Friday, October 17, 2014

Day 4: Welcome to Taipei~

~ 17th March 2014~
Where we need to walk everyday.... day and night.... 
After we've settled down at the minsu, it took us some time to get our ass moving. We were quite tired and reluctant to get out of the place. Do you know that we have a list of places to go just on the first day itself. We were planning to go to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial but in the end we thought we should shift it to the last day as the last day was kept empty for such an occasion. Finally, our rumbling stomach was the one making us get moving. 
I like this piece of photo for no reason... just love it....
This trip to Taiwan is the beginning of our 20 000 steps of walking on average per day. I know it sounded scary for those who didn't do as much as a thousand steps in one day. I don't know how much walking I do on average but I know I drive longer hours than I walk. I only walk inside my house and walk a few steps to my car. That's the most I walk. Anyway, in order to visit a country and see everything, you need to walk. That's how Taipei looks like from a corner. I'm not standing in the middle of the city. This is real life. This is where the people live. 
My cheap yet delicious spring onion bun....
We came across a bakery. We have checked with the minsu owner Miss Chen on where to get food the quickest way since street food doesn't start their business until around 6pm. It was only 4pm that time so, to stop the growling stomach, we rammed into the bakery. That was the nicest smell ever. Actually I can eat bread for every meal. I don't need rice to survive but my travel buddy is a rice bucket. She needs rice as her body fuel.
I don't know what to say about this... the words OLD and RUNDOWN kept appearing...
Then, we continue our walk in search of food at the Food Court in the shopping mall. My GPS built-in in my head was on alert mode. I was downloading the road maps into my head. I know I cannot rely on my travel buddy all the time because at times she's a very blur person. And my mama is a 100% tourist and we're playing the roles of being her tour guides. The only time I'm completely lost and couldn't remember a single road was in Kuching, Sarawak. This one, I was ready to take the role of being a leader. Hahahhahaah
The only landmark in my head... I can still remember this...
I really thank God for this boutique. That's like the only English word that I can see that's downloaded into my head. Other than that, everything was just a vague memory. It's like you look at the shop and you have seen it somewhere but where was that somewhere, you can't pin point the exact location. My built-in GPS almost failed me but seriously, the word Joseph reminded me of my best friend's brother's name. When we were walking back at almost midnight, that was the boutique that brought us back as my reliable GPS travel buddy was completely confused with all the crossroads.
Walk... walk... walk... walk... walk...
While walking along the corridor of shops, I was asking myself, what on earth was I doing. Back at home, I will never walk along shop corridors like this. I don't even bother to check out the shops. None of us bother to walk into the shops. We were just walking straight ahead. I wonder how do the shops survived. There ain't many tourists around that area I guess. 
NT$260 bowl of noodles.... *ahaks*
Finally, we arrived at Shin Kong Mitsukoshi. Pinky, my travel buddy, has circled in her map as the place where she was going to do her shopping. Shop my arse. We walked into the shopping mall. It was something like walking into Parkson. I can tell you that I can afford to shop for clothes and more clothes in Parkson but the moment we stepped into Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, we knew we were rather poor. We couldn't afford anything, not even a box of chocolate. Why are the things freaking expensive? Or are we just so poor that we ended up at the Food Court. I looked at the price of the food and I almost collapse, never to regain consciousness. Because we were so hungry and we didn't know where to get delicious yet inexpensive food, we settled for the safest thing to eat - a bowl of noodles~! Three of us shared that huge bowl of noodles. According to my photo.... yes, according to the photo, the bowl of noodles looked really delicious. We were hungry, we could swallow the bowl. The first sip of soup, gosh.... I HAVE NEVER TASTED SUCH HORRIBLE TASTE IN MY LIFE~! I'm really sorry for our empty stomach. I cannot remember the price for anything right now, but this I remember. It's NT$260. I felt that I've been robbed in daylight and was that what the lady at the post office meant when she said I will easily spend away NT$1000 without realizing where the money has gone to. *sob sob sob sob sob* Noodles at home cost just RM3.30 (NT$33) *wailing and sobbing uncontrollably* 

While eating, we were discussing about this recommendation from Miss Chen. She must have thought we are rich people or she must have been very wealthy to be able to have her lunch there often. Then, her taste of food must be lousy to say that it's nice. It's okay. Goodbye to Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, it's not a place for us to shop around. 
15 minutes walk from where we stayed...
That's our tunnel~! Will be back tonight and a few more nights. 

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