Sunday, February 04, 2007

Day 4 of Taiwan 2007 Trip

Going to be a long post...

20 Jan 2007 (Sat)


Woke up in the morning with shoulder ache, and feeling really tired. 才奔波两天就那么累了。 What I worried more was my legs, must not let 旧病复发。 又累又痛，因此变得很安静。Sally thought I was unhappy with something. hahaha.

Where got unhappy？ Even though I had visited Dan Shui last year, I still wanna visit it again. Cos I like the place so much!

While waiting for others to arrive at 淡水Mrt, my mood got better. Because for the first time over the past few day, the weather was good. Such a sunny day. No rain at all. (looking at the pictures, though it seems that the sun was shining brightly, it wsn't scorching hot. Take note that we were still wearing our jackets).

What a sunny day!



Jessica, Huimei arrived soon. And as we walked along the 淡水老街， we bought some t土产along the way. I need to get 阿婆铁蛋for ah-shui. She specified that she want 阿婆 brand. Went to Sophisca candy store of the 淡水branch & bought more candies.

Had 阿给& 鱼圆for lunch. They took me to a different stall from the one I visited last year. But to me, I feel both stalls’ ah-geis tasted great.

If you did not read my last year posting on the food I had from my March , 2006 Taiwan trip阿给are fried tang hoon wrapped in beancurd skins . Each costs only NTW$30 (abt S$1.50)





Decided to visit the tourist attraction -- 红毛城or Fort San Domingo. Chile joined us as we walked along the 淡水河边。 3 ladies are a ruckus, not to mention now there are 6 ladies in total. Dunno who started the idea of wanting me to pretend to jump into 淡水河边 just like what 李圣杰 did in his 《很想说》MV.






闹够了，就继续走向“红毛城”。A brief description of the fort can be found on this admission ticket which I had carefully “preserved" (click on it for larger view):





I took this picture of he building and was rather suprised by the colours of the sky and the building which turned out. I swear i din did any touch-up to it:




Somehow I think we had more fun taking pictures than touring the place. (most of the picture shown here were taken by Nita & Huimei)

See what Chile did:




And even though we were touring the place in a group of 6, we still manage to take group photos without getting assistance from other people. Nita is the best, know fully to make use of fire hydrants, walls to position her camera and set it on timer-mode.




As you see, the only problem we faced were “路人甲，乙” who get into the pic. Hahaha.


Walked back to 淡水河边and guessed what, we heard someone performing 《痴心绝对》。 It’s not the first time we heard it during the day and burst out laughing when the performer introduce himself as “阿杰”。

先生，搞不好你也姓“李”吧。

Frankly speaking, he is not a bad singer. Quite a crowd forming to listen to his performance. A shy little boy even went up to buy his CD.

Went to try out their 巨无霸ice-cream:




See I was rather nervous when holding it.

Cos it wasn’t mines. Huimei bought it at ard S$1 only.

I had bought a smaller version at S$0.50 – green tea & strawberry flavor.

Wanna see “Spiderman” perform but too bad the Spiderman-of-the-day was not active, just stood around. Heard from others that they had seen a Spiderman jumping ard, making lots of poses.


Oh forgot to mention that Miss Nita is a ‘dangerous woman” when she had her camera with her. Cos she can be taking picture of you without being noticed. But had to admit she is really good, see this picture she took when I was resting at the river bank


(I changed it to sepia mode)



Set off to 橘屋.日式陶锅 opposite 淡水捷运站for our Shabu-shabu dinner. I had never tried this type of individual steamboat dinner before. Good leh. need not worry abt not having spicy soup base where others want it. hahah.



This is the menu, which is also the "coaster".



Took a few pics while waiting for the soup to heat up:







Had a really great dinner. The meat & seafood were fresh. Ate a lot of new “yong-tau-foo” stuff which cannot be found in Singapore—cheese fishballs, white & purple balls which are a mixture of flour & yam.

And the price – NTWS$330. That is ard S$15. Including free flow of drinks too. So I guess it cost less than our usual ChongQing steamboat @ beach road.



Sally left to attend to some matters while we had Haohao joining us towards the end of our dinner.

Went to 忠孝东路 ， intending to find a place where we can sit down & chat. Was turned off at the first place cos it required a minimum spending of NTW $800 each (though they say we can order food, sing ktv). The most far-nie thing was that when we opened the door, the counter staff said :

“对不起，这不是让人来跳舞的。”


我们像是去跳舞的吗？！！！！


In the end, we settled at a small pub called Queen Coffee. Long story lah, dun wanna explain here. Just interesting to learn that in Taiwan, many of such pubs were another business (in this case, it serves coffee ) in the day and turned into pubs (and dun even serve non-alcoholic drinks) as the sky turn dark..



So that’s the end of my long day on 20 Jan 2007.

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