It's time for Taiwan!

So, recently I went to Taiwan for holiday trip with my family. Usually, when I go with the "elder", I prefer to join a tour group as it is easier and hassle free.

As most of you know, joining tour means you have to have high acceptance attitude. Hotel always far far away from city, restaurant choices is not the best one in town, spending most of your time in the bus, and there still more things that can't satisfied your travel instinct. But it is good for the "elder".

After much effort, finally we travel by our own *yay* We are going to go to Taipei, Jiufen, Tainan, and Kaoshiung for 8 days.

Super excited to go, I was browsing a lot about Taiwan cities and what to do but what shocked me, there is not much blog or information regarding Taiwan for tourist. Most of the review was from 2012, 2013, or maybe 2014. Since it is 2015 already, so some things has changed.

I hope my blog will help you arrange your own Taiwan trip.

Day 1 - Taipei

Arrived there in the afternoon, around 4 PM, there is not much to do anymore in my first day. Since it was super early flight, so all of us was super tired and sleepy. We decided to stay in Green World Hotel Zhonghua, which located in Ximen area. For us, it was a very convenience place to stay if you want to go around Ximen area and it is cheap if you compare with other hotel around there.

It located right besides exit 6 of Ximen MRT station. When you travel from airport with heavy luggage, you can go by taxi (around NT$1100) or you still can go by MRT but exit 6 has no lift or elevator. It's your choice :D

The lobby is at the 13th floor. Don't go to the wrong floor because there also another one or two hotel in the same building hehe..

The decoration for the breakfast place

Twin bed room with no window

The bathroom

The room is quite small but the lighting is good and the most important thing is... clean! I also love their toilet as they use what I call "Japanese closet" haha! #happy

Next to their building, there is also 7 eleven and Family Mart, so if you crave for midnight snack or cute drink, no worries, problem solved.

Right after we put our luggage to our room, we go directly to Yongkang street.

Went there by MRT, stop at Dongmen MRT and look for Yongkang street in exit sign. It could be exit 4 or 5 (sorry I forgot). If you are in the right exit, once you are out from the station, in your right side should be NET, Taiwan fashion brand.

Go straight and in your right side, you will see Sun Merry bread shop. Many people buy pineapple cake there, but for me, Ciate still taste better.

Read some reviews from some blog, Kao Chi is Din Tai Fung rival and most of local prefer to eat there to avoid the long queue. So, with high expectation, we go there and tried their famous dish.

Kaochi menu

Some kind of Pork Pao

Pork Xiao Long Bao

 Over all, the Xiao Long Bao skin is too thick in my opinion. The taste is also so -so. It can't be compared with Din Tai Fung. We didn't try the other menu as we are planning to eat more variety in Yongkang Street. So, only if you have time and spare spot in your stomach, you can try.

After eating at Kaochi, we go straight and found out Smoothie House. You can see their advertisement everywhere in Dongmen MRT station. The queue is super long but it worth the wait!

supposedly our photo ><

Mango Ice with sorbet

It taste superb! especially we are eating it in a hot summer weather. There are many choices, but this one is the most ordered items. The mango is sweet and the Mango sorbet make it perfect! The portion is huge and don't worry, you will finish it as it tasted soo goood.

There are two choices for the mango ice, using sorbet or pudding. We are happy with this one but sadly we have no time to try the other variation. 

After our stomach are full, we just walk along the street for not so long because we want to go back to Ximen area to shop.

Apparently, after we arrived in Ximen, my mom can't stop requesting to stop by in modern toilet restaurant. So, with full stomach, we go there and see if we can do dessert only.

Arriving there, it is already around 9.30 PM so we need to order super fast as 9.30 PM is their last order time. They have minimum spending for each person so you can order anything but in total it should be tally with the minimum spending requirement. Finally we order food as well as we need to fulfill the minimum spending.

It's me playing around with the decoration

The taste of the food is not good, especially the ice cream (once again, this is in my opinion). We ordered sukiyaki set and pork curry set. Both doesn't taste good and it is quite pricey as well. It is good to go there once, just to know and play around, but I won't coming back again.

So, this is what I do in my first day, you can continue to my second day until I go home in the next post.