Taiwan Day 1

It is our family's first maiden trip together after more than 20 years. My parents were excited and woke up really early. Our Jetstar flight to Taiwan was at 7.10am. Before 6am, we've reached the Changi Airport. I have actually done a web check-in the day before. So I was expecting the check-in process to be a breeze. However, the web check-in lane was slow as there was only one counter servicing it. Ironically, those queuing at the normal lane got to check-in much faster as there were quite a few counters in operation. (Why should we do web check-in if the process is going to be slower?) After checking in, we went to Wang's cafe to have our breakfast. We ordered some toast, mee siam and laksa. But the mee siam and laksa at Wang's cafe were really terrible. I've tried their mee siam at the harborfront branch before and it was good. What a sharp difference in standards between outlets.

As it was my parent's first time on a budget airline, I was worried they might complaint. Luckily, they do not find their seats too cramp. Soon after the plane took off, my parents went into their dreamland while we entertained ourselves with movies on our phones and tablet. Changi airport does not allowed us to bring any water bottles on board. So when the air stewardess came around to sell food and drinks, I bought two Evian mineral water from them (at a costly price). Surprisingly, we were allowed to buy mineral water bottles within the departure hall of Taoyuan Airport and bring them on board when we flew back from Taiwan.

After 4 hours 40 mins, we finally landed at Taiwan Taoyuan Airport, Terminal 1. The weather doesn't look good as expected. A check with the weather forecast shows that for the next 3 days, Taichung would be cloudy with occasional rain too. June isn't a really good time to visit Taiwan.

Day 1_000

Terminal 1 looks rundown and was undegoing renovation. We passed by a money changer on our way to the custom. From the forums, I learnt that the rate at the airport would be better. So we had made plans to change some NT at the airport. But when we compared their rates, we did not find it any better. Did we get the right money changer? We ended up not changing as there was a queue forming and we didn't want to wait. After clearing the custom and picking up our luggages, we found another money changer that gave the same exchange rate. We changed our money there since there wasn't any queue. After that, we went to get our Taiwan sim card from 台湾大哥大 and my brother applied his Taiwan youth card. We took two sim cards each at 800NT package that offer voice and unlimited data plan for our 9 days stay in Taiwan. Overall, I happy with the signal reception and data speed when I used it in Taichung, Hualien and Taipei.

There weren't many eateries or restaurants in Terminal 1, so we made our way to Terminal 2 for lunch. I knew there is a food court at the basement of T2 that offers many different Taiwanese food. We took the sky train to T2 which was a wrong choice. The sky train platform was a far walk from the arrival hall and walking there with so many luggages was very tiring. We should have taken the shuttle bus between Terminal 1 and 2 instead. By the time we reached the food court, it was almost 1pm. But we were glad to have come to the foodcourt. It has many food stalls, including Macdonalds and a 7-eleven. We ordered rice and noodles from 金满园排骨 which my family enjoyed very much. The only thing that not to our liking was the chilli bean paste.

After lunch, we made our way to the bus terminal located on level 1 of Terminal 2, where we took U-bus 1637 to Chaoma station in Taichung. We bought the bus tickets for the 2pm coach. The journey from airport to Chaoma station took more than 2 hours as we met some traffic congestion. If we had taken the HSR to Taichung instead, we'll be able to reach the hotel earlier. We alighted at Chaoma station and took cabs to our hotel, In One City Inn, which is about 5-7 minutes away from Chaoma station. There are plenty of cabs around Chaoma station but I ended up with a cabbie who kept speeding while chewing and spitting betel nuts along the way.

Luckliy all of us reached the hotel safely. We checked in around 4.30pm. We had booked two rooms; a shakespeare double room and a deluxe triple room. The check-in process was fast and the staffs were friendly and helpful. I made the payment for the remainng balance. After getting the room cards, one of the staff led us to the lift and showed us how to use the room card to access the floors which our rooms were on. Our room was on the 8th floor while my parents's shakespeare room were on the 9th floor. Their room was spacious and had a side area for dinning. My family and I enjoyed our stay in this hotel very much. After resting for a while, we went to Fengjia Night Market to spend the rest of the day shopping and eating.

Fengjia night market is the largest night market in Taichung. We were glad to have spend 2 nights there. There were many street foods to try out and most shops only closes after midnight on weekends. From our hotel, we walked along Wenhua Road for approximately 5 minutes and reached the junction of Xi An Street, where Fengjia market is. We continued down Wenhua Road and turned into the food alley on Lane 20, Fengjia Road. It wasn't too crowded along Wenhua Road. so we thought we were early for the night market. It turned out we were wrong as there was already quite a crowd in the food alley. (Be prepare to queue and wait for your food, especially at those popular stalls. We waited quite long for some of our food.) The first food we tried was a pork burger (熊手包), with had a panda palm imprint on the bread. Probably because we are hungry, it tasted great. We also tried sweet potato fries, BBQ meat stick (like satay), and then we saw this large crowd infront of a stall selling chacoal chicken chop (碳烧鸡排). Seeing that there were so many people buying, we thought it must have been great. We waited about 40 mins for our order to be ready. But it was a real disappointment. The sauce coated on the chicken tasted weird and not to our liking. Furthermore, the sauce made the chicken soggy. Definitely not worth the wait.

There are simply too many food stalls in FJNM that one can finished in a night, As we continued down Lane 20, we passed by a restaurant selling steamboat. The restaurant was pretty crowded and their dishes looks decilious. My parents decided to give it a try while we continued with our 小吃 exploration. We went on to queue for 大肠包小长。 There are two famous stalls in FJNM selling this and it pretty hard to miss it. Located in the heart of FJNM (at the end of Lane 20), you find long queues of people in front of their stalls. 大肠包小长 comes in different flavours. Besides the original flavor, they have the mild hot, spicy, garlic and black pepper flavors among others. I bought the mild spicy and the black pepper. For those who do not know what exactly is 大肠包小长, it is simply a sausage wrapped with glutinous rice with some fillings like cucumber and sauerkraut. Personally, I find it nice but not as great as what some people have claimed. Because it is made of glutinous rice, it can be very filling, We also tried another snack called 米血糕 which is made from glutinous rice and animal blood (normally pig). I find it nothing really special.

We met up with our parents after an hour and continued our way down Lane 19 towards Fuxing Road to begin our shopping. There are plenty of shops selling fasion wear, shoes and ladies accessories along Fuxing Road to Wenhua road. We shopped till about 10 plus before we slowly made our way back to the hotel.