Taiwan July 21-25 2014 - Encountering the typhoon

Day 1 - Setting off...

And so, I was off to Taiwan for a business trip on a Monday afternoon. It was one crazy morning dashing off after a meeting with the boss. Thank God, everything fell into place pretty well (or so I thought). At least I got to the airport in time and was on board the plane before you knew it.

The flight was smooth and SQ's service was good as usual but I did feel that it seem to be better before but I guess its probably cause I was expecting more from one of the world's top airlines. 

So anyway, I arrived at the Taoyuan International Airport and hurried to join the taxi queue so I can check in to the Sherwood sooner. There was issues to resolve - I had to decide if I was going to move the event planned for 23 July to 24 July because of the typhoon.  I had initially thought to stick to what's planned but felt increasingly uncomfortable about it and had prayed for guidance and was guided to shift the event to Thursday instead, which turned out to be the right decision as Typhoon leave was announced eventually. 

Sherwood was like what I remembered it to be like, like the grand dame of hotels, great service, clean and comfortable. I am glad I stuck to the decision to switch hotel, I don't think I would have felt as safe and comfortable if I went with the Grand Hyatt. 

After sending out several emails and making several phone calls to set things in action, I want out to get some food. I really thank God for the food options around the hotel cause that meant that I didn't need to venture too far to feed my stomach. I was after all, rather worn out from he travelling and also from dealing with the issues that came up.  By some luck, I chanced upon this 干拌面，called 李掌柜。It was quite yummy. I actually went back there two more times for dinner, I order different dishes to try off course.  After dinner, it was back to the hotel to get washed up and get some rest.

Day 2 - A day of meetings

So this was the day that we were going to start experiencing the effects of the typhoon...except for some strong winds and moderate rainfall, I really didn't felt any difference in the weather. After a quick breakfast in the hotel (which was pretty average), I went across the road to where Q office is. The team from Ogilvy were there to give us a quick rundown on the event on Thursday。 Meeting went well and Vivian and I felt like we have sufficient assurance that things were going to fall into place nicely - such vibes were important.

A colleague in the Taipei office was nice enough to help me book an office that I could use between then to when I was due to be at the Grand Hyatt.  The meeting at the conference venue was quick, just to get my bearings of where the respective venues were going to be.  I then made a dash across to the Taipei 101 to grab the eye mask that Susan had asked me to get before returning to office for a meeting on intranet publishing.  I grabbed dinner at a Udon shop nearby, wasn't that great but I made do with it still. And then it's back to the hotel before the typhoon came (as the Met office predicted). Alas, the typhoon never did come in full force as I thought I would but I am actually thankful as I think it'd be pretty scary for me since I'd be all alone in the hotel.

Day 3 - Typhoon

Since most shops were close, it was breakfast at the hotel again, sigh...and then back to my room to get more work done before the event tomorrow. I did take some time to get out for some fresh air, a trip to Carrefour to pick up some supplies and then it was back to more work...dinner was the cup noodles that I bought from the supermarket and that was it.

Day 4 - Event Day

I bought some cold noodles from the supermarket and had it for breakfast before hoping on a cab to meet Ross at the Grand Hyatt. After Ross' keynote address it was time to get into action. The media turned up late as there was a conflicting event at the same time. Given such circumstances, I thought we were lucky to have at least 8 media outlets join us for lunch even though we did not have hard news for them.  Both Vivian and Ross did a great job with their presentations and I think I did ok with my translation duties. Overall, I thought the event went pretty ok give the challenges we faced. 

So it was back to the hotel to change out and then some me time at Ximending. I did some shopping, grab some food and then headed back to the hotel to pack my luggage.  Packing took much more time than I expected...

Day 5 - Slept in

For the first time in a long while, I slept beyond 8am. I caught up with emails and then grabbed a taxi to SunnyHills for some pineapple tarts. On the way back, the taxi stopped waiting for the green light and where it stopped as a small Catholic church and I thought I should go to church and make a donation. It felt good to be able to say a prayer despite the hectic schedule and I am thankful for the opportunity. The business trip went really well considering all things and I really have Him to thank for that. 

Back at the hotel, I rounded up the emails to send and took a quick shower before checking out and grabbing a taxi to the airport. Traffic was smooth and I reached the airport in about an hour.  The queue to check in was really long and I am thankful that I did my web check-in and skipped past the long lines.  After clearing customs, I had some time to grab some food before boarding. 

The flight back home was slightly bumpy but generally ok, I watched two movies which were ok but am thankful for the time to even do that.

19th Mar - Hualien to Chingjing

we woke up in the morning to the smell of delicious breakfast made by Auntie Liu. Before she decided to run a minsu, Auntie Liu used to run a 'breakfast shop'. I guess that explains why the breakfast she made for us was so delicious. Auntie made us 'Pizza', which was actually thick toast with mashed potato & mixed veg. My description does not do the toast justice but it was really delcious. Jeff had the home made burger which was equally delicious. We also had nice warm milk tea to accompany the sumptous breakfast.

After breakfast, we got onto the cab of Mr Chen, who was goona bring us on a tour of Taroko, Mt Ho Huan, Ching Jing farm & eventually to Lu Shan. what was in stall for us was what I call the 'extremes'. Taroko was an extremly mountainous area. The sights we saw there was amazing and I can understand why tourist all list Taroko as one of the must-sees in Taiwan.

Aftr Taroko, we went on an extremely dangerous drive to Mt Ho Huan. The fog was so bad that you can barely see beyond 2m. While the rest slept like babies, i was so afraid that I stayed awake for most parts of the journey. the other 'extreme' at Mt Ho Huan was the extremely cold temperature. It was only 3 degrees! It was freezing. I went to the loo there and my hands were numb when i washed my hands!

After Mt Ho Huan, we made our way to Mt Ching where we saw two extremes. Extremely beautiful scenary that was comparable, according to my sister, to Switzerland. It was also extremely boring for and the goats & cows were extremely smelly.

When we have had enough of Ching Jing Farm, we travelled to Lu Shan. We were told that Lu Shan was the top hotspring location in Taiwan. I guess that raised our expectations significantly. However when we finally picked a hot spring resort..we were extremely disappointed. It wasn't quite like the one that Jianhui had brought us to the last time. It looked a little run down if you asked me. But i guess we eventually made do with it.

Surprisingly, that night at Lu Shan was quite enjoyable after all. We had a simple dinner and walked around the little town. The weather was very cooling and it was all very nice. We bought some snacks and sat at the patio outside the room and chatted the night away. It was very relaxing and therapeutic to not be rushing around for once.

Taiwan - 18 March 2008

We woke up early on this day as we needed to catch the 7.30am train from Taipei Train Station to Hualien. We had bought the tickets earlier on just to make sure that we get seats & get to sit together and not with some stranger.

The hotel we stayed in Taipei was nice enough to pack us breakfast (ham & cheese sandwich, a packet of tea as well as a bottle of mineral water). We took the MRT from Nanjing E Station to ZhongXiao Fuxing Station where we changed to the Ban Nan (blue line) for the Taipei Train Station MRT Station. The travelling took us about 30 mins and soon we were all comfortably seated on the train headed for Hualien.

I think everyone appreciated the 3-hour train ride because of the late night and the lack of sleep over the first few days. We all slept like babies on the train. Sadly, I didn't manage to get the Bento box that I was looking forward to accompanying my train ride so I settled for the packed breakfast from the hotel instead.

Before long, we had arrived in Hualien and the first thing that I noticed was the weather. It was WARM! We were all expecting it to be cooler than Taipei but it was not. It was actually warmer!. Auntie Liu from the Stone's House Minsu that we were gonna be staying at were there waiting for us with Huang Shifu (the cabbie who will be bringing us around for the day). We unloaded our luggage onto Auntie Liu's car as she transported our luggage to the Minsu. We waited a bit outside the loo as Don took a crap. After that we followed Huang Shifu on our tour of the east coast of Hualien.

At my request, Huang Shifu brought us to a bento take-away shop that sells, in his opinion, one of the better spare ribs bento in Hualien. We realised after that that it was really that tasty as compared some of the other stuff that we tasted after that.

Our first stop was to the Farglory Hotel, which to me looked normal. But i guess the real reason why he brought us there was because of the view that it offered. Resting at one of the hilltops, Farglory offered its occupants a very good view of Hualien. After Farglory, we started on a scenic drive along the east coast, stopping occasionally at some scenic spots that I now cannot remember. There were nice beaches with a fantastic view of the ocean. There was this particular steep climb that i chicken out..haha...

The slapping of the waves on the rocks were beautiful and we all became excitable kids waiting for the waves to come in..haha

One other place that we stopped by was this limstone cave that had a huge pool of water in the middle of the cave. The place were ran by the aborigines there and we managed to con them into believing we were students, well, it was really Huang shifu who coined the idea. We merely followed his instructions. we did the same at Ching Jing Farm on the next day..haha..The ride was really short cause it was a really small cave but there were tonnes of bats in there so it was still interesting.

Before heading back to the Stone's house, we asked Huang Shifu to bring us to a shop that sold fresh mochi and another one that sold firecrackers! Jeff and I really like the salty mochi so we bought quite a bit..we also bought the Hualien sweet potato...i kinda like the taste.

Stone's House looked like any huge landed property but inside the rooms looked really cosy. Each came with a balcony of its own. And in most cases, it offered a view of the Sunrise. Unfortunately, the morning after was misty so we din see the sunrise. Sianz.

Anyway, about Stone's House...
Stone's House Minsu's owner is a nice auntie whom guests all refer to affectionately as 'Liu Ah Yi' (Auntie Liu). She runs the place together with her Indonesian madid who speaks a reasonable amount of Mandarin, her husband and an elderly gentlemen who might be her Father-in-law or Father. Of course there are 2 adorable doggies, one call 'niu niu' and one call 'Xiao Xiong (Little Bear).

As soon as the vehicle pulls into the porch, we were greeted by Liu Ah Yi and her doggies. She showed us to our rooms and told us to rest for a bit, maybe take a bath and meet her downstairs at 7pm. she will then drive us out for dinner.

As there were 6 of us, Liu Ah Yi had to make two trips. She recommended that we try the spare ribs noodles in the city center. She also strongly recommended that we try the 'golden eggs' which were actually hard boil eggs with runny yolks. The sort you get when youhave Japanese Ramen.

I personally liked Taiwanese hawker fare heaps and I really liked the noodles and the eggs..not so sure about my friends. some of them prefer bland tasting stuff...

After dinner, we took a slow walk to a nearby square where there were performance by the local aborigines students. It was a 'free show' (pun intended: the boys were wearing such skimpy costumes, G-strings look-alikes. We wanted to be supportive but the weather was not permitting. So we ended up returning to the minsu a little earlier than planned.

En-route, I requested for Zhang Shifu to bring us to this 'Zhong zheng Bao Zi' that he highly recommended. We had wanted to just buy a few since its just after dinner but Huang shifu wanted to give us a treat so we ended up with more buns. The buns were really tasty. Really wished I had more space to stomach them.

Upon returning to the minsu, we realised that Liu Ah Yi had actually bought us milk tea with pearl. We had bought some ourselves but she thought we should try this stall that she thought was really good...So it was really a night of buns and milk tea!!

Liu Ah Yi was a hyper person, she was always doing something and no sooner had we tucked into the buns, she led us outside to try the fireworks that we had bought earlier on. We had such fun. The trade off of being a Singaporean meant that we had not touched fireworks in our entire life. that night, We had so much fun with the fireworks. Liu Ah Yi was so nice, she even took a video and burnt us a Cd to bring home. Yes, she's very tech-savvy!

After all the excitement. It was time to calm our nerves alittle from the little explosions. At Stone's House, its a must to do some rock painting...i was a little apprehensive initially knowing how i sucked at art. But i think i did oka dn so did the rest. It was with great satisfaction that we retired to our rooms in anticipation of the next day's sunrise (which we did not get to see eventually).

Taiwan - 16 - 17 Mar

I was supposed to blog on my trip to Taiwan on a daily basis but it just wasn't feasible after the first entry so I am making up for lost time by making this entry.

To recap, we arrived late evening on Saturday and stayed over at Alan's place after a karaoke session. We had delicious 'cold noodles', which was noodles with peanut sauce and all sorts of fried stuff. Alan also bought 'gong wan; song, which was actually huge meatball soup. There was also miso egg soup, that was quite tasty as well.

The next day, we rented a 9-seater and travelled to Jiufen, we ate lotsa nonsense along the old street. Ice cream & peanut candy shaving wrapped in poh piah skin, freshly fried potato chip, grilled mushroon, stinky toufu, 'or ee' (yam dumpling). We also bought this tea that was highly recommended by Jianhui, its call Jin Xuan tea. This tea, apparently, is tea that has a milky smell/taste.

After Jiufen, we made our way to Jeelung, although not to the Jeelung Miaokou Night Market that I was hoping to go. We went to this seafood centre where we bought fresh seafood and had the hawkers there cooked it for us. I especially enjoyed the crab claws! We were all lazy people so we only bought crab claws and it was just heavenly. We apparently got ripped off but as because the cost was split amongst 9 of us, it was actually quite ok.

Soon after dinner, we had no choice but to start on our one hour journey back to Taipei city as we had to return the rented car. We had wanted to go to Maokong but could not make it due to the time factor.

We just settle for some milk tea from this place call 'Qing Xing' (like Quickly, Happy Cup all these). I personally still like '50 Lan'. After that we headed back to the hotel to retire for the night.

The next day we actually had the luxury of waking up a little later. The plan was to go to Yang Ming Shan, so we took the MRT to Jian Tan station and changed to bus Red 5 which brings us all the way up to YMS.

There was a little episode that left us in stitches at YMS. We were waiting for a bus that will bring us ard YMS, to the Flower Clock & Calla Lily park but there was a long queue so we attempted to walk to the Visitors' Info Centre..The climb in Jasmine's term is a Level 3 of difficulty. We were huffing & puffing by the time we reached the visitor's centre and to our horror, the centre was closed!

We then had no choice but to hail a cab to bring us to the Calla Lily place. Thank goodness he was nice enough to take all 6 of us. We reached the Calla Lily place, its actually call 'Zhu Zi Hu' but Zhen was quite disappointed as it was not Call Lilies growly wild as she had imagined. I was not impressed either. We did a bit of walking ard and finally picked a restaurant called 'Jia Xiang' for lunch. We picked the cheapest set lunch consisting of 7 dishes, amounting to NT1500. It wasn't spectacular but it was alright.

We eventually set off from YMS and took a cab to Bei Tou station and made our way to Danshui, we had wanted to catch the sunset.. Sadly, the weather wasn't fantastic so we din really catch a proper sunset although we had out 'Zha Ji Pai' & warm milk tea. We also had a portrait done. The lady din do a good job for me although Jeff's drawing was quite life like.

After Danshui, we stole some time to walk the old street and bought some local products before meeting up with Alan & Jianhui at Alan's plc. You see, it was actually Don's birthday the next day so Jianhui drove from HsinChu to celebrate his Birthday together. We ended up at this place call 'Yi Yuan something'. We had dinner there as well. Jeff and I shared a tomato soup base mini hotpot. It was delicious..for NT190, i thought it was a steal.

We played cards till 2am before we made our way back to the hotel to rest. We needed to wake up really early the next day as we were taking the 7.30am train to Hua Lien.

Day One in Taiwan

After hours on the plane (we took a connecting flight from SG to HK and from HK to Taiwan), we finally arrived in Taiwan at 1830hrs. I think I am coping better with the ride..the anxiety seemed a lot better..

I have been looking forward to this trip for the longest time. The past 3 months has been exhaustive planning for the Pilot Plant Opening. It feels so great to go on this holiday. The icing on the cake was the company i'm getting for the trip. There are six of us joining the 2 who are working in Taipei.

We took the Evergreen bus, which cost us NT135, to Bus Stop No. 5. We has assumed that Alan will be waiting for us at the bus stop but we did not see anyone there when we arrive. Bummer no.1. But we eventually found our way to his place anyway.

After resting for a bit and after collecting our vehicle for the night ( a 8-seater that we rented for NT2800 plus NT400 for insurance), we set off for a much-awaited karaoke session. Before that we bought some snacks, including cold sesame sauce noodles, some fried chicken and soup. After that we sung our lungs out and left the Party World KTV at one plus to pick up Huizhen & Peiru who went to Wufenpu to shop somemore. They were here 2 days earlier and had done their share of shopping since then).

The plan for the night was to head to Maokong for tea but they commented that it was kinda late so we headed back to Alan's place. Bummer No.2. Now, bummer No.3, there were 9 of us and there were only 2 proper beds/futons..so how were we to sort out the sleeping arrangements? Well, just put it this way, Jeff & I slept on Alan's bed sheets lined with his cushions as pillows. I kept my padded jacket on and wore Alan's socks to sleep.The floor was freaky hard and cold so I ept tossing and turning thenight. But thank God when I woke, I didn't have the back ache that I was expecting.

We arenow waiting for the rest to wake up and go for breakfast before we continue with th day's itinerary - Yehliu, Jiufen & Keelung...the weather looks good, cooling with sunshine.More on today's programme later..ciaoz.

A Nite of Stars - 16th June 2007

I've got to stop doing this post-dating entries thingy. Even though i know no one is gonna read my blog, it still irks me that i am only writing on events that has past for weeks..damn..



Oh well..anyway, The Nite of Stars was something that I simply had to blog about. It was my company's D&D. It was a great evening and i have not had such fun in eons. Being part of the organising committee was fun as we saw everything put together and being realised.



This year, we took a gamble, we went with a movie theme, and asked for staff to come dressed to a movie. For a rather conservative company, we were warned that the idea may not take off. But when we see people dressed as Shaolin Soccer, Austin Powers, Egyptians, we knew we won the gamble.



My table dressed up as Romans, there were Gladiators, the pesants, scholars & the ladies, of course...and we danced to retro music all night long.









For entertainment, we had Wendi Koh & her band, which did a fantastic job of entertaining the crowd with her beautiful voice. Then we also had Kumar, who left everyone in stitches, with her racist, sexy & crude jokes.

There was free flow of beer & wine all night long. When the crowd started dispersing after the lucky draw, we were slightly disappointed that they were not staying the dance. But i guess, we pretty much expected that, but thankfully, there were still a number that stayed behind and partied.

I only started drinking when the evening officially ended. Before i knew it, things started to get a little fuzzy but it was the nice kind of fuzziness, and i took of my shoes and started dancing.

I had such great fun that I can't help feeling sad that it was over so quickly..

My only regret for this fantastic night? Not have a photo taken with Jeffrey, my lovely partner, who came dressed as a roman peasant. Trust me, it took a lot of effort. It was not him to be so sporty.

Well, i guess the evening ended on such a high note and we certainly will be looking forward to an even greater eveing next year!

I Love Bangkok!! 19 - 24 April 2007



For one of the nights, we had dinner at this place call "Cabbages & Condoms". I had seen travel programmes intro this place many times on tv so I decided I had to check it out when we visited Bangkok- my second home, this time round.



The story behind C&C is quite interesting. It seems that long time ago in Thailand, the farmers in Thailand grew lotsa cabbages, so much so, everyone had access to it at one point. With the hope of keeping the number of Thai people contracted STDs, a VWO came up with this initiative where everyone through them can have easy access to condoms and protect themselves against these dieseases.



The night at C&C was probably the only night during our trip where everyone sat down together to have dinner. The other nights, because of different programme, we did not get to have dinner.



The food at C&C was quite good but expensive. After dinner, we went into the souveneir shop and i bought myself an interstingly-shaped cappucino cup. I wished we had more time in the shop but we could not as our masseuse were waiting for us at the massage parlour call "The King & I". To be honest, I think the Thais are more creative when it comes to naming their shops.