Taiwan Holiday [Day 2]

The weather was really colder than we expected! Joe shall show you how we survived by layering!

It was raining cats and dogs and we really couldn't go up to Yangmingshan as planned. We decided to spend the day engaging in Joe's favourite activity - shopping! Seriously he is not interested in sightseeing at all, only shopping! I teased him by saying that we will have our next holiday at Orchard Road, maybe have a hotel stay there and he thinks it's a great idea! Someone save me!!!

We started the day with a simple breakfast offered free by our hotel. Honestly, Keyman's is nothing to shout about. If you are not too picky, you would be quite content staying here. It's kinda old but the selling point of this hotel is its very convenient location at pretty affordable rates. The entrance to the MRT is just a minute's walk from our hotel and it's across the road from Kuo Kuang Bus Station which can bring you to other parts of Taiwan via bus. If you are doing a lot of travelling around Taipei using the metro, I recommend that you choose a hotel near Taipei Main Station. Since it's a central station like our City Hall, you can get to many places easily and without much hassle.


Proceeded to Taipei City Hall area to check out Taipei 101. This area has many financial buildings and seems like a financial district to me. We din go up to the highest floor of Taipei as it was a really foggy cloudy day and the lady told us we wouldn't be able to see anything at all! So we checked out the mall which was full of branded boutiques - some of which can't even be found in Singapore!

Didya know that the food courts at Taiwan shopping malls can be massive? They have roughly the same kinds of food, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Singaporean (yes the stalls have names like Sentosa Café!). But somehow feel that the variety cannot be compared with Singapore's. I think the main attraction for Taiwan food is the street food and snacks. They are very innovative when it comes to street food! Like a normal ice cream cone, just by piling up the ice cream, it becomes a novelty that customers flock to buy!

Other than food, there are the drinks! There's this drink from Japan that's sold in Taiwan called Calpis and I love it! I used to buy it back in Sg but it is pretty costly, a bottle of it costs close to $3 but here in Taiwan, it's only $1! It tastes like a sweeter and more diluted version of Yakult and I love Yakult too! Anyway, this bubble tea stall sold Calpis with Calpis agar agar and it was totally refreshing! Love it!

I guess Taiwan is quite influenced by Japan.. Taiwanese people love cute cute stuff lots too! There's this Japanese donut chain that's quite widespread in Taiwan called Mister Donut. They dun just have the normal donuts but also a multiple ringed one that is nice and chewy! They have some other yummy varieties as well!

So back to more shopping at Wufenpu. It's supposed to be THE place for shopping since wholesalers are located here and they sure use their so-called "wholesaler" status to reject your bargaining. I din find the place very spectacular, it reminds me of Bugis Village and some of the items tat were sold here cost less at Shilin. If you are really into shopping, check out the shops at Shilin, there should be more than enough there to whet your appetite.

We ended the night at Raohe Night Market which is some distance from Wufenpu. You gotta try the black pepper bun, it's really tasty! It's like a pao with black pepper meat filling but they charboil it by putting it into some pit with charcoal. It becomes very crispy on the outside and with the tasty filling on the inside, it was really satisfying on the cold and wet night. The other stalls selling food like stinky doufu, herbal soup were so-so only but if it meant coming all the way to Raohe for the pepper bun, it would be worth it!

You can read more about the rest of my holiday here~