After ending our tour, we went back to Paradise hotel, the hotel in Xi Men Ting where we stayed the previous night. My Ah Gu is coming to meet us, his girlfriend is Taiwanese living in Dan Shui, and he fly to Taiwan the previous night. They came to the hotel to find us, and then bring us around Xi Men Ting to walk walk see see : )

This is a big-thing in Taiwan. 鹅阿面. And this stall is the most famous of them all. One bowl of noodles is around SGD$2, not very expensive you say, but they do it in quantity. Have to go through the long Q just to buy the noodles, what’s more you ask? People literally hold the bowl and eat by the road side. No kidding. Don’t believe me right? See below

See! Told ya!

Taa-daa!

We walk around eating 小吃, and shop around, didn’t buy much though. The shopping comes much later at night. We also eat Duck Tongue. My first try! Hahah. Feels funny, but then it doesn’t really taste very weird la. After which, night falls and we have to find some place for dinner. The place we are at was Ximen Station, so we decided to go to the next station for our dinner. At first wanted to take cab since its easier, but then we never went on the Taiwan MRT yet, so here we go.

Ximen Station

The train station was super crowded, but then it wasn’t really that hard to navigate around. Ximen station is some sort like Singapore City Hall station, the interchange station. So naturally its much more crowded and difficult to move around. But being true-blue Singaporeans, what’s this to us? Hahaha. No problem at all. From our Ximen station, we had to go down one level to take the next line to go to our destination. In Singapore we say ”Keep to your left” correct? But no one does it. One thing i really like about Taiwan MRT is that, everyone really follow the MRT rules, their one is slightly different, they “Keep to their Right”, and they really do. See? Once got people don’t keep to the right, the whole line will jam, and people behind will stare at you. LOL!

We reach the next station and took a 5min walk to this restaurant. Ah gu’s girlfriend suggested this place because she say this is one of the place which serves really local Taiwan porridge.

At the entrance

One of the famous taiwan porridge dish, cai-bo egg

Braised meat

Hmm.. we had about 7 dishes for this meal, all very cheap dishes like vegies, egg, normal fish. You guess how much the meal cost? SGD$110!! For porridge? What the hell right? But yea, thats how much it cost. It must be the most expensive porridge i ever eaten. *Faint*

We went back to Ximen, but this time we took cab, much faster, and its even cheaper than taking train. Seriously. Shopping time, not much time left man. My rewards were a bag, nike shoe, tie, t-shirts and some others which i forgot. Hahaha! Then we went back to the hotel and chat. But after a while Ah gu is hungry. So together with me and donald, three of us went out and see what we can find. The time was around 11pm already, and this is when the streets become alive. Earlier when we were in the streets of Ximending, the shops are all open, and the street is full of people. Now we go back, the shops are mostly closed, and the street has lots of hawker stalls selling 小吃.

All the fried stuff

Pancakes

Salty-chicken

Something interesting happen while we were buying the salty-chicken. When we made our order, somebody suddenly shouted “police police!!” The stalls all went for cover, but after a while nothing happen, so they all came out again. Then while the hawker is cooking the chicken, the police really came, and all of them scramble for cover. But the funny thing is, the police car drove past them, they hide by the road side, the police can see them, but no action done. Ha! After the police is gone, they came out, and finally we got our chicken.

Another jellies that we brought

We went back, finish up the food, they left and we went to sleep. We slept at around 1230am, the flight next day is at 7am, the journey from Taipei to airport is 1 hours, we have to get up at 4am because 2 hours earlier before check-in time. So on the way to the airport we were like falling asleep on the bus.

Thats the end of the Taiwan trip, it was really fun, we got to see many things, and also tasted many of the delicious food in Taiwan. Mayb the next time, same like Shanghai, just book a plane ticket fly there, book hotel free-and-easy. Hahaha! But i do know the next time i go will be with the army next year june-july period, for training of course. It took me very long, almost more than one month to make all the post, but then i was really very busy. Too many photos to upload. A lot of things that happen this few weeks are not updated yet, they will come very fast, all this includes Secret Recipe, Ivins, Daily Scoop, Hooked! Ema Dine, Terra Cafe and Haato 

Catch the previous post Grand Hyatt-Dian Shui Lou here

” The world is a book, and those who never travel only read a page “

Number one dish

Another one

Green xiaolongbao

Normal xiaolongbao

Fried rice

Apparently, i am not very sure of the different type of xiaolongbao. Hahaha! Too many, and they didn’t tell us which is which. So we just keep on pop-ing xiaolongbao into our greedy mouth. I found the fried rice not bad, but the others don’t really like it because they think that the rice is too soft (Taiwan rice is much softer than Thai rice). I believe the main reason is because Singaporeans are much used to the hard thai rice, so eating the soft Taiwan fried rice they find it weird. This is the “official” end of our Taiwan guided tour. The tour guide collect his tips, and from now on its on our own. Free-and-easy. Stay tune!

Catch the previous post Grand Hyatt here

” The world is my home, i live wherever i go “