| undramatically , jot down those notes. |

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Taiwan Trip Day 2

Morning call to our hotel room at 7.30am and breakfast at 8am. Our guide would pick us up at 9am. So we went down for breakfast at 8am, ended by 8.30am and spend the last half an hour to pack our luggage and check out of the hotel.

At 9am, we carry our luggage and put it at the boot of the van and there we board the van and head towards our first destination for the day- Peacock Farm.

This is the map of the peacock farm.

At the peacock farm, there is a wide space or free area for the peacocks to move and run about....

This is a close up picture of the peacocks moving about in the free wide area for them to wander about....

Another close up picture of the peacocks moving about in the free wide area for them to wander about....

Something special: This is the white peacock and I have never seen it in S'pore before... it's pure white.... Nice eh? Like snow white???

This is called the Golden Pheasant.

Personally, I think this Golden Pheasant deserves it's name more as it is more golden in colour... Chio desu ne?

This Blue Bird is called the Taiwan Blue Magpie....It's pretty unique I thought....

Okay, enough of peacocks and peacocks.... so our next destination is to the temple and visit 日月潭 and from there we can see really beautiful and picturesque view as shown in the pictures below....

This is the entrance of the "Wen Wu Miao" that we are going to go in... Our guide taught us the way to walk into the temple. I didn't know such practices until the guide taught us how to walk in. The guide told us that there is a "Dragon" door or entrance and "Tiger" door entrance. We should always go in from the Dragon side and not the Tiger Side. This is because they believed that those "dirty" things would follow us. If we walk in from the Dragon side, "they" are unable to follow us in and would stay outside of the temple and go away on its own knowing that they cannot stick to us. However, if we go in from the Tiger side, though they cannot enter the temple, but they can sense and know our presence and so, they will wait until we come out of the temple and follow us back home. Another reason for not entering the temple from the Tiger side is due to a famous saying as well "送羊入虎口". The Dragon Side is always on the right hand side and Tiger on the left hand side.

This is the Dragon's eldest son and this sculpture or statue has a story behind it. I couldn't remember what is that man's name but the story about that man was that he was born with 7 moles on his feet in chinese we called "脚踏七星" he was born to be an emperor but because of his family background, he always ends up with those gangster kind of friends and become very playful and creates a lot of trouble. One day, he dreamt of the Jade Emperor and the Jade Emperor told him in the dream that he was destined to be the Emperor of the country andthe Jade Emperor would send all his 9 sons down to help him to get the throne. Slowly, with the aid of the man's gangster friends and the dragon sons. He got his throne and the country was running very well and one day the 9 sons told him that it is time they have to head back to the heaven and report to their father who was the Jade Emperor. The man was worried that after the dragon sons left him, everything would not be smooth sailing for him as the dragon sons helped him a lot. So he told the eldest dragon son that if he is able to walk with the tombstone on his back, he will let him and his other 8 brothers go back to the heaven. Little did the eldest son know that the tombstone carved with words from the emperor was so heavy that he was unable to move and so he stayed at the position of where this statue is right now. The other 8 brothers saw the plight of the eldest son and thought that it was meaningless to go back without their brother. So, the rest of the 8 siblings stayed and can be found all over this temple at different corners.

I didn't take the pictures of them because I fell that it was rude to take photos in the temple. So, only took a few pictures... apologies.

This is the roof of the temple and these are the dragon sons lined up in a row.

This lion like statue is called a "qi lin" and it is a male. It is seen as something auspicious. It has a lion head, horse body, "qi lin" horn. In this statue, it is holding a big ball. Which means "有求必应" because the word ball in chinese has the same pronunciation as wish or hope. So it means whatever you wish or hope, you pray in this temple, it will come true.

After visiting the temple, we went to the restaurant nearby for lunch.

This is the a picture of the whole 日月潭 and how it got its name is because of the land formed a shape of a '日' and '月' character. I took this picture because the actual view was so big and huge that couldn't be captured by my camera... the actual view was the picturesque view photos I took and posted after the peacock farm photos.

While waiting for lunch to be ready, the guide helped us to take a family photo of with the beautiful scenery behind us.

After lunch, we head to the night market for shopping. Along the way, we drove pass this building shown below.... Our guide told us to guess what building is this. This building looks kind of colourful and beautiful. So we guessed TV station, some art exhibition hall or museum but we're all wrong. It is a restaurant that rotates.... like the one we have in Singapore near Telok Blangah and Habourfront area.

This is their train which is = Singapore's MRT. Since night time is free and easy for today, the guide told us if we want to come back again at night we can do so by taking a train back to the night market from our hotel area. Since our accomodation tonight is within walking distance from the train station.

There at the night market, though we went there at like 5pm to beat the queues, there are already tons and tons of people. There, we tried 螺阿棉线, 螺阿煎, 鳗鱼饭，炒花枝，洛神花汁，苦瓜汁，臭豆腐，官财板 etc.

We saw some cheap socks so we bought some as well. Time's up and ready to go back to the hotel. Tonight's accomodation has hot spring and we were told that we can choose to enjoy hot spring in the hotel room itself or the public one at the basment of the hotel. If we want to enjoy it, we can just open the tap and the hot running water is actually spring water and we can just submerge into the hot water in our bathtub, but we have to leave the toilet door open for ventilation and not to soak in the water for too long or else, we'll faint.... :)

Another alternaive is to go to the public one, but we have to go in the water naked. OMG la~! so pai seh lol... though yea all are of the same gender..... So we went downstairs to see how the public one is like before deciding on whether we want to enjoy hot spring in the toilet or the public one. There was no one..... yea so means only our own family members and of coz since it's naked its separate hot tub for different genders in different rooms.... so we have decided to go for the public one.

Though it was only my mother and I, I started off a little pai seh and ah~! 43 degree celcius.... was so hot.... only my feet managed to go into the water after 10 minutes..... and then slowly my calves, knees and the whole leg.... and slowly the whole body..... woo.... piping hot... it's shiok.... really..... After like soaking inside for 10-15 minutes we came out of the water and bathed there using their shower facilities and wear back our clothes and wait at the lobby area for my brother and father and went up for a good night's rest in the hotel room....

Below are the photos of the hotel room for that night's accomodation.....

------------------------------------------ End of Day 2----------------------------------------

2:07 PM; undramatically.Y

Friday, September 19, 2008

Okay I finally have time to update on my blog about my Taiwan Trip. As it is taking ages to upload the photos, I shall start with Day 1 of my Trip for now....

Taiwan Day 1

We are taking the 12.30pm aeroplane and we reached the airport at 10.30am at Changi Airport Terminal 3. Uncle drove my father, mother, brother and myself there. Oops~! 5 pax in the car, full load. Therefore my 2nd sister took a MRT to Changi Airport to send us off.

I am taking my plane from Changi Airport Terminal 3~!

Queuing up to check in our luggage.

After Checking in our baggage, there were shops inside for us to shop while waiting for the time to arrive for boarding. There, I saw this thing showed in the picture below. It's a Gadget Charger and most importantly, it's FOC~! It's kinda cool, so I took a photo of it. It has 14 slots with different chargers. For example slot 1 is for Nokia, slot 2 is for Sony Ericsson phone, slot 3 is for Sony camera and so on. It has a key allocated to every slot, so its user can just leave their electronic gadget inside to charge and lock it with the key provided and come and claim it back once they're done with shopping and once the charging is full. Cool isn't it?

Next, we went to explore the butterfly park which we heard on the tv before. It is a new attraction built in the Changi Airport and so, we went around hunting for it and WE FOUND IT~!!!

In the butterfly park there is this nice man-made waterfall

Oops, saw my reflection in the mirror. But that's besides the point, all these things hanging there are actually the lavae and pupae of the butterflies. They are kept in there until they are mature and you can actually see them transform.... O.O <-- Look at my big eyes. It's sure eye-opening for me to see these lavae and pupae becoz I have not seen before only in primary school science textbook when we are learning life cycle of a insect....

A close up photo of the lavae and pupae of the butterflies.

Seems like the butterflies love red flowers a lot...

Butterflies enjoying their lunch... Today's menu for them is pineapples~!

It's almost time and so we made our way to the departure hall and finally board the plane... woo~! Window seat.... I promised my bf to take pictures of the aeroplane flying up in the sky and it's view from the top in the aeroplane. So yea, I told my family I want to sit next to the window to take pictures. =)

This is the paper bag provided in case you vomit like a Merlion....

I'm sitting at the window seat~!!!

I managed to take a picture of the windsock from my seat. Woo from my geography lesson in the past, it is used to find out the direction of the wind.

That's me and my younger brother on the plane.

Woo~ It's taking off~!

It's flying~!

Wow~! See the view and the clouds~!

This is my aeroplane meal... Fei Ji Can~! Mashed Potato, Grilled Chicken, a Salad, Butterbread and biscuit. Drink: Orange Juice...

This is my brother's meal, Some kind of noodle as his main course the rest are the same as mine...

This is my mom's set... Pork Rice as the main course and the rest is the same as mine.

Mommy's food... the red drink is alcohol... i took a few sips though I'm below 18 at that point of time... Shh... It's known as 'Singapore Sling' a Made in Singapore Cocktail.

This is Cornetto Ice Cream and this is dessert~!

This is my Black Forest Flavour Ice Cream

My Ice Cream~!

See those white spots? It's formed on the window... it's ice.... the water droplets on the window became ice as it flies higher in altitude....

I'm listening to music killing time....

Upon arrival to Taiwan, we were picked up by our tour guide and board the mini bus on our way to visit the night Market. There, my brother bought a pair of Puma Shoes (real one) not imitation. We also went to try Road Side Stalls Food such as 大肠包小肠(There is original, black pepper, tom yam, spicy flavour but we tried black pepper and original flavour) it's yummy... , 爱玉冰，署条with梅子粉 etc. After shopping at the night market, we board the bus and we're on on way to our hotel for a good night's rest...

This is a fire station in Taiwan, I saw it on the bus ride on the way to our hotel.

Finally reached our hotel room... below are photos of how my hotel room looks like for the first night...

We were told that next to our hotel is a shopping centre and the Carrefour there is open 24 hours. So, we went there to buy some mineral water, soft drinks and snacks to munch and drink on the long bus ride tomorrow....

After shopping we're so hungry so went to grab a bite the the MacDonald's there and went back to the hotel to sleep. We went back to the hotel at like about 12.30am.

----------------------------------------- End of Day 1 -----------------------------------------

3:32 AM; undramatically.Y