Taiwan part 2! Last :D
Taiwan part 2!
Hopefully I'll get all of the Taiwan blogs finished today! I just realised I have a bit of a backlog!
After our day trip we went to a really famous dim sung place (steamed dumplings!)
And we ordered everything!
This was the main character guy! :) The dumplings were lovely.
We then went for a walk to find the Taipei 101 building.
as usual the scooters were crazy!
The Taipei 101 building was actually further than first expected.
Inside was a giant mall :)
The views from the top were beautiful.
This was the mountain region.
The buildings were impressive.
There was an art exhibit on the inside of the tower.
Paintings from all over the world were hung in the event space.
The last part of the tower. It was extremely windy.
Me and Heather posed like in Americas Next Top model and took really silly photos.
Again inside with the star like mirror.
Taipei was supposedly famous for its red coral. These outfits were made out of red coral.
A Jade Cabbage.
The Elevator to the top of the Tower was apparently the fastest one in the world. It was so fast that my ears popped after about 3 seconds....
Anna got excited about the prospect of a......pretzil? I think, so we went for Pretzil's! My first pretzil was a Twix one! It was lovely!
Hot inside and all melty! yum!
An American brand...I think.
After shopping we posed for pictures outside of the tower.
The tower looks pretty as night comes.
Statue of liberty was...there.....I have no idea where.
The lights came on.
This building changed colours! Just like a rainbow.
At night we headed to snake alley to find some snake to eat.
The markets leading on to snake alley.
Snake Alley!
The snakes weren't what we expected.... we expected it to be already cooked snake to eat, but when we got to a snake shop we found the snakes alive outside, living in their own poo, ready to kill to eat. Suffice to say...we didnt order any snakes....
Another thing.. we we're allowed to take pictures of the snakes.
Prawns and other fish were displayed in tanks.
The end of snake alley and we were hungry.
We found some interesting statues of buddha on the way to finding food.
It took us a long time, but we got food at TGI Fridays, which I must say was well and truely overpriced!!!!
Ribs and 2 onion rings....maybe not so good...
So I went back to the hotel and had some Caramel Guts! Yum Yum!
The next day me and Anna decided to see how dirty out feet would get during the day....this was a rather clean day but this was our results.
On other days...we had been dirtier... But seriously, Taiwan's streets are really dirty!
Most of the girls spent the next morning relaxing, but me and Anna decided to check out the local restaurants for food.
We took the plunge and went to a very popular buffet type shop. Not only did we not speak Chinese, but did we neither know what we were eating or the system to select food. It was an interesting lunch.
What happened was....whatever looked good, went on our plates and we found a place to sit and investigate what we had ordered.
This is what happened when we discovered the egg...
Now unknown to us at this point, was that this glutenous jelly like egg was actually fermented in cows pee.... we ate this before we knew that... It was actually good...but I dont want to try it again.
Good lunch :D Bad Eggs.
It had also became a nice tradiation to get a slurpie from the convinience store....so we induldged.
Pina Colada Slurpie that was cheap.
Yum Yum.
When we went back to the hotel, it was time for our second trip. We had planned to see the Ying Yang Sea, a Mountain Villiage and well...I cant remember. But it was good.
We were driven round the eatern parts of Taiwan.
Briefly stopping at a shrine.
The shrine was very colourful and decorated.
Dragons were everywhere.
We were at a lil fishing bay, so there was alot of fish on display.
Freaky.....
Heading back to the car, we then went to a nice cove with cool orange cliff's and rocks.
It kind of scared me to stand there.
The sun.....started to affect my skin...I turned RED!
Coming into the Yin Yang Sea
The Yin Yang sea had two distinct colours of sea due to the rocks influence. It was pretty cool. It looked really dirty though!
We then hit up a mountain villiage that was all cool little shops.
Everyone was trying to get you to buy...something.
The street was packed with visitors.
Then we went down the narrow streets to get to the van.
Later that night, we had sea food! I ate Frogs! It tasted GREAT! :) I would definatly eat frog again. It just tasted like chicken. Very small pieces of chicken.
After a few drinks and food, we headed to the nightmarkets for the last time and it was back to the hotel.
On the way back I tried out Papaya milk. It didnt taste as aweful as I expected...but it had potential to be disgusting.
The next day would be our last day, so we headed to the Royal Palace Museum.
Although it was really far from the station and we got lost on the way.
We found this little shrine thing...
There was cool sheep on the way up.... statues of sheep.
Trying to figure out where to go...
Somehow going up the mountain seemed like a good idea.
There was alot of stairs.
I also got to see some people practising kung foo! It was as if we were straight out of a chinese kung foo film!
We got to a shrine at the top, to find out that it was being rebuilt.
It was nice to see a shrine being worked on to preserve it.
Although it was being rebuilt in some areas, the shrine was still in use.
Inside these little towers was tiny little buddha's.
Tiny little Buddha's.
The bonsai tree was being trimmed.
Fung Shuey Type frogs.
Then it was back down to the bottom of the shrine.
Finally! We decided to get a taxi and went to the museum, which ended up being far far far away.
The museum was HUGE!
And it was super hot.
The umbrella brigade was out in full :P
We spent a few hours going about the museum and seeing alot of Chinese Artifacts, some of which were from the year 60...or 100...it was...really strange to see items that old!
Even on the last day, we failed at jumping shots...
We then headed back to the city and decided to get some food and go to the chinese theatre. However, by the end of the meal, we discovered that Anna had lost her camera!!! So me and Anna went speeding off into the night to find it. However....we spent an hour in the taxi back to the museum to find that they didnt have it :(
Anna did a NOOOOOO pose!
Back into the taxi and back to the restaurant....
TADA! The camera was there the whole time! But we did have a pleasent time going around taipei by taxi, so it was ok.
Happy Anna!
Mmmmmm CELEBRATORY ICE CREAM! It was amazing.
All was finished....ALL!
extremely cheap ice cream.
We decided to walk to the taipei 101 to catch up with the other girls before getting our tickets to the chinese theatre.
Ducks!
It was an extremely long walk.
Unfortunatly....the girls...werent where we were supposed to meet them.. so me and Anna were ditched in Taipei :(:(:( We tried to find the theatre...but...we failed...
So we played Taiko
And played in the Harajuku Lovers store (wanted everything!!!!!!)
and then went to the cinema! We saw Surrogates, which was an amazing movie! It was a weird way to order the tickets. We ordered our popcorn and drinks at the same time, so when we were paid up we waited around before going into the cinema. It was fun though! The popcorn was amazing too!
At around 12pm we ended up back at the hotel, where the girls were worried about us. We found out that the theatre was at the taipei eye...of which we never knew and we had arranged to meet at the wrong area of the city... :(:( great.... (;_;)
Then, it was home time!
First some dodgy looking but tasty breakfast!!
Next, a delicious Banana Whiskey Coffee at Mr Browns coffee shop (I had wanted this for...DAYS!).
Pretty awesome coffee
Then exploring the airport was fun, as it was huge and had lots of weird painted cows.
And we were home! After 2 fast hours in the plane, we were back in Nagoya and ready to sleep!
Taiwan was lots of fun, I'd definatly recommend it! Very cheap too!