宇宁: Taipei trip Day 1 and Day 2

Taipei trip Day 1 and Day 2

Time for another Chinese new year visit back to Singapore.

I planned a 5 day trip to Taipei as it's been more than 30 years since my last visit. Wanted to familiarize myself with the city again and brought my mum too for some bonding time.

Yeh Liu View

I booked amba Ximending for a convenient location and it's really close to the MRT and lots of eateries and shopping. It reminds me of the Bugis street in Singapore with lots of little alleys and trendy shops.

Amba Ximending Hotel good service but minimal amenities

Got the super card on the first day in the 7-11 for our metro rides in Taipei. There's a usd4 card purchase price with a value to be added for metro rides.

Cute Easy card design

We were told the 7-11 and family marts are essential for daily life like utilities payment and quick snacks or even to use their trash cans.

Apparently the older apartments do not have common connection trash cans. Trash collection is done with a trash truck using trash bags that's purchased from the government.

So it's frowned upon to throw trash in shops that didn't belongs to them.

And i noticed they truly do recycling and composting which is great to see another country making a real effort.

After landing at close to 7pm, we went for potstickers and a feet massage before going to bed.

Ba Fang Pot stickers

Foot massage time!

Day 2: City tour

I booked a 9 hour city tour with a small group.

our small city tour group at Taipei 101

It ended up being 4 of us in a mini van going to multiple places. The guide Qiu Xiang is very professional and did a great job explaining in English and Mandarin so that my mum and the aussie lady both understand what she's explaining.

Breakfast before heading to the meet up point. Chong You Bing Scallions pancake

First stop: National Palace museum Gu Gong

The outside of the museum with the Royal Garden

I was told that there's lots of priceless antiques in this museum.

We went for the jade exhibition first followed by Copper and then Porcelain. Unfortunately the jade cabbage is out on a tour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadeite_Cabbage

Jade exhibition

The Bronze exhibition

The porcelain exhibition

Tang San Cai exhibition

Revolving designs

Next stop is Chiang Kai Shek memorial Hall.

We saw a guard exchange and it has 2 other buildings that became a Concert Hall and a Theater.

I was surprised to see sakuras in Taipei but apparently this is the season.

The memorial

Guard Exchange

Next stop is Longshan Temple

There's a huge temple with all kinds of Taoism gods in there. Fun assortment.

The fun part is the God of Love are no longer being used for relationship but for concert tickets.

So i took a picture of one that has the pop group that they are praying to get the ticket =)

Long Shan Si

As the group is small, we had options for lunch plans. Next to the temple is Wan Hua Alley which is famous historically for snake stew.

We went for 2 Michelin Bid Gourmand places for braised pork buns and port belly rice. Yum.

Good Gua Bao .. Yum

Good Pork Belly rice

Next stop is Ximending which is near our hotel. We were given some time to walk around and we shopped around the Red Building that has cute shops.

Ximending

Next stop is Di Hua Jie which is meant for dried seafood etc. It's an interesting old area but too similar to places that we can find in Singapore too.

In the temple there's also a Yue Lao which is the god of Love.