一步一脚印，发现新台湾 (Day 6)

垦丁大街 & water activities

We woke up early at about 730 am for some hotel breakfast before checking out of Gear hotel, and making our way to 垦丁. Although the breakfast was rather yucky, i felt that the service more than made up for it. for one, the canteen lady came over to explain to us why there was no sunny side up that mornin, and that we could request to have more omelette if we wanted. i think taiwanese are generally very friendly and warm. i managed to stuff some porridge down as i know we would have a long day ahead.

After checking out, we took cab down to 国通捷运 to enquire about the rates. me and DC went to check out the departure schedule for a couple of places there and in the end we decide to take up an uncle's offer for a private bus, as it was slightly cheaper, and we could leave immediately. although the others had their doubts about taking a private bus instead of the established 捷运, we took it anyway, and soon we had left 高雄 (and the polluted air) behind.

The whole journey took about 1 hr 30 min. as we approach 垦丁, nice scenery awaits us

We stayed at Hostelling International, 垦丁, Taiwan. HI Kenting is very different from HI Taipei; instead of three double-decker bunk beds, we had six mattresses laid out side by side in a semi tatami-style room. when we first enter the room, all of us were pleasantly surprised, as we had expected the double-decker beds like in Taipei's. and we had a TV set! it is definitely more comfortable here and i can tell you i had such a good sleep that night that it was the first morning out of so many days that i was the last person among all to wake up!

Inside our room:

After unpacking our luggage and changing into beach wear, we went out to 垦丁大街 for some lunch before HI's private bus picks us up for some water activities.

This is how our hostel (It is also called Youth Activity Centre) looks like:

Entrance to the admin. office:

A 7-11 (便利商店) located in the premises, very convenient:

At the exit of our hostel. The three guys had decided to take a picture with the dog since they are all born in the year of the Dog. I wont explain why LW (in red) posed in this manner, since i think you can figure out yourself =) :

A group photo at the entrance:

A map of 垦丁:

Thereafter, we made our way to 垦丁大街。垦丁大街 is one long stretch of shops selling all kinds of beach apparel such as t-shirts, slippers, bikinis, wakeboarding equipment etc., and also restaurants that serve Thai food, yummilicious seafood delicacies as well as desserts for hot summer.

Some pictures along 垦丁大街:

A surfboard equipment shop with its shop name on a wooden "surfboard":

Many, many shophouses that line the street:

大尖山 ('nuff said):

Cute signage:

A rather gu-niang shop. I wonder which guy would "bravely" enter:

Creative, legal gratifiti on a storehouse of sorts along the way:

You can see many signboards along the way, particularly seafood restaurants':

Huge mannequin of bikini babe:

A drinks stall which at first i thought was a fruits stall, since it looked so green and so many fruits were on display:

At a Snoopy shop. DC posing with Snoopy:

HM (looking so happy, haha):

Entrance of Kending National Forest Recreation Area:

Another image of 大尖山:

A hotel outside the park. Dunno why i thought of 大奸商饭店 when i see the hotel name, hahah:

We had lunch at guess where? MacDonald's. I know, i know. with all the good food there, why did we choose Mac's? well, i didn't care too much as i was famished. but instead of stuffing myself with food since i hardly ate much the day before, i only managed to finish my burger and a few strips of fries. hmm my appetite continued to be smaller than my usual for more than one week, and i did notice my tummy slimming down. good way to lose weight? hee.

After having lunch, HI bus came to fetch us to the beach for our water activities. The sky looked rather gloomy and I had my doubts as to whether we would still be allowed to continue with our plans. It was fortunate that no heavy rain or thunderstorm ensued, and we changed into snorkelling (diving?) suit. Me and HM were apprehensive as we did not know how to swim well, but we were assured by our instructor (who's a Taiwan 少数民族) that we would be very safe.

I'm glad I did not give up snorkelling just because of my fear. Although the seawater is not as clear as that in the Maldives or Australia, we were treated to beautiful sights of coral reefs and fishes once we set off. Despite the slightly choppy waters (probably due to the bad weather), we were able to see quite clearly, and after getting used to breathing through the tube, i pretty much enjoyed myself alot!

Thereafter, the instructor led us snorkelling to the deeper waters. And over here, where the speedboat was waiting for us, we began the second part of our water activities- banana boat! Haha I have always wanted to try that, and true enough, it was pretty nerve-wrecking! Funny that the instructor asked us beforehand whether we want to fall into the water or not. I was like, can choose one meh, i thought sure fall one. None of us except for LW wanted to fall, but one person's strength turned out to be enough to overcome the majority. We fell into the water when the boat turned at a sharp angle, with none of us being able to stay afloat (since we are all on the same boat, technically speaking). We promptly boarded the speed boat before we took the banana boat again. I think the "fall" was probably the highlight of our ride, as all of us berated LW while merrily recapping the "fall" haha.

We took the speed boat back to our original spot of snorkelling after finishing the banana boat ride. Here, we were allowed to snorkel on our own (before, we had to follow the instructor's lead, and all of us were "connected" by ropes, with two of us in front holding onto a swimming float led by the instructor).

It was 5 plus by the time we returned to shore. Picture of us after our successful first attempt at snorkelling and banana boat:

While we took turns to take a nice shower back in our hostel, we had a rather fun time watching A Chinese Odyssey: Cinderella, a Stephen Chow film that is typically full of lame jokes. What i enjoyed about the show was the time-reversal parts, where Stephen Chow went back to save Karen Mok, his beloved, before she commits suicide. Haha we almost didn't want to leave our room for dinner as we were so engrossed in the show.

It was getting dark and drizzling when we left our hostel. Wafts of sumptous smells of seafood lingered in the air and enticed us to step into one of those restaurants that had live seafood displays outside. My stomach was practically growling like mad at this point. We ordered lotsa food, including steamed prawns, fish soup, stir-fried vegetables, fried fish (it's abit like japanese shishamu, where the whole fish is deep-fried in a batter coat), etc. The meal turns out to only cost about slightly more than $10 per person! I thought it was freaking cheap, given the amount of food we had (we had at least 7-8 dishes). The only gripe was the lack of chili or other sauces for us to dip in. I think Singaporeans would only truly enjoy seafood in our own country, where dishes like chili crab can never be rivalled elsewhere.

Pictures of some of the dishes:

Thereafter was some shopping along 垦丁大街. We played a few rounds of basketball arcade before heading back to our hostel for some rather "unclean" fun of gambling keke. The overall winner, XY, had acquired for herself enough coins for her to play many rounds of basketball arcade game the next day haha.

P.S. Very nice pictures coming up in the next entry.

一步一脚印，发现新台湾 (Day 5)

梦时代 (Dream Mall)

It did not turn out to be a good start for the day ahead.

I didn't have a good night's sleep as I start to feel stomach upset in the middle of the night and had to rush to the toilet a few times. In the end, I woke up at 5 plus in the morning after barely catching 2 hours of sleep to read my 小王子picture book. The others started to wake up at about 7 plus. At that point, I felt nauseaus and did not feel like joining them for breakfast. Instead, the rest went down to eat, and they bought some medicine and sour stuff for me, as well as XY, who also felt sick.

XY felt better after taking the medicine but I still felt very sick even after vomitting. In the end, I opt to stay in the hotel room to rest while the rest left at about 3pm. I had fallen asleep and woke up at 4 plus, and entertained myself by switching TV channels (Taiwan has over 100 channels for viewers to watch, and they have *gasp* HBO, Star Movie, Sports channel etc. lucky them!!). About 6pm, i felt much better and decide to join the rest at Dream Mall. Despite raining for almost the whole day, it was still pouring when i took the cab down to Dream Mall, and luckily LW advised me to bring a jacket along as it was quite cold in the mall.

Dream Mall is apparently the largest shopping mall in Taiwan (pictures taken courtesy of http://www.dreamall.com.tw/index.asp?LCID=1):

The rest were at 金石堂书店 when i reached. HM had gone into a shopping frenzy and bought many notebooks and other stationery as souvenirs for her friends. Hee i also got into a small frenzy, and was damn happy when i saw 小王子 notebook.

Picture taken courtesy of (http://www.wretch.cc/blog/shangen):

Aww.. i feet that the artist is really talented. he portrayed 小王子 in such a dreamy and fantasy mood that i've fallen in love with the story all over again. do visit his blog (above link) for more of his art pieces!

After making our purchases, we went for some makanan. As I just had some instant noodles in the hotel room, I ordered soya beancurd dessert and 铜锣烧, which were very delicious!! For the soya beancurd, you could choose to have any toppings you like, and I chose 芋头 and 红豆。The others had 麻辣火锅 and crepes. Thereafter, some of us opt to take the Hello Kitty-themed ferris wheel located on the roof floor, and thus we bought tickets at the ground floor. It costs us about S$6 each, and this also came at a student discount.

The ferris wheel was quite pretty.

There were also other amusement rides there, such as this:

If i weren't sick, i might have tried this out, even tho it looked abit silly jumping up and down haha

Photo taken on the ferris ride. I looked so sick/pale, contrast to HM's excited look, haha:

Some night view shots. We could almost see the whole of 高雄, hmm eh maybe not, but it was a good view nonetheless:

We left Dream Mall after the ride. Funny that I felt more sick after taking the ride, as it was moving so slowly, it was hardly a "thrilling" ride so to speak. It was about 11pm when we reached our hotel room, and I somehow fell asleep while waiting for my turn to bathe. Well, for a prelude, I somehow recovered the next day when i woke up, and did not feel sick at all. It's almost as if like i dislike 高雄 subconsciously, as i felt totally fine to leave for 垦丁the next day, keke.

一步一脚印，发现新台湾 (Day 4)

台北101，五分埔批发市场，高雄

It was out last day at 台北 before we went down to 高雄. Later this evening, we would be taking train at 台北车站 to 左营 station, 高雄市。The trip would take about 1 hr 40 min, and I thought it was pretty fast, considering the fact that we would be travelling from the northermost part of Taiwan (台北) to the southernmost part (高雄)。 An alternative would actually be to take an inland flight to 高雄机场 but it is less feasible and more expensive (I think). The train ticket costs us about NT1490, which is about S$74 (use the conversion rate S$1=NT20).

After checking out of our dorm and depositing our luggage at the counter, we left the hostel. Initially we planned to go 五分埔 first before going 台北101. However, later did we find out that 五分埔 only opens at about 130 pm, and since it was early, we decide to go 台北101 first. We had breakfast at a 卤肉饭 eatery and the 猪脚 was marvellous!!

台北101 was located at a short distance from 市政府站，and is located in the 台北市信义区, where other important office buildings/places of Taiwan were located, such as 台北市政府，台北世界贸易中心 (Taipei World Trade Center) and 国际会议中心.

We walked past this building which reminded me vaguely of our very own Esplanade theatre:

As that day was rather foggy/misty, some of the shots taken might have a little "smoke" effect.

Some sights along the way:

Mr Tin-Man:

A cute "wheel-chair" by the roadside for passers-by to take a rest:

An attempt at taking a shot of 台北101:

台北101 (side view):



Originally called 台北国际金融中心，台北101 is currently to date the tallest building (摩天大楼) in the world. Besides being a main financial center, it also houses many expensive brand retail shops (as well as less expensive brands such as Espirit), eating places, and our final destination: 室內觀景台, as well as 戶外觀景台. Brief layout:

Basement to level 5: shopping area plus eating places

level 5 to level 88: offices (many of them in financial and insurance sector)

level 89: 室內觀景台

level 91: 戶外觀景台 (subject to weather conditions)

level 91 to 100: telecommunication purposes, such as television, radio and emergency rescue relay stations

We did not do much shopping and as some of us wanted our daily coffee fix, we made our way down to the basement for some Starbucks coffee. To our surprise, starbucks in taiwan was more expensive than back in Singapore. A hot chocolate costs me almost S$6 i think!! as the guys decide to stay at Starbucks to chat and play cards, we split ways and the girls went to buy tickets at level 5 to enter the 室內觀景台 for an aerial view of 台北. the ticket costs us about S$15 each and I felt it was a tinny bit expensive, but since it's an experience not to be missed, we went ahead with it. by the way, there was actually a discount if you produce your student traveller pass. the original price was NT350, but student travellers only pay NT300.

We first entered an elevator that took us up all the way to the 89th floor. Like the building itself, this elevator is also famous. It holds the Guiness Record for the fastest elevator in the world! it was no surprise. the elevator could go up to 16.83 m/s (37.5 miles/hour or 60.4 km/h), and within 36 sec, we had travelled 84 floors!! no wonder that we felt some ear blockage in the midst of the journey up.

As the observatory provides a 360 degree view of 台北市, the observatory is shaped in a circular form, and visitors could see some of the most important buildings in 台湾，such as 总统府 and 中正纪念堂. Audio guides, available in 7 different languages, would be distributed to each visitor, and it is similar to a remote control/phone. As the observatory is dvided into about 10 sections, by pressing the number corresponding to an area on the audio guide, the person gets an audio description of the places/buildings/features he/she can see in that particular area. for e.g. the origins of 四兽山 was given as additional information for the visitor.

As the weather was rather foggy/misty as i mentioned earlier, our view was slightly restricted and we could only see vague outlines of the places that are located further.

One misty view:

What perked me up was the mail boxes available at the observatory for visitors to send greetings/postcards back home, and I promptly bought a postcard from the souvenir shop to send home. There were also cute chops for us to stamp on our postcards.

A picture (found on the website: http://www.taipei-101.com.tw/index_en.htm) that is similar to the one on my postcard:

Some other pictures taken at the observatory:

Maps available to show visitors the buildings/places that can be seen from each window view.

E.g. view of 台北巨蛋 (Taiwan's equivalent of HongKong's 红馆, where only the hottest artistes get to hold concerts with large capacity at, or for new yr countdown concerts etc.):

View of 中正纪念堂，总统府， 台大医院 etc:

View of the mountain terrains:

The southern direction:

Us!!:

Cute versions of the 台北101 at the entrance to the ticketing office when we leave:

Thereafter, we left 台北101 and made our way to 五分埔， which is located at walking distance from 永春 station. It was after 1 pm when we left. The layout of 五分埔 is actually similar to Bugis Street, except that each shop is bigger and the area is less cluttered. As the shops there are wholesale dealers, you would expect cheaper prices and real bargains! I was rather excited about coming here as I have heard about this place mentioned in taiwan variety shows, and their fashion there is rather up-to-date, as most stuff is brought over from japan, korea or hong kong directly.

After we decided to meet at 415 at the entrance, we split into two groups, girls and boys, so that we can "maximise" our shopping experience hehe. In short, I bought about 4 tops, one checkered skirt and one blue dress there. The tops and skirt costs less than S$20 each, and the dress costs about S$25, and I felt it was a real steal, as the material is good, and IMO very nice!! hehe. I would really recommend this place for both sexes as there are also shops selling men's clothes, and have brands such as abercombie (altho. im not sure whether they are authentic or not, since the price is too good to be true!) One regret I had was not buying a pair of beige coloured suede boots which costs only S$25!! So cheap! i had decided not to buy cos i doubt i would wear it at all in singapore's weather. that shop also had a wide range of boots in different cutting, length and colour, and many of them were a real steal! i will definitely go back to 五分埔 the next time i decide to come taiwan again.

Thereafter was a mad rush back to our hostel. as we got lost in 五分埔 (the guys too!) and delayed the meeting time, we ended up arriving at our hostel to collect our luggage close to 5pm, and it was rush cos our train was at 550pm! Haha i haven't been so 狼狈 before, cos we had to lug my ultra big luggage around, and the underground was very inaccessible for travellers and the handicapped as there were many staircases around.

After buying dinner from 7-11, we made our way to the train station and board the train about 10 min earlier. I had cold noodles. we chatted and played mahjong cards on the way, and soon enough, we had reached 左营 station, at about 730 pm.

It was a total nightmare for us after that. We were going to stay at Gaoxiong Gear Hotel, which was located at 建国三路 487号。Due to some miscalculation, we walked almost 30 min to the hotel, dragging our luggages, backpacks and/or bags. I had never felt so tired in my life (except for the 10 km run that i had in OBS last time maybe), and by the time we located our hotel, we were all pretty exhausted, and hungry too.

After checking in our hotel room and leaving our luggage there, we set off to look for some food. At a distance from our hotel, there was a small 夜市 (no idea what's the name) and we bought 花枝羹，鲜虾羹，酥炸菇 etc. and packet back to our hotel room and eat. We also bought bubble tea, and always remember to ask for 五分甜 if they ask you for the sweetness you want for your bubble tea haha cos we made the mistake of asking for 三分甜 and it was almost like normal tea brewed from tea bags. The shop lady was very friendly, and chatted with us about the places we went and can go in Taiwan. She highly recommended 绿岛 for its beautiful scenery.

We watched "Doom" on TV while having our supper. I felt it was quite a pleasant experience, spending time with friends, and exclaiming over the scary parts together haha. Thereafter, we decide to sleep (close to about 2pm) for a good start the next day.