Taiwan Day 3: Kaohsiung

Today we went on a day trip to KaoHsiung! I really enjoyed this trip as the high-speed rail was a really enjoyable ride and the living pace at KH was more peaceful than at Taipei.

Our tickets for the HSR was really pricey tbh. 3000 each... which is almost 160 sgd? But I cannot believe how fast it took to cover such a large land mass of Taiwan.

We bought the tickets within Taipei Main Station itself. There were a lot of counters in orange colour (which I forgot to take a picture of :() but it is quite obvious so no worries! Also buy your tickets in advance as they can run out.

Note also: we wanted to change the timing of our return journey to be an hour earlier and realised we could do it for free as long as we did it early. Any further changes and reissuing of tickets will cost 30 twd per ticket.

Soooo we took the 8.30am train and reached KaoHsiung at about 10am!

Here's the squish at the platform of taipei main station. Go there early AND MAKE SURE YOU ARE ON THE RIGHT PLATFORM. There are about 3? And it is certainly possible that you did not go to the right platform. Always check carefully ok.

The sign '8' actually stood for our carriage number.

I loved the train ride and staring out for 1.5 hours. The train also had a fold out table just like those at airplanes so I could write.

I HAVE NO STILL SHOTS OF THE SCENARY SOBS. ONLY MOVING SHOTS.

And the pic below... shows the queue we had to conquer to change the timing of our trip back to taipei. Yikes.

Their 7-11 ultra cute please, even have this?

We went to find a famous shop called 兴隆居 at City Council Station...
and realised it was closed.
Wow guys, of all the days in the month of July. The sign below says in the dates in the month of july that they are closing. All mondays. So idk from aug 2017 onwards what is it going to be.

Wandered around and randomnly got some food from a store nearby.

Then went to the Love River coz it was within walking distance. Nothing much, just a river to me. O_O but still a refreshing change from the hot sun and concrete jungle as always

We then took a train to Sanduo Shopping District Station coz there is a lot of malls there.
We went to sogo coz my parents wanted to shop there. my goodness it was 13 stories but very small. Like a small BHG standing on its own.

I did buy a pair of shoes in the basement tho, this brand the salespersons not bad.

And there is surprisingly a daiso on the like top floor. Tax Refund was good at sogo though coz it was a direct refund.

Beside Sogo there was this stand alone shop that was like a Miniso + Convenience Store + Sasa combined into one. It's called POYA. And we spent 1 hour there buying so much items lol. From cup noodles to skincare to tupperware haha.

Here's the interior

And even cosmetic lenses?! I a bit scared la. Of all the senses, sight is most important to me so I'm taking no risks with this.

We then checked out another mall called FE21 and unfortunately we only had time to eat there. There were a couple of floors with food. but I went to the one with the food court concept and had a central seating area (11th Floor)

Here's the food we got!

So far all the bubbletea I bought does not suit my taste. I think I am too used to gongcha?

We then departed to take the train to Central Park to look for Xin Jue Jiang. Due to the limited time we had, I suggested an abrupt change of our agenda, abandoning the Liuhe Tourist Market for this instead.

AND IM SO GLAD.

We chionged to this place at about 5pm. Most stores were open by then, and the streets were not so crowded

Although this place is much smaller than the night markets in Taipei, this place had the BEST RATIO OF GUYS STUFF AND GIRLS STUFF. I was really glad that my dad could get some shopping done here as there were a lot of shops catering to guys, rather than just girls only.

I also really liked that it was well-organised and easy to walk through without feeling overwhelmed. I bought quite a bit from here in terms of accessories, no more new clothes coz I got loads from Korea already.

We finished walking this place in 1 hour and left, we saw the street food and decided against it coz the hygiene in terms of food handling... yikes

After that we went to Formosa Boulevard Station to see the light installation/painting/art/mural/idk/icannoteven yep. WORTH IT TOO. I like how pretty it looked and how majestic it was because of its large scale.

Here's the schedule of the light show

We then headed back to Zuoying Station to catch our HSR back to taipei. We made a quick last stop at another Shing Kong Mitsukoshi just beside the station to see if we can grab some food (HOW MANY SKM ARE THERE?!)

See that cute dinosaur shop at the background? We only manged to buy 2 shirts from ther ebefore we had to go :((

And there we were, back at the HSR station waiting to get on the train! Surprisingly, the train was already at the platform 30 minutes before waiting to depart. So we headed down the CORRECT PLATFORM and hopped onto the train.

Note: the above picture just reminded me. THERE ARE DIFFERENT GANTRIES DEPENDING ON YOUR CARRIAGE NUMBER. I have no idea if it makes a difference, but let's not risk anything and just make sure you enter the right area ok?!

I AM SAD. I wished I could stay here longer. I really did enjoy exploring this place. I want more time sobs. We barely had like 9 hours sobs. Next time then!

Taiwan Day 2 Part 2: A11 Shing Kong Mitsukoshi, Wu Fen Pu, Raohe Night Market

We took the long bus ride back to Taipei and this time stopped near the Taipei 101 area.

We were looking for Shing Kong Mitsukoshi Xinyi Place A11
Address:No. 11, Songshou Road, Xinyi District, Taipei City, Taiwan 110

Wah. This area really quite big ah. And so many different SKM! Got A9... A11 was in particular of interest to us coz of the LINE pop up store and how apparently the items here are more for youth?

So we headed to the basement first of A11 to have food. (we tried looking for food at the other SKM... this one was much better as there were many options.)

Do take note... there is always a waiting time of like 10 to 20 mins for each food item.... coz it is just that slow or that crowded at each store, even if there is no crowd at the counter.

I ate expensive lobster roll. Coz I miss boston and I miss my bff :( It was pretty good though. Must eat within the first 5 mins... coz the bread cold liao becomes hard -_-

Bought this super cute ice creammmmm!

Dad bought fish from this store, strongly do not recommend. It tasted lousy

The interior of one of the higher floors selling clothes.

TBH we bought nothing much here, but idk why we were in so much of a hurry that day. Maybe we just really had a lot to cover and we didn't intend to spend too much time here to begin with. I did buy a pair of birkenstocks tho, coz here is 30 sgd cheaper than back home.

If I were to liken this place to a SG shopping mall... it would be Tangs Singapore in terms of the shopping.

highlight: the Line Store!!

There was a muji cafe we stopped at in A11 coz we were that tired.
Can i just say... DON'T BOTHER.
Coffee lousy, tea lousy, even creme brulee lousy. How liddat
AND THE SERVICE LAST WARNING. My mum waited 15 min in line when there was only ONE HUMAN IN FRONT OF HER. Slow ttm wasting time

The one of two pics I got of Taipei 101 hahaha

We then took a bus (using surprisingly reliable google maps) to Wu Fen Pu coz it was much faster than going via train.

I quite like this place! The clothes here, while affordable like 100 to 390, are quite pretty and can bargain also.

This shop in particular sold non-generic clothes that really caught my eye. Check it out when you are there.

\

Wah funky ah

IMO this place is very similar to the ground level of bugis street... just a lot of clothes shops. I bought like 3 pieces of clothes here? :D But quite tiring to walk so many lanes la. It is quite clean though and store displays are much neater than before (according to my mum)

Only thing is... here no toilet yeah. :( Unless you go to the park near the back, which leads you to a staircase to the underground car park and there is a small toilet there.

And now, the highlight of my trip. RAOHE NIGHT MARKET
THE WORST
NIGHT
MARKET
EVER
I HATE IT
I HATE MYSELF FOR GOING THERE
I WILL NEVER GO THERE AGAIN.

In fact, I'm so pissed I'm not even going to explain how to go there.

Let me explain.

There are street food there. NEVER. EVER. ORDER. WITHOUT ASKING THE PRICE.

Coz I was so anxious to bring some form of food to my hungry parents, I ran off ahead to buy this. the well known sotong of night markets

and stupid me just ordered one. without checking the price.

Do you know how much the store charged me for this nonsense? 350 DOLLARS. THAT'S ALMOST 16 FREAKING SINGAPORE DOLLARS. FOR THIS. I could have gotten so much more with that money.

I saw this being sold for like 180 and cheaper at other night markets later in the trip and I was just so so shocked when she told me the price and I cannot believe I was so stupid.

This is the store by the way.

You can even see the nasty women's face. Yes, it is my own fault for being an idiot. But to me, this is DISHONEST LIVING. I hated myself so much after that for squandering precious money.

So learn from my mistake. Please don't even go there okay? Thanks. Or if you do, go up to this store, DEMAND FOR THE PRICE, then go away clucking to yourself or exclaiming in a loud voice how this is daylight robbery.

Sigh. If only I wasn't in such a hurry that day.

I'm so upset writing this, I am not going to even blog anymore about Raohe Night Market except to say

1) this was THE WORST night market I went to, compared to ximending, shilin and everywhere else. Even without the incident, this was the most crowded, most disorganised, most uncomfortable and unenjoyable night market to visit. My family literally did nothing except to buy random food and walk that horrible round journey of about 600 meters through the bustling crowd.

2) don't come on a weekend if you can la. really. too many humans.

I hate this place. I should have known when I read all the other blogs and everyone gave very meh comments about it too.

STAY AWAY.

Taipei Day 2 Part 1: Yehliu Geo Park

What is at Yehliu GeoPark?

Rocks. Rock Formations. Funny looking rocks. Intersting rocks. Rock pokemon....you get the drift.

Most famous.... is this (that I took from google, my best friend)

but honestly looks like this...



Someone obviously did a lot of photoshop hor. I feel scammed lol.

Anyway

Directions: Head to Taipei Bus Station (careful when searching on google, multiple of these will come out) and take bus 1815

See this map where I circle out the place


and see this pic, in the background you can see the word taipei bus smth smth on the building to the left.


(my goodness as I am doing this post I realised how poorly marked out Taiwan's google map is, I cannot even find places as obvious as Taiwan Bus Station lol. Kudos to my mum for researching sia)



Comfy bus with even english announcements for stops! Yay. But long ride.... 1.5 hours to the stop? So take a nap :X the driver will announce once through the microphone when you reach Yeh Liu but rmb to listen to it, mine only announced in Chinese.


Once you alight... you will see this



Make a left turn and then walk straight allllllll the wayyyyyyy.


ooooh nice view

and reached!!


Soooooo the place is quite simple. Take a map and walk to see the different rock stuff. Some are quite far, most are quite near. We were done with this place in about 1.5 hours because we just walked as we felt like it.

Also coz... the sun was way too bright by 12pm. It was terrible. We should have left earlier our hotel earlier!! But oh well. We were also very weary of the food available along the way... seafood prepared by restaurants are always a huge warning sign to me for getting scammed.

Photo dump time :D


















The fairy shoe


The famous queen head....


blurry pic of the rocks which look like ginger....

6 things about Yehliu Geo Park
1) I saw people doing some sort of parasailing!
2) IT IS SO HOT. I got a tan line. Please put lots of sunblock
3) The rocks are interesting to look at and the sea view is quite pretty
4) please wear sporty attire and good shoes  (saw ppl wearing flowy dresses LIKE WHY)
5) look out for red lines, which demarcate areas you should not step across
6) I saw a lot of... sea cockroaches..... crawling everywhere around that area.... so no need to scream yea! (COULD NOT find out if there is another name for this creature!)

Which reminds me of wimpod, my pokemon haha



Oh yeah
there are really interesting rock formations that DO NOT get a name for themselves
like this one! so cool right, what do you see?



And... don't bother queueing to take a picture with the queen's head la. you wait a very long time to take a pic with a rock.
see the queue?



back of the queue




to the front of the queue

So nah, we play cheat by taking a pic of it from the back (which is not the queuing area, but a continuous part of the park that everyone could walk, even with that pram lol). Not the same but we just wanna show that we have been here.



We promptly left as the sun was really way too hot and departed for the Taipei 101 shopping area! More of that in part 2 :)