Taipei 2013 w PF!

It's been almost 2 weeks since my return from Taipei! Third consecutive year of going to Taipei during april-june period :) Weather was the hottest I've ever experienced there so far, almost the same as Singapore's. But we're still super glad to have booked the trip back in March! Don't know if it's luck or fate or what (haha), but we totally avoided the horrendous haze! Thank goodness! :)

We reached TPE at about 6am and it was way toooooo early for our check-in at Taipei York, so we left our luggages with them in their store area. We got approached by a driver who could bring us around to tour places that were slightly a distance away from the city, he quoted us 600NT (approx SGD26) per person and we felt it was pretty reasonable cos we requested to go to JingTong, Shifen, Jiufen and Keelung.
Jing Tong is one of the filming sites of a popular Taiwan movie last year - You are the Apple of my eye. Heheh, being fans of the movie, how could we not visit this place!! :p

Instead of writing wishes/well-wishes on a sky lantern, people here would write it on a bamboo, and could either hang it along the fences, or throw it up onto wires above the tracks etc.

Shifen was up next, played w old-school fire crackers, released sky lanterns and omg one of the most exciting and exhilarating part of the trip - we rented scooters and rode around Shifen! We rented it for 1.5hours, rode it to view the famous waterfall, and spent the remaining 45 minutes exploring this little town on the scooter!

We then headed to Jiufen, spent about an hour or two buying lots of local goodies back for our family/friends :) So thankful that we decided to travel around on the first day with chartered transport. Can't imagine how we were going to lug everything around for the rest of the day!! Last stop was to Keelung! But we didn't really take many pictures as we were too hungry and tired due to only having 2-3 hours of sleep on the plane. Weird, but after returning to Taipei York, the girls decided to hunt for a supper place at XMD. After all these years, I finally stepped into Fish House!! Was so attracted by the seats as they're actually swings!!!! Heeh, happy me.

We totally KO'ed and didn't even wake up early for breakfast the next day! Love our room too much :p
Visited a risotto restaurant w a famous golden retriever as their mascot, food was alright, we all thought the risotto could have been better.

Check out our phone stack! Thanks to G, "strictly no phones, no social media etc during meals!" HAHA.

Travelled to Danshui after our meal! Played lots of old school games as well! It's still one of my favourite places in Taipei :) I don't really know how to explain it but I just love how rustic the place is, full of nostalgia. Took a ferry to Dan Shui Ma Tou (pier) towards the evening to catch the sunset :)

I really love the last two shots very much :') Major love for such beautiful sunset! We were really just sitting there enjoying the sunset, the peace and serenity....UNTIL i-forgot-who SAID "who's up for FUN RUN?!" And a few seconds later, all 7 of us were playing Fun Run on our phones -.- So much for being romantic and all HAHA. After a few rounds of fun run, we left Dan Shui and went to ShiLin. We were there mainly to eat and to hunt for shoes because a few of us didn't bring shoes for clubbing hahaha. Surprisingly, we really didn't buy anything else like clothes or accessories! In fact, for the whole Taipei trip, I came back with ZERO new apparels and accessories, surprise surpriseee!

The next day was spent visiting Taipei 101, then heading to SOGO! It's totally our favourite shopping mall :) We spent so many hours....just at the first level - Cosmetics. Check out our haul! I must really praise the guys for their patience HAHA. Not once did they hurry us and pull us away from the counters. They just left us at the area and went to browse around etc. If I'm not wrong, I think we spent close to 2-2.5 hours just at the first level shopping for make-up. #girls ;) Our plan was to head to Raohe for dinner actually, but due to time constraints, we went back to XMD for dinner and then returned to Taipei York to get ready to visit the club. We chose Club Lava, a little disappointing cos we were expecting a really large crowd, but we still had fun! :)

Had all-you-can-eat steamboat at XMD for about 2 hours, then we returned to our rooms because of bad weather (okay, and because we were all too tired + there were two suffering from hangover from the previous night hahaha). We totally nua'ed in the room, watched movies all the way till 7+pm! I know we're supposed to make full use of our time while we're overseas, but I guess relaxing and nua'ing are definitely part of traveling too; a getaway trip haha. Headed to Shi Da Night Market but it was kinda bad cos they actually closed half the market due to residential issues! So we came back empty-handed after all the window shopping, their trend was abit different from ours anyway. At about 1am, we decided to leave the hotel again to visit the 24hr Eslite Bookstore :) So glad we made this decision because we all bought books! HAHA. Spent a good 2 hours there browsing different genres of books.

The trip came to an end in the blink of an eye. It was a well-spent 5 days with them as we managed to catch up with one another, have fun and enjoy the company :) Super love this bunch of spontaneous friends! We're all kinda different, yet kinda similar. Have learnt a lot from all 6 individuals and managed to sort out some thoughts during this trip as well. So thankful for them :) With Jackyboy enlisting soon, we can't really travel as a group anymore for the next 2 years but I'm sure the girls will do a BKK trip sometime next year again. Love y'all velly much!

x

School's starting soon! Can't wait to return to school, miss my uni babes already! :) One last year of school, note to self: stop working so much and just enjoy being a young (student) adult.