The landing was like a roller coaster ride though. Pretty exciting and fun but I have no idea why.

It was a 4-hr flight but it seemed like eternity before we reached Taiwan. Probably cos there was really nothing to do on a budget plane.

We all were rather disappointed when we saw from the plane that there was lightning and it was pouring.

When we finally landed, I had an unpleasant encounter with the airport official who was supposed to check my passport. He really pissed me off with his horrid attitude. Thankfully, I didn't meet anyone else who was like that the rest of the trip.

After gathering all our luggages (It's the first time I am bringing one of those wheeled luggages! Usually, I carry my trekking bag around), we were whizzed off to our hotel in xi men ding (one of the most famous shopping areas in Taiwan) in a small van.

After a 20-min ride, we finally reached our hotel. We were all really hungry and headed out for dinner after depositing our bags at the hotel.

Unfortunately, as a result of our extreme hunger, we made a hasty decision that proved to be wrong, settling for dinner at a yucky steamboat restaurant.

That place smelt like a wet market, and believe me when I say nothing was really edible except for the ice cream which I'd say was the oasis in the desert.

The worst part was that Adrian's girlfriend, Kailing, even found a small cockroach in her rice. Yuck! This, plus the fact that it was raining, was a pretty disappointing start to the trip.

We then headed to the area where all the shops are and we passed by a bakery which was selling some really cute stuff!

Aren't these strawberries adorable? I can swear some of them were staring at me. They even have different expressions on them, shocked, astonished, happy, elated, bewildered... haha! I simply couldn't resist and had to snap a photo of those sitting there in the fridge.

I deduced that Taiwanese love basketball. There are so many arcades that have those basketball machines. Gosh! We just had to have a go. Okay, I admit I was really lousy at it.

There were also A LOT of machines that let you 'catch' soft toys:

And they got the weirdest soft toys (a pile of... radish?!):

A mobile stall selling lots of food in the heart of xi men ding:

Don't we just love the 7-eleven in Taiwan? It has such a huge variety of drinks to choose from!

Me & Hoon were satisfied with our 'Yakult'.

...........................................................................................

Day 2 - City tour

It was drizzling again.

Our tour guide was a talkative man, an ex-cop. Okay, that's crap. Of cos he is. All tour guides need to be talkative to entertain the tourists. He's a rather political and preachy one though, he rambled on and on about the political leaders from the start to the end of the day. One moment he could be talking about some attraction and the next, he'd be at it again. He'd talk about his family too and some values. But he's an interesting man I must say. I don't deny that I was highly entertained by him.

We visited a theatre:

a memorial hall (don't know who that guy is):

another memorial hall where we watched a pretty strange ceremony:

and the forbidden city (I was told by Hoon it's not the authentic one, the authentic one is in China):

That's Ali & her boyfriend, Renjie, outside Gu Gong (the forbidden city). No photos of the inside though cos we weren't allowed to take photos there.

On our way, we witnessed some demonstrations (asking the president to step down I think) and passed by Chen Shui Bian's residence too. It was heavily guarded.

On top of the tall and thick white walls surrounding it, there were spiky metal fences set up outside the walls and bodyguards standing outside. With the current situation, it's no wonder he needs so much protection. The poor man.

Tour guides love to bring us to tourist shops that have extremely persistent sales people. You know, the kind that pester you till you feel like buying something just to keep them away. I hate this kind of shops just as much as I detest going to memorial halls.

So one of the shops we went to was this aborigine (shao zu) shop which sold very expensive health and beauty products. They sold rare stuff like lingzhi & even deer foetus powder! Creepy!

I must say that the exfoliating lotion (which costs more than SGD100) was really good cos apparently the hand which the lady experimented with was really fair as compared with the one which was not exfoliated. She couldn't bare the sight of that and exfoliated the other hand for me too. I don't deny that I was really tempted to buy it.

In the end, despite her desperate pleas for me to buy, I stood firm and did not buy anything! And I left the place after taking a photo with the shao zu princess.

We also visited a feng shui shop where I bought my tian lu. It's supposed to make my life a better one, I hope. The reaction of most people (including Shan) was, 'What?! You spent SGD99 on that little stone?!!'. But I guess sometimes we just need something at some point in time to reassure ourselves of the future.

And I was convinced by the feng shui masters in that ling long ge (the name of the shop). Anyway, we'll see if my orange tian lu works in a few years! If it does, I might even go back for the bigger and much more expensive purple one which is really pretty!

We also paid a visit to jiu fen which is a hill/mountain where we had our lunch in a cosy shop. That's all of us less Chee Wee (he's taking the photo) huddled up in a small corner at a very short table.

Our lunch (every meal there has to be pork rice). Note that we are all afraid of pork rice cos of the cockroach incident during dinner the day before.

Jiu Fen is quite a nice place and I think we'd have enjoyed ourselves much more if not for the rain which made the sloping pathway so slippery.

Nevertheless, most of us bought local goodies from the shops there. I realised the Taiwanese love almond and I am no fan of almond. So when the others were busy buying from the almond shop, I scurried off to other shops. I bought Taiwan's famous Guo Dong (jelly)!

BBQ Seashells? (with meat inside of cos):

I had alot of fun at a hot spring place too! We weren't told we would be going there so none of us were prepared to soak ourselves in the sulphuric water.

Since we were all too shy to strip naked in front of one another, the gals all just soaked their legs since we paid for the hot spring visit anyway.

Me and Hoon shared a small room where we spent more time posing and taking pictures than actually enjoying the hot water. It was great fun though and we had a good laugh at the silly pics we took.

Our last stop for day 2 was Shilin. From what I heard, we went to the wrong Shilin. But the food was pretty good nonetheless.

My impression of Taiwan from what I gathered from friends before the trip was that Taiwan is a food heaven. True enough, I was not disappointed.

Albeit a little late, we had a wonderful and sumptuous dinner which consisted of a coffin (guan cai ban) - the coffin auntie was not very friendly (she refused to cut the coffin into 8 saying she only cuts it into 4, what the heck!), some fried stuff, mee sua, chicken cutlet (ji pa), etc. some of which I failed to photograph:

The mouth-watering snow ice was our all-time favourite. We had it for dessert. It was once on a Taiwanese food show called quan neng mei shi show (currently showing in Singapore) okay! Don't play play ah! And I must add that the auntie was so much nicer too:

After dinner, we finally headed back to our hotel (Marshal) by train and our day 2 ends there. No doubt, we were all extremely tired after all the sight seeing.

It had been an eventful day and I was extremely pleased with the end-of-the-day dinner. Definitely looking forward to more fun the next day!

I always thought mai dong xi chi dong xi (buy & eat) applies to Hong Kong. From the third day to the last day in Taiwan, that was exactly what we did! More of that later!