Since I haven't said it since it's started, Happy Lunar New Year to one and all. I'm late, it's already the 3rd day but it's fine and dandy since the celebrations traditionally last FIFTEEN freaking days (in Singapore, we only get 2, but this year's good since the 2 days happen to be Thursday AND Friday, so we get a good long weekend).
I don't really want to go back to school come Monday. It's dreadful, when I get back, it'll be week 5 and I have a test on week 6. I still don't quite get Bioinformatics (but then again, it doesn't look like anyone does).
I haven't done much the past few days; I've gone for the yearly reunion dinner (it was BORING, my uncles are all in their fifties so I don't have anything to talk to them about, not to mention the fact that I don't really like them because they're not very nice people, and my only other cousin on my paternal side must be less than 10, not to mention he's autistic, so there's literally nothing to talk about). The food wasn't good:( And then I went visiting, I didn't visit my relatives on the first day, visited my boyfriend's relatives, which was pretty stressful because I spent almost every moment feeling like a stunned deer, not knowing what I was supposed to do, if I unwittingly stepped on anyone's toes, what I was supposed to say etc etc. Yesterday was spent going to the temple (my mum would nag me to death if I didn't go), on the way back, since none of our relatives were home, we made a short trip to my maternal 3rd uncle's place to visit his mother-in-law who's in the final stages of stomach cancer which metastasised to her liver. The only consolation is that despite being in the terminal stage, she's not in pain and she doesn't know what illness she's suffering from. There aren't many instances where ignorance is bliss but I reckon this would be one of them. She's lived a pretty long life, had filial children who took care of her and lived to see 3 of her grandsons (other grandkids I'm not so sure).
Yesterday evening, we went for a proper meal at a Peranankan restaurant in Keppel Country Club to celebrate my mum's birthday. It was great, the food I mean. I mean, it was mouth-watering good. Not everything was that fantastic, I thought the Buah Keluak was too bitter and sour and the Babi Pongteh way too fatty. However, the Beef Rendang was lip-smacking good (tender, the flavour permeated through the meat, served piping hot, how can anyone resist that?) and the Nyonya Chap Chye was tasty (I normally dislike Chap Chye and I made an exception for this dish). I felt the Ngoh Hiang was not bad, it was nice in a sense as it was served hot, a little crispy too but it could have been better. The Assam Prawns didn't leave much of an impression on me, as did the Assam Fish (maybe they're just no good with their Assam-based dishes). For dessert, I had Sago Gula Melaka, it was glorious (though I really thought that they were a little too generous with the Gula Melaka aka it was a tad too sweet).
And today was spent doing work. Biostatistics tutorial (which took me 2.5hours!), writing notes for Experimental Cell and Molecular Biology, rerunning through the Bioinformatics practicals.
Tomorrow's the last day of the 4-day CNY break. I don't really want it to end. And then I checked online and realised that next year's Lunar New Year is on the 14th and 15th of February, which is on a Saturday and Sunday. And the mid-semester break happens to start on the 13th. Which means I just got cheated of my break, AGAIN! The same thing happened last year. I swear the university loves eating our well-deserved public holidays up. Needless to say, I AM NOT HAPPY.
Right, now I need to go shower, do MORE work and catch some sleep. Tata.
I'm using Mozilla Firefox and blogger has been acting weird for the past 4 days or so. What on earth is wrong with it? My New Post page looks absolutely wonky.
Anyway, the holidays have been good so far but work starts tomorrow. I'm an invigilator and my shoes need to be quiet lol.
Been playing lots of games, watching lots of Boston Legal, reading a little... and I'm starting to get bored. Geez, I can never be satisfied.
NWN2: My party beat the dragon and Fire Giants in one sitting (each). Didn't even have to run out and then back in. Hahahaha.... Qara did the bulk of damage to the dragon but Zhjaeve dealt the killing blow. Fire Giants were quite easy as compared to the dragon. And did I mention I figured out how to pronounce Zhjaeve's name?
I'm watching the Martha Stewart Show (we must be years behind) but is it me or did she give a studio full of people a camera each?!?!?
it has to be during the few days we have our Lunar New Year holidays. The Met Service predicted heavy rains and flash floods (yes, in SINGAPORE) and you see, normally, they're way off. They'll tell us that we'll get a bright and sunny day and then it rains cats and dogs. When they tell us to brace for a thunderstorm, we'll end up with a blistering heatwave. Now, they finally choose to be accurate, 'cause it's raining now. ARGH.
Today's the eve of the Lunar New Year. I'm not exactly excited, the only thing I look forward to would be collecting the red packets (laden with cash..)
My room is still in a mess, albeit a minor one. I need to wipe my surfaces as well as clear my desktops. Other than that, the textbooks have places of their own now.
I have to study but I'm obviously in no mood to study, it seems nuts studying over the Lunar New Year holidays but the university I'm in is a sadistic one and doesn't like the idea of having its students actually enjoy a proper holiday, hence all the mid term tests the week immediately after the Lunar New Year holidays. Boo.
Maybe I'll get started on my Philosophy essay (draft number 2). Yea, and then my brain can go on a hiatus and I can proceed to look absolutely zombified, as if I've been on drugs, for the rest of the night. The reunion dinner isn't exactly the most intellectually stimulating event on earth, actually it couldn't possibly be mildly intellectually stimulating.
I can't decide which module to S/U. Philosophy or Sociology? ARGH.
I went to the library today and did SOME (I mean it, SOME, so it wasn't a lot) research that I thought would be useful for my philosophy essay. Now I have an additional point that I think is plausible and I'm out of space. Working backfired because now I think I have too much and don't have enough space. I need help so I think I'm going to ask my tutor for help tomorrow.
Today, as I hopped off the lorry (I hitched a ride on my mum's company transport), I felt this sudden twinge of pain (definitely not good) that spread around my left ankle. My left ankle doesn't like lorries. So I shouldn't hop off lorries and land on my left ankle. Point taken.
I forgot to watch a webcast lecture last Friday so I'm probably watching it on Wednesday. Just so I know, the list of things that HAVE to be completed over my non-existent study break (next week):
1. Study for my Biodiversity CA 2. Study for my Economics CA 3. Complete my Philosophy essay + attach one of my blog posts 4. Study for my Sociology CA 5. Study for my Statistics CA
Anyway, one of my lecturers collapsed 2 weeks ago after my weekly Monday lecture for that class. I didn't know about it till today (the lecture was cancelled last week) when the new lecturer took over and told us. Apparently the first lecturer is stuck in the ICU of a hospital. Sounds bad, kind of makes me wonder what happened. Maybe it's a societal thing, especially so in Singapore, where we are just so morbidly curious about everything. And if it's something bad, the more curious we get about the issue. We are morbid people.
Tomorrow I'm off to the airport (again). This time to send ANOTHER friend off to Australia. Long day tomorrow. At least my lessons are mostly over by the end of tomorrow. All that's left is one statistics lecture on Thursday though I do have to be back on Friday for an hour's worth of talks on summer exchange programmes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on landing one this coming semester break.
I'm super tired now and it's barely 11pm. My room is a mess. The Lunar New Year is less than 6 days away and I need to clean my room up. My room is frighteningly untidy. I need to find a place to chuck my textbooks. Next time, I'm going to want a monstrous bookshelf that can take all the books I can possibly buy. For now, I'm out of space (my textbooks for the sem are sitting on a spare chair I have). My table is overrun by Eragon (the book) which I haven't started reading.
I find this amusing; I have the bulk of my hair in a ponytail! Lol. I got rid of my at-shoulder-blades length hair May last year and the boyfriend UTTERLY HATED it, along with just about every guy who commented. How long is it going to take before it gets back to being at least shoulder length? The current length is an awkward one because I have a stub for a ponytail. LMBO.
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:
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.
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!
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.
I'm a 3rd year student in what is probably the largest autonomous university in Singapore majoring in a Science-related subject (well it sorta IS SCIENCE). I'm known to be introverted, sarcastic (at times), funny when I rant (which isn't a good thing lol) and somewhat of a loner. I miss LA and would move there in a heartbeat :(
Comfy (inviting) bed!
