This would be the most memorable Taiwan Trip ever. Krystal and I have been planning for the trip since March/April and have been dying for time to pass by faster ever since. Time flies and it reaches the day that we've got to fly!
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| The neat row of lights and planes, we flew via Tiger |
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| The wings that flew us to Taiwan |
We finally arrived at our hotel after the bus ride with bad mood uncle and being forsaken by the free shuttle bus. Despite the eventful journey, we were elated to the following discovery of our next 5 nights accommodation!
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| Our bed! |
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| Another view |
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| The cute toilet door |
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| Our very decent Toilet |
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| Our very cosy bathtub |
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| The walkway to our room |
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| Right outside our hotel room |
First mission of the trip: DO OUR HAIR
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| The Salon has TV to entertain guests! |
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| New hair, but hmm I revisit the salon the next day to fix the dry fringe and it got chopped shorter:( its ok, fringe will grow!:) |
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| A SUPER tired us who insisted taking photo with great lightings hahaha Bimbo ttm i know |
Anyway! The direction to the salon can be found
HERE it's located at Xi Men Ding, very convenient! Look for A-Sir in particular, she is good at guy's styling FYI. However, i thought i looked better 2 years ago when i visited her then. hmmm second thought, curls are much better this time!
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| My hair two years ago |
The salon delivered superb service and got the team to stay back till 1230am for us! We were very embarrassed and apologetic but they were all smileys towards us. Some of them even bunked in to the salon head's apartment so that they can reach salon on time the next day. What's more? They offer to help us buy dinner on their bikes and upon hearing our rejections, they bought us Choco Ice Blended from "Come Buy" (A drink stall all over Xi Men Ding [XMD])! LARGE some more! so sweet right!
So yea, we did our hair till wee hours and wanted to try the famous Lu Rou Fan (lrf) according to JJ.
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| Where the lrf stands in JJ's picture |
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| The actual stall we saw. IT'S A FOOT REFLEXOLOGY SHOP NOW :( |
Uber sad. So we combed the rest of XMD outskirt and chanced upon Cosmed! good discovery, and we settled for a so-so lrf soon after. What followed by was delicious instant noodles and ever stunning FAN TAUN from 7-Eleven. Satisfied!!!:)
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| Found this pretty container Latte. Taste good yo! |
Day 2
Rise and shine! We had breakfast at 永和豆浆油条! Slurp at the black sesame soybean drink and the 葱抓饼. I'm missing the drink already:(
Day 2 was VERY WELL SPENT at wu fen pu! I bought a truck load of apparels at a range of SGD4-12 approximate! Super worthwhile, super high! That comes with a price as well.. Apart from the hole burnt (willingly), I was really, really tired from the walks and load carrying. We were very determined to comb the entire wu fen pu as both of us usually gave up half way during our previous visits. So, we spent 6.5 hours in 5 fen pu in total!! Note to friends: wu fen pu doesn't start early, we reached at 1230pm but not all stalls were ready for operation.
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| My recommendation! Cheap and good drinks that comes in 500cc (20NTD), 700cc(25 or 30NTD) and 1000cc (30 or 35NTD) !! love it! |
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| One piece is a popular craze at this point of time during our visit. Look at the towel! |
Alright, we were really engrossed in shopping so not much photo here to share:) well, we were too tired to even visit 胡须张卤肉饭as it was far away from where we were. A XMM directed us a wrong route to Rao He night market and so we decided to spend a little bit of money to cab down to Rao He!:)
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| Taiwan lovers sure find this familiar;) |
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| Favourite dessert toppings! 包心粉圆！First tried in Yi Lan in 2010, and loved it till today,.. it tastes better with tau huay though!:) |
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| Another Chao da bei drink stall! |
We ended our day 2 with drained souls. I was practically stoning towards the end of day ha!
Headed to zhong xiao in the noon. we had Ding Tai Feng in Taiwan! It was slurpy!
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| xlb |
There was this one xlb that went out of shape (see, you can't even tell from the picture right) and to our surprise, the waitress actually requested to change that for us! Top grade service with their big warm smile please! Singapore got to learn that from them:)
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| Full load! |
In between we went to Dan Shui where we almost cleared a shelf of masks! It was so much that the store offer to deliver to our hotel:)
After that, we headed down to 小猫花园 at Zhi Shan zhan! We dined with the cats, an animal that both of us loved!
After that, it's Shi Lin time but sadly, the scaled down Shi Lin did not amaze us like how it does in the past. That's very sad. Despite the disappointment, i did buy the long awaited umbrella! love it to the core and i'm carrying around everywhere i go in Singapore:)
Day 4
We had breakfast at MOS Burger which is located just below our hotel!!! So nice to have a buddy meal with free non woven bag! Btw, non woven bags were our best friends in Taiwan during shopping as we did not want to carry those flimsy plastic bags around. hee!
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| Focus on bag |
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| Focusing the very nicely illustrated "life on paper cups" |
Visited the Bank of China and exchanged more TWD for our trip, after which we headed up to 9 fen and 10 fen!
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| Supposed to be very nice, but i wonder what happened to the shot i took and it became this:( |
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| jiu fen |
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| Same spot, 2 years later |
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| a MUST-TRY wild boar sausage! we had two each for lunch! :) |
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| Like a kid, BEST FRIEND! |
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| OTW to 10 fen. |
We wanted to take a picture with the beautiful moving background but alas too slow a shutter landed us in the tunnel
Second attempt but only captured faces without scenery
With the background but WRONG background! greeneries please not buildings!
Final attempt and we gave up. haha!
writing for our tian deng
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| A pretty pic i thought |
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| Favourite piece of art for life:) |
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| yeah wan sui! |
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| :) |
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| me! |
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| Krys! |
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| Night scenery |
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| More photos on facebook! |
It was rather touching when the tian deng went up to the sky. I almost wanted to tear with the celebration of our undying friendships. Yes we do bicker on and off, but that was part of the catalysts that lasted us through 19 years:) Oh my gosh, 19!! the last time we counted was when we were 16, and that made our friendship 11 years then. time flies, I feel blessed to have a childhood friend so dear till today!:)
THE PROPOSAL=D
*Side Story
JJ lied that he would be in camp for reservist hence not able to send me to airport during departure. He secretly visited my family after i left to ask for my hand! :) and so, that landed him in land of bubble tea on Sunday. While i was busy eating at zhong xiao, he happened to be around with Jowie. Upon knowing that we are in Zhong xiao, both of them freaked out and escaped out of town! haha quite interesting to know ;) so after Shi Lin, Krystal found an excuse to visit the recept and introduced JJ and Jowie to them, informing about the upcoming proposal to get access to our room next day. hee!*
Prior to this, JJ had actually in cahoot with Krys and Ethel for the proposal way before this trip. Each meet up with either of them was accompanied with a purpose that I wasn't aware of. Such as, checking if I'm ready to step into next phase of life, checking if JJ is the one for me etc. The most amazing task was to get my ring size, and that was tasked to Ethel. Coincidentally, Ethel's BF tasked me an identical task too! So, the day when we tried to fish for each other's ring size, it was a breeze! =D Btw, our proposal time difference was less than 24 hours, mine in TW, and hers in SG. She was secretly complaining that she might not have a proposal from the very calm bf, but yea I had to contain the secret and increase her surprise level when hers happen!
So back to the story, we missed our train and ended up at XMD only at 9+pm! With the intention to comb XMD, I gave up meeting Jowie, who claimed that he was on business trip at Taiwan hence the small world of bumping into each other (i discovered his check-in on FB and we texted). Upon knowing that Krys and I were approaching XMD, the duo had a quick dinner (almost choke) and got ready at the hotel!
After much deliberations (in search of Koi and other beverages), Krys and I finally returned to the hotel. I thought Krystal wanted to take a picture of me, so i posed at the door for the LONGEST TIME until she hinted me to take a look at the room!! (i thought her camera spoil, like hello i posed for such a long while but never complete taking the photo haha!)
The nicely lined up photo across the room
I found the box in the fridge and it said "开门"! so there he was standing at the door waiting to propose:) I controlled my tears well since i was already CHUI enough after a long day, but i honestly feel touched at everything that was planned. Yes JJ, you may proceed to call me Mrs Tan in time to come and ceased the Miss Neo soon, though i think Neo sounds good:)
Well friends, guess you will only catch the edited videos from the two cameras on wedding day HAHA!
The very relief fiance!
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| =) |
Day 5
As typhoon was about to hit Taipei (but didnt in the end) we stayed in XMD to shop. Krys and I headed to Taipei Train Station to eat railway bento (tie lu bian dang) while JJ and Jowie caught their famous Unagi rice (yes we separated our ways after proposal HAHA!)
Cheap and good!
My "set lunch" with drinks from my favourite place in Taiwan: 7-Eleven
So much ingredients!
The milk tea with coffee cubes! nice!
Then we headed back to XMD and shopped all the way. Finally found the highly recommended 鸡卤饭! So hungry that we only remembered to take an empty bowl's photo
The signage
The location!
Koi in Tw, Ice Cream Milk Tea! so ironic to have a slimming center signage behind us hehe!
Headed back to hotel to fight a packing war. We couldn't bring ourselves to sleep after that, trying to savour every bit of holiday we were left with. It was quite a sad moment when we know that our trip has come to an end:( Went to 7-Eleven again to stock up food and had supper. Scrimped and saved our last bit of TWD for breakfast too.
THE WAR
Masked luggage
Our best friends in Taiwan! Accompanied us through rain and shine
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| One last shot before we leave the cosy hotel and end our 二人行 |
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| I forgot who, but someone said JJ and I should go for holiday like this as engaged couple haha! |
I truly enjoyed myself with this unforgettable trip and hopefully not the last trip with Krystal. Despite getting engaged and eventually married in time to come, I would love to know that i will be able to travel with gfs like this again. Hope it's not a wishful thinking:) I don't know how life would be after marriage, I don't know how much responsibilities will be donned on me, I don't know how much differences will there be.. At least i know, i will always reminisce the good times i had =) Thank you Ethel and Krystal for giving me such a pleasant gift (to be part of the plan) as you two are my bestest best friends (sound childish but true ok) all my life. Having my hubby to be and two most impt friends involved in the plan is a huge gift to the proposal:)
To be able to revisit a destination with your childhood bestie after a photo crash 4 years ago, and a romantic proposal that intercepts the itinerary unexpectedly (at least to me) is a 5 star blessing. I will live Happily Taiwan After!
(More photos available at FB. OK i have yet upload them but soon heh)
