In Taiwan - Day 6 (Part 1)
Though we had a draft plan of our pit stops, we didn’t know what to do in the city itself. We had a vague idea what were the popular spots in each city. We had to do our homework on where to go each day or the night before. Hehe.
And so, we woke up early and had our usual breakfast in nearby store before we proceeded with our tour. Of all types of breakfast, I somehow developed the love like affection towards the egg pancake.
Right after that, we walked around before we decided to head to…
Yes. It is the National Science and Technology Museum. From the outside, it looks real big; bigger compare to that of our national museum. There are about 6 floors; divided to 2 sections. So, there are a total of 12 sections (or even more). There is even a 3D theater for films.
We showed our passport to get special rates as well as purchased tickets for a 3D short boring documentary film. We had to check in our camera bags and all but were allowed to carry the cameras.
We practically walked each and every section there was in the museum. From telecommunications to biological stuffs, foods to space science and manufacturing section.
We did learn quite a few things about Taiwan’s history from there. We even learnt how to spell notebook in Taiwanese way. Hehe.
Then, we went to the mini cinema to watch a documentary film about a lion… in 3D. Good experience but the film was rather boring till the point I almost dozed off. Hungry and sleepy, we left the museum after the film in search for our late lunch. Our first sight was…
And off we went there without second thought. Haha.
… to be continued
In Taiwan - Day 5 (Part 3)
… continuation
After the tour food hunting, we left Chiayi and went to Kaohsiong (Taiwan’s second largest city) via train. The journey took us more than 1 hour or so to reach our destination. Once we were there, we looked for hotel to crash into stay. After all the checking in, we took a rest for awhile before heading off to the night market (I think it is called Liu He Night Market).
According to the check-in counter, the distance between our hotel to the night market is about 15 mins of walking. But to our (Malaysian) calculation, we roughly estimated about 30 mins instead. Unless you consider running as ‘walking’, we had to multiple whatever they said by 2 times. Hehe.
Throughout our stay, I guess this night market is our most favourite of all night markets we’ve been to. Not only it is big, there were variety of foods and drinks.
Being gluttons, we bought whatever that looked delicious to us. Hehe. The picture above is grilled corn. They coated the corn with peanuts, sesame seeds, sugar and some sauce. It tastes rather …. weird. It tastes like the filling of apam balik (from Malaysia).
Those are assorted dim sum. IIRC, they charged NT$50 for 4 pieces and NT$100 for 9 pieces. You can choose any of those as you wish. And yeah, they were tasty.
There was only one type of taroyaki balls unlike those offered in Jaya Jusco malls whereby you could get all sorts of flavours. They taste alright to me but a lil too sweet for the sauce.
Square watermelon like what you see in television. The owner of the stall said they import the watermelon from Japan (I think). Anyway, it was there for decoration and to attract crowd.
Those are battered sausages. They came in different flavours; garlic, cheese and etc. Due to the size of it, we bought two for trying purpose. But we got conned as the batter was as thick as 0.3cm and the sausage was tiny!!
BBQ chicken wings. BBQ chicken ass butt. BBQ sausages. And other BBQ stuffs. This stall sells them all. One chicken wing costs NT$10 only. So as the chicken butt. And yeah, they were delicious.
Me heart sugarcane water. One cup costs NT$40. They were really fresh but not so chill at all. But hey, they did crunch my thirst after eating all those stuffs.
There were more foods but I didn’t manage to capture them all. We stopped eating at about 10.30pm or so and we went back to the hotel to call it a day.
In Taiwan - Day 5 (Part 2)
… continuation
Right after the sunrise viewing, we headed back down via train again. We grabbed a bite (breakfast) again somewhere nearby before heading back to our hotel.
Before we headed to our next destination, we took a nap again since we woke up at 4am!! Our next destination was Kaohsiong. But in order to go there, we need to take a ride down to Chiayi then only proceed with train riding. Again, we took a van down which cost us around NT$200 each. The ride was rather (very very very very) slow as the driver was driving at 30km/h throughout the journey.
In Chiayi, we left our big heavy bags at a luggage counter (in train station) for a small sum of money as we wouldn’t want to repeat our ‘amazing’ feat like we did in Day 2. Somehow, I managed to produce a formula as below;
Heavy bags + hot weather + walking = Torture to our bodies!!
Then, we proceeded with lunch hunting. As usual, we find whatever food that is available in the city and somehow we managed to find a shop that sells noodles and rice.
Right after the usual meal, we went to look for their famous chicken turkey rice as proposed in the guidebook. It took us approximately 30 mins to 45 mins walk from train station to the shop.
But along the way, we bought pancakes (or mini sponge cake) to munch. It was so good that we bought another 3 packets (4 pieces per packet). Hehe.
The chicken rice which was mentioned earlier was a little different from the one offered in Malaysia. Shredded chicken on oily rice as opposed to pieces of chicken meat with oily rice in Malaysia. And yeah, the taste was as good as the guidebook stated.
It took us another 30 mins to 45 mins walk back to the train station to catch a train to Kaohsiong…
… to be continued
In Taiwan - Day 5 (Part 1)
It was 4am and we had to wake up to see the sunrise. It is not an everyday chance to see sunrise at 2nd highest mountain (Mount. Kinabalu is the highest, according to the tour guide). Being Malaysian as we are, we wore T-shirt (with wind breaker, of course) and short pants as opposed to others who wore like they were in Moscow.
The temperature wasn’t that cold to begin with. We got used to it after an hour or so. But we did get lots of stares from others as though we were some alien from outer earth or something similar based on what we wore. Haha.
We had to catch a train up to the mountain and the journey lasted about 30 mins. Up there, is a viewing deck for tourists. These were the photos I caught…
And again, the view was breathtaking. Just mountains and trees. No concrete forest. It was tricky to get a good shot of sunrise as we need to do various adjustments to our camera settings beforehand.
Besides, we only have 30 seconds, remember. As for me, being lazy me, I just shot whatever I could see and most of the shots were handheld.
Around the deck heading towards the train station, there were stalls selling foods. Appetizing indeed as the cold weather made us hungry.
We bought 2 pieces of the french toast before we headed back to the train station to catch our ride. And yeah, the french toast was awesome. Or maybe we’re just cold and hungry…
… to be continued
In Taiwan - Day 4 (Part 2)
… continuation
Upon reaching Alishan, we made a few phone calls to enquire about the hotel rates. All phone numbers were found from the guidebooks we brought along. As my friend said, the good thing about not making reservation beforehand is that we could bargain for a lower price compare to those than stated in the ‘brochure’. The weather in Alishan was somewhat cooler compare to that of Genting Highland (as the temperature shown below). But it will drop further towards the night by a couple degrees more.
Upon checking into our room, we left the hotel and searched for our lunch. There weren’t much choices to begin with and hence, we have to settle with a small restaurant.
The chicken dish you are looking at right now was one of dishes we ordered. It is something like our steamed chicken from chicken rice stall but it was freaking cold!! Chilled!! Cold!! Whatever you like to call it. I guess they served it directly out from the fridge. Bleehhh…
After the not so satisfying lunch, which cost us NT$1200 for 4 pax, we went to walk around and into forest we went. Being ‘classy’ backpackers, we paid a driver to send us into the jungle instead of walking. Haha.
There weren’t much things to see except for trees….
trees….
and more odd-looking trees.
Then, we reached to a mini lake. We whacked snapped pictures as much as possible. But after half an hour or so, things started to change…
Spooky, isn’t it… We continued our journey out of the jungle forest before it gets dark.
There weren’t much entertainment at night as all shops were closed. We opted to have our dinner in 7-11 to redeem ourselves as being backpackers.
… to be continued
