First Day in Taiwan: Taipei

Taiwan Trip: Day One

As it is my last semester and being still clueless in figuring out where I will end up, I was determined more than ever to make the most of the luxury of being a student. So, when my industrial training had finished I scrambled to organize a trip at the last minute! After a mess of a planning from switching from Cambodia to Vietnam to Japan to Myanmar (they are ALL going on my to travel list!), we finally settled on Taipei two days before the actual departure i! Even my to be companion had switched from my two Korean friends to a last minute Danish one, but in the end I was up in the air on my way to Taipei.

The cheapest option for flight was Eva Air at 1750 HKD round trip!

It was one of the most pleasant flight I have recently taken with reasonable food and very attentive and polite stewardess! I'll always remember to check out the Airline when i'm flying other places in Asia too :) 

The flight itself was roughly 2 hours, and soon after we arrived at the Taoyuan Airport in Taiwan.

The aiport itself is roughly 1 hour away from Taipei by bus and costs around 140 TWD (taiwanese dollar) and the tickets can be purchased at the airport itself!

We also got 5-day unlimited dataplan for only 300 TWD which helped us out greatly with navigating around town and especially with figuring out what to do as neither of us spoke chinese!

Oh and look at these fancy Taiwanese Dollars :)

After arriving at the Main Station (in the city centre) by Bus, we headed down to the MRT where we found our first street food! It looked like pancakes of some sorts, and for some reason it got better and better as we ate it! 

We finally figured out the MRT (which is pretty cheap at around 20 NTD - 0.7USD per ride within center) and arrived at our Hostel: TaipeiTaipei!

I strongly recommend the hostel to anyone travelling to Taipei! Great location in my opinion, as it is quite close to main attractions without it actually being in the DEAD center of the night-market (which is way too crowded and loud)

The neighbourhood around the hostel was really peaceful as you can see in the photo below, and after dumping our bags we walked (only 10min) to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall

I can imagine this place literally bursting with crowds, but when we went it was pretty much deserted an it was nice to see the sunset and take many silly photos whilst the chinese around us laughed at us... :)

We went into the memorial hall as well and although i was most impressed with Chiang's towncars.... the place was actually a lot more interesting and informative than I had guessed it would be! Plus it was also free and you could see lots of interesting uniforms and photos!

After the sunset, we headed towards the Taipei 101 and encountered many other interesting buildings during our walk... :) However we decided NOT to go up to the top of Taipei 101, for numerous reasons including the overflow of chinese tourists clogging up the queue and it was rather expensive....So instead we pretended we did by taking the silly photos as shown above.... ha.

Dinner: Din Tai Fung
Due to its popularity all over Asia, I've seen this eponymous shop literally everywhere from Singapore, Hong Kong to even Korea. However, I've never actually been to this famous establishment until I got the chance to visit it in its original 'home-town' Taipei.

I had expected the prices to be rather high due to its popularity and fame, but it was surprisingly cheap! It's not like street-food cheap but we paid around 100HKD each for quite a number of dishes! (Although we did not get the expensive 'chinese-dinner dishes' so that might be it)

Don't get scared by the queue, it shrunk really quickly as the place (well at least the Taipei 101 branch) was HUGE! But I would think if you come as a big group there might be a slightly longer waiting time but it's definitely worth it! While you wait, you can go try out the samples of the famous Taiwan Desserts being given out in the shops near-by.. they're too good to refuse to make sure you leave enough room for dinner :) 

The most famous dish is of course the Xiao Long Bao, and although the ones I've had in Shanghai are slightly better, these were still delightfully succulent and juicy. AND in case you're clueless as to how to eat these mini-bombs that can literally explode either inside your mouth or all over your shirt, they had a cute instruction sheet showing you how to eat it! 

We also ordered couple of other dishes randomly such as the noodle shown below, and potstickers and then some desserts.

I have to say that my FAVORITE dish of the night was not the xiao long bao but these amazing black sesame buns and black sesame xiao long bao. They are amazing. Seriously... if they had these in Hong Kong I would be eating these all day and every day until my teeth becomes stained black.

I mean look how happy I am!!! 

Night Market at Ximen
After stuffing ourselves to the maximum with buns, dumplings and little bit of noodles we waddled our slightly heavier selves to Ximen to take a look at the night-market at 'downtown' Taipei.

In addition to the street shops, the place was bursting with endless shops, restaurants and most of all PEOPLE! I loved the contrast between the huge imposing neon-signs of the shops with the little carts selling fruits, skewers and keychains! This place was such a bizarre mix of time-periods, crowds and interests around every corner on every street! 

Afterwards, we were so exhausted and tired from our long day out in town that we quickly headed home and crashed in our beds instantaneously.... ALthough people did say there's not a lot to see and do in Taipei, I had a lot of fun eating my way through Taipei!