Sidenote: The travel agency, however, only emailed me the confirmation flight details like super last minute. I had to call and pester them every other week, up until the week I was supposed to travel. Nevertheless, they delivered so I'm all good. Just an FYI for people who are ganchiong spiders or whatev.
In all fairness, I did my homework (itinerary) last minute too.
So we took the 1am flight and it was a sad, rainy night. Still, I was pretty excited because honestly I was sick of travelling to Malaysia all the time lol. Unfortunately the flight really wasn't as comfortable as we would like it to be (sigh, first time with budget airline please bear with me). I drifted in and out of sleep and was fidgeting and tossing and turning (as best as I could in the space I had lol), as a result disrupted my mom's sleep. =( But the journey was smooth (flight, landing - despite the weather) so that's a big plus.
Anyway. We arrived in Taipei at about 6am and had to sort of feel our way through the airport to the bus stations. My homework says there should be buses to bring you to the nearest MRT stations/hotels from the airport. It sounded exciting to arrive so early in the morning so we wouldn't waste a day flying but we miscalculated the fitful sleep so..we were pretty darn tired and 狼狈, dragging our luggage and carrying umbrellas in search for breakfast and the hotel.
We asked around and the lady at the bus booth cheerfully handed me a map which I gleefully accepted because 1) my map was too hugeass and I don't wanna look too much like a lost tourist, and 2) information from the land itself wouldn't go wrong. I only checked the map after we boarded the bus and guess what, the map was in JAPANESE. -_____-||| #NotEnoughHokkienVulgarities
The bus brought us to (opposite) Yuanshan MRT station (NT90/S$3.80/pax, approx. 1 hour), and we were reprimanded by the bus driver that the stations are called 捷运站 and not 地铁站. hanah hanah say too fast can? I am sing ga por lang. You come Singapore and say 捷运 see who understand you? In my short holiday we've learnt that the bus drivers are not your friendliest people in Taiwan. But everyone else are super super nice. Really. (Honestly though, I wonder what MRT stands for because they're called MRT stations too. The website doesn't translate it directly so I'm guessing Metro Rapid Transit lol.)
We bought their Easy Card for the MRT rides - NT500 (S$21.30) including a fully refundable deposit of NT100, so the rides are at a 20% discount. And we fully utilized the NT400 for 5 days! :D
To continue our very sad first day (LOL), we went back and forth Jiantan and Shilin MRT stations looking for breakfast. The shops in Taiwan don't open that early! (Later on we found out that we kept alighting at the super ulu exits of both stations; there were cafes at the other exits. Their stations are so huge that different escalators from the platforms actually bring you to different exits. #MountainTortoise maxmax.)
Sorry, best view of the shop name from where I was sitting.
We found this small cosy cafe (not exactly a cafe but I don't know how else to describe it) about 2 streets from Shilin MRT station. It was the only available shop to be honest, and we were dead tired going up and down the streets, appalled that the cafes/restaurants/food shops weren't opened for breakfast (one cafe actually said "breakfast available" but it was closed up tight + there were like 3 days worth of newspapers at the door so my mom said maybe the business flopped but then we passed by later at night and it was opened LOL). We were given a menu which was in mandarin (duh) and I swear my brain turned to mush. I must have stared at the menu for too long because then the lady boss came about from behind the counter to translate explain the menu recommend their bestsellers. Hey in my defense it was in traditional chinese!
We anyhow-ed through the order and in my mushy state tried to do the math. I think my jaw dropped when I realized the entire breakfast was NT110 (S$4.70). and the fooooood - simple affair but so, so, so damn good.
Mom's club sandwich, NT45 (S$1.90 how can?!)
My pastry thing that looks like roti prata with a slice of bread and black pepper pork.
SO. DAMN. TENDER.
Okay la that's all actually lol. Our drinks not as fascinating. Hehehe.
Because we felt like homeless kids, we took a cab (finally!) and I gave the cab uncle my book where I anyhow-ed wrote the address of the hotel hahahaha. BUT I figured since he knew what I had written, I guess I must have gotten it right LOL.
Before we left for Taiwan (and actually after I bought the deal), I looked up the hotel on the internet and the reviews ranged from like bad to quite-okay. I was a little bit more optimistic and decided that it should be comparable to Hotel 81 and that is fine. (And before you ask, I know about Hotel 81 because we booked it once as our makeup stop for Halloween. We managed about 7 people with props and costumes and makeup in a small room but that's another story.) The headache part was actually locating the hotel because someone wrote that even cabbies may not know the road and that worried me.
It turned out that Simply Life Taipei was located at an alley and we would not have found it no matter how good one is with the map, Japanese or otherwise lol. Anyway I didn't take photos of the hotel but if you're really interested you can check it out here. I gotta give it to their photographer; the place looks more spacious on the site lol.
A little bit on the hotel though, the staff are friendly and they try their best to help you, like how to get about to the general tourist attractions. I say general only because I tried to ask for directions to Pingxi and they told me to take the MRT to Taipei Main Station then ask around. (Lol I guess people who want to get to Pingxi won't be staying around Shilin?) Also, the hotel has no lifts so guess who stayed on the top (4th) floor? LOL. The airconditioning is centralized so we "regulated" the temperature by closing/opening the toilet door. You can imagine most times the door would be opened lol.
Check-ins are at 4pm and we were there at 10:30am. They wanted us to leave our luggage at the lobby and go back at 4pm but we were dead beat so we paid for another day's worth at NT480 (S$21) to SLEEEEP. I was running on adrenaline I think, because I was still transferring my itinerary from pieces of A4 papers to a trusty black notebook hahaha. My mom knocked out for an hour before I was done and then I think I blacked out LOL.
We were fresh and out of the room by 2:30pm. Not too shabby. But being Sep/Oct, the sunset in Taipei is about 5:30pm so we decided to check out Ximending and the Shilin Night Market. We had to take a bus to the nearest MRT (about 3 stops, NT15/pax) Shilin Station; that was when we found out about the other amazing, more happening exit lol.
Ximending, still a popular shopping district despite the poor weather.
It rained the whole day like some whacky cycle of drizzle and downpour. We were whipping our umbrellas in and out; really quite the holiday spoiler. It was also very difficult to shop because most shops were stretched to the streets and the weather was just sad la.
Some No.1 Ramen place. But then almost every other restaurant is No.1 there.
Our dinner was at a ramen place, and I had another heart attack moment with the menu lol. Asked the server about one of the flavors and he simply read it off the menu without explaining it. I had to resist rolling my eyes lest he spit in my food.
Super crowded bakery at Shilin Night Market.
Went back to Shilin Night Market and we were quite moody and tired, really. But we also KIV-ed some stuff to check out on Day 2 at Wufenpu so it wasn't that bad. It was very, very windy that night and we didn't want to risk falling sick (what with the wet weather) so we made our way back. We tried to find the bus stop to take the same buses back to our hotel but again, we walked up and down the streets a few times between Jiantan and Shilin MRT station and although we found the bus numbers, they didn't go back the district our hotel was located at! We gave up (for the night) and took a cab. *insert 不甘愿 face*
On hindsight, I think we were more prepared for Day 2 because we already knew what to expect with the public transports and which direction to take at the MRT stations. :D
Next up - Wufenpu Commercial Zone and Raohe Night Market!
