Just Jessie: June 2009

Night view of Taipei City, taken from observatory desk in Taipei 101

Ilha Formosa means Beautiful Island. That's what a group of Portugese sailors uttered when they saw Taiwan for the first time. People are awesome, famous to be one of the warmest people in the world.

From Malaysia, we flew to Taiwan on 23 April 2009.We landed in Taipei from HK(transit), then took a high speed rail to Chia Yi as we wanted to catch the early old train to Alishan the next day. Spend one night in Chia Yi and went to the night market. I was amazed by the night market. The whole place was immersed with variety of food and clothes!!Mainly seafood though. The seafoods were just too enticing.Don't even dare to touch it after the anaphylactic shock incident in Bangkok. We managed to catch the early old train to Alishan the next morning. It was about 4 hours scenic ride. Spend one night in Alishan. Woke up 4am the next day,felt so fortunate that we would be able to see sunrise at the summit of Yu-Shan.

Chia Yi's night market

Avocado juice

The fancy helmets

This was the train that we took to go to Alishan National Scenic Area.At the halfway point we were asked to walk a distance to catch another train to Alishan.

The second train stopped at Fenchihu for a short break. Fenchihu is a tiny and old village.

The motel that we stayed in Alishan

Alishan's coffee

The misty weather in Alishan

We had hotpot at one of the restaurant in Alishan

The sunrise at Yu Shan

Another view of Yu Shan

From Alishan we took a bus to ChiaYi town and caught a train to KaohShiung. KaohShiung is the second largest city in Taiwan. Spend one night in that city.Went to the Love River and night market.

One of the locals main vehicles - scooters

KaohShiung Train Station

The night view of Love River,KaohShiung

KaohShiung night market

Various types of fruits juices

"The juicy pork"

The Super huge "sotong"!!

After KaohShiung, we spend the last 3 nights in Taipei. First of all I've to say that the accomodation in Taiwan is awesome, so cozy and comfortable. I guess this was the best accomodation that I've ever stay especially the one in Taipei. We stayed near Shilin night market which is known as the king of Taipei's night markets.Spend our first night in Taipei at Shilin night market hunting for food :). The next day, we took a bus to YangMing Shan National Park. We were so eager to see the flowers in YangMing Shan.The funniest part was we didnt actually spend our time in the national park. It happened that the information centre was closed on that day. We were kinda lost and dont know where to start from. Fortunately we met a few of taiwanese ladies and suggested us to follow them to see Alocasia(calla Lily) in ZhuZiHu. It was a long journey to see Alocasia.hehe....10 mins of bus drive and about 1 hour of walk.It was a nice trip though. However, we managed to drop by at the famous flower clock of YangMing Shan before we left. Next was Taipei 101, officially known as world's tallest building and has the fastest elevator in the world. We went to XiMenDing the next day, a place where youngsters hang around here and also with full of trendy shops, restaurants,sneakers and etc.The last day morning before we left Taipei, we managed to visit Sun Yat-Sen memorial hall and watched the changing of guards with extremely precise march and intricate spinning of rifles.

Taipei MTR

At Shilin Night Market

The famous fried chicken chop

Spicy and oily noodles(direct translation from mandarin)...hehehe...

The white bitter melon juice

My favourite taiwanese beef noodles

The calla lily plantation

The flower clock at Yang Min Shan

Taipei 101

The 90th floor in Taipei 101

The world fastest elevator. The lift travels at 1010 per minute and takes 40 seconds to get from ground level to the 89th floor. It took extremely long and lots of patience to take this photo.