Hotel Puri : Taipei Station

For our Taipei Trip, we decided to stay at Hotel Puri, Taipei Station. It was about 10 minutes walk from Taipei station. We booked a standard twin room for 2 adults. While we were searching for our accommodation, we noticed that most affordable rooms in Taipei are dormitory style with shared bathroom. We wanted a room where we have privacy, own bathroom but still at an affordable price. I think Hotel Puri is the only one that fits these criteria. 

Location: 

Location is near the central station. It is around 10 minutes walk from the station. There are several 7/11 shops around and small restaurants / food stalls where you can buy your meals.

Price: 

I think the price for this is really great. We paid P5,478.86 (144 AUD) for 2 nights standard twin room with private bathroom. There were 2 single bed, safety box, water heater (for tea), complimentary tea bags, coffee, and water. 

Cleanliness: 

The room is very clean. They also do the beddings every day, change towels and refill the supplies. 

Others:

There is no breakfast included for this booking but they do have a mini pantry/kitchen near the reception area. There you can get extra water, tea, coffee and they have snacks available in the morning. I think I saw cereals, milk, and popcorn there (didn't go there for breakfast because we always eat out). If you arrive earlier than the standard check-in time, they allow guest to leave their luggage at the hotel. We did advise them that we might come back late and they said it's ok to do late check-in because they already have our luggage in their storage. Overall, I think this is a great place to stay at an affordable price and does not sacrifice privacy.😁

Taipei : Maokong Gondola

The Maokong Gondola has three (3) stops. Taipei Zoo Station, Zhinan Temple Station, and Maokong Station.

First stop, Taipei Zoo Station. We stayed and went around the zoo for about 2 hours. We didn't spend a lot of time here because our main reason for going is to experience riding the "Gondola" 😉. I'll post the picture from the zoo in a separate blog post. 

We also went down at Zhinan Temple Station because we saw the Giant Dragon Statue from the gondola. We thought since we're already there, why not take some pictures with the dragon? (Insert Dragon Ball Z OST here!😀). The station is still far from the actual temple. There are a lot of Taxis waiting near the station though. So if you're planning on going to the temple and haven't arranged a service in advance, you can take the taxi here. We didn't bother to check how much they are charging. We are in a hurry to get back to the Gondola to reach Maokong Station. 😁

Finally, after 2 stops, we reached Maokong Station! There is a tourist information centre inside the station. There is also a convenience store and several souvenir shops. However, the best part is across the street from the station. They have lots of different tea houses offering a variety of food and drinks. The whole road (maybe about 1-2 km) is filled with tea houses. If you are not keen on walking, there is a big food court (hawker-centre style) just a few minutes from the station. We tried their oyster pancake, milk tea, and lemon tea. The oyster pancake was so yummy! You can also try this pancake at Raohe Night Market. We saw several stores selling it there as well.

  

Taipei: Taipei 101

Taipei 101 is Taiwan's highest building and was actually the World's tallest building until 2010 (before Burj Khalifa in Dubai). It is a couple of minutes walk from the train station. The building is so tall, you'll need to find a spot few blocks away if you want to snap a whole picture of it. 

On our quest to find the best spot, we passed by some cool decorative balls which were great for wide angle mirror pics. 😉

Taipei: Shifen

Shifen Old Street is one of Taipei's most popular tourist destination. Tourist flock the streets for their wish lanterns! The old railway is still operational. The shops do know the daily schedule so they will advise their customers when they need to leave the railway. 

After lighting/flying your lantern, you can take a walk to Shifen Waterfalls. It took us around 45 minutes -1 hour to the falls. We did stop for short breaks and picture taking in between. If you are not keen on going for an hour walk but still want to see the waterfalls, you can take a taxi. It will take you to the closes drop point and from there you just have to walk for about 15-20 minutes. The Taxi cost around 100 NTD each. We walked from old street to the waterfalls and took the taxi going back. We were too tired to walk the whole way back to the station. 😂

   

Lego Land: Malaysia

During our trip to Singapore, we included a day trip to Legoland in our itinerary. Lego land is located in Johor Baruh Malaysia, which is around 1-hour bus ride away from SG. 

Here is the route that we took to get to Legoland

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Guide from (https://m.justgola.com/blog/how-to-travel-to-legoland-from-singapore-233)

At Jurong East Bus Exchange:

• Get on CW3 or CW4 bus (S$ 4) to get through the Tuas Checkpoint. Then, get off at the CIQ interlink. Operating hours: 7:10 am – 11:45 pm (Mon-Fri), and 7:30 am – 11:45 pm on weekends.

When you reach CIQ Interlink, get to another bus: 

• Bus JP02 (RM6 / S$ 2.50) for weekdays. Operating our: every three hours only at 8:30 am, 11:30 am, 2:30 pm, and 5:30 pm.

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We didn’t bother to pre purchase our tickets online because we expected that there won’t be a lot of people in the park. It’s a Tuesday around the month of October. So we anticipated that most of the children are still in school. 😉

Upon arrival, we purchase our tickets. As you can see, no people around! We even thought that it’s closed. We did check their website before leaving SG and there is nothing indicated about the park being closed that day. 

So, we were able to visit the park, get to all the rides and take tons of pictures without photobombers. 😁

Nando’s : Malaysia

Whenever I go to Malaysia, I always make sure to eat at least once in Nandos. I just love their lemon and herb marinated chicken with mild peri-peri sauce! Also, prices are significantly cheaper compared to SG and other countries. Individual platter with ¼ chicken and 2 side dishes is around 21RM (250 PHP/6 AUD). I frequently order the ¼ lemon and herb chicken with chips, veggie salad, and iced tea. Since we are already in Malaysia for our trip to Legoland, we decided to have our 👍dinner  in here before catching the bus to SG. 

AN: I don’t know why but I think that the food in Nando’s Malaysia tastes different from the one you can get in the Philippines and Australia. They are all under Nando’s but different taste. Is that possible? 😅

Rating (out of 5)

Price: 5

Very affordable!

Ambiance: 4 

Instagram worthy 😉

Service: 5 

Very fast. In my knowledge, they cook/prepare the food once orders are made. It took around 15-20 minutes for our food to arrive. Also, for all the times that I've been here (two location, Nandos KLCC and City Square JB) I didn't have to wait before we were seated. There is always a seat available! 😁

Food: 5

I love it! Chicken was cooked well. You can really taste the flavors and marinate. Special mention for their salad dressing. I forgot what it is called but I think its the best dressing I've tasted.

 

Taipei Taiwan Travel Video

Hello hello! 😀

I'm too lazy to sort out and edit pictures from my recent travel ( I got around 1000+) right now. For the mean time, I decided to just post a video. I was planning on showing a short snippet for each place I visited. However, I found out that I was not able to take video in some places. 😂

I'll try to find some motivation and battle my laziness in order to sort/edit pictures and write the actual blog post.

I put "ft. Bro Bear" in the video because he was my companion for the duration of this trip.

Places we visited:

• Shifen
• Jiufen
• Shilin Night Market
• Taipei Zoo
• Maokong
• Zhinan Temple
• Dazhi Bridge
• Raohe Night Market
• Taipei 101
• Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
• Ximending

AN: I am LOVING the emoji feature right now. If you notice from my recent posts, I'm now using EMOJIs! 😉

Batam Island: Indonesia

Batam island is just an hour boat ride away from Singapore. It cost around 50 SGD (P1650) for a round trip boat ticket. Their currency is Indonesian Rupiah which is equivalent to 0.0038 PHP. For our pocket money (this was only a day trip. We just need money for lunch, snack, and souvenir.) we exchange P2700 pesos (for 4 people) which were converted to around 720,000 Rupiah. WOW! Almost a million! 😏 The boat fare was more expensive!

What were we able to buy for 720,000 rupiah or 2,700 pesos? Since I can’t remember the exact breakdown, I’ll just enumerate everything that we bought.

• Lunch at a restaurant located on the 3rd floor of Mega Mall Batam Centre. Meal + fruit shake (for 4 people).
• Food as pasalubong “souvenirs” from Mega Mall supermarket (5 big packs of dried jackfruit, a couple packs of cookies, 2 sweet potato chips and a bottle of mineral water)
• A box of coffee roti bread (10 packs) - the roti actually cost 100,000. That’s 10,000 each!
• Four grande frappuccinos (different flavors) from Starbucks Indonesia. 

We had to spend all the money, or at least leave minimal amount because unlike other currencies, Indonesian rupiah expires. So even if we do have a plan to return, we’re not sure if they will still accept the money.

Note: We didn’t have any rupiah when we left SG. We did forex when we arrived in Batam because my cousin said the exchange rate there is more favorable than in SG.

Bugis Street : Singapore

If you are looking for affordable Asian fashion in Singapore, go to Bugis Street! It’s a whole street with shops selling clothes, shoes, and accessories following the latest Asian fashion trend. 

The styles available really suit my taste. The best part? You get the items at a bargain price. You can even haggle for some of them. I think I bought my graduation dress along with one sleeveless blouse for SGD 18 (PHP 594 or AUD 15). I bought a few more items such as “skorts” (skirt+shorts) and more office blouses. I’ll try to post them all below. 😀

Oh! There were also fruit shake shops which offer fresh and cheap fruit shakes. They have a long queue as well. 😉

Chinatown : Singapore

Chinatown SG is popular for cheap restaurants and souvenirs. Our main purpose for going here, however, is the latter. My siblings wish to buy a few souvenirs (by few I mean everyone they know) for their friends. 

Everything is in package, 4,5 or 10 for $10. Keyrings, bag, shirt and etc. The pictures that I got were all stolen photos because we were trying to bargain with the prices and we didn’t want to show the seller that we can afford expensive phones and cameras. 

Although now that I thought about it, it probably wouldn’t have an effect even if they saw them. They still know that we were tourist… 😅