Taiwan Trip
April 5 ARRIVAL AT TAIPEIWe went to Taipei through a cool plane. Each seat (or most of them) had its own TV. I watched Yes Man. The plane also had YUI's I Loved Yesterday Album in the selection. It took me some time to decide what to do. Anyway, We went to Agora Garden Hotel after arriving. The room is way awesome. We had a living room in our room, complete with some couches. After a few minutes rest, we went snack hunting at the nearby malls. We ate at 7/11, where I had a hotdog in a bun. After eating, we walked around and found the good places to eat at. We explored around before returning to the hotel to rest and meet up with our tour group.
We ate dinner at BullFight Steak and Seafood, a restaurant (guess what type), which was located in New York New York, a mall. I had a short rib steak, Caesar Salad (finished it), mango jelly thingy (like in Pizza Hut), bread, and drank red iced tea. The steak wasn’t good, considering I like most steaks.
After eating, we went to Taipei 101 to explore. Then we returned to the hotel, where my lil bro and I watched One Piece movie in Chinese. After that, we went to sleep. I slept well. The room was very silent.
April 6 TAIPEI TOURBreakfast at hotel. It was good. Then we went picture taking in lots of places. We then went to national palace museum (Forgot what was there). Then we had lunch somewhere where we ate siao lung paos (or however you spell that dumpling like thingy with soup inside), dumpling, rice, drank soup, and had a dumpling wrapped red bean.
We then went to other places to take pictures then went to the hot spring, where I found out hot spring water stunk. We then had dinner in a buffet place, with a Mongolian barbeque grill. I had four round in the Mongolian barbeque place. After dinner, we went to a church to tour around then we went to the night market, where only Michelle was able to buy something.
We then went back to the hotel. There was nothing worth watching. But we watched Tears to Tiara (Japanese with Chinese subtitles). My little brother and I made joke dubs. Slept well that night.
April 7 TAIPEI-TAICHUNGBreakfast in hotel. It was the same as the previous day. We left Taipei by high speed railway to Taichung. We went to a huge Buddhist temple (I’m guessing that was Zhong Tai Buddhist Temple). The stories of the monk guide were very interesting. After that, we had lunch in a place around 15 mins away. I didn’t like the food much.
After lunch, we went to other places like Sun Moon Lake, where we first tried the black sugar lollipop with salty thingy on a side. Nothing else was worth mentioning. Could be because of the rain. Anyway, we had steak for dinner with salad bar (or as Jeremy, the tour guide, says: “all you can eat salaba”). We went to Chinatrust Hotel for overnight. Nothing special about the hotel. Didn’t sleep as well as the previous nights.
April 8 TAICHUNG-ALISHAN FOREST RECREATION-TAINANBreakfast at hotel. It wasn’t good. Left for Alishan Forest Recreation, but had tea on a tea shop on the way. The place was just a long trail with a lot of old trees. We had lunch first before taking pictures around the place.
Long story short; Left Alishan, had dinner, went to Wei Yat Toong Mao Grand Hotel, where the room was relatively better than Chinatrust’s but not close to Agora’s. Can’t sleep at first but slept well later on.
April 9 TAINAN-KAOSHUNGBreakfast at hotel. Aside from the noodles, I didn’t like the food. Went to temples, ate lunch which I didn’t like, then went to buddha land. It was like the small world ride in Star City before (I don’t know if it still exists), without the ride and the music. Ok... So I’m not sure if there wasn’t any music as I forgot. Anyway, after that, we went to Tiger and Dragon Pagoda. Then we went to Ambassador hotel, a 5 star hotel that isn’t as good as Agora. We went to another night market, where we a different types of food for dinner. Went back to hotel after that. Didn’t sleep well.
April 10 KAOSHIUNG-HUALIENI’m guessing nothing good happened on that day as my journal only occupied three lines. It said: “Breakfast at hotel. Didn’t like the food. Hard time sleeping, but slept well.”
April 11 HUALIEN-YILAN-TAOYUANBreakfast at hotel. It was the least I ate by far among all breakfasts. Hated the food in lunch. Buffet at hotel for dinner, where I ate noodles, 4 siomais, and almond for dessert. I placed the meals first since I didn’t talk about the trip in my journal. Basically, the only part I liked was the visit to National Center for Traditional Arts. It was a place with lots of different stores (imagine Ong Pin). What’s special about the place is that there are times where people there go outside their stores to exhibit their arts, such as glass sculpture, clay sculpture (Which was really good... We saw some of the works and watched how the person creates them), and puppetry.
Anyway, back to journal. My lil bro and I watched Detective Conan marathon in chinese in the hotel room, along with parts of Mr. Bean’s Holiday. Watched FMA Brotherhood (Japanese with Chinese subtitles again) after Mr. Bean’s Holiday. Hated the room. Not only is it not cold, there’s a darn nightlight (exit sign), which we can’t turn off. We might as well have left a light open. Didn’t sleep well.
April 12 TAIPEI-MANILABreakfast at hotel then went to airport. I finished Yes Man, watched a little Bolt, which I liked, and listened to YUI in the plane.
