Hello everyone! I have been inactive for a few days because I was on a trip to Taipei. Now I am back! The last time I visited Taipei was 15 years ago and many things have changed. In this post, I will be sharing some pictures I took during my trip. At the same time, I get to store these precious moments on an immutable blockchain :).
The pictures that I did not quote the source are all taken by me with my mobile phone. So please pardon my lousy photography and camera. Haha...
Day 1 - Landed Late
Our flight to Taipei was delayed and we ended up reaching the airport at around 9.30pm. The first thing we did was to buy our EasyCard (悠遊卡) so that we can take the Airport MRT line to the city. Exploring the city via the MRT is really convenient and having the EasyCard was really handy.
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The next thing we did was to buy a cup of Bubble Tea :). The entire journey from the airport to our hotel took about 60 minutes. We stayed at "ECFA Hotel Wan Nian" which is right beside the Ximending (西門町) walking street.
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The hotel is at L6 of the Wannian Commercial Building (萬年商業大樓) and it took us a while to find the hotel as the entrance is easily missable at night. We also did not expect the hotel to be inside a commercial building. The location of the hotel is excellent and the building itself has a foodcourt, an arcade and a few levels of shops. The room is clean and the price was quite reasonable. Many people who visit Taiwan prefers homestays, but if you are someone who prefers hotels, I will recommend ECFA Hotel Wannnian.
After checking in, we only had time to roam around Ximending area and have some street food.
Day 2 - Meeting up with Local Friends
My girlfriend has a few friends who are staying in Taiwan. They are very hospitable and showed us around Taipei on our Day 2 there. The first place we visited was the Taipei 101 building.
We only took pictures outside and explored the shopping mall. The entrance fees to the observatory level is NTD 600 per person, which was quite exorbitant and we did not want to spend the money. Instead, we used the money on a sumptuous Shabu-shabu all-you-can-eat meal. It comes with the seafood plate as shown in the picture below.
We shopped around the nearby malls and finally proceeded to our next destination, Yangmingshan (陽明山). We will never have planned to visit this place without local friends driving us around.
The cafe, The Top (屋頂上), we wanted to visit was full at that time. Fortunately, we found seats at the next venue, Sleepless (草山夜未眠). These are the 2 cafes on Yangmingshan with the best view of Taipei City.
Cherry blossoms can be seen at a few locations during this time of the year in Taipei. Many locals will also drive up Yangmingshan to catch this once in a year sight.
The night view is even more spectacular from this cafe.
Day 3 - Touring the City Like a Tourist
We visited the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) and Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall (國父紀念館) on Day 3. These are the standard tourist attractions that most visitors will head to. Here are some pictures I took from the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall.
Here are some pictures from the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall.
We then ended the night at Shilin Night Market.
Day 4 - Danshui Old Street, Tianyuan Temple and Beitou Hot Spring
We met up with the local friends again on Day 4 and visited the northern side of Taipei city. Danshui Old Street (淡水老街) is also a popular tourist spot. The well-known dish is a food called Ah-Gei (阿給). It is basically fried beancurd stuffed with vermicelli. Here are the photos I took.
We then visited the Tianyuan Temple (無極天元宮), which is a popular place to see cherry blossoms. It is a pity that we reached there a little too late and we could only catch the night view.
Finally, our local friends brought us to enjoy one of their favorite past-times, soaking in hot springs (泡溫泉)! This is also something I did not plan to do as part of the itinerary. We visited this place called Huang-Chi Spa (皇池) in Beitou (北投).
This was followed by a delicious dinner with crab porridge and other dishes!
Day 5 - Shop, Eat and Drink!
Ok, the past 4 days also had a lot of shopping, eating and drinking (bubble teas). But Day 5 was really focused on that as we were generally tired of the traveling in the past few days and wanted a more relaxed day on day 5.
The day started at about 10am as we were all quite tired after the trip yesterday. The first thing we did was to eat. We had brunch at a rather famous Japanese restaurant in the Ximending area, Mei Guan Yuan (美观园). The Japanese food here has a local twist. The sushis and sashimis are generally made a little bigger than the usual bite-sized.
Next, it was shopping time! We started at Ximending. SPAO, a Korean retailer is having incredible promotion (75% discounts!) that day and we managed to get quite a few good deals over there. We continued to explore the Ximending area and had the iconic Mango Shaved Ice for dessert. This was coupled with a local favorite Bittergourd Honey Drink and Mango Milkshake (Not in picture),
After that, we visited the mall near Taipei 101 again and went to a nearby supermarket. I always like to visit local supermarkets when I travel. Supermarket is usually the place you can buy what the locals will buy and I can get them at local price. We bought some local snacks and headed for an early dinner. The place we went serves individual small hot pots.
It was also the 15th day of the Lunar New Year and a full moon that day. We managed to snap a picture of the moon by the Taipei 101 building. It was a pretty sight but my lousy phone camera was not able to capture it well :(
After that, we returned to Ximending to drop our stuff in the hotel. Seeing that it is still early in the night, we went on to walk around the area. However, we ended up eating again! We shared a bowl of beef noodles for supper at a nearby restaurant, which I forgot to take the name. The soup base was really fragrant and not too heavy in taste. Just the way I like it to be :)
We ordered the scrambled egg with shrimps as well. It was a little to bland to my liking and a little pricey.
And of course, throughout the day we had bubble tea too! Here is one of them.
Day 6 - Heading Home
On the last day of our trip, we shopped in Ximending again. However, this time it was for souvenirs. After that, we spent some time at the arcade just to wait till it is time to depart to the airport. Not many pictures for the day, but the food at the airport was surprisingly good. I ordered the 梅菜扣肉 rice set and was pleasantly surprised. The meat was succulent and the vegetables tasted really crunchy and sweet. It was a little on the salty side but mixing the sauce with the bowl of pearly rice produced an excellent taste.
2 tips to share based on my experience at the airport. There are 2 wings (Wing 1 goes to Gates As and Ds, Wing 2 to Gates Bs and Cs) in terminal 1 and both wings have the same food selection. We followed the signboard for food and it led us to the opposite wing from our boarding gate. We only realized that there are the same food near our boarding gate after we walked back :(.
Next, the vending machines are very good to use up the remaining balance you have in your EasyCard. I had NTD 50 left in my card and managed to spend them all at the vending machines for drinks and snacks. They are all quite reasonably priced, with a 500ml bottled green tea costing NTD 25.
That sums up my trip to Taipei, hope you enjoyed the post! Thanks for reading!