taiwan

my very 1st time in Taiwan.. was over there over the CNY.. hehe.. ppl say we damn smart... got away during new yr but left baby behind...hehe...aiyah not on purpose one... juz that we couldn't really bring jan ard... it's damn cold there and she juz too young!!

anyway it's still winter over there.. was ard 10 degree in the Taipei city but very much colder elsewhere... it was freezing in Jiufen! we went YangMingShan too...it was 6 degrees there! cool!!

very briefly.. taiwan is a friendly place for travellers/backpackers..that is if u're chinese-speaking.. generally the ppl there dun speak very good english... but they tried hard.. once ppl know that we're from Singapore...they spoke to us in English though we keep replying in mandarin...guess they din realised that we're not very confortable with speaking in english there... anyway... ppl are generally very friendly and they're almost always glad to help and point directions to u... or give u advice on how to get to places...

we were there for 8 days... seems quite a long period hor? but we only managed to get to 2 cities properly!! only Taipei and Hualien... initially TaiTung, AliShan and even KaoShiong were in our destination list.. u see why it's not really possible....

Day1 - Taipei: Shida Night Market (we arrived late in evening so only managed to go for night market...)

Day2 - Taipei: Ximending, Shilin

Day3 - Hualien: ZhongShan Rd, ZhongZhen Rd (we arrived early afternoon, so after settling down it was already afternoon)

Day4 - Hualien: Taroko Gorge National Park, night market (forgot name le)

Day5 - Taipei: HuaXi St (aka Snake Alley)

Day6 - Taipei: Jiufen, Ruifang

Day7 - YangMingShan, Beitou (Xing Yi Rd)

Shida/Shilin/HuaXi - Night Markets
Ximending - shopping street for the trendy/younger generation (us included)
Hualien St - street stalls of eateries and provisions and fashions.. lots of variety la.. got KFC,Mac etc too
Taroko - natural gorge winding about the Central Highlands of which is mainly made of marble... marble is a major produce of Hualien and in this national park u get to see many nice nice landscapes formation, streams, rivers, cliffs.. u got the idea la...
Jiufen - a (used to be) small town set on the slope of the mountain away from the main city.. lots of ppl come here for a short getaway from taipei.. the famous st here is called JiShan St.. the popular eats will be the jelly cakes and some kueys and taro-ball... it's nice to walk along the streets!
YangMingShan - gotta love their national parks.. in fact as long as it is a national park outside singapore, likely that u wont be disappointed visiting it... i wanna go Africa's national park someday!! anyway it was flower-blooming season then.. actually it's juz starting...they were hardly blooming yet.. juz very wet and droopy..
Beitou - 2 reasons why we're here.. 1stly.. we need to go YMS vis Beitou.. 2ndly, how came we miss hotspringing in winter!! lotsa hotspring facilities here! take ur pick!

some representative shots of the trip... for more, visit my multiply albums!