Family Trip to Taiwan Day 1

There were so many photos, not enough time, not enough RAM and not enough memory on my poor old little Mac laptop. **Hint...you dear fans of my blog should know what to get for me birthday! I am not greedy ok.... a portable HD will do. ^_^/

Anyway, I think I will do a photo-blog of sorts to commemorate my first family trip overseas. Yeah, sad hor, my very first one in my 29 years of life and it is not even a complete family. My youngest sis didn't come with us as she is busy with uni.

Here we are at the airport. My dad is excited about the leg massager that was provided FOC at the airport. He was just like a kid with his new toy. Dot has kindly bought my parents some famous Ang Ku Kueh from her work place near Chinatown. They tasted really fabulous like at about 6plus AM in the morning after we have checked in and got our tickets for our flight to HK for transit, then another set to Taiwan.

From left: Bro, papa, Ryce & mama





Here we are on the aircraft. I had to mention this funny incident. Of course on this flight to HK, there were many MLC on board. When the FAs were serving meals, I heard them asking for rice. Unfortunately, they only had a choice of rice porridge or omelette for us and I saw that they chose the porridge immediately and proceeded to gobbled them down in like less than 2 mins. Gosh. Were they that hungry?

I purposely chose omelette and spoke to the FA in English out of self-defiance to all those MLC. Haha...yeah I know, childish right?



It's hard to accomodate 5 pax in a row.

While waiting at HK Int Airport (it was massive btw. It literally blew our minds away).






While running leisurely walk-jog to our transit gate in HK airport (the transit time is less than 1 hour. Cheese lah, my calves cramped after reaching the right gate), I told my mum she has got to walk a bit faster or else she could end up like the famous lady in the world who missed her flight in this very airport to San Fancisco. She laughed.

Kudos to Cathay. It is so different to Emirates. They served us char siew rice on board from HK to Taipei. The flight was a pathetic and short 1.5hour but the crew managed to efficiently served everyone on board and the food was delicious. All non-pork passengers were served sesame-fragrant instant mee in a huge cup. Way cool!

When we reached Taoyuan International Airport, we gathered at the arrival gate to wait for our tour leader. 5 of us spotted the rest of our group immediately. There were a group of 5 boys/men and a couple.

We were milling around aimlessly trying to look for the tour leader with Hong Thai’s blue & yellow sign. I can feel a strange vibe in the air. The crowd at the arrival were huge with groups of giggling girls with a lot of signs in Chinese. Shortly after we left the customs gate, the girls started to squeal/jump up and down/shout/scream in Chinese. ‘Oasis!’ I can hear them whisper in their bits of broken T-english. And then all hell broke loose.

The girls tried to touch 4 men coming out from the customs gate and the bodyguards of the 4 men BODY-shielded the 4 guys as they walked to a waiting bus at the side of the airport. All the time, the girls were screaming away. I swear I saw one girl crying (why do you need to cry?!) and waving to them. I didn’t even know Oasis was coming to Taipei. Ah well, they look pretty cute up front. It’s a pity I didn’t get any photo cos I was excited about the entire episode as well.

In the midst of confusion, we found our tour leader. We took attendance on the bus and off we sped to our first stop: Jing Yong DIY Tomato farm in Taizhong. No idea why this farm is a necessary stop but it was really interesting to know there are so many different types of tomatoes in the world. And the toilets there do not lose to the Malaysian highway ones. Smelly and wet.

Here's a series of mum with tomato, sis with tomato, me with tomato, mum & dad with tomato.... you get the idea.









And this totally random thing to sell in this tomato farm


Then we proceeded to Fengjia Night Market in Taizhong. Our tour leader brought us to this famous street right outside Fengjia Uni where there are lots of kids teenagers queuing up for roadside stall food. This particular street has been christened 'The Street of Bentos' cos everywhere our eyes turn, we see shops selling freshly packed bento and at a very cheap price starting from NT$60 which is roughly about $2 plus for a takeaway food packed with rice, 2 meats and a veg. Very affordable for uni students which is exactly why this street is just right outside the uni.






Between the 5 of us, we shared 2 bowls of herbal soup noodles, some Taiwanese version of hot dog in a bun but in rice, deep fried sweet potato fries & papaya milk. Yummy.

It was a tiring first day and we crashed immediately after reaching the hotel.