vkeong loves good food, travel and photography!
Posts tagged Travel
vkeong’s Taiwan Trip Day 3 Part 1 – Yehliu Geopark & Ya Rou Bian
Aug 27th
On our third day to Taiwan, we decided to venture out of Taipei to some other tourist attractions like Yehliu and Jioufen. The package we bought to tour Yehliu and Jioufen cost NT$1000 and NT$1100 respectively. Both packages were from the same company and they included hotel pickup by van, entrance tickets and tour guide.
Well the tour guide was actually the driver himself too lol, it was basically an one-man show. After we came back from the trip only we realized there were companies offering cheaper (by NT$300 to NT$400) packages for the same tour. The thing was, it was only advertised on brochures. So if you don’t get hold of it, you wouldn’t know. If I remembered correctly we got the brochures from one of the hotels we were scouting to stay.
On the way to Yehliu we made a brief tour of Keelung town, just to know how it looked like and all. Not getting to stay at places at your own pleasure is one of the worst thing about taking tour packages, sigh.
For your information Keelung is actually a port city situated in Taiwan’s northeastern part. It is also Taiwan’s second largest seaport after Kaohsiung. Chung Cheng Park is one of the attractions here, located at Keelung’s east side.
This huge bell is said to bring good luck to whoever strikes it.
vkeong’s Taiwan Trip Day 2 – CKS Memorial Hall, Longshan Temple & Taipei 101
Jul 5th
Continued from Day 1 of my Taiwan trip. We decided to skip the free breakfast provided by our hostel because I have made it a point to try the Taiwanese traditional breakfast.
I guess because it’s a different culture, most Taiwanese do not have their breakfast in the food shops. Instead, they take away the prepacked sandwiches and pan fried pancakes. That would explain why the shops in Taiwan are so small compared to our local kopitiam. This is just my personal observation so please do not take it as a fact.
Lucky for us there were rows of food shops within walking distance to our hostel. But we still walked around looking for shops that sell soy bean milk, especially Yong He (永和豆浆) Actually it was pretty stupid of us to do that since almost all food shops sell soya bean milk, just that they don’t display it on their signboards.
Unable to find any Yong He Soya Bean Milk, we just settled down for the shop which looked the busiest. Just for your information we did manage to try Yong He on the fourth day, it was near Shilin MRT station.
We had a turkey ham sandwich (not shown) and Scallion Pancake (葱油饼, or was it 葱抓饼 I can’t remember lol）, two cups of soy milk for NT$80. I think you have probably guessed it, the Scallion Pancake not only looks like a roti canai, in fact it tasted quite similar too. Quite recommended.
After that we took a MRT ride to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall (國立中正紀念堂), NT$20 from Taipei Main Station. Do expect some walking before you reach the place.
Shown here is the Ceremonial Gateway (自由广场) at the entrance to the memorial. You won’t walk through it if you are here via MRT though. Entrance is free.
The memorial is surrounded by a park and is flanked by the National Theater and National Concert Hall on the south. This is the National Concert Hall. Thanks to the hot and humid (hazy like) + drizzling + overcast weather all the photos appeared dull. At that time our mood was quite depressed because the miserable weather affected us a lot.
The National Theater Hall.
I don’t know whether you know it or not but I am gonna say it anyway just for the sake of increasing this post’s word count lol. This memorial was built to commemorate Chiang Kei-Shek (obviously), former President of the Republic of China. Click here to continue reading >
vkeong’s Taiwan Trip Day 1 Summary – Shihlin Night Market
Jun 29th
Phew, finally I get to update my blog and share my trip to Taiwan not long ago (just returned last Friday) Tell you what, summer is definitely the worst time to visit Taiwan, or maybe Taipei only I don’t know.
The air is super humid, weather is like KL and it always drizzles without any warning. It’s like the whole city is trapped in a huge sauna lol. Just making a few steps out of your hotel and you would already sweat like hell! It feels damn miserable too to hold your camera on one hand, and use a umbrella on the other.
Weather aside, it was a nice trip overall with plenty of food eaten and interesting places visited. It’s impossible to share the summary of the trip in one single post so I have to break it down to daily basis.
Thanks to MAS for sponsoring the air tickets to Taipei, definitely my top choice of carrier in Malaysia. If you are interested to visit Taiwan, the best time is during October and November. Conveniently there’s a Deepavali holiday in October so you can plan a trip at that time. I just did a search for October’s flight and there’s plenty of options. The cheapest return ticket price including tax is only RM778 per pax. Do check it out.
It’s easy to pass time in the plane, as there’s plenty of things to do. You can take a nap (which I did), watch some latest movies like Red Cliff 2 or even play games!
Since our flight was at 9.40am and it takes 4.5 hours to reach Taipei, brunch was served. A choice of either chicken with potatoes, or..
Fish and rice. Do you notice the cup of red wine I requested?
Once we touched down Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.. guess who’s the first to greet us. None other than the cute pig, Pukii! lol what a name, this pig will never have its name approved in Malaysia.
If you are between 15 and 30, the first thing you should do after reaching the airport is to apply for a Youth Travel Card at the Tourist Service Counter. Just provide your passport and fill in some forms and you will get it.
The card is very beneficial to tourists like us because it provides more than 500 special discounts on transportation, accommodations, restaurants and recreation. For the list of the 500 discounted things, a booklet is provided as reference.
Took a bus to Taipei Main Station for NT$80 (RM1 = NT$9) There’s plenty of express bus companies to choose from at the airport.
The accommodation we stayed for the first 3 nights in Taipei, Taipei Key Mall Traveler Hostel @ NT$1500 per night. I kinda regretted staying here for so long, as there’s many other nicer looking hotels with the same price in the area like CityInn.
Besides, the owner is a bit freaky and weird, and the worst thing is that they don’t accept credit card! Thanks to that I had to spend NT$4050 already on the first day, burning off 25% of the total cash we brought. And you know what, they even require a deposit of NT$300 for the bed sheets. I have learnt not to fully trust the positive reviews posted online now.
The only good thing about this hostel is its location. It’s located directly opposite the Taiwan Railway Station and is only 2 minutes away from the Taipei Main MRT station.
Kota Kinabalu Trip Day 2 Part 2 – Dinner at Luyang and Old Village Seafood Restaurant
Apr 25th
By the time we reached our hotel after returning from whitewater rafting, it was already 8.30pm and KampungboyCitygal was waiting for us for dinner.
Not sure where to go, we asked Lavender Lodge’s owner to recommend us some seafood restaurants which the locals usually patronize. And Salut, Luyang and Gayang were suggested.
After considering time and cost factor, we decided to give Luyang Seafood Restaurant at Luyang (yes, the restaurant has the same name as the location) a try because it was the nearest and also the cheapest via taxi (RM12). Other places like Salut and Gayang would have taken at least 40 minutes to reach and the taxi wanted to charge us a whopping RM120!
I think we were unlucky to reach at Luyang quite late because most of the seafood like prawns and clams were finished. Not even a single clam or prawn was left lol. We were only left with fish and crab, which Luyang Restaurant was famous for.
Our first dish was Spicy and Sour Crabs @ RM28/kg for the female mud crabs.
I had quite high expectation in this dish actually, since it was supposed to be Luyang’s signature dish. Looks wise it was already a winner but I felt it the crabs weren’t anywhere spectacular.
The gravy, initially quite tasty turned jelly like after being left cold and the crab meats always stuck to the shell, making the peeling even more difficult. At one point we were so frustrated with all the hard work peeling the crabs (and so little flesh!) we wanted to stop eating altogether lol.
After a disappointing first dish, things started to look up with the arrival of Braised Garoupa in Claypot – RM25 if not mistaken. The Garoupa was meaty and flavorful, really nice especially when it was still warm. Click here to continue reading >
