clearing backlog is very difficult but i'll try my best.
so you all have to bear with reading entries that date way back to 3 months ago.
sooo i last blogged after my taiwan trip.
and i had promised photos and an entry about it.
(to think this came way after chin and eleanor's entries even though they went 2 months later)
now *drumrolls* here it is!
and so the story begins in the morning of 30th May 2006.
3 girls hastily made a decision and decided to conquer Taipei!
DAY ONE - 30th MAY 2006
full of enthusiasm, equipped with heavy (ie char's one was almost 20kg!) lugguages and armed with maps, we happily bidded goodbye to our sunny island of Singapore.
alas a heavy cloud loomed over our happiness midway through the 5 hour flight. hungry, thirsty and uncomfortable atop the immensely cramped seats of the budget airline Jetstarasia plane, we started feeling just a little homesick.
but as land started appearing on the window (i took the window seat heh), we got all excited. "Yeah we're on Taiwan ground!", "I can finally eat all the Taiwan snacks I saw on TV!"-related thoughts starting filling our brains as the plane touched down on 中正(ZhongZheng) international airport.
getting our passports stamped and collecting masses of maps from the counter, we took our ride down to the Taipei central city. after conveniently dumping our bags, the ravished girls decided to have a first hand taste of Taiwan's night snacks. we asked the receptionist for the directions to a vegeterian restaurant and headed out promptly without really knowing where to go. and yes, we got lost on the first night! haha but fret not because somehow we managed to walk one whole MTR station away to the 龍三寺(longshansi) area.
along the way, one very interesting thing happened besides our checking out the convenient stores and passing through this really creepy street which we really realised was a "red-light" area. a weird suspicious looking guy passed by and walked towards zhuang, exclaiming: "小妹妹﹐你很可愛!" both of us were shocked and hurriedly pulled zhuang away. later she told us that she had smiled at that man! LOL. zhuang really's a blur sotong.
so even though we couldn't find a vegetarian restaurant, we found a night market instead. and thus we had the first 臭豆腐(stinky tofu) of the trip.
for me, i got really hyped up when i saw all the yummy food in the night market. somehow they were calling out to me. char and i tried almost everything we could afford and believe me, that was where majority of my expenditure went to. and if you were to compare the pictures before and after taiwan trip, both char and i grew fatter! haha.
the above, as recommended by char, is called 肉圓(meat ball). it looks nothing much from the picture but they are really good! considering we were already bloated upon eating this.
this is really good! just simple caramelised strawberry. hot and the strawberry melts into our mouth. *yums* how come they don't sell this over here?
had always wanted to try this ever since i saw it at the japanese fair in takashimaya basement. the taiwanese counterpart is much cheaper and it tastes good too!
other food we tried that we didn't manage to take a picture of include: 抓蔥餅(garlic prata) which is a less oily version of singapore's roti prata. actually we ate much more but i forgot. oops.
after all that sinful food, we decided to take a longer route back and realised that 西門盯(ximending) is just one street right behind our hotel! the subconscious in us started screaming: "SHOPPING!"
DAY TWO - 1st MAY 2006
*to be continued*
