(Continues from here)

♥Dec 2nd – Drizzle/飘雨的台北♥
My collague, Teresa, came to the hotel to meet us. Somehow, Zara and her ‘clicked’, and the rest of the day, they were glued together (oh well, Teresa was looking after Zara for me).

Because it was drizzling, our plan of going to the zoo has to be changed. We went to the National Palace Museum (故宮博物院) instead which was packed with tourists who came in bus load.

Zara showed lots of interest in the artifacts, reading the didactic to learn more about them, not Zaria though.

However, both were intrigued by this longish painting from 1085-1145, which is 528cm long capturing the daily life of people from the Song period at the capital. It’s called Along the River During the Qingming Festival (清明上河圖).

You can view the animated River of Wisdom, to see why it’s so interesting for the girls.

(No cameras are allowed in the museum, so no photos of the artifacts)

Teresa bought us a simple lunch at the Museum Cafe (delicious!) and then we went to Shinkong Mitsukoshi. The Taipei Station branch there was having an aniversary sales, and I don’t know why, I didn’t buy anything even with the good discount. o.O”

Teresa bought us dinner as well in Shinkong Mitsukoshi, and got the girls some presents. The girls said Teresa took care of them like their Gu-ma(姑妈), and called her their Taiwan Gu-ma. o.O”

In the night, after we parted with Teresa, we went to Shida Night Market again (師大夜市) since it’s so near the hotel.

Trendy boutiques to cater for university students are every where. This one has some rocking horses at the shop front.

Another funky shop.

The display window.

Bubble tea is sold everywhere, this one has miniature samplers.

A nightmarket can’t do without some stalls selling food. This old man was burning grilling some corn.

Eww. Pig’s blood cake.

Tangyuan (Glutinous rice balls) shop where we had 2 bowls of tangyuan from. Maybe because they do tangyuan with pork too, the sweet tangyuan we had tasted a bit porky. o.O”

♥Dec 3rd – Sunny/放晴♥
After a day of drizzling, it was sunny. Lucky for us, because we’d made plans to meet up with my collagues at Bali (八里), a seaside town near Tanshui (淡水).

We took the metro to Guandu (關渡), one of my colleagues, Iris, met us there, and then together, we took a cab to To House (兔子餐廳), and met up with the rest of my collagues.

To House (八里兔子餐廳) is a theme family restaurant with a compound housing lots of rabbits.

Healthy looking rabbit in To House.

Besides rabbits, there are other animals too, i.e. Parrots.

There’s also a pig!

Girls spent the whole time petting and feeding rabbits. Coming in only to have their lunch. Leaving me lots of time to catch up with my collagues whom I was meeting for the first time.

Deco around To House.

We left the place only at about 3pm with Iris, we took the bus and went to Bali Ferry Port.

The Streetfood, mainly selling seafood, around the Ferry Port, attracted lots of customers.

Salted eggs are supposed to be famous here as well.

And in Taiwan, Stinky Tofu is sold everywhere.

Guess what? We didn’t buy anything from these stalls, except a stick of squid cake. We were too full from lunch, and I didn’t feel good everytime I wanted to get something, Iris rushed to pay.

We took a short Ferry ride to Danshui.

Over at Danshui, it’s the same, food stalls are everywhere and each one of them were very crowded.

This is the famous Amah’s sour plum drink, but we didn’t really like it.

Danshui street.

Catching the sunset is one of the main attraction, but the evening was gloomy.

Girls found a new game of throwing pebbles into the river.

Riverside Living Statue.

There are lots of streetfood available too.

As the only pork eater at home, she has the honour of having a stick of famous Taiwan grilled sausage.

There are grabbing game machines again.

And other games.

Once we got to the Metro station, Iris, left us to run her own errands.

Outside the metro station, we caught a puppet show.

Lottery icket seller outside the Danshui Metro Station.

Busker crooning Jacky Cheung’s hit.

We had BBQ buffet dinner at Danshui before taking the metro back to the hotel.

To be continued.

When we suggested for a holiday further away from Hong Kong, Zara made some noise, “What’s the point of going for a holiday when all we do is walk walk walk?” “It’s so boring taking the plane.” “I have ear problem, and you still want me to take the plane” etc etc.

We gave her 2 options, either go with us, or stay home with Jelly. Of course, she chose the former.

Daddy’s airmiles could cover 4 of us to either Perth, or Taiwan. Looking at the AUD exchange rate, we therefore decided to go Taiwan instead. We have to time our trip according to flight schedules claimable by airmiles and to make sure I’m in town on December 9th because I have bought tickets for Jacky Cheung’s concert. Hence, the trip was made during the wet season in Taiwan. Sigh.

♥Nov 30th♥

We arrived at Taipei about 7pm+, it was already dark. Upon arriving at the hotel, a package from my Taiwan colleague, Teresa, which consisted of a Taipei Guidebook and 2.5Kg of Taiwan rice welcome us.

Our hotel for the next 4 nights will be Li Yuan Hotel (儷園飯店), a small hotel located near Shida (師大) and 1 minute walk from Tai Power Metro Station (台電大樓站).

We got a family room with 2 queen beds. The room is small but functional and clean.

Soon after we checked in, we went straight to Shida Nightmarket (師大夜市) for dinner. We picked a restaurant which specialises in herbal chicken soup, 龍涎居雞膳食坊. We were too hungry to take any photos, but Daddy who’s not a chicken eater claimed they serve one of the best chicken soup he’s tasted.

We did some walking about the nightmarket after dinner, and then headed back to rest.

♥Dec 1st – Gloomy♥
We woke up late and missed the hotel breakfast and had to eat out.

Our first destination after breakfast of road side pao and bubble tea was Bo Ai Road (博愛路), the Taipei Camera Street, to get a lens Daddy was eyeing (he did the research before arriving and knew exactly which shop to go to. o.O”).

We spent sometime in Ximending (西門町), for lunch, to glance through some of the small shops.

Shops and stall at Ximending :

菓風小舖, the sweet shop where we spent most time in.

Roadside Sweet Potato Ball Seller

Girls kept asking for money for these ‘games’, but I didn’t let them.

Lots of shops have dogs at the door front, this is one of them.

上海老天祿 stewed duck wings

The Red House (西門紅樓), Taiwan’s first public market now a theater.

Girls were fascinated with the many costume shops across the Red House.

Besides getting some sweets from the sweet shop, we didn’t buy anything else in Taipei’s shopping street. o.O”

As Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall (中正纪念堂) is nearby, we thought we’ll visit it as well. Not knowing we’ll spend so much time there. As it’s surrounded by a big park, lots of locals walk their dogs, do team practice for various events etc etc.

We saw a brass band practice in the park.

Zaria spent so much time chasing after pigeons.

School team practicing march.

Li Zhen’s Sculptures (李真雕塑) were exhibited in front of the Memorial Hall.

Girls wanted to take photos of the sculptures.

And wanted to be photographed with the sculptures.

Inside the Memorial Hall, the girls could not believe the still guards were real, and not human.

Zaria asked who the statue is “Is he the King of Taiwan?” o.O”

As we were there in the evening, instead of change of guards, we managed to catch the flag lowering ceremony (at 5pm).

As night fall, they started lighting up the whole park.

Li Zhen’s sculpture.

That night, recommended by my Taiwan colleague, we went to the Eslite flagship bookshop (誠品信義店). A bookshop with 8000m² of floorspace! Heaven for me!

We even had dinner there at their food court, then just glanced through the various floors.

We love the 杏仁燒, an almond dessert with grass jelly, peanuts, red bean and tosted almond chips from this dessert shop Summer Tree Sweet (夏樹甜品) at the food court. (sorry no photo).

(To-Be Continued)

It seems I’m slacking in blogging. I find I barely have time with a full time job, all the chauffering (kids to school and to activities), home work and revision with a school going kid and lately another item has added to the to-do list, i.e. completing a course for career development by year end.

Anyway, this post is not about how busy I am, but the trip we made to Singapore during the school holidays.

Before the trip, I asked Daddy to get us a GPS, as I could foresee navigating with a map in Singapore, there’ll be lots of stress in the car. The El-Cheapo He went to Daiso and bought a compass instead; he thought a compass would at least tell us which direction we’re going without a GPS. o.O” Thank goodness I shared this joke with my neighbour, and she loaned us her GPS for the trip!

♥4th June, Saturday♥
To keep up with Daddy’s (dilly dallying) track record, we left the house after 11am (we’d never left the house earlier than 11am on any driving holiday trips we made), and got stuck on the North–South Expressway.

It seems everybody was heading towards Melaka for the weekend. It took us more than 4hrs to get passed Melaka. By the time we reached our hotel in Singapore, it was 6pm.

We stayed in V Hotel Lavender, a newly opened hotel located in Lavender housing area. We got very good rate for a room with 1 queen and 1 single beds. Although the room is a little small, it is comfortable, and best of all, its location is super. The Lavender MRT station is on the basement of the building, and around the hotel, there are lots of small eateries, and also a few small HDB food courts.

Not wasting any time, after checking in, we headed straight to Orchard Road to shop, as well as to have dinner (at the Ion Food Court). With the exchange rate of S$1 to RM2.50, every thing seemed extremely expensive even during the Great Singapore Sales.

♥5th June, Sunday♥
The original plan was to go to Singapore Zoo, but it was pouring in the morning, and we have to change our plans, it was to Singapore Science Centre instead. Tickets were : $9 for adult, $6 for children (3~16yrs)

I prefer Petrosains, as there are more things for kids to ‘try’ out there. Still, we spent a 4hrs there, *yawn* watched 2 shows, The Tesla Coil Show and World of Insect Show.

In the evening, after a rest/nap in the room, we took a taxi to Marina Sands Bay, to watch iD by Cirque Eloize at the Grand Theatre. It’s a colourful Hip-Hop Circus act from Montreal, with lots of music and dancing. Girls of course loved it.

What more, we met our neighbour and her girls, who are the girls’ age and their best friends, visiting Singapore and watching the same circus!

They played together during intermission, and also after the show, went to explore Marina Sands Bay and had supper together.

♥6th June, Monday♥
Girls said they had already been to the Singapore Zoo on our last trip, so they wanted to go somewhere else instead. Sentosa Island was the somewhere else we chose.

We took the MRT to Harbour Front, and took the cable car ride (Tickets were : $26 for adult, $15 for children round trip), there was a promo going on where Malaysian tourists only need to pay half price, but because we didn’t bring along our passports, we had to pay the hefty full price. 🙁

We took the cable car to Mount Faber first, spent some time there.

Then took the cable car to Sentosa Island.

If you are going to Sentosa Island, plan your trip well so you can save some money buying combi tickets or play passes. We only went on 3 activites, and spent quite a fair bit because we didn’t know about this.

We watched the 4D Magix (girls screamed and shouted, and they said they didn’t like it at all because the ‘visual effect’ was too real) and went on the Extreme Log Ride (a ‘roller coaster’ rides with high-definition wide-screen projection, which the girls loved but I didn’t like it at all). (Combi Tickets were : $29.90 for adult, $17.90 for children)

We had dinner at Sentosa so that we could catch the Song of the Sea show (Tickets were $10 per person), a show which uses fountains, lasers, projection to tell a story. Now seriously, I don’t think Song of the Sea is worth the money, as you can get a similar show in Marina Bay Sands for free (read on).

After the show, we walked back to the cable car station, as there were long queues for the free monorial and bus ride.

We didn’t go to Universal Studio this round as there are lots of rides Zaria cannot go on due to her height. We’ll do that the next visit.

♥7th June, Tuesday♥
Girls pleaded with Daddy to stay in the hotel with them, as they wanted to spend time in the pool. So, the first half of the day, Daddy spent time with the girls at the hotel pool, and I went shopping on my own.

In the evening, we went to Marina Bay Sands (MBS). We took the MRT to Promenade Station, and then took a 10min walk via the Double Helix Bridge to MBS. It is a very scenic and pleasant walk, there were some local joggers jogging, but mainly foreigners enjoying the view as well as to take photos.

Daddy spent so much time there snapping photos, the girls got pretty impatient and in the end, I had to bring them into MBS first while he continued shooting away.

We have dinner there at the food court (we had almost all our dinners in the food court this trip, so sad), did some shopping, and then headed to watch the show at the Promenade. It’s a similar fountain and laser show like the Song of The Sea, except this is free, and we find more entertaining (no cheesy dialogues).

We then walked back to the Promenade MRT station the same way. The night view from the double helix bridge (and from the Promenade at Marina Bay Sands) was spectacular.

♥8th June, Wednesday♥
The last day of our trip, we only did shopping around Orchard area, and then it was home.

Zaria asked if she could stay in Singapore forever on our way back. And when we asked the girls which event/activity they liked best, they both claimed the morning they spent in the pool was the best. o.O”

Their holiday, we probably should just book a hotel nearby with a pool for them.