Dream mall + Jingyuan Leisure Farm

Last weekend was Taiwan's National Day so we decided to stay at Kaohsiung since most places would be packed! 

On Friday we visited dream mall, which felt very much like a Singapore mall, with random clothing shops and shoe shops and Daiso etc.

Nevertheless, still walked through everything since it was a tourist attraction. We went up to the roof to see the famous Ferris wheel. 

Haha yup it was big and beautiful but the girls were only interested in snapping photos with it haha. 

Managed to get a nice one! So cool that our huge group of 8 can go so many places together haha.

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On Saturday, we went to visit Jingyuan Leisure Farm which is something like a mini zoo. I wasn't too excited because when we went to the Taipei zoo, most of the animals were lethargic and sleeping. 

But jingyuan farm was cool because it had many cute animals!!

Okay, not too cute but the first stop was to see hippos. Quite funny how the zookeeper teased them by offering the food left right left right and both hippos' mouths were wide open while waiting LOL.

Flamingos chilling in the waters

There are a few open areas where we can pet the cute animals like rabbits and piglets.

Little kids feeding the piggies!

Haha we wanted our turn too so we bought ONE bottle of milk at 50NT to share among 8 people lol. So the piglet can only get one sip of milk before the bottle is passed to another person. Auntie-ness at its best. 

Selfie with the animals was also important on the agenda. 

The farm was very small but we actually took 3 hours to cover it because everyone was trying to get their selfies!

 

Posed for a group photo at the end of the day!

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Back to the school rush, work is piling up fast!!

Visiting Kaohsiung with my Aunts!

I'm Finally got the chance to visit Kaohsiung's attractions! Me and my roomies have been putting it off because the weather at Kaohsiung is really unbearably hot and we would rather stay at our air conditioned apartment! Since my aunts came to visit me at Kaohsiung, I had the opportunity of bringing them around while the rest of the girls went to Xiaoliuqiu.

First up was a spectacular meal of Chinese food at Hotel Dua where my aunts were staying. The cost of this meal could have fed me for 10 meals LOL. The budget for holidaying with family is indeed different from holidaying with friends, hehe, and I filled my belly to the brim. Gonna work hard at my yoga mod this week to burn it off!

It was awesome to have stayed with them at Hotel Dua at Formosa Boulevard because the room was so luxurious! The king sized bed could fit the 3 of us quite well!!

The next morning, there was a shiok hotel breakfast, where there was so much variety, and the biscuits that I normally have back at my apartment paled to the whitest shade in comparison. I felt like I was living in luxury LOL.

Pier 2 Arts Center (Yanchengpu MRT Station)

First stop for the day was Pier 2 Arts Center. I visited this with Joce 2 years ago so I had many déjà vu moments. However unlike last time, the weather was crazily hot and in no time, we rushed to find shelter and ice cream >< there were many garang people who braved the sun and tried to use their dslr to get their shots. ><

Love river (walkable from pier 2 but we cabbed there to avoid the sun haha) 

Next stop was love river where we took the ferry one round to see the nearby scenery. I couldn't understand most of what the tour guide was explaining so I just took the opportunity to chill and hide from the sun LOL. Somehow my aunts were being actively engaged and interacted with the guide hahaha.

Central Park (Central Park Mrt station)

We went to Central Park which was a Taiwan version of botanic gardens except that they had so many more swans and ducks! I think there are only 2 swans at Botanical Gardens. Thankfully it was later in the day and it cooled down enough for the walk to be bearable.

Rueifeng Night Market (Ju Dan Mrt Station)

Rueifeng actually had many food stalls but as my aunts were afraid of food poisoning from eating street food, I only had the lemon drink that I was holding in the picture hahaha. I think I'll be coming again with the roomies to try the rest of the stuff!

Cijin Island (ferry from Gushan pier, 15NT since I tapped my student EZ link!)

Cijin was beautiful and the skies were finally blue!! (But still so hot as usual) we walked around and tried some food from the stalls, and stopped by the beach to snap some pictures. I know my roomies would totally jump into the water but me and my aunts stayed 20 meters away in a pavilion LOL. #familyholiday

After that, we took a cab to drive around NSYSU and visit my apartment and I sent my aunts to the airport to return to SG! 

So happy that they came to visit/pamper me and allowed me to live in luxury for 2 days! Quite the experience taking the mrt everywhere with my aunts and exploring by ourselves. Blogging this while on the way back alone feels quite miserable, makes me feel sad that all my family and friends are at SG so far away!

3 more months to go!

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!