I was looking forward to my Taiwan holiday and now that I've been back to Singapore for more than a week. I've already uploaded the photos from my holiday and there will be Dinner & Dance photos to be uploaded here soon as it just ended last night. I'll blog about this next time.

Day 1:

My flight to Taiwan is at 1.50pm and we were there very early. We went to have early lunch then we did not want our family members to wait for us too long so we decided to go in early and walk around while waiting for the gate to open. I went to DFS to buy some chocolates as instructed by my father to hand it to his Taiwan friend which I will be meeting up with that night to hand her some thing my dad has instructed me to hand on his behalf. There was nothing to do much at Terminal 1 so Auntie Linda suggested taking Skytrain to Terminal 2 and walk around. So my grandpa tagged along and after reaching Terminal 2, Auntie Linda recalled there's this Butterfly Garden in Terminal 3 which she had come across before previously and asked if we will want to go there. So we took the Skytrain and headed to Terminal 3 from Terminal 2.


Xmas decorations in Terminal 2...


Finally we reached Butterfly Garden. Inside is the only enclosed area without air-conditioning. The butterflies seemed to like flying to my grandpa's fingers.









I'm taking a Jetstar airlines but this is an old plane. The space of the leg-space is very narrow compared to the flight I took from Bali to Singapore previously. That one was a much comfortable seating.


Before disembarking from Changi Airport...

Skies above the clouds....

The flight was not fully full but my grandpa had to sit on separate seats from us. His seat was the next row beside ours near aisle. In the end, he shifted to the back seats near the toilets cause it was empty. It's always so beautiful seeing sunrise/sunset from above the skies and also from sea.

It was only 4.30pm when we saw the sun was about to set from the skies....


It was raining when we touched down at Taiwan and as it was winter, sunsets earlier than usual. At 5.30pm, the skies were already turning dark. We touched down at around 6.30pm and reached Taoyuan International Airport. By the time we got our luggages and got out. It was already slightly past 7pm. The hotel has someone picking us up by limousine. We paid NT1500 per car. I managed to find my name being flashed on the white card from Brother Hotel. It took us around an hour's drive to Taipei City so we only reached Brother Hotel at 8pm and it was pretty cold that time. We checked into our rooms and rent two umbrellas from the hotel before we headed out to source for food near our hotel area.

We managed to settle for a HK style cafe. I ordered a Nissin Noodles Luncheon and Egg Soup. After dinner, we walked to the nearby night market called Liaoning Night Market. There aren't any shops around there but just food stalls and it was drizzling that night so many stalls were already closing. It was a small night market area so my grandparents ended up sitting at one of the dessert stalls and ordered red bean soup. Aunty Linda and myself went around to walk. there aren't many shops around there so at 9.30pm, we walked back to our hotel as I need to meet up with my dad's friend at the lobby. We returned to our room and I started taking shots of our room.


I couldn't take shots of the toilet as Auntie Linda was showering inside but it looks decent enough. the daily toiletries are provided and there's a just bathtub in there.




The view outside our room...There's even a platform on the window so we can actually climb up on it to sit and look outside of the window...

Day 2:

Our hotel rooms comes with 2 breakfast per room at Level 13 - Rose Cafe. It's a buffet style Western breakfast which wasn't very nice except for the hash browns. I only went there twice I dun feel like eating there on the last day. I suggested going to try the American breakfast itself at Level 1 Lobby Cafe as this may be better.





The buffet also has Taiwan Teochew porridge. It have sweet potato in it but I picked the porridge without the sweet potato.

Aunty Linda and I taking photo of our reflection in the toilet...

We got the receptionist to book the half day tour on 29th for my grandparents to Jiufen and Northeastern Coast and at the same time, and the receptionist had already helped us book the dinner reservation at this famous hotpot restaurant called Man Tang Hong. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the date or time we want cause they said it was winter time so the place is full. We only managed to get the slot for 5pm so we just have to go for early dinner. We left the hotel at around 10am and took the train to Zhongxiao Fuxing interchange from Nanjing East Station.


This is the super long escalator that leads all the way down to exit to Sogo or to transfer to the other train line.




Train approaching....

I actually took self-photos of Aunty Linda and myself while inside the train but the memory card had error downloading these photos so too bad...

We alighted at Taipei City Hall as we were heading to Taipei 101 but we saw the map outside the MRT Station, we realised the MRT station isn't near to Taipei 101 or the shopping malls around. We will need to take a shuttle bus there. When we reached the bus stop, I was shocked at how many different bus stops there were there and each bus seemed to go to Taipei 101 but it's not free. I know shuttle bus is supposed to be free so I was unsure which is the exact bus stop to wait at or which is the bus to take.



We have decided to walk there instead so the first place we reached was this Shin-Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store as it isn't that far.

they have a lot of such shopping malls around in Taipei. Just in Taipei City Hall, there were 3-4 of same stores around the same area nearby one another.

Finally saw the view of Taipei 101 building...


We came upon this Xmas decoration outside one of the buildings that has a link bridge to Warner Village Cinemas which has all the small shops within the building. The ticketing booth for the cinemas had a super long queue. This Xmas tree had the Alvin & the Chipmunks 2 characters statue inside it.

We entered this Shin-Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store and there's this nice vertical green wall inside at the entrance. I immediately too out my camera to take some shots. HDB gallery has been wanting to do this and they are using the same method, peg-tray systems.

These are my grandparents...

Aunty Linda and me...


Aunty Linda and I headed for lunch at this Japanese restaurant and we wanted to have a light and early lunch so we just ordered two chawamushi each, two cha soba each and a plate of salmon sashimi to share. Taipei City Hall was quite boring. It's either department stores that sells expensive goods or not suitable for us. We decided that we just want to go to Wu Fen Pu and Ximen Ding to shop. Our feet were so pain and tired from the walking. We even spent some time looking for my grandparents. I just regret not buying that bag I saw in Net shop. I loved that bag but thought the price was expensive around 50-60+ for a bag. On the last day when I went to the Net near our hotel, I couldn't find that bag anymore in that branch and regret not buying it that time. Aunty Linda managed to get a bag in the end on the last day when she went to Net shop. We ended up sitting around for a while in Taipei 101 food court called Food Junction.

At 4.15pm we went to get a cab to head down to Man Tang Hong which is at Da-an Road Sec. 4. I was there in July 2008 so I loved the food there. It comes in Yuan Yang Hotpot (one is normal soup base one is spicy known as Ma La) and they will ask you your level of spiciness. When we reached there, the restaurant haven't open yet. We were 15 mins earlier to their opening time at 5pm. Then I realised we were their first dinner customers who has made reservations. However, there were several people outside also waiting for the restaurant to open.

A typical residence in Taipei....

The signboard of Man Tang Hong...

We are only given 2 hours to finish so by 7pm, we will need to finish and pay the bill to leave. Soon the restaurant was full and packed.

After dinner, we took a cab back to our hotel to drop my grandparents off first before Aunty Linda and I goes to Miramar Entertainment Park. The receptionist passed me a message left by Patricia, my dad's another Taiwanese friend, who has helped me a lot including booking of the room and giving me advices of Taipei. I called her to tell her about my room number and she says she would like to meet us for dinner. She asked what we would like to eat. We said Teppanyaki so she said she'll decide on place and try to reserve for 8.30pm. After my conversation with Patricia, Aunty Linda and myself left for Miramar Entertainment Park where we alighted at Jiannan Road Station.



The view from Nanjing East Station...

We were waiting for the train to arrive so we ended up taking photos of the night view...

This train is like our NEL, the train is driverless and it consists of several separate carriages. Design looks like skytrain especially the seating in the front and back of each carriage.

Finally we reached Jiannan Road Station and we saw the huge ferris wheel from the station.




Nice attractive building opposite the station...





There's the Xmas decorations across the MRT station...









Crossing the road towards Miramar Entertainment Park...

The interior of the building...

A nice water feature in the building itself...

We happened to go out to the highest floor of Miramar Department and saw this terrace leading to the outside. It's like a balcony, probably many will head out there for smoking. We saw this building opposite and it looks nice and grand at night...


Because there were people I say i look like Hebe in the past so Aunty Linda ask me to stand with the poster to pose together...


I was shocked and entrigued with how huge/grand the ferris wheel was when I was below it. The tickets for the ferris wheel is only around NT150 (SGD4.50) which is pretty cheap. They asked if we will want to try the fully transparent carriage but it only have two carriages which will take around 20 mins for one to reach the bottom to pick up passengers, so we just went for the normal carriage as there were few groups waiting for the transparent carriage. I believe it's be quite scary to see through the bottom down. So we went to the normal carriage and when we started going up, I realise the carriage was a little shaky and really pretty scary. I am a little afraid of heights so taking ferris wheel is an adventure for me. I tried Singapore Flyer but the experience is nothing compared to this. Taipei one has four in a carriage whereas Singapore Flyer contains around 20-30 pax in one capsule so you dun feel the feeling of being shaky and unstable. I grabbed on to the handles and stopped moving so I became a little rigid and stiff. But I dun have those huge phobia for heights, otherwise I can't even take planes.






The view from the ferris wheel...




At the highest point of the ferris wheel...


Day 3:

We headed for breakfast at the lobby cafe and chose American breakfast.



After breakfast, we left the hotel at 10am and headed to Zhongxiao Fuxing where Sogo was there. However, we were there too early, department stores there only opens at 11am so we went to Watsons which was beside Sogo. Then we went over to Pacific Sogo and sat down outside the store to await for the opening of doors.




There was nothing much at Sogo as most of the stuffs there were pricey or branded. We were the first few customers so all the staff of each floor stood near the escalators actually greeted when we entered each floor. We managed to buy some gift from Crabtree & Evelyn for Patricia as she will be treating us for tonight's dinner. We bought a NT990 (ard SGD45)

Around 11.30am, we headed to look for Breeze Centre where we were supposed to meet Aunty Linda's ex-colleague, Judy for lunch. She brought us to this restaurant that serves local dishes called Kiki Restaurant. Along the way there, we bought some strawberries from the peddlers.

Aunty Linda and Judy...She used to work in Aunty's company for a year in Singapore. Sweet-looking girl with American accent when she speaks English...

The exterior facade of Brother Hotel...We walked back from Zhongxiao East Road to Nanjing East Road (which we were already in between of the two stations so walking back will be better).

We went back to the hotel after lunch to leave our stuffs back at the hotel before we leave for Ximen Ding. Aunty Linda managed to buy a pair of shoes there but I couldn't get anything there. Then we headed to Houshanpi where Wu Fen Pu (Wholesale Shopping) was there. The place is huge and this place has any kinds of clothings. All are winter clothes so it is hard for us to get clothes there suitable for Singapore weather. I had thought I could get a bag there but I didn't anything that i liked there besides that bag I saw in Net shop. But I managed to come across this shop that sells clothes at a sale of NT100 (SGD5) so I bought this top that comes with two pieces and ended up buying another two cute pouches for Mingli and Chuvi. We tried the beancurd with pearls (豆花粉圆) at Wu Fen Pu. We headed back to the hotel before 7pm.

Patricia brought us to this restaurant and I was shocked at how good their service was. This wasn't a Japaneese teppanyaki restaurant but a western fine-dining BBQ restaurant. Their ambience is very nice and cosy.

The chef at our table...



I loved the design of how they placed the tableware...

We need to order from the menu which the whole set comes in 6 courses if I remember correctly at a price of around S$45 per pax. The first dish was the appetiser. It consists of salmon with bit of caviar and the other i cannot remember what i was eating cause everything they said was in Mandarin and they speak really fast so i do not know food terms in mandarin.

Next was the soup. I ordered the Borsch Soup as Aunty Linda ordered the Cream of Mushroom. The chef proposed ordering different food as we can share and taste the different varieties. This was the seafood soup. They had the fresh and actual ingredients in the soup and they just pour the soup into the bowl in front of our presence except for my Borsch Soup which served the fastest.

Cream of Mushroom

French Onion Soup

Borsch Soup. The taste for all the different soup was nice. No wonder the place was quite packed too.

Next was the Salads, Patricia ordered the Escargot, I ordered the Fruit and Seafood salad but because the one of the salad dish ordered had tuna in it, I gave it to Aunty Linda and I took her Soft Shell Crab platter. My grandpa took my share of Fruit and Seafood Salad cause they thought that dish was his order.

This is the BBQ escargot...

Softshell crab platter salad

Tuna Salad

Fruit and Seafood Salad....

The main courses were served and the first order came was Chicken Breast stuffed with fruits in it. The chef actually suggested ordering 5 different courses and the chef will split all the food in 5 portions for all the courses all everyone can have a chance to try all the food.

Pork in two different methods of cooking....



The chef wanted to allow our cameras to be ready for the shot so he passed a lighter to my grandma and asked her to light it. After he poured some wine to the stove, fire followed the wine and lighted flame onto the duck breast...

Steak in two different methods of BBQ...

Fried Rice with Sakura Prawns...

Then one by one the seafood we ordered came after the fish, there's the prawns...

Oysters...However, when the fired rice came, none of us can really finish it then. It was already 10+ and we will still not at dessert...

Then our dessert have to proceed to another area where everyone chill and have drinks and dessert at that area much more cosy and comfortable seating...

We only ordered 3 desserts out of the 5 sets, two fruit platters and Mixed Fruit Sorbet. Because we did not order our complete drinks and dessert, they felt bad so they actually gave us some souvenirs from their restaurant each. It was a nice and simple namecard holder with their logo on it (flower). I even filled in a feddback form for them and it was all good comments. Their service there was really good and they are definitely all very warm and friendly.

I wanted to take a shot of the exterior of the restaurant and I wanted to discreetly take the shot. But when the staff at the entrance saw I was about to take a shot of their restaurant, he smiled and said wanna take a photo must close their doors then will look nicer and it displays the name of the restaurant.

I wanted to take their signboard, the staff even wanted to switch on the lights of the signboard for me to take the shot clearer and brighter but I said it's okay. Such service will never be seen in Singapore. Thumbs up for them!

Day 4:

We went to the Rose Cafe for breakfast at 9am. Then at 10am, the cab driver we had booked called Yin Bao Quan but I call him Mr. Yin in Mandarin, picks us up at 10am outside our hotel. We pay him NT2500 to bring us around the whole day. Anyway, our first stop in our itinerary is to head to Yangmingshan for Hot Spring. It was around an hour's drive to Yangmingshan and at certain parts of our journey up to the mountain, the roads got very misty and foggy until we can't really see the road ahead. Finally we reached this hot spring place called Ri Yue Shan Zhuang 日月山庄 and proceeded to enquire about pricing. The man mending the reception counter explained that if we will want to have our meals there, it will come with hot spring. 3 pax to enter hot spring will require us to order the food to a total of NT1500 at least in order to receive the free hot spring. In the end, we ordered a lot of food and it came up to a total bill of NT1720 cause the food there was rather cheap. We suggest going for the hot spring first and have the meal later. The place there was really cold even walking to the outside area, I was freezing. We checked out the public hot spring area and female and male are two separate areas (besides each other). Aunty Linda and I decided to go for the public one as it has 3 different hot spring tubs in there. There wasn't anyone collecting the tickets from us so we went into the pool area and we wore our bikinis and went into the 40-degree hot spring water after washing our bodies before entering. Our cold and shivering bodies turned warm after we entered the pool. We spent around half an hour alone in the hot spring area then a local woman entered and checked out the area. After a while, she entered with only a towel wrapped around her body and head. Then after soaking for another 5-10 mins, we decided to shower so we showered and changed there. After we started drying our hair with the hair dryer, another two women entered too also naked. After that, we realised why the woman earlier had stared at us in a weird manner, we were supposed to be fully naked but in the end, we managed to spend 40 mins alone by ourselves. We discreetly and secretly took photos of the hot spring area.





Look at the huge spread of food we have ordered? In the end, we had to invite Mr. Yin to join us for the meal as we really couldn't finish everything...

After lunch, Aunty Linda and I went outside to take photos of the scenery and the area.


The toilet...The worst toilet I ever encountered, there's no lighting inside and the squat toilet is pretty dirty and smelly...


The beautiful scenery of Yangmingshan...






It's really cold till both of us had to stuff our hands into the pockets of our jackets respectively as you can see from the photos...

Look at the pure and natural hot spring water stream that is flowing down? It's really hot....


Before leaving Yangmingshan, we took a group shot to commemorate this place...

The next stop in our itinerary was going to Damshui Old Street 淡水老街. I never managed to go to this place in July 2008. We only drove past and I saw this place was so happening at that time during summer. So I shall miss this time round. We headed to this Sanrio shop. It's a very huge store and eye-catching cause you can see the Hello Kitty signage outside the shop. It's an authentic shop. Aunty Linda was so happy she managed to buy those cute tissue packets from the shop. She bought each of every design there (there were about 4-5 diff designs). I bought a Snoopy calender there thinking it was NT300 (SGD13) then after paying I realised it was only NT240 (SGD10.60) so after seeing grandparents sitting down and resting at the dessert shop next to the Sanrio shop, I headed back and ended up buying two cute diaries and one My Melody calender as calenders and diaries were having 20% discount storewide. I even received a small free gift for purchase of NT500. I got a cute Hello Kitty paperbag....




The old street of Damshui...

This chocolate shop is really cute and interesting...We can only stay there the whole day. They sells interesting chocolate with nice packaging which you can give out as gifts. Not sure if Singapore has it...

We walked from start of the old street to the end of it where the Damshui MRT station was and where we were supposed to meet Mr. Yin at...I bought some preserved plums there which Dad and Mum had wanted me to get it after trying out one packet which Dad's Taiwanese business associate had given to him. We headed for Damshui Fisherman's Wharf 淡水渔人码头.

This photos was shot outside the toilet. While I was walking towards the toilet, a group of stray dogs started barking and ran towards my side. I walked beside them and started covering my ears and I couldn't even see what happened. I just hear the dogs were fighting and they were barking and seemed to be fighting. I decided to turn back to where my family were when the dogs started running back in front of me. I saw my grandparents and Aunty Linda laughing at me and walking in another direction away from the dogs. I told them this was the 1st time I was so afraid of dogs and I couldn't even bear to hear what might happened to me. I just know if they are fighting with other dogs, I mustn't run or they might start chasing me instead. After that, Aunty Linda just told me all the stray dogs were attacking one guard dog there. They wlooked and sounded super fierce. This was the first time I was so scared of stray dogs.









My grandparents did not even want to go up to the bridge so Aunty Linda and myself just went up by ourselves...All I can say is, the photos turned out to be super different from what I took in July 2008. Summer skies and winter skies were different. We had blue sky without clouds during summer time, and the purpose of coming to Fisherman's Wharff is to see sunset but today was the wrong day to come here as there wasn't any sun today. We should have come yesterday where it was really bright and sunny.




The foodstalls, seafood restaurants and eateries are at the other end of the bridge...




The famous and romantic Lovers Bridge at Damshui....





We went over to the other side of the bridge and had initially wanted to buy the Mango Shaved ice I ate the last time but the stall has changed menu and owner so we ordered Fried Sotong Balls instead and it's good. We had wanted to share two sticks with grandparents, but it tasted so good that we decided to finish it first then return back to buy another stick for them.


These three gals are so cute. They are so cold they are wrapped up all the way till their eyes and you can't even tell which is the eldest among them if it weren't from their height difference...









We left Damshui before 6pm and headed to Shilin which was around 1/2 hour drive but there was a minor jam due to the peak hour traffic so we reached there around 6.30pm. We started queueing for the XXXL Chicken first at Shilin Food Market which there was a long queue.




That's me queueing up for the XXXL Chicken...




Oyster Omelette...The one that Show Luo has learnt from for starring in his drama, Corner With Love as a street hawker


My grandma at another food stall selling Xiao Long Bao but in Taiwan they call it as 汤包...

Not as nice as Ding Tai Fung...


Fish Cakes...

We had wanted to eat some shaved ice mango but we settled for this stall thinking that it sells shaved ice. In the end, they were selling sorbet and other desserts....Our whole trip this time round doesn't give Aunty Linda any chance of trying mango ice...Good thing I tried before when I came in July 2008 during Summer time...

We got seats and settled my grandparents there to rest while waiting for Aunty Linda and myself to do our shopping at Shilin Night Market. The first shop we went in was a shop that I previously spent and bought two clothes from that same shop previously. I couldn't find anything that i like but Aunty Linda bought two clothes for only less than NT700 (less than SGD40) so she enjoyed so much there.


I managed to buy all the Taiwan snacks that was meant for colleagues for that same snacks shop. I passed by accessories shop and thought why not get my Dinner & Dance accessories from Taipei instead. So I went and look for guitar or musical rock pendant to fit the Glam Rock theme. I bought this guitar necklace with some diamond studs on it for NT700 (SGD31) as the girl said it's made of some kind of metal (maybe nickel), so it will never tarnish or change colour even when perfume is sprayed on. After shopping, we went back to the market and bought bubble tea before we went to look for Mr. Yin's cab.

Day 5:

We decided to forgo free breakfast on the last day so Aunty Linda and I walked over to the nearest mini-mart and bought local cup noodles there. It's so cheap, we bought two cup noodles and 1 fruit juice and we paid around NT150 (SGD3.00). After breakfast, we had around 6 hrs left before we leave for airport. Mr. Yin is coming to pick us up at 4.30pm. By the time, we packed our stuffs and checked out, it was almost 12 noon. We enquired at the concierge on buses to take around and back to hotel but there weren't any so we decided gto walk around the area and look for place to have our lunch. In the end, we found this HK dim sum where there was a queue so we queued and we ordered our food which was only S$4.50 per plate each. After lunch, we headed back to the MRT station and left to take the train ride to the end of the last stop - Taipei Zoo. Then we alighted and thought we can go try the Maokong Cable Car but it was already closed since the typhoon in 2008. So we went to a McDonald'sthen we decided to take to Zhongxiao Fuxing and go to the other Sogo Shopping Mall.

Then we walked for a while and headed back to Nanjing East Station.

After letting my grandparents to sit at the hotel lobby, Aunty Linda and I went around to walk and see if there are shops to kill time. We went into Net and Aunty Linda bought a bag. Then I tried looking for that bag I wanted to buy at Warner Village Cinemas but I couldn't find. I regret not buying it previously, instead Aunty Linda managed to get a bag herself. We left for the airport at Taoyuan and it took us 1 hour's drive and Aunty Linda and myself kept looking out of the window to see the roadside 槟榔stalls and check out the girls inside. Now we know how to spot such stalls along the highway.

We had our lunch at this only restaurant at the Terminal 1. There's nothing much to eat at Terminal 1 compared to Terminal 2 when my flight was Singapore Airlines. We took a last group shot before we entered the borders.



I'll miss Taiwan. Got tourists think that I'm Taiwanese there cause everyone looked like the same an d how I dress is like how Taiwanese dress. Got two tourists approach and ask me for directions and I always tell them i'm also a tourist here...Hehe

Labels: family, holidays, Taiwan

[x] Shireen signing out at
4:21 PM