Saturday, May 13, 2006
My Taiwan Trip..

As some of my friends know, I was in Taiwan for a few days during early May. Interestingly, Piggy and I were also in Taiwan at about the same time last year. The only difference was that the previous year was purely pleasure and this time round, it was mainly business for Piggy.

It was just a short 3 days stay in Taipei but I enjoyed myself. Would have wanted to explore more but was restricted by the constraints of time. Furthermore, my flight to Khao Hsiung was delayed by about 9 hours. The plane had actually already taken off and flown in the air for about half an hour before they announced that the plane was experiencing technical problems and had to fly back. This is the first time I encountered something like this. But felt relieved that the airline company was responsible enough to abort the flight and head back immediately before further trouble arose. As a result of the flight delay, free accomodation was arranged for affected passengers at a nearby hotel, since the new flight was scheduled at 3 am in the morning!

Because of this, I met a Vietnamese lady who was married to a Taiwanese and ended up sharing room with her before the flight. She was quite nice and spoke relatively good Chinese cuz she had been married to a Taiwanese for the last 11 years. It was pretty interesting talking to her. Found out that she was only 34 years old but already had 2 kids, the elder of who is 10 years old, meaning that she gave birth at 24! And she was still so slim! She also told me that Vietnam is a bad place to bring up children cuz the facilities are not there. The pay here is also low so it's hard for families in Vietnam to sustain a family of more than 1 child. When I asked about the hospitals and medical facilities, she said it wasn't good, as can be expected. She said that in comparison to Khao Hsiung, where she was staying, the medical facilities were much much better. Guess she must be wondering why Singaporeans come over to a place like this to work when most of them can't wait to get out. But then the standard of living here is also very low. She told me her nicely manicured nails (with nail art) cost only S$1 in total and they were done at a normal hair salon! I almost couldn't believe it. When I did my nails together with Apple at the hotel, it was already considered cheap but this is even cheaper.

On that very same plane ride, I also met this other Vietnamese woman with a really cute and chubby baby and she happened to be sitting just next to me..haha..but the poor baby threw up during the flight..but then he was so young, only 6 months. The lady asked me to help her carry him for a while and it was so nice..I hope to have my own baby soon and I hope my baby will be as chubby..heehee..

When I reached KhaoHsiung, it was early in the morning at 7 am. Hence, basically just went to the hotel (Splendour) where Piggy was staying in to eat breakfast, catch some sleep and then we were headed for another internal flight to Taipei. So you can say I hardly got to see Khao Hsiung. According to Piggy, the urban planning of Khao Hsiung was much better than Taipei. A pity I didn't have a chance to explore it further..

In Taipei, we checked into this hotel, called "Waikoala Hotel", and we got the honeymoon suite cuz it only costs about $10 more than the normal room..heehee. It had a really huge bath tub, kinda reminded me of Racha..haha..




However, the hotel was nowhere near the popular "Ximending" or "Shihlin" areas. Nevertheless, we did go to these two night markets on 2 of the nights, mainly to eat. Had this really nice dessert at Ximending, which I m still thinking about. I definitely can't get this stuff in Vietnam.


On the first day in Taipei, it was raining so I stayed in the hotel during the early part of the day to watch TV. Wow, the channels there are almost exhaustless..more than 100 channels. They even have a channel dedicated to korean dramas 24 hours though...haha..I almost couldn't stop!

Then I followed Piggy to some of his vendors' sites and they brought us to this hot spring on Yang Ming Shan called "Huang Chi", which was quite interesting.

There are so many hot springs in that area, with different themes, and the air up there was cool and crisp, a refreshing change from the stale air in Vietnam. This was followed by a sumptuous dinner at the very place and we were introduced to Taiwanese beer. I m not a
lover of beer and I dun really drink but this beer was light and refreshing with a very subtle taste. Nicest I have ever tasted.

On the second day, I also followed them to the company and one of his vendors dropped me at the nearby Ikea to take a look since I had nothing much to do inside the company. There I saw this nice cupboard, which I like. I hope next time, we can do something similar for our house.

After that, we went to eat Japanese food, but really tasted very taiwanese but still nice. Had this interesting soup in a tea pot, which I heard is only available in Taiwan.

Kimmie scribbles
7:11 pm |

=-+-=