Day 6: One Middle New City? Panda Tour??

~19th March 2014~

Our double beds...

Finally, the young lady, not like we're old ladies, but the girl who took us to the office to settle the remaining of our payment was really young, like she's in her early 20s. This minsu in Taichung is like the budget hotel we have in Malaysia. Mind you, this place is more expensive than the luxurious minsu that we stayed in Taipei. It's in a building with shoplots and after taking an elevator up, we had to hoist our luggage up two flights of steps. We weren't very happy with all these. Then, the inexperienced young lady made mention that if we needed anything, we could just call her on her mobile. All three of us shouted at the same time,"NO NO NO NO NO NO!" We told her straight in her face that we will not call her no matter what as her phone would be switched off and we would be listening to the annoying voice recording. What we weren't happy about was that the girl did not even offer a simple apology. After we spent hours and our kind taxi driver spent hours calling her, she could just muster up a SORRY, but instead she just explained that her colleague took the phone. If that colleague took the phone, couldn't the phone be switched on? Very bad way to run a business. I don't care whether you're just an ignorant staff or the owner or the owner's daughter, you did a lousy job. Apart from all the inconvenience, the mattress was really comfortable.

Pandas~!!!

This is the only reason that I can think of on what the heck we were there for. Before I go further, one thing that you must know is, in every trip and every step, it has been pre-arranged by God and we just followed without realizing that it has been arranged in such a way. By the way, the name of the place is 一中New City and the last two words, please figure it out yourself. Direct translation for 一中would be ONE MIDDLE. Beats me... I will not torture myself mentally by thinking about the name of this place. When we were at Taipei Central, we picked up a few brochures at the information counter. There was a brochure about Pandas World Tour Taipei 1600 but everything was written in Chinese. I really wanted to look at those pandas touring around Taipei. Clueless me thought that there would be real live pandas being brought around and how could there be 1600 pandas parading the town when there were not that many pandas. My partner in crime international travel buddy told me that they aren't real. So what are they? How can you have fake pandas walking around? Humans in panda suits? I think my questions asked in Taipei were answered in Taichung.

Pandas~!!!!

The adorable panda soft toys. They were right smack there on the ground level of where we were staying. I took the chance to snap photos but not that many. Thank God that I took the few photos as after we came back, all the pandas have been kept. The next morning, we left the place as early as we could muster up our strength to move on. Do you realize that there's no food photos at all? It's because we did not have any breakfast and we only had those two sweet potatoes for brunch. There's no proper lunch as well. Marvelous us were not hungry at all. I wonder where did we get all the strength to mark our footsteps all over the place without fuel in our body. We hardly drink water as we always ran out of drinking water and public toilets were as difficult to find as rubbish bins.

Pandas~!!!!

This might not be the real Pandas World Tour Taipei. Maybe it's just an introduction to the world tour. The full information was right smack there but please don't expect me to understand a single word. You can enlarge the photo to get the full information. I'm not gonna guess what it says as well. Don't know means don't know. Cannot read means cannot read. I know two Chinese words though... 一中 [ONE MIDDLE for direct translation or yi zhong for the pinyin] You don't know what's pinyin? Then you're worse than me in understanding the Chinese language. God is good... how could you ever deny that? I got to see my pandas whether the person in charge of the minsu was lousy or not. Thank you Pinky for getting this place.