Ready... Get Set...Could not get much rest the night before due to the excitement of our first family trip. Woke up 5 am in the morning and started to get prepared. After a final round of inspection, we set off to the airport. I had purposely timed to get a cab between the 6:30am and 7am window, after mid night surcharge had ended and before peak hour surcharge starts. Fortunately there were lots of cab and we spend no time in arriving at the
Changi International airport terminal 3. We had a smooth check in of our luggage and was issued our boarding pass. Just to mention, I had tried to check in online 48 hours before the flight via the
SIA website but fail. Upon checking, it was because we were travelling with an infant. Since it was still early, we had our breakfast at
Delifrance before boarding the plane SQ876.
Fly...It had been 3 years since I last flew and it was
Kang Le's first. Although our tickets were economy class, we were allowed to board right after the first and business class, just before the rest of the economy class, all thanks to
Kang Le. I thought that was a very good arrangement. It give us time and space to get ourselves settled down before the rest of the passengers packed in. As the plane taxi and begin its take off, we begin to worry if
Kang Le was able to equalize the pressure of the take off. We tried to coax him to drink water hoping that the swallowing would help him equalize. To our surprise, he was not very affected by the pressure and that felt like a good start to our holiday. After the seat belt light went off, the air stewardess fixed a baby cot for
Kang Le right before our seats. Pardon me for "being in the mountains for too long", but I had not expected such arrangement on a flight for infants. She presented us a "
goodie" bag completed with diapers,
bibs, toys, wet tissues...etc for
Kang Le. Later she even provided
Kang Le with baby food and warmed them up. Though I did not find the flight entertainment (watched "Jumpers") interesting, the brunch actually made up for it. Frankly, it took me several visits to the lavatory before I discovered that the sink is not choked but I will have to press a button to drain the water away... *embarrass* The flight experience on the whole made me feel comforted as the extra buck spent to fly with
SIA was a good choice.
ArrivedAfter we landed we cleared customs and immigrations smooth but spent quite a while to collect our
luggage. As we entered the arrival hall, we begin searching for the local tour agency that was to
receive us. Probably due to the insufficient rest the night before, I missed my own name twice before finding it. The local tour guide gathered all of us and started to take attendance. She was concern as a family she was to
receive was absent. However, she guided us to the bus to "rest" before she left to locate them. Later, she returned and updated that the family had some problems with their luggage and apologised for the delay. The tour guide was very professional as she kept her cool, was very warm and friendly and kept us inform of her whereabouts, happenings and provided
information during the journey. Although the time we spent with her was only from the airport to the hotel, I felt that she had given us a very good impression of Taiwan and her people.
The Hotel
We were the second group to be dropped off at our hotel, Hotel Royal Castle(成都大饭店). Due to the delay at the airport, we were behind our schedule. However, it did not worry us as it was free and easy thereafter. We started to unpack after inspecting the room. Although we requested for a baby cot for Kang Le, the hotel does not provide such facilities. Therefore the whole family of 3 will have to squeeze in the king size bed. I contemplated to have a additional bed and was advise that our room was not big enough to accommodate one. To do so we will need to change to another room and the changes for the additional bed (if I remember correctly) was NT350 (S$16) per night. As we had started unpacking, I decided to try squeezing for a night before deciding on the additional bed.
The MRT
We began our sightseeing at Lung Shan Temple (龍山寺) which was one MRT station from Xi Meng Ding (西门町) where our hotel was located. The MRT is very simlar to Singapore's MRT. The main differences that I noticed is
- the seating structure which I feel is better then Singapore.
- the impressive behavior of the locals on the MRT. (e.g. never fail to give up seats to the needy, organised queuing before the doors during peak hours...etc)
龍山寺
It had been quite some time that I had last visit a place of worship, the last I could remember was at Wong Tai Sin temple (黄大仙) back at Hong Kong in 2005, and it never failed to impress me that Chinese (taoist) are very devoted worshipers. The temple was immersed with incense and singing of prayers for the deities. The temple was packed with devotees. We did not take any pictures within the temple so as not to show any disrespect. We made a quick tour of the temple and exited so that we would not cause inconvenience to the worshipers and before we start tearing from the incense.
华西街 广州夜市
We spent no time in locating Guang Zhou Street (广州街) as the street entrance was right next to the temple. I was very excited as I had been longing to visit a night market (夜市) in Taiwan since many (about 8) years ago. I spent no time in locating my favorite "smelly" bean curd (臭豆腐). At about 5 pm, I guess we were a little early as many stalls were not ready or only in the midst of setting up. Walking along Guang Zhou Street, we came to the intersection with Hua Xi Street (华西街) which is known for its exotic dishes (e.g. snake, turtles...etc) from the internet. We took a walk down Hua Xi Street to see for ourselves. We did locate a few shops/restaurants that offers these exotic dishes but I do not seem them crowded with locals or tourist (probably we are just too early). There are also KTVs and most eateries with offers a huge varieties of dishes. Unfortunately, we were not so game to try them fearing that we might catch some sickness or that our stomach were not seasoned/trained for such adventures. By then all the walking had tired our legs and we drop into a desert shop to grap something. We ordered Zhong He Dou Hua(综合豆花) and some hot sweet rice/porridge thingy (cannot remember the name). After wetting out appetite, we went on with Moji ("麻吉"), Tian Bu La (甜不辣) and Ai Yu Ping(愛玉冰).
西门町
We made out way back to 西门町 and walked around before deciding to eat at Genki Sushi. Somehow the food seems to taste better and fresher then Singapore. After freshening up at the hotel, we went on to explore the night seen at 西门町. I finally had my very missed 臭豆腐 at the store just opposite Rainbow Hotel. There where other roadside stores that we wanted to try but they were so crowded.
