Day 1 - Off to Taiwan (via Hong Kong)!

Finally gotten around to journalise my travel tales from 4 months ago! And am doing so from campus speaks a lot of just how long I have been procastinating. Oops.

Anyhow, after weeks of (frustrating) planning and preparations for the trip, SY, SJ, TJ & myself were finally underway. We met early in the morning, 6 plus, at Changi Airport's Terminal One to check into our Cathay Pacific Flight CX710Q to Taiwan, en route via Hong Kong.

Checking in was a pretty smooth process. We had sometime to kill after we checked in our lagguage. So we decided to head to the newly opened Terminal 3 to look-look-see-see.

Two excited girls, SY & SJ taking a photo in front of the flight info display at Terminal One while waiting for the SkyTrain to Terminal 3:

We wanted to eat something at some restaruant in Terminal 3 for breakfast, but we couldn't find the damn restaruant and we ended up eating... of all things, MacDonald's (-.-)'''

After breakfast, we hurried back to Terminal 1 as it was approaching our flight take off.

Stitch with the girls before taking off:

Take off was pretty smooth, and approximately an hour into the flight, we were served breakfast (again) for our in-flight meal, I had fried carrot cake:

It's the first time I heard (or seen for that matter) an airline serving fried carrot cake in-flight! The rest choose to stick with (the unexciting) western omelette breakfast meal:

Enjoying breakfast while watching "I Am Legend":

I had forgotten how miserably small the in-flight entertainment screens are...

We arrived at Hong Kong's International Airport for a pitstop around noon. The weather in Hong Kong was really foggy. Us waiting at the Terminal:

We were instructed to leave the airplane while it refuels, I'd rather had stayed on the plane to sleep if given a choice:

Before long, instructions were given for us to board the plane, en route to Taiwan's CKS International Airport. The flight number is now CX564Q, but it's the same plane though.

Half an hour into the flight, we were served (again!!!) lunch. Couldn't remember what it was and I didn't snap a photo of it either. So in the space of 6 hours, we ate 3 times. Once at Changi Airport, once on the flight to HK and now on the flight to TW. Yipes...

We arrived at Taiwan around 3pm in the afternoon. I must say, the CKS airport really pales in comparison to Changi or Hong Kong airports as an International Airport. It is really worn down and small.

The customs clearing took, like, forever! And to make things even more amusing, the uncle that served me tried to strike an conversation IN ENGLISH!! Of all languages! I had a really hard time trying to make up what he was trying to convey, asking where I was from and whether am I here on holiday, etc. I mean, I am not trying to say that my command in English is far superior than he is (he was a nice guy by the way), but I appear obviously as a Chinese, or at the very least, my passport indicated my race as Chinese, so what's wrong with conversing in Mandarin? He took like 5 mins to clear me, which in turn explains the long time the flight took to clear the customs.

View of the small airport from the carpark:

The ride from the airport to the hotel was freaking long. I think it was at least an hour. There was another family traveling with us on the mini-van.

Taipei!

The driver dropped off the other family at their hotel (which was right in the middle of Ximending) before going to our hotel, which is also in Ximending.

Street view from our hotel

By the time we settled down, it was already close to 5PM and the day was pretty much gone. Our first order of business was to head to the night market at Raohe. For that, we took the Metro. The Metro system in Taipei is pretty amazing, it takes you to almost everywhere, and Taipei is a pretty huge place. There are 4-5 different operators running different lines.

Ximen Metro Station

Raohe Night Market!

There's pretty much nothing to do there except to eat, eat and eat!

And that's exactly what we did. The first thing we saw upon entering the night market was this freaking long queue at one stall located near the entrance. There were queuing for freshly baked buns, and these buns were baked in the traditional way. It's pretty crispy and it smells pretty darn good.

We also had desserts at one of the stalls near the center of the market. The stall owners first guessed we were from Malaysia, before pin-pointing that we were from Singapore. They told us they get a lot more visitors from Hong Kong and Mainland China these days compared to a few years back.

After eating to our heart's content, we took the (rather long) Metro ride back to our hotel and called it a day.