Yilan 宜蘭, Taiwan Trip (Day 1)

13th May 2018, Sunday

Our Plane to Taiwan

Yeah!! Finally final exams over!! And am going with my colleagues to Taiwan for holidays today. We had to get a flight on Sunday as there were no promo tickets for Friday or Saturday. We met each other at the airport around 9 plus in the morning and i went to the arrival hall to collect the wi-fi router. It really took a while to get the rental router as there is only one staff working to  handle the queue. After that, we proceeded to check in our luggage..wanted to use the self check-in luggage but can't as one of my colleague needs to show her visa to the airport staff in order to fly. After we checked in our luggage, we went ahead into the boarding area and we went ahead to have breakfast at Heavenly Wang. After breakfast, we went to buy some additional stuffs before heading to the boarding gate.

View from the sky

Top of Mountains near Taiwan

The plane took off at 12 pm and we were off to Taiwan. It was a 4 hours flight ride and i just watched movies throughout the journey. We landed in Taoyuan Airport at around 4.30 pm, there were alot of people arriving in Taiwan too. It took a short wait for us to get clearance from the customs. Then we went down to the luggage belt to collect our luggage. After that, we headed to take the airport express train to Taipei Main Station. It was about 6 plus when we reached Taipei and it was getting dark. After which, we bought the train tickets for an express train to Yilan which took about 1 hour plus. Was feeling hungry and sleepy on the train....

View from the train

Yilan Main Station

Jimmy Park Entrance

 It was around 8 plus when we finally reached Yilan train station and i saw a McD sign from the station. There was a castle building beside the McD, so i told my colleagues that should be our hotel as the hotel name is N.Castle....hohoho...So we all walked towards the direction, however, it turned out to be an amusement centre. So we checked the map and realised we had overshot  a shot distance and had to turn right into an alley, where the hotel was located. The hotel was quite small, with two levels. We got assigned to our room, where there were two double beds and we will be staying in the same room tonight.

Dongmen Night Market Entrance

Sweet Potato Balls

Food Stalls

Choices of BBQ sticks

Crispy Spring Onion Pancakes

After leaving our luggage, we headed down to Dongmen night market for dinner. We just bought some street food while walking through the market. There were multiple shops in the market, there were also sellers putting out clothes to sell in the centre of the road. Had bbq food and crispy spring onion pancakes (nice!! :)) After that, we walked around the market....the oyster omelette we bought was not nice...After that, we headed back to the hotel and rested for the day...Going to have a long day of activities await us tomorrow....

Places Visited:
Dongmen Night Market

Hotel Stayed:
N.Castle Hotel

Tokyo 東京, Japan Trip (Day 1)

4th March 2017, Saturday

Finally planned to go for a short trip to Japan again and this time, i am traveling with two of my friends. Today is the day to fly off, away from work and study!!!

Woke up @ 5 am and got ready to go to the airport. My friends had arrived first at the airport and checked in their luggage when i was on the way (Purposely don't want to wait for me to check in together... :P). There were a lot of self-checking in kiosks and self-printing of luggage tags & boarding pass at the SQ counters. I went ahead to check in my luggage and we went in. While i looking for breakfast, the 2 of them were buying their makeup stuffs. We had our breakfast there after shopping. I had a doughnut and hot chocolate drink. After that, we walked towards to the gate and waited to board the plane. I got a different seat with my friends, so we were seating separately on the plane. And it's time to fly!!

Arrived @ Tokyo

Watched some movies during the flight and we landed in Tokyo at 3.15 pm (Jap time). It took a while for luggage collection, we tried to figure out the way to our hotel. We had to change 2 times on the train route to go to the hotel. We had to carry our luggage up the stairs when we cannot figure out where was the lift. My friends were having a bit of trouble to carry their luggage up as one of it was weighing 22 kg. By the time we reached the street level, we were panting....hohohoho.....By the time we finally arrived at the hotel, it was already almost 6 pm. Our rooms were on different levels too as i was taking the single room while my friends were taking double room. After check-in, we all went up to our own rooms.

My Room

The interior was quite the same as the one i stayed during my last trip in Tokyo. Didn't expect the single room to have a double bed too, when i went to check out the double room, my friends were also sharing the double bed and the size of the room was the same as the single room...and i got the whole bed to myself in my room....hahahaaa).

After settling down, we went to Akihabara for dinner. It was a stop away from our hotel and the sky had already turned dark, We went up to a building named Chomp Chomp to find some nice shabu shabu. But when we went up to the indicated level, there were two different restaurants, each on left and right side. We chose one restaurant (which was on the left side), named Akane No Niwa, and went in to try. The tables were placed inside separate small individual rooms and there was a strong cigarette smell too. We ordered a plate of gyoza as our starters and ordered a seafood hotpot. Thought we can order 2 different hotpots to try but was told by the staff it was required to order 2 of the same soup base.

Yummy!!

Seafood Hot Pot

The gyoza were yummy and there was a nice sweet sauce that came with it.The skin wasn't thick too.
It was so nice that we ordered 2 more plates of it. When the hotpot came, it was big and had quite a lot of seafood, including crabs. However, we don't find the hotpot was as yummy as the gyoza. It was quite disappointing though. After we finished our dinner, we had a bit problem to communicate to the staff to get us our bill. Cos we were trying to tell her "Bill", she kept thinking it as "Beer"......hahaha..
Finally, she got what we meant and got us our bill, which we paid at the counter.

Drinks from Gundam Cafe

After dinner, we walked around the anime streets and went to find the Gundam Cafe too. But we walked in the wrong direction and ended up walking in circle. Anyway, we managed to find it and queued to have some snacks. There were more characters designs for the drinks and we all ordered different drinks. I also ordered some fries as i was getting hungry again...hahaha....By the time we finished, it was almost to 10 pm and we took the train back to the hotel to rest.

It was soooo cold....

Hotel Stayed:
APA Hotel Kodenmacho-Ekimae

Europe Trip - Back to Singapore

Day 15: Haiz...going to take plane back to singapore..so sian.Woke up and left for Paris airport.Still have to take the airport shuttle train from T3 to T1.So ma fan and the airport is so messy (still got 2A to 2F terminals,don't know how many terminals they have.) Then we checked in our luggage and when we went checking in,there was a lady beside our counter.She was like arguing with the SQ personnel about paying for excess hand luggage.Hohoho....

Anyway the airport looks old and boring,so we went in to the gate early.We did a little shopping too before boarding the plane. Later we boarded the plane,it was a 11 hours plane ride.So anyway basically we just sat and slept in the plane.As there is nothing much to do,except to watch movies or listen to music and waited for our food to come.Lol

With this,my 2 weeks Europe trip ended by reaching Singapore on 24th May 2010 early morning.