Places @ Taipei

*My Ah Ma(grandmother) is very sick at the moment, I've never seen her that weak before in my entire life. Recently there are just too many problems surrounding me it seems like the problems never stopped coming. Now I have to be worried about not only my job hunting matter, but also my Ah Ma. So yea, sometimes that prevent me from blogging, or rather, blogging funnily...
I'm sorry my dear friends, please pray for my dearest Ah Ma... :)

Back to the Taiwan trip...
It was a jam-packed week trip in Taiwan with the bf. We had a lot of fun traveling together, although we didn't find Taipei as interesting as expected, especially those famous snacks.
Anywayz, I'm not going to crap about every single thing in my blog since you can check out the pics in my Facebook. What I'm going to do is simply recommend you places and food you must go and must try.
So let's start with recommended places!
Here we go~!

The we-had-the-most-fun place: Jiufen 九份
It was quite a long journey there. From Taipei main station, it took about 50 minutes of train ride to reach Rui Fang 瑞芳station and because we went on a weekend, we had to stand through the whole journey there. And then from Rui Fang, another 10-15 minutes bus ride up to the hill of Jiufen. A first view from Jiufen... Very nice hey?
One of us!
Another angle here...
The weather wasn't really good, as you can see from our pictures, pretty cloudy, and it rained a little later...
Over there there is this Old Street 老街, which seems like quite commercialized with shops selling souvenir and all kind of food. Entrance to the Old Street!
This aunty selling Taiwanese sausages is definitely getting a lot of the attention, but the sausage was just so-so...
One so called 'secret place' is this one place where you can enter by only paying NT$10(which is around RM1 plus). XT went there but she didn't even know there is such place, so I guess we explored quite a lot there just to find out about this lovely place where we had the most fun there. Yea... Something called 秘密基地...
Inside you see all kind of old school stuff like toys you've played when you were a kid, those old records, old furniture, old communication tools, etc. I gotta tell you, I always love this kinda stuff! And to top that up, you can choose from a variety of costumes to wear and take pictures with it! As you enter, there are whole loads of old records... Can you recognize any of them???
Old school toys as well...
I dressed up as a sexy lady with the little 肚兜！
啊~少爷，你别杀我呀~~~~!!!
阿里山的姑娘美如水啊~~~~~
I still keep some of these old cassettes at home you know. :p
Mr. President is getting real MAD! Hahahaha...
Mrs. President? Ah, I want to be like Michelle Obama, can ah???
Dooo...Dooo... Dooo... I'm sure you've seen this in war movie!
That was really a cool place with loads of cool stuff! And for all that fun, it takes only less than RM2! That was bloody awesome. P/S: We even got some lollipops as we paid our entrance fee! :DWe definitely love Jiufen a lot~!
Gotta thank XT for her recommendation on this one! :)

The Must Go Place: Taipei 101
A Taipei trip can't be called 'complete' if you didn't visit Taipei 101. It is currently the tallest building on earth (waiting to be beaten by some fancy building in Dubai, IF they have the money to finish the project). First down side is, you gotta pay NT$400 (equivalent to around RM40 plus) to enter the building. Judging from the amount of visitors we saw, those people are earning a lot from the entrance fee, definitely! One thing we only found out there is that the elevator is also the fastest one in the world! It took us only around 30 seconds to reach 89th floor!
Normally they let you go till the 91st floor but because of the cloudy weather we only got to go till the 89th floor. So yea I guess the tip I would give you is to go when the weather is nice. :)
Honestly, the view from the top is really just so-s0. I've been to KL Tower and it's really much better. I think it's the fact that most of their other buildings around the Taipei 101 aren't very tall. And most of them aren't commercial buildings so not much of pretty lights at night. That was a bit of a disappointment.While the bf enjoyed reading about the amazing building, I prefer to be a fashion queen... Hahaha...
Yes, number 1! Beating the KL Twin Towers!
The GIANT BALL behind is what prevent the Taipei 101 from collapsing!
A night view from the top of Taipei 101.
Of course you can still spend your time reading the facts and figures over there, read about how the building was built, how they prevent the building from collapsing when there is an earthquake, read about the fastest elevator in the world, etc. The bf definitely enjoyed reading about all those constructions thingy... Later, we bought some really nice souvenir there. One thing for sure, the souvenir there aren't too expensive. I guess yea, they earned enough from the entrance fee!

The girls-must-go place: Wu Fen Pu 五分铺
Said to be a place for cheap clothes, I think Wu Fen Pu is not only for girls, cos the bf bought more stuff than me from there! Aih... How Sat Bai I am man... It became very sunny the last few days of the trip so we can show off our new sunglasses. Yay~!
Note: DO NOTE GO ON A MONDAY! That's because it's a no-retail-day. So unless you want to buy 10 pieces of a same item, you better don't go on Monday. But yes, we went on a Monday and so I was turned down so many times just because they refused to sell me the stuff I love! Aaaarrrhhhh... Nevertheless, I got a few pieces of clothes from some shops that don't mind selling them to me. And we went there the next day just to get more! I was very ready to shop but... Ish ish they don't want to sell me stuff!
Look how crazy it can be...
But then hor... To be honest, I don't find the stuff there too cheap lor. I mean, they all look like very normal, some quite low quality kinda stuff, but the price can be surprisingly very expensive! for instance, there was this one skirt that I love very much was selling at NT$980, which would be around RM100! Shoes there are mostly over NT$1000, which means over RM100! How is that cheap? Unless if they are some branded stuff, otherwise I refused to buy them with such high prices.

P/S: I had one of the nicest food in Taipei at Wu Fen Pu, stay tuned to find out about it!

The alternative choice: Taipei Zoo
We left our second last day of our trip empty so that we can maybe go to places we want to visit again or go to some places without any planning beforehand. Wu Fen Pu was the one we went the second time but before that, we made a 'kiddy'(there were like millions of kindergarten kids when we were there) choice of visiting the Taipei Zoo in the morning.Shirlexia is very excited to see the pandas! Ohyea, that was my new dress from Wu Fen Pu, nice?
Some of them are sleeping, while standing! Cute!
Frankly, we were only there for the pandas and penguins. So we thought why not? the entrance fee is just NT$60, which is around RM7! So basically we spent RM7 just to see the pandas and penguins, didn't even bother to finish the entire zoo. :p
The zoo's main attraction is the two pandas, namely Tuan Tuan 团团& Yuan Yuan圆圆, in which if the names are combined into 'Tuan Yuan团圆', it means reunion! That was the first time I saw real pandas and I think they are really cute! very fat, clumsy but bloodily cute! Really man, especially when they are eating the bamboo leaves! So cute lar!!! Say hi to Yuan Yuan, and she is a 'she'.
And this is Tuan Tuan, the male one.
He looks so cute covered in a bunch of bamboo leaves! Nom nom nom nom...
As for the penguins, the bf said we have more in Langkawi, so I guess that wasn't too fun lar.Gosh, the penguins look so fake at the back, like I was posing in front of a picture...
The Taipei Zoo is very big and clean. Plus, the entrance fee is just too reasonable! So for animal lovers, it might be a unique choice to visit the zoo when you are in Taipei.

The food post is coming next, so stay tuned!

Meanwhile, check out my Facebook's Taiwan Trip albums for more pictures!
Album 1
Album 2
Album 3
Album 4