A trip to Taipei for the First Time

Hello! I went to Taipei in September 2018 for the first time and here are some pictures I took! It was an educational trip but I shall exclude those pictures and show the interesting ones! Without further ado, let's go on a trip to Taiwan, Taipei!

Day 1

By the time we reached Taipei, it was night around 6pm. After dinner at a halal food restaurant, we went straight to Taipei 101. This is how Taipei 101 looks from the bottom. If I say so myself, I think I captured this picture quite well.

This is the ticketing area inside. 

This is the view from the 90th floor I think. So many lights in the darkness. Thank god it wasn't cloudy that night so we were able to see everything nicely! I just love observatories, if you didn't know. They're beautiful. Every time I travel, I make sure I go to an observatory.

 I took a picture with my friend, Michelle, at the observatory. :)

This was a model of Taipei 101 and the nearby buildings inside the observatory itself.

Day 2

The view outside our hotel, day vs night.

 As part of our education itinerary, we went to Cold Storage and this boat figure was outside. It was quite interesting.

They sold some cute and interesting drinks below! I didn't buy any of them unfortunately since I don't fancy going to the bathroom or having a stomachache when we're on the bus most of the time. They have mickey mouse, Disney tsum tsum, pokemon drinks that we'll never see in Singapore! It's quite cheap, about $2-3 per bottle/can.

The frozen food section. I started drooling upon seeing the food!!

The wine/alcohol packaging be looking so fine and pretty. It's about $10-12.

At night, on the way to Ximending, we passed by a wall with really cool art/graffiti.

 Ximending was lively, with many people on the streets, and you can occasionally hear storeowners calling for people to buy their stuff. It was a bustling shopping street. I bought some food as souvenirs and played the crane machines there. Will show pictures at the end.

Day 3

We went to Leofoo Theme Park. It was a 1.5-hour bus ride from where our hotel was at. There was an interesting giraffe figure at the entrance. Can you believe that red building on the right is the toilet?! XD 

 The entrance to the theme park. A little underwhelming, to be honest.

Sat this water ride with my friend, the plunge down made my stomach drop as well. It was a steep and high drop down. It has 2 drops; the 1st one is the right (shorter) one, and the 2nd is the left (higher) one. It was fun XD we got quite drenched since we didn't have any coats to protect our clothes but it dried within an hour in the hot weather over there (33 degrees).

That circle on the right is a 360 degrees ride. You basically go upside down. I didn't ride it as I didn't think I could do that without puking ><

Dustbins. 

The buildings there reminded me of the castle at Far Far Away in University Studios Singapore.

We were surprised that most of the rides didn't have that long queues. For example, this merry go round ride. There was no one in the queue. Maybe as it was a thrill-type of theme park, so everyone went to the thrill rides. We didn't even wait 2 minutes to get on this ride. On the whole ride, there was only my friend and me.

While Leofoo is a theme park, it is also a zoo. We saw some rare flamingoes, a white tiger, and meerkats.

Day 4

We visited a university in the day and headed to Shilin Night Market. The sun was setting by then and I was able to capture this beautiful picture with the sky.

 The streets reminded me of Bangkok for its narrow alleyways.

Our group of 5 girls shared 3 plates of fried rice and a side dish and it was so yummy!

Day 5

Apparently, our teacher forgot to specify the timing of being at Jiufen to release the lanterns to the staff there. So after an hour-plus bus ride, we were there in broad daylight with a temperature 30 - 33 degrees, the sun burning our skins. The weather in Taiwan is no joke. But the place was empty, which was great. We passed a temple along the way which had some nice wooden blocks with carvings on them.

After writing our wishes as a group on one lantern, we watched it go up in the sky as the sun burned our eyes and skins.

At night, we went back to Ximending and found a cute shop selling these Studio Ghibil items.

There was a long line of gachapons on the street as well.

Day 6

We visited the soap factory, where we had a workshop on making our own soaps. We chose our own mold, color, and carvings :)

They had a mini shop selling various soaps at about $6 - $8.

 We then departed for the airport and saw this cute penguin there <3 for a small airport, the decoration was quite nice (right pic).

Finally, we're at the souvenirs section! These are some things I bought for my family back home. Biscuits, cookies, crackers, pineapple pastries, etc

I love stitch as you can see. The first 2 rows I bought at the night market (keychain, phone ring, ezlink cardholders) and the last row are the toys I caught at the crane machines at Ximending. They're quite easy to catch, I think I spent only $7 catching all of them. My main objective was to catch the stitch plushie on the right, and in the process, I got all of those Disney plushies (left pic).

It's $0.50 per try, while Singapore is $1 - $2 per try. A ripoff since you can't even get a single toy without spending a lot of money. 

Yeah, that's about it for my trip to Taipei! It was fun despite the unsatisfactory food as compared to Japan's. It was my first time traveling with many friends and I probably wouldn't forget my experience there :)