Taiwan 11 Days Trip (4) - Sun Moon Lake

17th November 2014

Arrived Sun Moon Lake in a very good weather. The sky was blue, the water was crystal clear and the air was fresher, hahaha!

Sun Moon Lake 日月潭

Sun Moon Lake 日月潭

The Taxi dropped us in front of our accommodation, which have a very interesting name, Sun Moon Lake Honeymoon Hotel. We left the hotel after check-in and dropped our bags inside the room. Me and CY were very hungry, it's almost 2pm and we haven't had our lunches, so we just had lunch in a restaurant nearby. We had minced pork rice 滷肉飯, something like bean curd 豆干 and kombu. The minced pork rice was nice, but I didn't like soy products, so I couldn't say whether the bean curd was nice or not. 

Taiwanese lunch (minced pork rice, etc)

Taiwan 11 Days Trip (3) - Alishan

16th November 2014

After Fenqihu, me and CY took bus to Alishan from Fenqihu. Once we reached Alishan, CY rushed to the train station to buy the next day train ticket to Chushan 祝山. While I stayed to take care of the bags. Then, a travel agency staff came over and introduced a package to go to Hehuanshan 合欢山, she told me that for past few days, due to the weather, the Chushan sun rise was a no-show, while Hehuanshan sun rise was seen for past few days, I was in a dilemma, actually I was prepared for a no-show sun rise because the weather was not nice. However, presented with another alternative didn't make me happy, I hate too much choices. At the end, CY and me decided to stick to original plan, we would stay in Alishan and hoped for the Chushan sun rise.

After that, we checked into our hotel, Alishan Shermuh Hotel. Then, we left and walked around the Alishan Station. Well, the structure was quite special, it's a wooden building and I think it looks a bit like the rumah panjang in Sarawak from far. Around 5pm, the day went completely dark, and we felt hungry and cold, so we chose to eat steamboat in a restaurant there, the taste was so so only and we ended up buying oden in 7-11 to eat in our hotel room. Ah, we should have just had convenience shop oden for dinner because the steamboat dinner was not cheap, and the most importantly, not nice. Well, it's on the mountain, they probably needed to bring all the stuffs from the ground and it added to the cost. Anyway, Taiwan has many wild boar dishes, when we went to the restaurant, the waiter suggested we go for a wild boar themed steam boat, but I didn't eat wildlife, so didn't choose that. After that, another group of tourists came to the restaurant, and the matriarch just directly said no to wild boar, she said anything ok, but not wildlife. Sounds like my mother, hahaha!

Alishan Train Station

Alishan Train Station (the digital thermometer showed that it's 14 degree Celsius then)

Taiwan 11 Days Trip (2) - Fenqihu 奋起湖

16th November 2014

Initially, me and CY wanted to take the early 7.10 am bus to Fenqifu, however, we both overslept and the next bus was afternoon. Since we couldn't catch the bus, we took our breakfast leisurely. The hotel breakfast was quite nice, I had a very Taiwanese breakfast, I ate porridge with fermented bean curd, fruits, coffee and drinks made from rice and peanuts called "rice milk", according to Wikipedia. Lol!

After breakfast, we walked to the bus station to ask about other alternatives to go to Fenqihu. Well, sadly, there were none. Then, we met the private transport provider that kept promoting his business to us the day before, he still have spaces left in the van, however, the trip was to go to Alishan, he agreed to detour to bring us to Fenqihu, but with a higher fees. We had to agree because we didn't want to wait until afternoon for the bus. (*Don't worry too much about the schedule, if you miss the schedule of the public transport to Alishan / Fenqihu, there are many private operators that offer transport to these 2 places!)

The driver brought us to Fenqihu Hotel, and told us to leave our bags in the souvenir shop next to the hotel. Apparently, the driver knew the owners and owners offered to help keep our bags while we toured around Fenqihu, I didn't see any lockers in Fenqihu Station. We were so lucky! It would be difficult to lug along a luggage to jungle trek.

We couldn't find travel brochures for Fenqihu, so we just read the travel information in the lobby of Fenqihu. After that, we started our Fenqihu trip. First we went to the Fenqihu Station, during that time, no train was scheduled to pass by, so it was quite quiet. It was a good thing though, we could take photos leisurely, didn't have to wait for the right time for the crowd to disperse.

There is nothing special about the Fenqihu station itself, it's just a normal building. However, next to the station, there's a wooden structure (阿里山森林铁路奋起湖车库 Alishan Forest Railway Fenqihu Train Garage) that houses some old locomotive train cars and a model of the Alishan railway. It's quite fascinating.  

Fenqihu Station

Alishan Forest Railway Fenqihu Train Garage

After that, we went to the square bamboo forest, the bamboo species was not native to Taiwan though, the bamboo originated from China. Anyway, the view was nice. It's not a very big area though, one can walked round the forest in 10 to 15 minutes. 

bamboo forest

Taiwan 11 Days Trip (1)

15th November 2014 - Day 1

This was my first and only trip in 2014 and provided me a chance to clear my annual leaves. I planned for this trip with a friend of mine and decided on the date end of 2013. I bought my flight tickets on February 2014 after Air Asia offered some discounts for 2 people travelling together. The initial price for return tickets for single person was RM900.00 ++, and with the discount, the initial price for return tickets for 2 persons was RM1074.00 ++. So, I just bought the tickets, after adding meals and charges for everything else, the total bill was RM1666.00 for two person.

On that morning, I had difficulty waking up because I worked very late the night before, and had to finish packing my luggage after I went home. I went to KLIA2 with a very tired body, I think I only managed to get three hours sleep. The queue to check-in the luggage was short, so after me and CY check-in the luggage, we still had a whopping three hours to kill before we board the flight. I had no appetite, but CY haven't had her breakfast, so we went to Bibik Heritage, me to have a cup of coffee and CY had nasi lemak and coffee. I forgot the exact amount of the bill, but I think it's quite reasonable and the the cup of coffee was huge, so satisfying!

After that, we passed the security check and walked towards the boarding waiting room. Well, that's the time I understood why a lot of people criticised the KLIA2 design. The route was long and many shops were squeezed along the way. For shopaholics, maybe this won't annoyed them. However, for me, it's too much.

Anyway, this was my first Air Asia flight, but not the first low cost Airline flight. Well, it's ok, not bad, I missed the in-flight entertainment though. For a flight around 5 hours, after read the in-flight magazine, the rest of the time was quite unbearable. Although CY was next to me, talking for a few hours straight was not really an option too. So, we talked, rested our eyes and waited for the Nasi Lemak Pak Nasser. Well, the nasi lemak was really nice, thumbs up!

After some time, the time passed by slowly when one was in a confined space, so five hours plus later, finally, we reached Taiwan! Well, the Taoyuan International Airport. After we reached there, we registered with the free iTaiwan Wifi service. Then, we decided to be more secured, we bought a temporary Taiwanese number. Since CY was the planner, she kept the Taiwanese number and I used my Malaysian number. Well, just in case if someone wanted to reach us. To make things easier, CY also became the treasurer, we both put 10,000 New Taiwan Dollar (NTD) each to our travel fund to pay for the meals and transports. For others, we will pay from own pocket.

To buy a Taiwanese phone number, one can do it right after go through the immigration. There are 3 major telco booths in the airport, all the offers are more or less the same. We chose the one with less queue. Hahaha! We got a 10 days unlimited internet package with certain amount of talk time. I forgot the price, but I think it was around 600 NTD, the employee at the counter helped to set up everything too, very convenient. Well, it is a right decision because we found out later that the iTaiwan Wifi was not as widespread as we thought earlier.

queuing up to buy a temporary SIM card

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith

Happy Chinese New Year!

I finished the lunar year with a book by Alexander McCall Smith, "The Good Husband of Zebra Drive". Well, the reason I could finish the book was due to the demise of my desktop computer's CPU yesterday. I tried to restore it and re-format it, both fail, finally the error that came out on the monitor was "BOOTMGR is missing". I gave up and read. Now I am typing on a "hybrid" computer, I used my old laptop (the monitor was damaged long time ago) as CPU, and I considered my problem solved. Hahaha! Actually I thought of buying a new computer, but I just changed all four tyres of my car, a big expenditure. So, I will live with my current computer until I really need to buy a new one. 

Anyway, back to the book. This time around, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency had some interesting cases. Mma Ramotswe was asked by her cousin to investigate three cases of death that happened in his hospital on the same time each week. While, Mma Ramotswe husband, Mr Matekoni took up a affair outside marriage case himself. Then, Mma Makutsi investigated a theft.