Early in the morning after having breakfast in the hotel, we proceed on to our next destination. The journey took a while, we pass by Miaoli to Xinzhu, stopped at a rest point before we arrived at Ying Ge Pottery. There, we see many diff type of pottery, but its really boring stuff. Yawn!

After which, we went to Shengkan Tofu Street (a stone throw from Ying Ge pottery), which is also the main focus of this post.  The Tofu street is quite a long street selling all sorts of ??, and like the name implies, its a Tofu street, so there are lots of Tofu products here.  

The start of the Tofu Street

One thing i really hate about Taiwan is that they do not have rubbish bins around. No kidding, in Singapore every few steps you walk there will be a rubbish bin, but in Taiwan, you can walk a few street without finding one bin. Anyway, thats the Taiwan Govt policy, they wanted the people to reduce the amount of waste, so they encourage people to bring out their own thrash bag, This bin is for tourists only. Hahaha

We went for lunch after finishing with Tofu Street, nothing special about lunch. Following that, the guide brought us to a shop where they sell rare chinese herbs, and a magical creature call Tian Lu or Qi Ling (they called it in China)

After that, they introduce us to Tian lu, or another name call Qi ling. People who have been to China or Taiwan confirm have been introduced to this stuff. Its actually a magical creature in Chinese, which are believe are blessed their owners and bring them health, wealth, luck. Anyway, one Tian Lu the size of your palm would have cost a few thousand SGD. Not interested, so we scram off very fast : )

The next post we will go to Ye Liu, the most beautiful place we are going to see in our Taiwan trip. So watch out for it.

For the full post, please go to ladyirontravel

” The traveller sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see “

Ah-ha! The much-anticipated part of Taiwan, the night market ??! You can’t say you have been to Taiwan if you haven’t been to their ?? can you? Hahaha! We are at Fengjia ?? now, the night market is just beside Fengjia University, so lots of uni-students around.

Lets go through the food shan’t we? First on the list goes to: Pig’s blood!! I never try it though, its not something for the light-hearted, not feeling adventurous enough : )

This ought to be the best reward for tonight. ?B store might sounds a bit crude, but the idea they sell are not at all. Picture this, a stick of seven piece of different fruits, frozen and dripped in flavours of either cheese, honey, chocolate, or suan-mei fen ???.

Taa-daa!!

The wrapper is also a bit budget though, but i think this idea of packaging fruits this way is quite unique and fresh. Anyone seen this type of fruits sold in Singapore? Leave your comments okay? thanks

This, is another “find” of the night. The store looks ordinary, even to the extent isolated. Its located at a corner of a side street, nobody takes a look at the store, nobody buys anything from it. But i did. Being the curious me, always on the lookout for something special. And i decided to give the store a chance, when nobody does. Lets see, the store sells hand-roll salad which comes with many diff form, like vegies, ham, tuna, pork culet, chicken, steak. And they also have many type of sandwiches. I had the vegies fruit salad hand-roll.

The result!! Its actually some sort of popiah skin, inside wrapped with vegies fruit salad, the owner put many diff type of ingredient inside which i forgot, but one thing she put that makes it taste special is peanuts. Somehow, when i took the first bite, the taste is nicer than the looks.

After that, we went back to the meeting point to gather, and head back to the hotel. First night market, more to come! The hotel we stay tonight looks very old on the outside, its a biz hotel, which means it caters to bizman who want bigger room, wireless internet connection. We got a shock when we went in the room, when we open the door, there was two bed. Normal, but when we turn around, we saw another two beds, thats like four beds in one bedroom for two of us? You get the point now? So its one of the surprise we got, although it might not look good outside, but its definitely good in the inside.

But i think the main problem with people is that they go for food that taste nice rather than food that is good for them. ??, ????? which of this food are healthy? But why do people still go for them i ask myself, because they taste nice. Food like salad and fruits are healthy and good for us, but do people actually buy them to eat instead of junk food? No

Next post we will finally go back to Taipei, but before that we will pass by Miaoli to Xinzhu, and go to Sheng Kan to visit the Tofu street, before heading to Ye Liu which is the most beautiful place we see in this Taiwan trip. After which we will head to Yang ming shan for our hot spring, before going back to Taipei. Plenty to share, watch this space!

Lots of pictures to see really, please go to ladyirontravel to see all the photos

” The food treats the heart and soul “

After a superb lunch at Tainan Sutou restaurant, we carry on our advanture to Ri Yue Tai, sun moon lake with quite a lot attractions around it. We went to visit this temple, don’t start yawning dude. See see the nice view from the temple. 

Map of Ri Yue Tai

 
We are quite close to paradise aren’t we?

See picture at ladyirontravel for the next surprise:  ????

Taiwan very own Bing Lang Xi Shi ????! The tour guide knows this ????, so he invited her to come abroad our bus for a photo-taking session. See no touch, and only woman gets to photo with her.  Just in case some don’t know what they do, the woman basically sit at a stall by the road side, wearing very little (bikini), and sell Bing Lang ?? (a kind of fruit? something like chewing gum) to man who wants to buy from them. Of cos there also also stores manned by uncle and auntie selling Bing Lang, and the price is much much lower. Tour bus drivers usually buy from them instead because of the much much cheaper price.

The Bing Lang sell by ???? is one for one dollar (if i nv rmb wrongly), while the one not sell by them cost one bing lang for ten cents twenty cents? There u have it! Thats the reason why they are being paid SGD $3k a month just for sitting there to sell Bing Lang. Thats just a job, nothing really disgraceful, but then again there are ???? who provide extra you-know-what also.

Leaving Ri Yue Tai, we arrive in Taizhong around 6pm. We went for a dinner at a restaurant which is open by one of the tour guide’s wife. Good business idea right, husband tour guide bring tourist, den wife open restaurant for husband bring over. The food variety for the buffet is really pathetic.

But den again i couldn’t care less, you know why? Because we are in Taizhong Feng Jia night market!! Why eat this food when there is plenty of taiwan snacks waiting for us around the corner? So we hurriedly finish our dinner and went out of the place. Given 3 hours to shop around the night market : )

I decided to stop here, partly because not enough time already, and also because the next post about Feng Jia night market will be super long, lots of things to share and tell. Exciting!! But the next post will be out later, nowadays very busy hardly got time to blog.

For the full post, please go to ladyirontravel

” Anything and everything can be found in Taiwan’s night market “

19 Sep 2007

Entering day 4 of our trip, we are in Kaohsiung now. We had breakfast at the hotel restaurant as usual, but today’s breakfast is rather lousy, first of all, its a buffet, but they only give us one plate, one bowl (for porridge), one pair of chopstick and one spoon. The plate and bowl have to re-use.

When you encounter problems like this, the tip is: take more of those food you find acceptable. lol!

After breakfast, we proceed on to Mei Jia Nong Shu Chun, a Hakka Village. The places showcast the Hakka culture, from the stuff they use, to the food they eat.

Arhh.. the highlight of this post, our lunch! Be warned, this is not a ordinary lunch, neither is the place ordinary. This ‘Wu Jiao’ restaurant is one a kind, never-seen-before, extraordinary place. The theme? The entire structure or building pillar is designed using tree logs! Cool right? All right then, take a peek inside! 

Taa-daa!! Does it looks more like a greenhouse than a restaurant to u?

Chicken

Cant remember whats this

The ordinary yet delicious sweet sour pork is extraordinary here

Cod fish which is super nice

Prawn

Hmm.. the meal taste superb! But is it really the chef cook so well? Mayb not, because the environment surroundings, plus the excellent presentation of food on specially-designed plates (by the boss herself) makes the food look food, resulting in you feel hungry, which in turns makes the food taste well. But lets not care whether the food taste good or not, kudos to the boss who make this place happen, who spend effort in designing up the place, and even carving the design for the utensiles.

After we finish our meal, we head up to the second level for some exploration. Gee! When we go the place not very crowded, so the second level is not used. But nice place really.

The end of this special meal marks the end of this post. The next post we will be going to Ri Yue Tai, and at night we will stay in Tai zhong, where we will visit Feng jia ??. Stay tuned!!

For the full post, please go to ladyirontravel

” Presentations make the food, the food make us “

” Who says Singaporeans are kiasu? “ 

Not true, Taiwan is just as kiasu! We head out for our ‘night mission’ after we put out stuff in the hotel, while on the way to the fruit market, we pass by this street where there is at least 3-4 tution centre side by side? Maths, language, science, you name it they have it. The time was about 9-10pm, still got lots of students there having their tution. Tsk tsk

One of the many many shops selling fruits. The whole street got at least 20-30 shops selling fruits? Mayb more. hahaha. The fruits are very fresh, and its cheap. So we walk around looking at the many different variety of fruits, we brought some back to the hotel, of course mango is a must. We never walk the whole street cos its too long, anyway every store sells about the same fruits, and their price is also about the same. So its a matter of which shop is lucky to get us as their customer

Another shop

Yet another shop

Like i mention before, the convenience shop in Taiwan is really power, they sell everything and anything. Look what i got in my hand, Tiramisu, and where did i get it from? Bingo, the convenience shop. hahahah! And its quite cheap, i think its $1, and taste not bad too.

Thats the end of our third day in Taiwan, tomorrow we will travel to Tainan for lunch at a very special restaurant, please remember to watch the next post, follow which, we will go to Ri yue tai, and at night we will stay in Tai zhong, where we will visit Feng jia ??, a lot of things to eat and buy!! See the next post coming up soon.

For the full post, please go to ladyirontravel

” You see all kinds of different things when you travel “

We are now still in day 3 of our Taiwan trip, coming to Kaohsiung after a long day ride, the first attraction that we visit is the Kaohsiung 85 ??. Like the name implies, it’s a 85 storey building that consist of a shopping centre, office space and some others. Somewhat similar to 101 ??, but mayb less famous compare with its relative. But anyway, the view is spectacular up there.

After a 40min tour of the kaohsiung tower, we were suppose to go to the love river ?? to take a boat ride, but due to lousy rainy weather, the boat service is not available, too bad for us. The photo above shows the love river when its not raining, i took it from a website : )

So we went straight to the next place, we are going to Cijin island. Its actually a not-that-small while not-that-big island by the side of Kaohsiung. Its mainly residential area, but there are also some tourist attractions. A 10min ferry ride from the ferry pier to the island is all we need. There’s a underground tunnel to the island also, but the tour guide say going by that way will take at least 45min to one hour, so even the local people who rides a bike uses the ferry service (the top of ferry is for people, while the bottom can take many motor-vehicles) paying i think 1 dollar each time for the vehicle service, while we pay 50cents.

Reaching the island after 10mins, we walk walk around, there’s police station, a lighthouse, shops around. The other side of the island is mainly residential area. The tour guide bring us to a shop to eat “o-wa” noodles. Not too bad, plus the soup is hot which warms us up considerately in the rainy weather.

We also had this huge bowl of mango ice. lots of mango for $3. By the way, Taiwan is really good for its mango, on the first night in taiwan, we brought a large mango for $2 only, which would definitely cost about $5 at least in Singapore? Ha! Anyway, we will be seeing mango soon later. Watch out for it!

Different favors, the usual peanuts, sesame, chocolate and some others

While walking by the road, there’s this store selling “ma chi”, so we buy one box of 10, one cost 5 TWD, so its 50 TWD or SGD $2.5 for the box. The ma chi was really quite good. I wanted to buy some more after we tried it, but then we were going for dinner soon, o well.

While we were about to leave, we saw this rubbish car, nothing special you will say, but then the rubbish car plays a kiddy music which caught our attention. The music is to tell people that it is coming, so please bring your rubbish out to throw. Ha!

After the visit to Cijin, we took the ferry back to Kaohsiung, and headed to the restaurant for dinner, the dinner was nothing special, the typical type of food you will find in a chinese restaurant. But while we are there, we saw them making lots of mooncakes for the coming mooncake festival. One thing to note, the mooncake in taiwan is completely different from the ones we had in Singapore.

 After dinner we head back to hotel for the night. There was a night market ?? in Kaohsiung of course, but it was otot (own-time-own-target). By the way, after 3 days we haven been to any ??, but don’t worry we will see plenty of ?? soon. Anyway, we didn’t go to the ?? because it was still raining, the guide told us that behind our hotel area, there is a different type of ??, selling fruits, whole street of them. So we went there instead and lo and behold, so type of fruits are available there. And that, is another story

For the full post, please go to ladyirontravel

” I travel, to tell my story to my kids next time “

18 Sep 2007

Waking up the third day, we found ourselves still in Hualian’s 5 Star Parkview hotel. We went down to the hotel restaurant eagerly for our breakfast buffet.

See, 5 star hotel is really different, they still have a staff cooking sunny side-ups, omelette with different toppings like cheese, ham, mushroom inside. As many as you like!! But i only have one omelette because it is so big that it can feed two person.

The perfect Breakfast

The splendid view from our hotel room

All of us work so hard is only for a main reason, to enjoy a good life. This is life isn’t it? What more can you ask from life when you have good food and such a beautiful scenary in front of you? I vow to become successful to enjoy my life.

After our stay in Hualian, we proceed on to our next destination; Kaohsiung ???. Its a long journey, from breakfast we travel until 330pm before we reach Kaohsiung. But before that, lets see some of the places we stop at in between.

We travel for about an hour or two and came to this rest stop at Rui Xi. At there, is a river call the siouguluan river which travels a distance of 104km. By now have you guess what’s the activity here? Yep, river-rafting!!

Following the break, we carry on with our journey southwards, another two hours pass before we reach our place for lunch. The meal was pretty decent, and the place is by the sea!

Finishing our lunch, our tour guide introduce us to a special fruit produce in Taiwan which also can be found in Singapore, but in small quantity which means expensive prices. Introducing… Ling Ki!! I don’t know the exact name of the fruit, but thats how they pronouce the name of the fruit. If you have seen or eaten the fruit before, you must be pretty good, because i didn’t. hahaha!

Taa-daa!!

We continue our journey to Kaohsiung ??? which we reach the city at around 330pm. What a long ride! Some gains always have to come with some sacrifices i guess. But for the trip, the long journey is definitely worth it : )

All right we have reach Kaohsiung, i guess i’ll stop this post here now that its getting a bit long. The next post will be about the attractions and the things we do in Kaohsiung. Watch this space : )”

For the full post, please go to ladyirontravel

” No one realise how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rest his head on his old, familiar pillow “

We are still in the second day of our Taiwan trip, although there are many posts already. The main reason why i am dividing into so many posts is to spilt up the different emphasis of the place, and hopefully it will be more organised and not so messy. I would say Parkview Hotel is the second best hotel in our eight days trip, the best being Grand Hyatt in Taipei. Its a five-star hotel after all. Hahaha! So cool right, get to stay in five stars hotel. OMG, i am loving every moment of it : )

Going up the room, i charged my Ixus for a while and tuning in to the tv many-many channels before going downstairs to the restaurant to have our buffet dinner (its included in the tour package)
Desserts

All the desserts together (or rather the ones that i fancy)

Taa-daa!! the combinations of all the meat available

After the very full dinner, donald and me went hotel-exploring, the pool was very nice no one somemore, but no mood to go swimming. Then there is this recreation centre which has pool, rock wall, gym and other facilites for the hotel members to use. This is the end of day two in Taiwan. Tomorrow, we will travel to Gao Xiong, which is the second largest port in Taiwan where we see their attractions like the 85 Business tower, the love river, and also take ferry to the small island Qi Jing which is just beside Gao Xiong. Catch the next post soon!

For the full post, please go to ladyirontravel ” When i go on travel, i do not think whether it is nice or not, when i finish my travel and enjoy it, it is nice “