Taipei 101 food court

The food court is the most affordable place in taipei 101, the shops are all just like paragon, all selling branded goods and over-rated. How i wish i could work here, so i could eat here everyday, haha. The portions are huge, and the food is very nice, this is where i tried the best tasting ramen ever, the soup was super sweet, the ramen had abalone slices and scallop somemore. cost? NTD120.

on the way to taipei 101

This was taken while on the shuttle bus to taipei 101, it's actually closer than you think from the city hall metro station.

Zhong Zheng Ji Nian Tang

You cant really get a feel of how big the thing is until you have actually been to the place,but if u look closely at the bottom left hand side of the photo above, notice how small the people look relative to its actual size. The whole place is just so freakin big, you'll be stunned at the sheer size of the whole place when u are there.

inside the happy family hostel

long qing with a super big banana that she bought at kee lung, little did she expect that this would be the start of her nightmare with the banana.

kee lung

See that big pot of rice, it's called you fan and it's glutinous rice with mushrooms, not bad but i regret not trying the pork thick soup. which i will make a note to try the next time i go back to taiwan.

miao ko, or entrance of the temple, this is where i was "lost" ; "lost" as in i did not know wat i wan to eat, after looking at 2 rows of food stalls n there are more down the corner, u would be "lost" too. too many choices until u dunno wat to try, it does not help that u are not familiar with their food culture n would regret choosing soemthing that looks nice but tastes bad.

Kee lung train station

This is the port city of kee lung where we stopped by next after visiting jui fen, n yes, we took the bus, and there was this super pushy cabby at the bus stop while we were waiting for the bus who wanted us to take his cab, he keep offering his services despite us refusing his offer time n time again.

jui fen (part 3)

Soon fatt says that this is where the inspiration of Sprited away came from, with the rows and rows of red lanterns lining the narrow flight of steps.


We shifted inside after realising that it was too sunny outside, the view is not bad lah, but i still dun think that it justifies the cost of my drink.

Okay, we took a break at some tea house which charges as much as starbucks for a simple cup of coffee or soda, which i feel is a little rip-off lah, n they even have a strict one person one drink policy, which means no sharing.

more scenic views from jui fen.

jui fen (part 2)

This is where we stopped next for another meal: fish ball soup, they use different types of fish for the various fish balls that u see in the pic, such as the xue yu wan, sha yu wan n the taste is totally different from wat we are used to in singapore.

jui fen (part 1)

This is where we bought the super nice tai yang bing. i bought 3 boxes and there were almost all gone a few days after i got back.

obaasan with super outstanding hairstyle. apparently she rather well known and took many pictures with a lot of ming xing.

okay, i'm the brave soul who went to try the shell thingy.

i cant remember wats this called, it's just some spiral shell thingy, roasted over the grill toppled with chilli sauce. n it does not taste as nice as it looks.

Bing tang hu lu, the gals were simply anxious to try it, luckily i didnt try as i dun think i would like the taste at all bah.

our 1st choice of xiao chi. popiah skin with peanut shavings n ice cream, not bad, it's actually nicer than it looks.

This is the start of the jui fen street, it's a very long street with most of the stalls selling food, so u can actually eat the whole day here.

taken while on the bus up

on the way to jui fen

taking the bus to jui fen, somehow with the way we are travelling, i feel so like a taiwanese, except for the fact that i cant speak chinese that fluently and dress like them.

Taipei Raiway station

Rui fang station. This is where we alighted from the train and took a bus to Jui fen.

The gals posing for pictures inside the Train. Yes, the train is nicely air-conditioned, i was expecting some lousy rickety ride with natural air with the usual annoying train sounds aka Malaysian Railway style, but surprisingly the ride is quite comfortable.

At the platform, waiting for the train. posing with a bento bought at the train station. The thing u have to be on the lookout is the platform berth on which the train will stop. Each platform has several berths aka berth A, B, C, so u have to be on the lookout for which berth the train will stop, picture us chasing after a train because we see other people also running after a train, and we just followed them likewise. not knowing if that train is the train that we have bought tickets to. Combine this with the fact that there are many platforms and many berths for the train to stop, it's really not easy to try their railway system unless you are brave enough. (not encouraged for the faint-hearted)

Inside the Taipei railway station, on the left is Jun Pei, on the right is Shu Hui. both posing for pictures in front of the really old-school ticketing office. the board above is labelled with departure times for trains to almost everywhere in Taiwan, and yes, everything in Chinese (Traditional Chinese not simplified Chinese)

The big escape

Okay, this is when we checked out of our hotel and went to stay at a hostel, the master plan was to get 2 rooms for 4 ppl and try to squeeze 8 ppl inside without the hostel owner's knowledge it's a long story but lets just say that the master plan failed and we ended up paying for a bed each.

Wu fen pu

We were starving after the fliming and went to Wu fen pu next, and our next meal is the famous lu rou fan, everywhere u go, u will find this simple dish of rice with lu rou sauce.

Wu fen pu is a whole sale clothes market, u will find narrow alleys of shops selling many clothes, we split up with the gals as we knew that we would only waste each other's time if we went shopping together, it was easier for us to shop as most of the shops were those selling ladies clothes, and it was easy to spot a shop selling guys clothes, look n see if the clothes were nice, pay $ and leave. the worst thing is that they dun allow u to try their clothes, so u had to just compare them with the clothes u were wearing. the most interesting thing about this place is the narrow alleys, just when u thought that only scooters were allowed into the place, here come a delivery truck that is about to squeeze into the alley. After a night of shopping, we took the metro back to ximen and back to our hotel, that was our first time on their public transport system, little did i expect that i'll be taking the metro almost everyday.

more wo cai

thisis Hebe signing autographs for people after the filming of Wo Cai, Jacky Wu has already left by this time, he dissappeared so fast, i could not even see his shadow, haha. My fren brought her notebook for Hebe to sign, the above photo is Hebe's autograph, please use your imagination to figure out the letters H-E-B-E. i'm using mine too.

wo cai wo cai, wo cai cai cai

We attended the fliming of wo cai wo cai wo cai cai cai in the afternoon. We reached the backgate at around 1.30pm, and had to wait for someone inside to open the gate for us, when we were brought in, we saw at least two other groups of Singaporeans there. How to spot a Singaporean in Taiwan? just look at their dressing, the Taiwanese are more jap influenced and are more out-landish in their dressing, while Singaporeans are more conservative and simply just dress in t-shirt n jeans. We watched on while the crew prepped the stage for the fliming, waited for the super "big star" which was Jacky Wu to appear. He was the last one to appear and the first one to leave, okay? but overall i must say, it was a very interesting experience to watch the filming of one of the longest running taiwanese variety shows, we always watched this show in camp during national service because it was one of our only source of entertainment.

it's a small world

This is johnsen, we took this picture at Miramar shopping centre food court where the ferris wheel is, He's my freshie from Science, and we just happen to meet at the shopping centre in Taipei, he said he saw someone wearing the science wind-breaker and wondered who that person was. and when i was queueing up to order my food, i turned around and i saw him. it was really very qiao. He was travelling with his family and was going back soon , while i just started on my holiday. (btw i was not the one wearing the wind-breaker, okay? it was Shu hui)

funky decor

This was a unique place where our guide brought us to see, this is actually a restaurent where the ouside decor was designed by a girl and (by right) it's quite well known lah, at times, it reminds me of the design of Parc guell by Gaudi. (i must admit that i didnt know anything when i went on this trip, like where we'll be going, or how we going, the gals were the ones who planned everything, we just followed)