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Oh ya the 2 miserable looking ones on the bamboo are those i rolled and attempted to cut. I think you have to put different ingredients at different levels so they look nicely rolled in the middle after cutting. But we simply put the ingredients on top of one another so thats why the ingredients are all mashed up in a corner. OOPS :x
Bee getting bored as I made more sushi for my love. Thanks 8-year-buddee for giving me most of the rice since we cooked too little (: She used the first batch of rice to make some shapes. I remember she has a habit of compressing food into funny shapes. For instance, she pressed some Cotton Candy into a tiny square-dice shape when we were in Secondary school. Yeppp.
And there you go, my final creation!!!
Tsk. Im so proud of myself. *beams* HAHA. I know the handroll looks bad. This container is seperated into 2 levels. Below this level there is another set of sushi and I made 1 more set in another smaller container. So in total there are 3 handrolls, individual sushis w egg mayo, crab mayo, pork floss (his fav!), prawn, tuna and the cut-up rolls that has the combination of 2 or 3 ingredients. If you look closely, 2 of the sushi are in the shape of hearts x)
Okay! This was my serect mission in the morning. I planned it perfectly and cabbed home just when he woke up. I acted as if I woke up late too and met him around 3-4pm. He did not suspect a thing at all :))) But as those of you who knows Vic would know that he did not jump up and down in surprise too la. He simply looked surprised, asked a few qns and continued sitting down and smiling. LOL. That's my chill-chill boyfriend. (: Of course it tasted wonderful. HEHS. I shall blog about the rest in part 2!
I seriously want to change my blog add and skin but that takes more time and im lazy :x Till next time, loves! (:
~You know that I'll support whatever decision you make. i'll always be there for you. Certain things you said recently touched me. Im sure you dont even know what you said but that makes it even sweeter because you said it so naturally. I love you baby (:
I sat at the window seat and watched High School Musical 2. It was surprisingly nice. But the Christmas plane lunch wasnt that great. There was a mini log cake too (which was so sweet). It was a 5Hour flight and i sat till my butt ached. However it was really interesting as I looked out the window. We seemed to fly higher and higher ( I learnt from baby that planes actually have different flight plans like some higher some lower etc. and all along i thought they simply fly wherever since the sky is so big. what a bimbo thought. Imagine you're flying to TW and a plane is coming from TW den crash meh? ..) ... and the the window got cooler and cooler. Because it was Winter over at Taiwan! Brr...
We touched down in Taiwan/Taipei ard 4+5pm. It was so dark and that time, as if 8pm in Singapore. Then i learnt that their night falls earlier so ard 5pm it's completely dark already. Wow, talk about having long nights! When i was gettin down the plane, I saw Taiwanese at the airport w their thick windbreakers/sweaters flying w the wind. Then I understood why. When we first stepped out of the airport, STRONG wind gushes over. It was 20degrees. It's all about the wind that's the coldest thing in Taiwan during winter.
The first thing that night was to check in to our first Hotel in Taipei, as seen below. It was just beside XiMenDing so we walked around the nightmarket which was bursting w activities.
We had a small dinner at a famous shop called Ah Zong mian xian which the tourguide recommended. It was really obvious which shop it was as there were ALOT of people crowding around, STANDING. Yep, you actually buy the hot mianxian and stand while you eat. I was so not used to the cold so the warm food really helped but it tasted OK onli. I think the one we have in SG (e shilin chicken shop) tastes better.
Then i think we ate another proper dinner at a restaurant, walked abit more and went back to the hotel at 11am. I forgot to take one amazing photo at the hotel washroom though. The bathtub had a sign that read
We left the hotel early in the morning after eating the breakfast buffet.
and i just have to digress and show an interesting photo of my Bf's little cousins.
Culture clash. lol. Their dad's a great Indian guy and mom a nice chinese lady who reminds me of my dear friend BEE. (: Their daughter has the most beautiful eyes! Plese click to enlarge!
I took CableCar!!! It was about 20minutes? Over mountains and mountains and i surprised myself to feel not scared at all again (: Baby and I shared our CableCar w a HongKong family of 3 and we chatted abit. Such nice people! Anyw it was cheap, think about $10 only? I forgot :x
We reached the peak of some place that had alot of food again. Everywhere in Taiwan everyone is eating at any time of the day. Haha. I guess it's because of the cold? I tried their famous Fried Oyster Omelette but it was quite bad. Gooey and chilli used were those KFC chilli sauce. Guess Singaporeans have our own unique Ou Ar Jian which tastes waaaay better (:
We went to SanKeng TouFu Street too and everywhere smelled of SPOILT SOUR Tofu. I tried smelly Tofu fer the first time and it was enough to last me a lifetime. It really tasted like mouldy rotting food :X Baby and I even went to the specific stall (as seen below) we saw on Bizarre Foods (one of our fav. shows)!
Spent the night shopping at XiMenDing w baby alone (: Couldnt manage to buy much clothes cause they were selling all winter stuff so we just bought accessories. I even saw a friend from SG at one of the shops! LOL. Afterwhich we cabbed back to our Hotel by raising out ONE finger ( apparently, flaggin w 1 hand means u want FIVE cabs in TW).
Day 3: HuaLien, some Yehliu and funny name places for sightseeing
We reached this place but we had to go through hours of this!
There's a weird shape thing in e first collage, which happens to be a famous attraction, a treasure of the country. They seem to have many Guo2 Bao3. And the tourguide was very anti-AH BIAN so he went on and on about how the neck of the figurine (it's supposed to be a beautiful fish/lady person and there's history behind it) about how it's breaking but AH BIAN doesnt want to preserve it. ...
So I joined him. (:
Went to our 3rd Hotel that evening, called Hoya Resort Hotel. It was Super Nice! It was a Hot Spring Hotel, meaning that the hot spring water flows around that area so the whole hotel used Hot Spring water. I was soooo looking forward to the open-air HotSpring but that was the day my PERIOD decided to come! ARRR. I almost gave up the thought of trying HotSpring as I read that Taiwan dont sell tampons. But the book was outdated as I found them selling it at the 7-11!
This portion is nt really for guys. LOL :X It was my first time using a tampon! Guys! You are darn lucky to not have to have cramps and periods and tampons in your life la! Oh ya they're not reading this part right. Ok... Anyw, by the time i was done putting it on, baby's relatives have gone down and up from the HotSpring :X Hence I went down w baby alone, not that bad after all. tee-hee. (:
The HotSpring was at the ground floor, at the back of the hotel and guys and girls can use them tgt. There were 3 Hotsprings area, beautifully made with rocks and pebbles? It was really cold when I wore my bikini in the 17degrees weather but after going into the HotSpring, I WAS HOT! One HotSpring was for children, not that hot so i went to the adults one which was 20+degrees! It was hot but bearable for like 10mins. Then we decided to venture to the hottest HotSpring, 43DEGREES! Touching it w the base of my feet hurt as it is. Then we learnt from the locals that you should dunk into the ice cold small pool first so we went in. Ya really cold. But after that we dared ourselves into the 43degrees HotSpring. For like 1minute before jumping out again. It was THAT HOT. Boiling water HOT. It was definitely worth trying though, you guys have to try HotSprings if you travel! Afterwhich we went up to the hotel in our towels and RED skin. Somehow, the night wasnt cold at all after that! (: I think we watched Jurassic Park on tv too. We watched in 3 nights in a row, part 1, 2 and 3!
psst- i kept the note you wrote to me on the hotel paper that night too (:
Day 5: Fruit plucking, Hakka village, Temple and the night markets begin!
We climbed up to this gigantic temple that was lined w Gold Buddhas along the whole path. After climbing up and passing all the small buddhas (as seen below), we reached...
A BIG GOLD BUDDHA! WOW! ... -.-
Okay la it has a nice view at least and we took some nice photos (:
Bought a huge cotton candy (but the kids said "see i can make small!" and pressed it till its 1/3 the size...)
Cute and naughty HengHeng (another of his cousin, my fav.) kissed me. LOL. I covered my dear boy's face cause he was looking funny. hahaha.
Oh ya we went to this plantation where you could look around and pluck your own fruits. The one we went to was er... Jambus? the red juicy sweet fruit? Not sure if it's called Jambu but i didnt upload cause there are too many photos as you can see. My dear boy was impatient and guessed me too and we plucked a bunch that was not very red. But it's the experience that counts right?! :x
They went to more temples and we walked around and bought goodies. Their Tian Tian Quan (sugar donuts) was superb!!! Their roadside sweet corn was horrid. It tasted like the honey syrup and nothing like corn at all. Oh well, it looked real good laa and we needed warm food. Oh I think by night it dropped to 16degrees again?
When it was dark, we went to Sin Jiao Night Market and had like 1 hour to shop -.- We thought like the first few nights, the night markets would be near our hotel so we kept what we wanted in mind and just walked w/o buying. But the hotel was farrr away so we didnt go back ): We reached our 4th hotel called Citizen Hotel I think (our hotels were mostly 4/5 stars so we were lucky people. hehs)
At night, we walked out for fruits! It was crazy cold but baby wanted to embrace the cold air and didnt want to wear his thin cardigan. The fruits were b-e-a-u-tiful! Huge (like 2times all the fruits we have since it's all hand grown and picked) and in bright colours!
Me feeling happy w happy colourful fruits.
His turn.
Of course we bought fruits and went back to the hotel.
Him being crazy in our room.
We gathered in 1 hotel room w the rest (we had 5 different rooms) and shared all our fruits and chatted (: OH OH! The past few days we spent money catching plushies from those machines too!!! Like Singapore, but much cheaper like some onli 50cents! Baby caught this cute chick plushie for me. I have the tiny, medium and huge one! What to say, we love these cute machines. (We spent over $100 at those in Singapore too. Know the Big Sweetland? And I have a huge tweety from the one at Causeway pt too. *GRINS)
Day 6: Train, Cow farm, Peacock garden plus Fong Jia night market.
We woke up early and ate our breakfast buffet as usual. We took an open-air train (not the one below, that's for the materials and stuff). The train was noisy with all the chugging sounds and the guide erm, guiding in Hokkien. He was so funny la! He actually told the passengers in hokkien that "we have Singapore visitors so lets welcome them *cheers*" and we had to like wave 3 times high up in the air and shout "yi, er, san!!!" then the train went "PooooPooooo!!!" and started moving. The people not on the train just kept waving untill our long train was out of sight. LOL. cute eh.
We went pass many corn plantations and so on then reached out destination, "Ru Niu De Jia" Translated as The Cow's Home that has live cows and everything that could possibly be made from cows or milk (sweets, biscuits etc etc).
We fed the cows with plants and milk and even milked the cows! One grasp was quite expensive though :x There were deers, turkey, ostrich and horses too. I bought some moomoo souvenirs for baby since he's my COW but he insisted the COW UMBRELLA is for me. Now it's still w me but i dared not use it. Its really white with black uneven spots all over.
Anyway, we went to the peacock garden and saw some beautiful white peacocks! Most of the peacocks had huge erm, mane? feathers? you know the back thing and when they opened it's soo pretty, unlike those broken ones in SG ):
When dawn came, we went to Fong Jia night market for one hour again. It was HUGE and we had to like speed through to finish it in 1 hour. It's like 5 times of Bugis Village? It's a round so you imagine like Bugis Village but with 4sides and more. Hence, we went to our 5th Hotel afterwhich called TwinStar Hotel. We shopped at the high-class shopping mall right beside till around 8-9pm and met a family of 3 from Singapore (from our tourgroup too). Think Pretty Mama, Fit Papa and cute 5-year-old daughter. They told boyfriend and I that they're thinking of going back to the NightMarket and asked if we wanted to cab tgt. So we went to find his relatives and told them we're leaving w the family and off we go!
When we reached, we set to meet in another 2hr+ and a place to cab back to the hotel tgt. The plan was to meet ard 1am I think? But ended up we went off seperately as we didnt see each other. So baby and I shopped for our things (: Bought our couple Havaianas at a shop called "the Brazil shop" which sells all Havas, Panamas? Crocs etc. I spend too long in Birkenstock (I even called all the way back SG for Sarah) but didnt buy.
Sorry boyfriend for spending so much time for my shopping than yours.
A random shot of us looking tired but satisfied on the bus that day. (:
The Museum and some other stuff were in the morning, not as interesting as the rest of the day. Taipei 101 is the tallest building in the world (I learnt that there are many tallest buildings actually, this is like tallest shopping mall, some tallest architecture etc). Inside you have all the Branded Goods and XiaoZhu's shop. We only went to some of the shops and then went up as we had onli an hour too ): Time was precious for the trip. You have to buy a ticket to go up and we reached Level 89 in less than ONE minute. We couldnt go to the higher levels I think cause they were being prepared for the fireworks as seen on tv at the start of 2008 remember? Yep so we saw the breath-taking view of the whole of Taiwan. Mountains, Manymany houses, Yellow Taxis and Scooters (in Scooter carparks!).
We went to the Guardhouse place during their change-of-guards ceremony. They had to slow-march a looong distance in their 1 or 2 layer clothes in the 10degrees of cold air (yep it was this temperature for the last few days). The guards don't even blink much as they stand at their position at the entrance!
We took some silly pictures w the serious guards and in picture4 you can see the cute kid of the hot parents as mentioned earlier. She was trying to puff up her chest so that she look big and strong like the soldiers. HAHA.
I know I look horrid in alot of the photos. I was so uncomfortable w the cold weather and I had a huge ulcer so that explains all the crooked smiles, dry lips and funny windblown hair. 
Whereas my dear boy, can somehow manage to look coy and nice (: Tee-hee :x
There, our first flight at 7:10am. The picture I thought would start this entry but it's for the end instead. I star-red our flight. We got on Singapore Airlines again and slept most of the trip.
I was so not used to the temperature and had a slight sunburn -.- . Ooh ya, we bought tax-free alcohol too (:
Okay I'm finally done with the longest entry EVER. It tooked hours :/ Hope I didnt bore you guys out there. This is mostly for close friends, family and my dear victor to read (:
One final glance of Taiwan (: Tadah! YAY I did it!
I love this trip but of course Im glad to be home. Thank you baby for everything. I mean it, never losing patience on me as I PMS thruout the trip, looking after me all the time and giving in to even to my most ridiculous demands. I appreciate all these. I love you and Im glad to start a whole new year with you in my life. (:
