Extremely, extremely, EXTREMELY overdue blog post about my Taiwan trip in March with Mrs Choo. First stop that the tour made was at the Taiping 101 building. The observatory deck was closed that day due to strong gusts of wind, so we had to settle with viewing from the inside.
The tower was nothing to shout about. Personally, I LOVE reading the history about places and buildings, how they came to be... How it was built, boring stuff like that. But due to time constraints and a very impatient and non-historical loving mother, I had to forgo all those :/
Best thing to see on the first day of my trip... HELLO KITTY DESSERTS-! Ranges from Kitty moon cakes, pineapple cakes, mochi to sweets homnomznomz.
The entire building is very much like KLCC, offices and observatory decks on the higher floors and a shopping mall below it. Difference is that every store, and I really do mean EVERY STORE belongs to a high fashion label. Quite impossible to shop there and it is advisable not to because the price for branded and luxury items there are relatively more expensive compared to Malaysia.
The only thing that was comparatively cheaper was Chatime-! RM4.90 for a large cup of pearl milk tea with tapioca balls. I would so buy a cup everyday if it were this cheap in Msia.
Checked into a hotel which was situated along a bay which name I have forgotten lol. Then we headed straight for the night market. I absolutely love Taiwan's night markets-! I don't know how it differs from Malaysia actually. Maybe its cold air and not having to wipe the sweat off of my nose every 30 seconds. Or maybe its the genuine Taiwanese hospitality.
Extremely fresh seafood. Wanted to try everything at that time but we already had specified cravings, which was fried omelette oysters, taro balls and fried chicken. Gosh, I'm soooo hungry right now, salivating as I'm typing this.
Ohmaigerd just look at those clams @.@
Made our first stop at the fried oyster and omelet stall... Or as us locals calls it, "ho jian".
Mama Choo loved it but I hated it because of its gooeyness. I like mine complete cooked and eggy, not starchy and lumpy urgh.
Yes and this-!! Homg my favourite Taiwanese street food ever, other than bubble tea and fried chicken.
The mother tapao'd some dimsum back to the hotel room too. They weren't fantastic but some of the choices had pork. And that's the magic word aint it, pork dimsum in a night market.
Caramel coated fruit skewers-! Certainly brings back childhood memories. I remembered devouring countless sticks of these when I was in China back in 2001. Ahh yes, those were the fluffiest days of my life. At RM2 for a whole stick filled with strawberries, who could resist?!
Every night for the whole week we were there, I learnt something really odd special about the mother, she has to eat and drink the first thing she wakes up so that she can... Poop ahahaha. Otherwise she'll feel uncomfortable the whole day. So I had to make sure she gets her pastries or bread with milk or bottled tea before we retire back to the hotel at the end of the day, everyday.
Night view of the river along the night market.
RM1 ice-cream that is better than the ones at Ikea-! There's a really funny story behind how we bought the ice-cream. See, I'm a Mandarin speaking Chinese, but majority of the people I know call me a banana (Chinese that doesn't speak mandarin... Yellow on the outside but white on the inside). I find it soooo ridiculous because they judge me base on my accent... And okaylaa so maybe I'm not that fluent as I should be XP
Anyhoos, I had to order everything in Taiwan because the mother does not speak Mandarin unless she's really forced to. And it just so happened that the staff didn't speak a word of English -.-" I was asking what flavour they had (all in Mandarin) and they kept saying 香草... 香草... 香草, which i didn't understood. It means "Vanilla". And this went on for a good 5 minutes.
The most ridiculous thing was that it was freezing out and we still insisted on having ice-cream ahahhaa.
We then retired back to our hotel room, me with my fluff balls and the mother with her dim sum. The night ended with the Front Office Agent requesting us to check out of our rooms because they had mixed up our rooms with someone else's one.
Seeing that I work in this industry, I remained as calm as I could because I have been in their shoes, though not exactly in the same situation. But honestly, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?! ASKING A GUEST TO CHECK OUT OF HER ROOM?! IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?!
Eventually, he came up to our room to apologize, bearing gifts even. The mother was like *no fucks given* and proceeded to slam the door in his face. Totally deserved it. Twas a great way to end our first night in Taiwan.
