from plane -- It’s about 4pm Pacific Standard Time right now and I’m on
the plane, about 5 more hours until my arrival back home. Just wanted to use
the time to recollect on the past 9 days or so. But to backtrack even far from
that, I had asked Ellice to come with me to Singapore and Taiwan to explore. We got to Singapre at about 1am in the morning. I called
both Phan and Jaycee at the airport to let them know of my arrival and then
headed for the hotel. I had booked a package at the travel agency, so they
arranged for a hotel transport and everything and things were fairly
convenient. After dropping everyone else off at their hotels, the driver
finally arrived at our hotel (Furuma Riverfront) at what I estimated to be 2am.
We checked in and went to our room and I took a shower and decided to call Phan
and Jaycee again to see what we can schedule for the next day’s outing in Singapore.
Phan was all disoriented when she answered the phone and after I talked for a
while she didn’t give me much of a response, and later told me she had no idea
what I had just said, so I told her we’ll plan in the morning. After hanging up
with her, I called Jaycee but couldn’t get through. I estimated this to be
about 3am, since by this time I still hadn’t adjusted my time and wasn’t
exactly sure what the time difference was. I watched TV until about 4am since I
couldn’t sleep and later turned off the lights by my bed to get some rest.
Ellice was all surprised and asked, “You’re going to sleep?!?” And I said sure,
I don’t want to be jetlagged tomorrow. She then told me it was already almost
5am, so then I figured there was really no piont in sleeping. So I took another
shower and got ready to head out at 6am just to look around the area. We left
at about 6.30 and when we headed to the gas station, the lady told us it was
only about 5.30am.. there was no clock in the hotel room!! Go figure..
We met up with Phan later that day, walked around a bit in
Clarke Quay 
and then met up with Jaycee in the afternoon to eat Hainan Chicken
Rice in Chinatown.
Looks plain, but good stuff! They cooked the rice with chicken soup or something, so the rice was flavored and mildly salty.
After that I was really tired and we decided to head back to
the hotel to nap – which ended up being a 4hr nap (Jaycee later kept saying “I
didn’t know you guys came to Singapore to sleep” :D). After that we took a taxi to Jaycee’s apt and
he took us to a place that’s similar to what they call “hawkers” where there
are stands selling food and a large area where you eat – I guess kind of like a
food court.. but the difference is you buy whatever food you want from each of
the stands and you give them your table # and they bring it to your table. We
had the infamous sting ray, squid, vegies, and duck sroup with sugar cane juice
to drink. 
sting ray.. i had no idea it was edible!!
the squid was so spicy! we didn't finish this.
I thought the concept of that eating area was really interesting, and
the food was great. Afterwards, Jaycee showed us the area and we walked around
for a bit. I felt like that area was amazing.. such a peaceful place, and I
loved the lifestyle that they had – it was after dinner time and people were
just sitting around talking and relaxing by the beach. It seemed like a great
place to settle down.
The next day we had a ½ day tour arranged by the hotel but
it sucked so we left on the 3rd stop (there were 5). We shopped
around Chinatown and got some souvenirs. Then Phan came to our hotel and we
went to see the merlion-- 
and then to the Raffles hotel to get the infamous Singapore Sling – not bad.
They served peanuts and you throw the shells on the floor -- like at Roadhouse Grill.
After
that we met up with Jaycee who worked close by. It was the first time I’d seen
him all dressed up and it was cute. He took us to eat Prata, cuz I said I saw these people eating it and it looked so good.
Indian egg sandwich or something -- roti john?? -- OMG best sandwich EVER!! 
Goreng or something.. indian noodles? suuuuch good noodles! 
This is called chicken briyani I think. and I don't know how they make this crap, but it is seriously the best chicken I've ever had. duuude I was full already by the time this came out, but I took a bite and I practically finished the entire chicken!! (phan and ellice were already full .. I don't even think ellice tried it.. and jc didn't mind that I loved it so much =D)
The prata was great with
curry. This particular prata had egg between the layers. man I
loved it all! Afterwards we went to Sweet Talk to get boba. We sat down and
Jaycee and I just reminisced about Japan.. good times.. after that we went to the
MRT station to head back to the hotel.
Day 3 was time for us to head to Taiwan. I really didn’t
want to leave Singapore because I was already missing Phan and Jaycee. I called
them at the airport to say bye again. When I arrived in Taiwan, I was no longer
excited about anything because I was missing the two dumbasses so much. We took
the taxi to Tao Yuan, where Ellice’s mom was and stayed there the first night.
Ellice's mom bought stinky tofu and I tried some for the hell of it. OMG it stank like crazy freakin dirty ass gutter, but I had to try it.. and.. it wasn't as bad as it smelled, but it still tasted funny. I think it's an acquired taste, and I wouldn't mind slowly acquiring the taste =P I love tofu!
The second day Ellice’s mom took us to Taipei where their other apt was, and
left us at mid-afternoon. We walked to Taipei 101 -- 
and then went to Shi Lin Yie
Shi (Shi Lin Night Market). It was indeed interesting. We bought some souvenirs
and ate lots of food. 
shot of Shi Lin night market
tried the o-ah-jien or whatever.. basically oysters and lettuce in egg. ehhh.. not that great.. i had no idea prior to the trip that "o ah" meant oysters.. ^_^' i don't like oysters.. but i had to try it because of "Corner With Love"
we also had the shaved ice because Taiwan shaved ice isn't quite the same as what we have here. The ice is EXTREMELY soft and melts in your mouth like cotton candy or something. We got egg pudding, almond jello, and red bean over green tea shaved ice. it was ehhhh.. class 302 or whatever has better taiwanese shaved ice than this one..
The next day Ellice wanted to go to the Chian Kai Sek
Memorial so we went there and then walked to Ding Tai Fung to get the dumplings
that I wanted. The xiao long bao was pretty good –
 the outer wrap was super thin and
the soup inside cooled quickly. The shu mai that we tried, however, was not very tasty (just for the record, that was not
my choice =P.. I had wanted another type of dumplings but since I had chosen
the soup dumpling already..). The beef noodle soup was okay.. Ellice said we
should get the soup since Taiwan is known for it.. but.. the restaurant isn’t
known for that. I think it’s all about the same though. Later we walked over to Xi Men Ding and did
more shopping and eating. We then went home but there wasn’t much to do, so we
walked over to a local night market and did more shopping and eating there.
On our third day in Taipei, we went to Dan Shui and got the
footlong ice cream that I wanted.
 This looks nasty cuz it was kind of melting already. It wasn’t as good as I thought it would be anyway –
it wasn’t even ice cream! More like sorbet and I’m not a sorbet fan.. I had
green tea and strawberry. For 20taibi, it was worth it though. Less than a
dollar for a cool ass looking picture! I threw away like ¾ of the ice cream after taking the picture and
ate the rest. We walked around for a while and I found some really cool
souvenirs there.. at least I liked them, and it wasn’t too expensive. I can’t remember what we did after that..
probably wasn’t significant.. but later that night I went to the salon and got
my hair done as I wanted to prior to the trip. Actually I was torn between
getting my hair curled, or getting it straighted and highlighted. I ended up
doing the latter because I’m not mentally prepared for curls yet.. next year!
Ellice, however, decided not to do anything to her hair other than a minor
trim..
Our fourth day was spent in Hua Lien where we joined a tour
to see the Taroko Gorge.
I honestly didn’t think it would be that great with a
tour cuz tours are usually stupid with lots of old people and crappy food and
they try to get you to buy stupid things. But I have to say our tour guide made
it so much better with her humor. The group wasn’t as old as I had anticipated,
and everyone had all sorts of different backgrounds.Everyone seemed to
be travelling for business except us =) I felt like I was lazy or something. So after the tour, we took the plane back to Taipei. That same night we cleaned up the apt and headed back to Tao Yuan to meet up
with Ellice’s mom.
Our last day before taking the 11pm flight, we went to Yang
Mei where Ellice’s aunt lived and she took us to the beach and we rented bikes
and rode around the area. Interesting experience indeed! =D
My flight is landing soon and I am VERY happy to be back
home.. ready to get back to work and my normal life. | 
