Taipei : Ximending and Taipei 101

After a morning getting really hot (pun intended) at Beitou (click to read previous post), our next destination was Ximending; the very well-known young and happening shopping district of Taipei, Taiwan. It wasn't even a weekend that day but the amount of youngster trudging the place were considerably plentiful.

Honestly, the outlook of Ximending reminds me somehow of our very own Bukit Bintang, just that it's a much bigger version with more alleys and lanes and shops. Well, being an acclaim shopping district, there are certainly plenty of boutiques but guess what? I actually shopped like super duper little there. Perhaps because I was only just back from Bangkok last month, I was kinda having this 'compare-to-Bangkok' shopping syndrome. It's like whenever I see a boutique and I see that they have similar style and designs to those in Bangkok, I'll immediately think of Bangkok and then I will immediately compare their prices. I couldn't help thinking like 'if it was in Bangkok, this piece of dress will only be xxx'. So, that's why I ended up buying very little from Ximending. Although there's more Japanese style clothing there but seriously, there's also plenty of sheers and scallops and chiffon and whats not like Bangkok.

Of course, not everything is similar to those in Bangkok though especially their footwear. The footwear in Taiwan are much better and nicer than those of Bangkok. They really have very nice shoes, sandals and boots and the best part is, most of them are not very expensive too!

Lucky kitty. Such a cute sleeping place for him.

Since we wasn't that interested in shopping, we decided to look for yummy food to fill our stomach.

Ah Chong flour rice noodle or better known as mee suah is really really good. Must try!

Price at only 45 ntd, this piping hot, concentrated and fragrant bowl of oyster mee suah is one of the best thing I had eaten in Taiwan. The oysters are huge and fresh and even their mee suah tasted better than the mee suah we use back home.

The famous aiyu bing stall that can be seen commonly around Taipei.

This is known as aiyu bing in Mandarin or ice aiyu jelly in English.

We ordered one cup added with lemon and another with a really fancy name which turns out to be aiyu bing with pearls only. It's really refreshing to drink it especially on a hot day.

A soft toy theme cafe.

Secretly took a picture with this larger than life bear in the cafe.

  
Most people say even 3 days is insufficient to explore finish Ximending because it's just so huge and happening like that but for us after 3-4 hours, we got bored of the place already. I mean the place is indeed happening, indeed the magnet of the young crowd, indeed trendy and hip but maybe because we didn't exactly explored the whole of Ximending or maybe because the shops there didn't attract us enough, hence we cut short our time there and decided to move on to our next mission in Taiwan, which was to the Taipei 101.

We got off at Taipei City Hall station and it's about 10-15 minutes walk to the 101. The Taipei 101 took over the Petronas twin tower and was the tallest in the world until it was surpassed by Burj Khalifa last year. Truthfully, I wasn't blown away or anything by the Taipei 101. I mean it's tall and unique on it's own but that's about it. It's only worth the visit because it's the skyscraper landmark of Taiwan.

The Taipei 101 from a distance.

Close-up shot.

LOVE Taiwan! :)

So our mission 2 and 3 was also accomplished already. Next up will be on Taiwan street food. Sounds yummy already isn't that? Prepare to get all hungry in the next post alright? :)

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Taipei : Beitou Hot Springs

I'm back from Taiwan! My supposedly 11 days had been cut short to 7 days all thanks to my induction which is starting tomorrow by the way. I had to rebook my return flight, reschedule my whole itinerary and canceled on some friends in Taiwan because I decided to come back to attend the induction instead of deferring although a huge part of me was really nagging me to defer. We didn't get to go to Alishan too which was in our initial itinerary because on our second day in Taiwan, there was a huge storm that hit Alishan area and apparently the road condition there was affected greatly with news of the road up the hill being broken and not accessible by any vehicles for the time being. Nonetheless, this 7 days had nothing been short of amazing especially with both of my darlings, Kit and SY.

This time, we chosed to fly with Tiger Airways instead because at the time of booking, Tiger Airways had the cheapest fare to Taipei among all budget airlines. Besides, flying from Singapore has an added advantage to us JBreans as we do not have to waste time transiting at the airport. It took us only about an hour to get to the airport from JB.

Waiting to depart at Changi budget terminal

We arrived Taipei at about 8.30pm local time (time in Taiwan is the same as Malaysia) and we wasted no time buying our bus ticket from this local bus company call Kuo Kuong to take us to the Taipei main train station. The journey took about 45 minutes and by the time we got to Taipei main station it was already 10pm! And it took us about another 5 minutes to locate our guesthouse (Happy Family). We were so hungry by the time we got to our room but we were also tired so we decided to just look for food around where we stayed instead of going to the night markets. Alas, all the shops nearby our area were already closed hence in the end, we bought our dinner from the Family Mart (Taiwan's equivalent of 7-11).

 

Our rather pathetic dinner on our first night in Taipei.

Our pretty basic but clean and strategically located guesthouse.

Our room for 3 which was located on the 5th floor!

Taipei main train station from the balcony of the guesthouse.

The busy street of Taipei in the morning.

How cool to have a real time display on the ladies washroom.

Taipei really takes the effort to try to keep us females safe. In case you are wondering what's the difference between this waiting zone and the rest, a female waiting zone will have more cctv's watching over compare to the rest (according to my Taiwanese friend).

Our first mission in Taipei was to go soak at the hot springs of XinBeitou. I know, it is summer in Taiwan right now and at average daily temperature of 35 degrees, soaking in hot springs sounded insane. But hot springs are one of Taiwan's pride and we thought we would just go try it out, you know just to have a feeling of what natural hot springs are like. Besides, the hot springs at Xinbeitou is one of Taiwan's 4 main hot springs and it is located so close in Taipei city itself. We took the mrt to Beitou before transferring on another train to Xinbeitou, home to the popular sulphur hot springs in Taiwan.

The mrt to Beitou.

We bought the one day tourist pass at 180ntd which enabled us to take unlimited rides on the mrt and public buses for the day.

The mrt to Xinbeitou. So brightly painted.

All these cute figurines depicting the town of Xinbeitou. Even from the mrt station itself, we can already smell the odiferous sulphur.

Even the mrt to Xinbeitou has all these cute tubs with a computerized map in them.

It's about 15 minutes walk to the Beitou hot spring public bath.

The Beitou hot spring public bath with an entrance fee of only 40ntd per person. 

Photography were not allowed inside the hot spring area for the privacy of all users. Basically, the hot spring public bath is divided into a few sessions a day with each session lasting about 3 hours each. There are 3 main hot springs inside with the temperature of the water varying between each hot spring and there are also 2 cold pool inside, which is superbly useful to cool down the body especially after you feel all roasted from the hot springs. Unlike the hot spring in Malaysia, the Xinbeitou one is all au naturel and bathing clothes are required. They encouraged users of the hot spring to soak at a duration of not more than 10 minutes each time for health purposes. 

We managed to stay in the first one for a full 10 minutes but we were already perspiring like crazy at the end of it. Still, we braved ourselves for the 2nd one and this time round, we couldn't take the heat anymore. The water temperature was only about 38 degrees but with the sun smiling generously down on us, I felt as though we were being boiled and baked inside the hot spring. My arteries were all dilating furiously and I felt my pulses really strong already. Hot springs are said to have beauty and rejuvenating purposes, so I guessed we only managed to beautify our skin for like 15 minutes that day. Hot springs are indeed relaxing and pampering, but definitely not during summer. It will have been most ideal to go soak in one during winter.

The Beitou hot spring museum with free entrance. There are many informative exhibits especially on the origin of the hot springs in this town but it's all in Chinese so unless you can read Chinese, you'll probably gain nothing out of it as well.

Can you all guess what building is this?

This is actually the Beitou public library! So beautiful can.

Attempting to blend in at the Katagalan cultural centre.

Alright, that's all for Taipei update for now. Mission two and so on in coming posts so remember to stay tuned to this space. Till then, nights everyone. :)

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Humble Beginnings Mille Crepe

In less than 24 hours, I'll be flying off to Taiwan *excited*. This is actually the first time I'll be backpacking with few of my darlings from high school so double the excitement. I'll also be meeting some friends from Taiwan thus triple the excitement! Well before I go missing for the next 10 days, I just like to share about something known as the mille crepe. For someone who pretty much dislike cream, this is one exceptional cream cake that I actually like.

So what exactly is a mille crepe? A mille crepe is basically a type of French cake and 'mille' means 'a thousand'. Hence unlike normal cakes, these type of cakes are made up of many many layers resembling 'a thousand' layers from afar.

When some of my friends came down to JB over the last few days, we decided to order the mille crepe from Humble Beginnings for them to try. If you guys have heard of Nadege Patisserie mille crepe in Melaka, then the founder of Humble Beginnings is actually the original chef at Nadege. ( I got to know this from reading Jason mumbles blog) So if you think Nadege is good, then you really got to try this. A few years ago, when Amos (the founder) just move down to JB, this mille crepe of his was only available in JB.  But little did I realized that now they are also available in KL/PJ and Penang besides Johor Bahru.

No prize for guessing right what's in our hand :p

The very nicely wrapped box.

The mille crepe from Humble Beginnings. When we made an order, we have the choice to request if we will like them to precut our cake into slices or cubes. I had requested for our cake to be cut into cubes because I thought it will be more convenient for consumption.

Beautifully layered.

We had cookies and cream that day hence the cookies and cream between each layer.

Each mouthful was sinfully delicious. I guess what makes this cream cake more bearable and better for me than the rest is the fact that amidst all those cream, there's those crunchy layers and caramelized top which doesn't make me feel like I'm eating all cream only if that makes sense. Well, I think this is something definitely worth a try to satisfy the sweet tooth. :)

Disclaimer : This is an unpaid advertorial/review and is based solely on the author's point of view only. Hence, any discrepancy in taste or opinion is very much regrettable. 

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Vientiane Riverfront

Remember somewhere in the mid of last month I posted a post about being in Laos? Well, I'm back for almost 2 weeks now and finally am going to start blogging about my experience backpacking the second leg of South East Asia; the first leg being last year covering Cambodia and Vietnam. This time, I decided to cover Laos and Thailand. Had intended to do more but I had to cut it short because of my convocation.

Anyways, in my previous post, I mentioned about getting our money change at the airport right? Well just a little advice from me :  please DO NOT get your money change at the airport because we later found out that getting our money change at the money changers around Vientiane fetched us a far better rate than the airport definitely. No need to rush to get your kips at the airport because while most Laotian uses kips, they widely accepts USD as well. Seriously, we felt so ripped off by the airport. At the airport the rate was RM 1 to 2200 kip and at money changers outside, it was RM 1 to 2540 kip! Argggh! At least that was the rates we got from the money changers that lined Lan Xang avenue. And because of that 300 kip difference, we were paying more with every single cent spent that in the end we used far more USD in Laos which makes everything cheaper after conversion.

Since we were staying at the riverfront, we decided to spend our first day in Vientiane exploring the riverfront. The Mekong river is less than 5 minutes walk from our guesthouse.

It looks like the Mekong river is drying up.

The whole riverfront is kinda like a recreation park now. There were people of all ages jogging and cycling along the river, teenagers and young adults skate boarding, families and children playing in the playground and dating couples just sitting around waiting for the sunset.

Walking on the opposite side of street from the park, there were quite a number of stalls selling pretty crafts and souvenirs.

The Lao love a good ping (grill) so there are countless food vendors along the street selling everything grilled. These makeshift grilled pits are actually used kerosene barrels.

We walked and we walked until we finally reached the end of the stretch of the food and drink vendors. Honestly we didn't know which stall to go because everyone from every stall was trying to get us to their stall. Besides, all their menus are similar, selling same dishes at the same price so there was nothing competitive in terms of prices. Hence, in the end we picked the stall with the most number of locals.

Notice those eggs the yellow arrow is pointing too? Apparently the Laotian love duck fetus eggs too! Seriously almost every table around us had a plateful of the duck fetus eggs on them and just like in Cambodia, they were happily gulping down their eggs as well. Only that the most Laotian take their duck fetus eggs with beer Lao.

The stall we ate from.

We ordered one grilled fish and one grilled chicken. The girl at the stall taught us to say fish and chicken in Laos. Fish is paa and chicken is kai which we later on found out was the same as the Thai language for fish and chicken.

Enjoying a coconut on a very hot day. The coconut was 7000 kip (RM 3). Even the coconut water was warm.

We had to wait like half an hour before our fish and chicken was ready because they were being slowly grilled over hot coals. So in the meantime, we decided to try this local street food which is called nam. It is really a fried ball of sticky rice and shredded coconut. 5000 kip (RM 2.30)

The fried ball cut opened. It's quite interesting to try because we never had such thing in Malaysia but perhaps because it was rice, I felt quite full even eating half of it.

A huge plate of sticky rice. In Laos, sticky rice is the preferred rice. Sticky rice is actually plain glutinous rice and is serve with a dipping sauce.

Our grilled Mekong fish. The whole fish was bathed in thick layer of table salt with lemongrass stuffed down its throat through the mouth. Despite it's not so appealing look (I don't know but I find the lemongrass stuffed into the fish mouth like that not really appealing) and after clearing away all the salt, the fish itself was super fresh and huge. Not to mention the whole fish was only 35 000 kip ( RM 15)

Our ping kai. Honestly, I felt it tasted kinda like our tandoori chicken. 20,000 kip (RM 9)

Everyone else also had a plate of this on their table so we decided to try one too. It's simply just fried maggi but unlike our maggi goreng, it is sweet and sour and had peanuts. If you like sweet and sour, you'll like this.

We initially thought this was some sort of street massage but turn out, instead of the conventional tables and chairs, this are the tables and chairs provided by some of the vendors in hope to attract customers.

I realized they have a lot of this Saigon painting look-alikes and very beautiful lamps.

The riverfront is indeed a pretty neat place to go to sample some of the cheapest Lao street food in Vientiane. I was full to the max after our dinner because as I realized, the Lao people are extremely generous with their food portion. Everything is like super huge plate and even their fishes and chickens are like huge (for the price we were paying, we thought it was well worth it). If I had stayed in Laos for a month, I'm pretty sure with all their sticky rice and huge fishes, I'll definitely gain weight in no time! :)

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