Day 5-6 of Taiwan 2016 - Taipei

I have previously ended my post on day 4 and here is day 5 and probably day 6 too!

We checked out of the hotel in Taipei at around 7.45am because we are taking the HSR to Taichung! :) It was around an hour journey from Taipei to Taichung. 

We booked a personal driver in advance for the Taichung trip because transport infrastructure was not so advanced in Taichung. If you are in Taichung, you can only rely on mostly taxis or public buses (if you don't find it a hassle) within this beautiful city. 

The driver was at HSR station to pick us up at 9.30am. Upon entering his car, he even prepared fruits (guava and rockmelon) for us! The fruits was still cold because he prepared an ice pack for it. 

Our 1st destination was to 中社花市 - it was a beautiful place with different types of flowers! Here's more photos:

This driver helps to take very pretty photos too! He gave us time to walk around this pretty place and we only go back to his car once we walked enough :) 

Our next destination was 百菇莊 -- a mushroom farm!

The fried mushroom was really yummy and they do sell snacks such as mushrooms biscuits which is a must-buy there!

After the mushroom farm, we headed to Lavender garden.

We had our free & easy time - no rush at all since the driver will be waiting for us at the entrance! 

My love for carousel since  young, it's like a fairytale!

I think the entrance fees is NT100 per pax (if I'm not wrong), you can use the tickets to pay for the food or buy souvenirs within the garden. 

I use it for coffee beans where I grounded it myself and choosing a cup with background story.

What a beautiful ambience with a nice cup of coffee!

I also tried the lavender ice-cream, nothing special. :p

I wanted to go fruit farm to experience the joy/nature of plucking fruits, but nobody pick up the phone so we had to leave it till next time. :( 

The driver brought us to try yam balls (东东芋圆) which he claimed was really famous & good! He did not lie, it was really good, better than the ones in Jiufen!

We decided to skip the Xinshe Castle because the entrance fees was quite expensive. But the castle is good for photos-taking if you like castle scenery.

I asked the driver if there's any nice sun biscuits in Taichung so he brought us to this 如意堂 - I don't like the sun biscuits there but I love their almond biscuits! We bought a box of it. Even if you do not buy any, it is alright. You will be treated like a VIP the moment you step in to the shop, they will serve you tea and let you try whatever snacks you want. 

It was going to be 6pm so I asked the driver to send us to Lavida Hotel where we will be staying for the night. It is at the entrance of Feng Chia night market. One thing good about this driver is - he won't charged for OT even if you exceeded 6pm. He is quite a famous driver for Taichung Tour.

Here is his contact:

吕先生 

+886986770890 

We booked a more luxurious room because there's TV in the bathroom. :p

La Vida Hotel

Address: No. 275-2, Section 2, Xitun Rd, Xitun District, Taichung City, Taiwan 407
Phone: +886 4 2451 7722 

Here are some of my favourite stalls at Feng Chia Night Market. Oh ya, there's a Minglun 蛋饼 across the road from the hotel which is the entrance of the night market. The  蛋饼 is super nice!

We had our dinner/supper in the room! Actually if you calculated, the dinner is not cheap because you will definitely buy few varieties from the night market. But who cares? Go holidays definitely must enjoy to the max!

I did not take much photos for day 6 because it's the day we had to leave Taiwan :(

Here's some snacks photos which I bought in Ximending.

Famous 鸭肉扁

   

 

Day 4 of Taiwan 2016 - Taipei

Continuation from Day 3 ~~~

I had to wake up early the next day and had to be slightly quiet when waking up because the mister said I'm too noisy every morning :p I decided not to turn on the lights so that he can sleep more, I had to visit the Taipei office to catch up with some colleagues! It was easy to travel to the office from Ximen station, just 2 to 3 stations away near to the customer site too. 

I was there for nearly 1.5 hours and the colleague even treated me to bubble milk tea! :) The station "Shuanglian" was linked 2 stations away to Taipei Main station so it's a good time for me to walk the underground mall and I gotten 4 pairs of shoes in short span of time. :p 

I reached the hotel around 1pm and the mister was nowhere in sight, so I lazed on the bed watching TV, it was shiok! The mister came back shortly and he brought back some fried sotong, duck wings etc! I was starving already~~~

We had some snacks, rested a while and headed out to Taipei 101 for Din Tai Fung! 

Can you believe that the Din Tai Fung cost only SGD $30 plus?? It was so much cheaper and of course nicer than Singapore. I'm missing the xiaolong bao & pork chop now!

After our late lunch, we walked around 101 shopping mall but really nothing much for us, unless you are into high end shopping. 

I wanted to go 东区 to explore one of the cafe so we went again to take the metro to find this Long Time Ago Cafe. 

It requires some walking distance from the metro station and Taiwanese were really so nice to help us with the directions! :)

This cafe was well-known for their disney characters latte art but due to copyrights issue, they are no longer able to do latte art in those disney characters. What a disappointment though~~~ :(

Longtimeago Cafe
No 9 Lane 21 An He Road Section 1
安和路1段21巷9号
Nearest MRT: Zhongxiao Dunhua Exit 6 (10min walk)
 

But I have to say the cafes in Taiwan have those drama feel ~~~ I really love the cafes ambience in Taiwan, wish I have more time to explore though!

It was early evening by then, we decided to head back to the 24hours Carrefour at Ximen area to buy the local snacks and instant noodles to bring back to Singapore. This was one of my favourite shopping place though, around 10-15 minutes walk from the hotel. 

It was back to the hotel to unload our stuff before we head out to Shihlin night market at around 8.30pm. I guess Shihlin is famous to every tourists and it needs no introduction. Here are some photos, we spend  an hour trying to catch prawns and that's our supper. Haha! :)

We left the night market around 12 midnight and glad that there were still train services! The stalls were mostly closed around that time. 

Here's the supper and our beer in the room! The honey beer is quite nice though - not much beer taste. :p It was so late by then because we had to wake up very early the next day to go to Taichung! It will be another separate post on Taichung. :) We packed another small luggage to bring our barangs barangs to Taichung.