Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Taipei through Monkey's lens

 
Believe it or not, despite being only 4 hours away, this was our first time :P
*transiting at their airport doesn't count, coz I did that a few times before*
We took a red eye flight out from Msia just in time to watch the Taiwanese sunrise from the window of our plane...hahahahaha

The sun rises here at 5.50am so it gets too bright too early....definitely not ur place if u are planning to sleep late. Our philosophy is to wake up early and maximise the time at each and every place that we visit. Oh well holidays are meant to be relaxing right? catching sunrise is very very relaxing...in fact it's such a novelty coz I don't get to do it very often in Msia.

Taipei 101 is like a must visit, the icon of this metropolitan. With 2.6 million beings the city is definitely bigger than Kuala Lumpur. Due to its location within the earthquake zone, the city can't be built high...so it's pretty spread out.

oh nvm about Taipei 101 which is the 3rd tallest building in the world. I will prepare a separate posting just for it because its construction is such a marvel. We spent 2 hours up there detailing its architecture and engineering.
The view is definitely fantastic
hmmm there's a storm coming over there~~~~~
but the view from our room is even more fantastic :))))
waking up to Taipei 101 glimmering with the reflection of morning sun *including my hobbits sun-tanning there* and doozing off at nite with the spectrum of neon/LED colors on Taipei 101.


Longshan Temple, built in 1738
I couldn't confirm if it's the oldest in Taipei. Nevertheless it's really beautiful and made me so at peace visiting it. Don't worry....a separate posting will be prepared for this.
another temple at Tamsui. Here in Taipei, most of the temples were of mixed influence of Buddhism, Taoism and Matsu.  I'm really confused....so confucianism?


JS arranged the hobbits this way.....after the first day he told me they wanna go home!!!!!
awwwwwwww
JS didn't enjoy the food in Taipei :((
other than that, he had a great time with the sights, arts, museums and culture.


apart from its mixed cuisine that JS didn't enjoy, we did a lot in the short 5 days. including cycling along the Tamsui River mouth.....the river meets the East China Sea which is also part of the Pacific Ocean. It's really a long river covering about 159 km long.

It's such a cute bicycle for two :))))

Tamsui is really rich in history with its Portuguese, Dutch and British influence. It's something like Malacca.

from Tamsui we took a lil bus to the edge of town that overlook the sea. Walked up the Lover Bridge which was built 14 February 2003
scaled up the inactive volcano mountain - YangMingShan. Enjoyed the greenery and waterfalls, and didn't really enjoy the smellie sulphur deposits at another part of the mountain....it was really stinko...but it was a good experience to see something from post-volcanic period.

JS brought so many Leica cameras and its respective lens.
-_-"
so that he can snap all the beautiful moments and scenery for u my dear readers...
while Monkey only made full use of her iPhone bahahahahaha coz the Leica proved damn difficult to use. I don't know how someone can use a manual camera arghhhhhh

so while waiting for JS to sort out all the pics from different SD cards....we'll just get to enjoy pics taken from my iPhone ok? hahahahaha.....errr guess that's about it :P


Time to go home!!!!!
on the last morning, JS woke up to snap pics of sunrise while Monkey was zzzziiinkkk-ing on the comfy heavenly bed...she opened her eyes and saw 5 pairs of eyes starring at her.

"Wat's up now!!!!!????"
JS: "Pack up!!!! time to go home!!! we missed home!!!!"
yes 5 short days went by
we came home feeling richer in experience and knowledge
:)))))))))

apart from its food, the other thing that proved to be difficult was language. We couldn't speak nor read and write....if it's ABC alphabet system, we can still survive. But trying to make up words, description, destination by looking at chinese text was really impossible. When Monkey was trying to get a book for someone she had to check and make sure every single stroke and dot is the same. To confirm it's the right book.

ARGHHHHH *pulls hair*
why can't they use simplified chinese??? there's too many strokes!!!

dang....we are heading to Japan next week. Ppl there don't really speak english too.
-_-" looks like we gotta compare strokes again but at least it's much more simplified.

Happy Tuesday folks!!!


2 comments:

Chasing Food Dreams said...

my favorite photos in this post are the one with the hobbits hiding in the pillow & the one with the two-seater bicycle!

food not good... so no photo or waiting for JS to sort out?? ;)

Tsu Lin said...

You're kidding! Taiwanese food is fabulous! Their street food is comnparable to Malaysia's. Vegetarian food super awesome. And actually every place that I went, food were fab! (I have a Taiwanese uncle, hehe) The only thing I didn't like is their version of Soya Bean drink.

And I had no problem there because I could speak a little mandarin. LOL. So my 6 years of SRJKC were all worth it. LOL!