My blog garden

Taiwan Trip Day 1

Written at Wednesday, April 06, 2011 | back to top

30 March 2011 - Wednesday

Taiwan Trip Day 1
::Singapore - Taipei::

finally, the day i have been anticipating for has arrived. it's the start of my long leave and also my overseas trip to Taiwan with Ginnette, Lisa and Shalee. we have been planning this trip since last December and finally, it's the day itself xD so excited!~

had a super hard time doing my last minute packing of luggage last night, and have to wake up at 5.50am to get ready and prepare to leave my house at 6.40am. the 4 of us even go on different route, Lisa and me will meet first at Outram MRT as we have direct bus there, while Ginnette and Shalee will be boarding the train from Tiong Bahru. and next, Lisa and me will hop up into their train. and yes, eventually, we will still meet xD

me and Lisa at Outram MRT Station

reunion inside the train xD

had a hard time pulling dragging such big luggage around, and carrying super heavy backpack too. packed too many things to bring there, what to do? it's a 7 days trip! ahhh, so excited.

and how nice that Audrey purposely came all the way down to send us off. she hop up our train at Paya Lebar Station and followed us all the way to Changi Airport. early in the morning somemore, we were touched! haha.

first place, take Skytrain to Terminal 1 and get our boarding pass and also to check-in our luggage. it's like a big burden to us pulling it around. mind as well immediately dumped it in to the plane.

anyway, shortly after, Moo came as well to send us off =D

inside the Skytrain

our flight, departing at 10.25am

queueing up for luggage checked-in

with Audrey

Boarding Pass

it was only 8.30am after checking-in our luggage, and so we decided to go Burger King to have our breakfast. we have at least an hour more before we have to go for another round of check-in. yes, i bought Double Croissan'wich Turkey Sausage Burger for my breakfast. my last time using Sing dollars before i have to covert my currency to NT$ for the next 7 days, everything i spend have to be multiplied by 28. lol.

Ginnette and my breakfast

Shalee, me and Ginnette

one group picture before the 4 of us went inside the departure gate

look at my VIP pig back xD

entering the departure gate soon
GOOD BYE, AUDREY AND MOO.
=thanks for sending us off!=

off we go, scanned through our bags, took the express link, only for Singapore passport holder, to enter. we managed to get through successfully =D and next, we entered into the waiting area, waiting to board the plane!

big big full length mirror in the toilet

our plane, China Airline

waiting to board the plane

finally, the gate is opened, and we were all allowed to board the plane at 10.20am. what a pity we weren't given the window seat, they gave us 4 sit together in the middle section. aww, it's okay. let's hope my return flight i can get my window seat xD

anyway, my first time taking China Airline, with 3 sections - 3 seats, 4 seats and 3 seats. looked big, but still as cramp. it took them quite long to serve us our lunch, mainly because they have to wait for the plane to fly up high in the sky before they can start moving around freely. anyway, we fell asleep while waiting until i heard them talking to other passengers about "chicken rice" or "fish rice"?

Ginnette and me each took a different set, and we split half half together. haha. good things must share =D and next after lunch, time for movie! haha

flying from SIN to TPE

Fish Rice and Chicken Rice

it's lunch time!!

toilet in the plane LOL

threesome..

camwhoring time!

REACHING REAL SOON!!

finally, we reached Tao Yuan International Airport at 3pm. 4.5hours flight journey to reach here, and next is to quickly grab our bags, move out of the plane, visit the toilet first, and to retrieve back our luggage before we can proceed to the Immigration Checkpoint to have our passport chopped.

anyway, the officers there asked quite a lot of questions, like come here for how many days? staying at which hotel? for what purpose, etc!

Arrivals!

toilet at the airport lol

luggage retrieved, checkpoint time!

and immediate when we came out from the glass door, we saw our tour guide holding a paper with the word "Super Travel" welcoming us. lol, i felt like a superstar for that few seconds.

anyway, we were the first 4 who came out first. our entire tour group have 11 Singaporeans, and while waiting for the rest to slowly make their way out, we set up camera with timer mode and started spamming pictures on the spot. haha

photos spammed!

Welcome to TAIWAN!!~

shortly after, the other 7 people in our group slowly made their way out from the glass door. and all of us followed the tour guide who led the way out to the tour bus waiting for us outside.

the moment we stepped out of the airport, we can feel the cold air. it's freaking cold outside with the strong wind kept blowing to us. i tried to fight with the coldness, but failed. all of us immediately went to our bag and grab our jacket out to wear.

Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport

cold like mad!!

up to our bus

the 4 of us chopped the last 4 seats

the building in Taiwan

Day 1 first station, instead of bringing us back to out hotel. the tour guide brought us to Taipei 101, one of the top attraction in Taiwan. yay, it's also the place i have been dreaming to go, and now the whole building is standing right infront of me xD. omg, so excited!!~

it's free and easy for us, we were given 1 hour 30 mins to explore the whole Taipei 101. we spammed quite some photos outside first. and not to waste anymore time, it's time to move in xD

Taipei 101

the main entrance

nice awesome shot

well, enough of the photos outside, the wind out there was freaking cold. we couldn't stand it and quickly, it's time to move inside Taipei 101. it's like another shopping mall with shops, restaurants, etc. but out main purpose was to go up the Taipei 101 Observatory.

but we were told that Taipe1 101 Observatory does not allowed big backpack to be brought in, as some years ago, there's a joker who actually went up to 90+ storey and jump parachute down?! lol. he must be mad!

anyway, the only ways to keep our bags were to dump it inside the locker. they had quite a number of locker services provided there. of course, coins were needed xD

Taipei 101's mascot: Damper Baby

locker to keep our belongings

up to level 5 to purchase ticket

taking lift. and they even have a yellow line on the ground
Please stand behind the yellow line!~ LOL

directing us there

the shopping mall

reached level 5, and was stunned to see the crowd. we were thinking whether to go and queue for it, as we were only given like 1.5 hours. but then come to think of it, we were already here, it would be real stupid if we gave it a missed!

we went forward to the counter and bought 4 admission tickets at NT$400 (SGD$17.50) each, but were told that due to some construction work, the outdoor observatory at 91 storey was temporarily closed. anyway, we still went ahead. no outdoor, there's still indoor observatory!

the ticket counter

Admission Fee

Admission Tickets

on the queue to take the elevator up!

there's photo-taking service provided there, but we didn't buy the photo
Ginnette used her camera to snap our picture when it was displayed out on the screen =D

we finally managed to take the high-speed elevator after queueing for 20 minutes or so. it was the world's fastest elevator which took less than a minute to travel from 5th storey to the 89th storey. if i never remembered wrongly, it was around 37 seconds!

and finally we were up at the 89th storey. i'm on the top of the world looking....... lol. standing up at high storey, i can see a larger scale of Taipei, looked like their buildings were.... kind of in a mess =X
i'm like playing lego! haha

look at the Taipei Lego!

pretty colourful uh?

North, South, East, West view.
can you spot the Esplanade and Merlion? xD

i looked dark.
please, don't block my light!! lol!~

group photo

individual shot

we went into the souvenirs shop over there to take a look, they were selling all Damper Baby products. but it was selling at some heavenly price, so expensive! haha. we did not buy anything there, kind of regretted now. at least should have bought some Damper Baby souvenirs back.

each holding a different colour Damper Baby

at the souvenir shop

enough of roaming at 89th storey, we decided to move one level down to the 88th storey to take a look there. actually there's even more nothing to see there, it's like selling a more expensive things like jade and so on!~ not for me, definitely.

and yea, it also showed more details of the Wind Damper, which was one of the unique feature of Taipei 101 building. the Wind Damper was suspended from level 92 to level 87. the Tuned Mass Wind Damper helps protect the building from any disaster.

the description of the Damper

the ultra huge Wind Damper

taking the stair down to 88th Storey

Cheers!~

with the Damper Baby

happy hah!~

lift from level 5

we were pretty late as we have to be down by 6pm, but we were still at 88th storey at 5.55pm. we quickly made our way to the elevator area, and damn we still need to queue up for the elevator. ahh, another waiting time.

by the time we made it back to the 5th storey, it has already past 6pm. haha. but anyway, we were not the last. we ended up still need to wait for others and the bus to pick us up.

the bus came at last at around 6.20pm, and then brought us to Vigor Kobo - some local pastries product shops to buy their local products. Lisa ordered a box of Pineapple Pastries there while the rest of us only sampled non-stop for free, haha.

anyway, the sky turned incredibly fast in Taiwan. it started to turned dark at around 4pm plus. and at 6.50pm it's already in complete darkness, it felt so like 8pm in Singapore, lol.

Vigot Kobo

their local products

next, time for dinner. they brought us to Five-Dime Driftwood Restaurant for dinner. it was a very unique place for dinner, from the outside it looked like some cave. you would never expected it to be a restaurant inside.

we have to go up and turn and walk round and round before we reached the place which we would have our dinner at. a total unique place!~ the foods served weren't that bad, love the fried mushroom. haha

entrance

the inside

our dining area.

waiting for the foods to be served!~

our dinner which was included in the package.

the toilet

kiss kiss

posed by the stairs

at the exit of the place

last picture before we went back to the bus

and before we were all send back to our hotel, the tour guide decided to drop us at Tanshui Old Street for some quick shopping. it's really some quick shopping, we were only given like 30 minutes. haha. we have to see things first, buy things fast as well. most of the shops were almost closing already, but i still managed to buy something there for my friends xD

Tanshui Old Street

and finally, after one full day. it's time they sent us back to our hotel - Joy Hotel. with the tour guide helping us to check-in, got our key and off we back to our room and rest. settled down everything before we decided to go out of our hotel and explore.

Joy Hotel

our room

yay, in our room

ready to go out?!

we were told that there's a 7-eleven just nearby only. so we put down our luggage, rest for awhile and left the room for 7-eleven. i was lazy to wear back my sock and shoes, so i just wore a slipper down thinking it was just nearby.

but who knows, at night it was freezing outside especially when the wind just blow like that. my feet was like frozen. damn, regretted not wearing my shoes out! we actually attempt to take a photos in the middle of the road since there's no car passing by or what, but we couldn't stand the coldness so we gave up and ran all the way to the 7-eleven for some warmth.

the street outside our hotel

wahh.. craving for something HOT!

Lisa bought that in the end, something like Yong Tau Foo. and i bought chips, cup noodle and a bottle of latte back. i had always wanted to try their cup noodle here, i was told that there's actually meat inside xD

after that, we paid what we bought, carried our things in hand as they charged money for plastic bag. ah uh, so environmental friendly uh? they really support the idea of 'bring your own shopping bag'! hah, nevermind, not alot of thing i bought, i can afford to carry back to our hotel.

and all of us gathered back inside Ginnette and my room to have a mini party. and next, laptop out, iphone out, handphone out, all hunting for wi-fi. hopefully to get online and connected with our friends in Singapore. we found free wi-fi, but it was very weak. but still, managed to survive with it.

hunting for wi-fi

things i bought
chips NT$17 ($0.70), cup noodle NT$53 ($2.30), latte NT$30 ($1.30)

it's cup noodle time!!!

Crayon Shin Chan playing on TV.

the things i bought for my friends at Tanshui old street
Crayon Shin Chan sock and Winnie Pooh Ezlink sticker

lastly.....
END OF DAY 1

whee!~ so freaking tired. off to sleep at 3.20am.

Labels: HSS friends, overseas trips, tour, travel