Kenting and Taichung

Hello!

Been to Kenting last weekend and covered Taichung this weekend! So much to update :0000

Kenting

Bao1che1 - 650NT to and fro Kaohsiung

We actually wanted to do a few days at Kenting but realized accommodation would be expensive since it is peak season now. So a day trip was planned for water activities! We wanted to take a bus from Zuoying Station but missed the bus because seats were snapped up too quickly. Luckily, a taxi driver came to us and offered us the same price to send us to Kenting! I guess competition is pretty tough for them to offer such a price! Anyways we had 8 people so the driver stood to gain also. 

Kenting - Houbihu Beach 

The driver pulled up to a particular water sports shop where we were immediately briefed by the staff about their water sports packages. We paid 550NT for a set of 3 activities- snorkeling, banana boat and a float thingy (where we could sit/stand on a float while the jet ski pulled it around. 

Snorkeling was quite an unexpectedly taxing activity this time. I expected being brought to some platform where we could jump into the sea and explore clear blue waters. However, we were asked to walk into the water on sharp and painful stones =.= it was so scary trying not to fall while we were at it. After that, the instructor gave us bread to feed the fish and it was so scary how the fish attacked the bread so viciously! Overall, a pretty cool underwater experience :)

Both the banana boat and float were very fun as well because the instructor rode super quickly!! We screamed while we were on the float and clung on for our dear lives. I wanted to experience capsizing but some of the housemates can't swim/have fear of water so we didn't do it @.@

After the water activities, we wanted  the seafood dinner that everyone raves about. Here is our plate of fresh sashimi for SGD4. Even me, who is not usually a fan of sashimi, really enjoyed this!!

Taichung - Sun Moon Lake

After arriving at Taichung Railway Station, we quickly dapao-ed sushi and hopped on the Ke4 Yun4 to Sun Moon Lake. This lake is huge and traveling around it is fastest by boat! 

Plate of sushi for 4SGD @.@ Gobbled it down on the bus. :)

On the boat. Super fun and windy to stand in front but clouds were quite overcast that day.

The highlight of the trip would be the trekking up the mountain! Although it only took 15min, it was such a strenuous workout for us since we haven't been exercising. 

Stone at the bottom of the mountain 

Temple at the top of the mountain

Coming down the hill for the famous tea leaf egg and a bottle of orange juice was fantastic. 

Gobbled this down too!

Flushed and sweaty after our hike! (Oh no I look like a giant here LOL)

Taichung - Feng Chia Night Market

We returned to our hostel in Taichung which is very near to Feng Chia Night Market. 

I highly recommend the huge tako ball which is a deep fried huge tako with lots of ingredients.

But the beef cubes really take the cake. These beef cubes are torched to perfection and sprinkled with rose salt. I'll love to have some now TTTT 

Filled our tummies and went back to the hostel to rest.

Taichung - Rainbow Village

Bao1che1 to go a few locations

Visited the rainbow village that was painted by a 93 year old man who didn't want the village to be demolished! He was around to give his autograph hahah

To always be contented! #happiness101

Some model shots since the sunlight was awesome! The village is pretty small so we were finished in about an hour! (Mostly posing and snapping pictures haha)

Taichung - 心之芳庭

Next stop, xinzhifangting which is totally a place for lovers haha. There were like confession slips that we could take and post it to our lovers. Also, people could write a love message with their lover and hang it on a wall, something like the famous Namsan Tower thing haha.

小 awkward XD

Nice sunlight!

Us doing the modeling thing again LOL

Taichung - Miyahara ice cream

Wanted to try out the famous Miyahara ice cream and pineapple cake! Yums!

So awesome! 305NT which means $3.5 when shared with 4 people! I love eating ice cream along with cakes/waffles/biscuits/chocolate crumbs so this is great! :)

Nantou - Cingjing island

Taxi - 2400NT for 8 of us

We then took a taxi from Taichung to cingjing. 8 girls in a 6 seater taxi. Luckily for the very long legged me, I got to sit at the front seat beside the driver. By the time we went up the winding mountains to the minsu, the rest of the girls were nauseous and sore all over @.@ I was nauseous but at least I had my own seat.

Cramped room XD 

The minsu was once again overcrowded. 8 girls in a 2 pax room. LOL. We had 3 girls sleeping on the bed and the rest had to sleep on the floor on the mattresses provided. The girly girls began smelling everything and declared that the room is very smelly loll. I decided that innocence is bliss and didn't attempt to smell the sheets.

The next overcrowding moment came. 8 girls to use 1 toilet =.=" it took 3 hours for all of us to get bathed and ready for bed. Thankfully in the mountains, there is absolutely no entertainment and we reached the minsu at 7pm after dinner to start the bathing ritual.

Cingjing farm was very fun! We managed to watch a sheep shearing show and also got to interact with the sheep because it was a free roaming field! Sheep are very practical animals, they go to the people who have food. In an attempt to take a selfie with the sheep, we jumped onto the sheep feeding bandwagon. After many failed attempts, I think I got a shot!

Sheep, stop eating and look at the camera!!

Aww the sheep so cute with the (photoshopped) glasses.

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The next morning we wanted to see the Swiss Garden, however, it was raining and there was a risk of typhoon so we cut short our trip.

Taichung - 18 degrees

Took a van down and went to the 18 degrees chocolate shop! Couldn't afford any of the chocolates (2SGD a piece) so we have ice cream instead (less than 1SGD when shared amongst 4 people)

We were planning to return back to Kaohsiung at 11pm as all the tickets were sold out in this mid autumn festival holidays. But because it is so rainy and windy, we queued for the "spare seats bus". Suddenly all of us could get on the bus @.@ I guess a huge group forfeited their tickets?? Not sure but I'm glad we can return to Kaohsiung early!!

Home sick

Only 2 weeks have passed since I left for exchange and I'm already feeling a sense of home sickness. School is still relaxed (only week 1) so I keep feeling like I'm on holiday and will be going back home to study soon haha... Well, on to more updates!

Having to do groceries for the first time

Check out my popping veins from lifting the groceries

In the past when I went to shop with my mum, I never felt the pinch when choosing between items with a small difference in price. Now it's like, oh this box of eggs is $2.20Sgd, but that one is $2.60, lets go for the $2.20 one! Oh wait does it mean the quality of eggs is worse ah... Ahh dunno which one to choose! 

Grocery shopping inevitably brings out the auntyness in all of us especially since we're on our own budget and have to spend within our means!

Also, we have eaten out/Maggie mee for the past 2 weeks so we really need some homecooked food! The problem is that no one knows how to cook LOL. GG. 

New ways of speech

Taiwanese speech is quite interesting because they will add 大 or 小 for varying degrees of something. So we try to copy them. For example, even though our apartment is 大 near from school, but because the weather is 小 hot, when we reach school we will be 大 tired. LOL. 

The apartment's crazy insulation

Our apartment happens to be situated in a location which is near the mountains and hence there's no signal whenever we are indoors. We only get internet when we open the windows and put the phone outside, which is quite dangerous because there is dengue problem at Kaohsiung also. That totally defeated the purpose of all of us signing up for unlimited data usage for these 4 months!

We are installing a modem next week but it'd be downstairs at the dining area so I don't think the signal can reach the room. Yikes, having to live with limited internet is hard!

Skyping with best friends

Aww look at them being cute haha

So happy that I was also to skypuru my best friends last week! Due to the data signal issues as mentioned above, I had to sit beside the balcony for the skype to work out XD

Our hardcore singing sessions seemed to be effective because my housemates seemed to think I can sing quite well during Kbox LOL. Missing the times where we stood at the rooftop and screamed to train our head voice LOL. Oh hindsight that must had been quite a nuisance XD

The difference is quite apparent between normal kboxing and kboxing with case budz because normally people don't really do harmonizing haha. NUUUU I need my dose of harmony  TT #casebudzlove. I attempted harmony at Kbox with the girls but ended distracting the people singing main melody haha =.=" 

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Haha would it be weird if I wish for school to get slightly busier so I'll stop being so bored and missing my favorite people at home? 

NSYSU- First week in Taiwan

Hahah wow it has already been 1 week plus at Taiwan!

Gonna recap the highlights of the trip because my memories is quite bad nowadays LOL

This is the first day at our apartment! With our very nice uncle su who helped us get this apartment, and sent 2 CARS to the airport to bring us to our new home! Super duper nice person.

He then brought us to have bahzhang and pig intestines soup which was supposed to be very tasty in Taiwan but was quite weird for me.

Adventure from Kaohsiung to Taipei

(Holiday bus(?), ke4 yun4, 600NT, 5 hours from Kaoshiung Bus Station to Taipei Bus Station)

Just the next day, we wanted to be happening and travel to Taipei for the week before school.

This is me in my comfortable massage chair on the bus. We got the 600NT Ho Hsin Bus (other than ubus and Aloha) which our Taiwan friend recommended. It's was really spacious and comfortable but my butt really hurt after 5 hours. @.@ 

Adventure to the Zoo

(Mrt to Taipei Zoo)

On the second day we went to the zoo!!! It was funny because the counter person thought we were below 18 years old and gave us half price for the tickets, much to our delight!

However, the zoo quality was quite disappointing as many of the enclosures were not well maintained and the animals were all lying around and being lethargic. Like this orangutan here:

Sent this picture to the case budz saying this is haochen HAHAHA.

The giraffes were super active though. We stood at the giraffe enclosure for the longest time looking at the 2 male giraffes trying to, erm, get it on with the female giraffe. Unfortunately, she kept running away and it never happened LOL

One of the more normal pictures with an alpaca, who is really good at posing for photos 

Adventure to Yangmingshan

(Local bus)

This trip was supposed to be a trekking trip.... until we decided that we should take the internal shuttle bus to every single destination HAHA. This place was extremely picturesque and there were at least 2 couples taking their wedding photos! Wedding photos seem to be stressful- the photographer directs every single movement and makes sure you get it right! He was like "Bride, lie at the groom's chest and look up at him lovingly! Yes! Yes! Smile more!" Awkward much >.>

Some other highlights include seeing cows, volcanoes and smelling sulphur =.=" There was also a public nude hotspring that some of the girls wanted to try @.@ we walked in and the rest were shocked to see some older women prancing around, nonchalantly naked (I went to hotspring before so I know LOL). So we immediately backed out and decided that a warm footbath would be sufficient to call it a day >.<

On the trip down, the bus was completely packed because the mountain closes at 5.30! Unfortunately most of us couldn't get seats. The rocky roads down made us cling on to the handrails for dear life and we felt like vomiting after getting down =.="

Adventure to Yehliu, Jiufen and Shifen

(Booked a car for 8 people, 625NT each for the day)

Yehliu is a beach with many rocks, the most famous one being the queen's head, which is circle by small rocks on the photo above, and as you can see, there was a queue to take pictures with it!

Kiasu Singaporean queued up too!

Jiufen and Shifen were very nice too! Jiufen had a street of many local food (our favorite was the peanut ice cream as pictured below)

Shifen had a beautiful waterfall and scenery so we were snapping pictures non stop (in between hiding under the umbrella because the weather is sooooo hot)

We also went to the railway to release a lantern with our well wishes!

Lol this is the typical kind of wishes an all-girls group will come up with:

And here are somewhat more serious wishes @.@

One group photo before we release the lantern!!

Yay! Think I finished blogging all the more important stuff! Phew!

Back at NTU it is already going to be recess week but it's only week 1 here! NSYSU was super oversubscribed this time and so it's quite unsettling as most of us haven't got all our mods yet. Apparently the add/drop is really informal- instead of waiting for slots to open up, there is this "abnormal add drop" period that we can ask the prof to discretionarily add us in. I still don't know what's gonna happen to all of us LOL.

Something epic that happened on Monday

Since auditing wasn't (and still isn't) accepted by NTU, I went to ask the Prof over at NSYSU why was that so LOL. Turns out that he didn't know auditing was rejected. 'Twas begins the story of how I became the middleman between both schools and passing on information through emails. I dunno why no one else did this hahahhaha. 

And today when everyone from NBS was gathered at NSYSU, the coordinator suddenly asked me to stand up and thanked me for my contributions!!! "让我们谢谢 Angerlah" Haha I almost wanted to find a hole to hide but there was no escape TTTTTTTTTT so now my housemates keep teasing me that I'm "famous" and calling me Angerlah LOL. 

Haha apparently we are going to Kenting the day after tomorrow but haven't planned/booked accommodation/itenarary yet. Stay tuned for updates!

Taiwan exchange starts now!

This post is written on the plane to Kaohsiung and dedicated to #casebudzlove: 

Aww I feel so much love from my favorite case budz!!

1. Look at the shirt that they gave me! 

Isn't it the cutest ever! This photo came from a day where I was angsty (or so they claimed) and didn't want anyone to touch me LOL. Unfortunately, the case budz are a persistent bunch and all grabbed on to my arms while taking a selfie! I didn't know what to do so I did a double act cool pose with a crazed look HAHA. This was the actual photo XD.

Haha see I was totally non-angsty LOL. At first none of them were available to collect the shirt but Kc was so awesome as to go out of his way to collect the shirt while on a date!!! :00000 awesomeness level too high LOL 

2. Sending me at an unearthly time of 5am! 

At first I really didn't wanna bother them to wake up so early! For the case budz, the day usually starts at 12noon and beyond. I was touched that they went camping at KC's house and drove all the way to Changi Airport to see me for 45min TTTT <3 so much love. I haven't met such onz friends before!

One solo shot with le BFF. How are we gonna survive without each other TTTT the last time we came to Taiwan for AIESEC we had each other so I wasn't too emo TTTTT miss doing random stuff and hanging out with Jocepuru already @:/

3. Creating an awesome video for me. 

They created a video overnight during the camping and blasted it at Macs at Terminal 2. Jocepuru's voice was strikingly high pitched LOL. This vid featured all my favourite enactus friends wishing me safe flight awwwww. <3 moments like this make all the suffering I went through in Enactus worth it! Kc directed me to watch the "most important part" which happened to be the credits section where I saw 

Vid collector- KC

Vid editor- KC

(everything else)- KC

Kc is like master event planner liao hahaha. 

Phew, this was a difficult post to write as I kept having to blink back my tears lol. Luckily I'm not sitting with my housemates if not they will be like why is this loser sobbing on the plane LOL =.=" 

Anyways! To my favourite case budz, thanks for teaching me the true meaning of friendship, you guys are the best friends that I ever had! Thanks for tolerating all my flaws like my low self esteem, being such a closed book sometimes... and over-filtering photos LOL.  I'll try to level up and change for the better! 

Hope you all will enjoy and do well for school and all your various ccas (enactus/taekwondo/choir). Time will pass quickly and before we know it... im UiSa time will arrive(?) LOL. 

Miss you all so much already! Stay tuned for updates and keep me updated too! <3

Enactus Camp 2015

Whew finally down to blog about the Enactus Camp that went on last weekend!

I initially had an identity crisis because I wasn't going to be in Enactus this sem due to exchange. The final arrangement for my identity turned out to be: fake freshie and part-time senior attached (since I went for the training and am somewhat pro in the social entrepreneurship game that the freshies were to play). 

Even though I initially thought that the camp was going to be somewhat stressful due to my stranger anxiety (especially the need to be a big sister to the freshies), it turned out to be really fun and great! The freshies are so friendly and open and even invited the GLs and me to Macs with them awwww. I can already hear Jocelyn saying, "See, aren't you glad I got you to come?" Hahaha. :)

In the morning we did the social entrepreneurship game as mentioned above. Since we knew that the aim of the game was to teach the freshies that understanding the customer is the most important, we had to "lead" them to buy more customer cards with the limited money they had. Jocelyn repeatedly got accused of "hinting too obviously" to the freshies. Because when they asked if they should buy the customer cards she will say "that's a great idea" and when they wanted to buy the other cards she would frown and say otherwise haha. We also guided them (pretty thoroughly) through the Business Model Canvass. Oops, too over-zealous about winning LOL. Alas................................... we won!!! Hahaha. -hides face-

Next, we adjourned to Sentosa to spend the rest of the day with games! There was a distressing moment here as we walked from Vivo to Sentosa using the Boardwalk. It was blazing hot and so humid that we almost got a heatstroke. Thankfully Jocelyn bought iced coffee to save us <3

After taking this photo: "OUCHHHH my eyes"

I really happy that I managed to click with the members of the Enactus exco. Maybe it was because I had Joce and KC around, so the atmosphere felt homely and comfortable. 

There was this game where we had to rescue our GL by unlocking a lock. But after trying around 6 games and changing key every time we passed a game, we still couldn't unlock the lock due to bad luck. So we decided to abandon Anu LOL. Just kidding, it was getting too dark so games ended XD.

At 11pm, where the night begins, the exco decided that it was time for kbox. 9 kbox-enthusiasts squeezed into KC's car and went on our kbox adventure! At first everyone was awkward and didn't dare to sing since there were newcomers. We especially didn't dare to go for the high parts due to embarrassment. KC ended up having to cover for everyone and exhausted his voice by the end of kbox LOL.

Eventually though, me and Jocelyn decided to break out of our shyness and sing crazily high pitched songs, disturbing some of the people who passed out from tiredness OOPS. I actually felt really bad afterwards and hoped that they didn't get angry :O

I was supposed to leave on that day itself because there was church the next day. Ended up staying over for the night since it would be ex and dangerous to cab home. (That's also how I realised my skin won't turn bad from one day of not cleansing LOL)

The next day I crept up earlier to make it on church on time. Surprisingly, my blaring alarm didn't wake anyone. I went out to the common toilets to freshen up and saw the most disgusting thing ever. A HUGE lizard in the sink TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT Why oh why did that happen to me TTTTTTTTTTTT. Anyways I leapt for my life and left the resort. It was weird walking out alone in the road that was almost completely empty because we came in such a huge group. But I decided that I was so glad that I chose to come for my third Enactus Camp and connect with the fantastic Enactus friends.