Taipei : Jiufen

After our hike in Shifen, we continued our journey to Jiufen Old Street. From Shifen, we took the train to "Rui Fang" station. Then take the bus to Jiufen Old Street. 

This location is included on the list of places to visit for first-time traveler to Taiwan. 

In my opinion, Jiufen is more suitable for Food Trip. Most of the establishment are selling snacks and native delicacies. You can also find stores selling souvenirs and local products. The streets are bustling with people, mostly tourists. 

However, our main reason for going to Jiufen is to see the inspiration behind a set in "Spirited Away" Movie. It's supposed to be a Tea House looking over the ocean and Jiufen view. It took us a while before we actually found the Tea House. There is no signage to show you the way. But, because this view is very popular there are a lot of people going. 

Tip: Follow the crowd and they will lead you to the Tea House. That's what we did! LOL. The struggle of not being able to understand/speak Chinese... 😤 

Warning: There are a lot of people going in the area, master your Ninja Moves to get a good spot and take instagram-worthy pictures. 😅

Home Thai Kitchen : Sydney

What's for Din-din? It's THAI FOOD! ^_^

Since I've finished watching 2 Moons the series, I've been wanting to try "Thai Pink Milk" (Nom-Yen). Hey! It looks yummy (and it's Pink)!

Luckily, my friend Nadine was in the mood to eat out. I searched the net for all Thai Restaurant's in Sydney who has Nom-yen in their Menu. That's hard work I tell you. Not all Thai restaurants have it. I think I've actually only seen two restaurants and one of them is a little far from the city proper.

And the restaurant of choice? Home Thai Kitchen near Townhall Station. 😁

There was already a queue by the time we arrived (around 6 pm). We waited around 20 minutes before we were actually seated. 

Of course, I ordered nom-yen! Along with stir-fry pork belly, bbq ribs and steamed rice.We also had mango sticky-rice and durian with sticky-rice for desserts. BTW: It was my first time tasting Durian. It tastes weird. emoji

Rating (out of 5)

Price: 4

Medium range. It costs us about $70 (P2,800) for 2 people.

Ambiance: 3

Food is Instagram worthy 😉. However, they used dim lights around the restaurant with spotlights around major places (kitchen, stairs, and rails). Hence, we cannot get a good picture with us on it.

Service: 4

Service was great. The staff is very attentive and they were able to cook and serve our order within a reasonable time. The only thing negative about it was that we had to wait a while before we were seated.

Food: 5

Love it! Especially my Thai Pink Milk! My friend said it's too sweet though. I think it's fine because Thai-food is a little spicy. The sweetness of the nom-yen negates/lessens the spiciness. AN: Well, at least that's how I see it. (sweat drop). 

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. 😂

   

Kaname Performance : Cosmania Philippines

I used to attend cosplay conventions when I was still in the Philippines. Through this conventions, I  met (fangirl, not personally 😚) some of the well-known cosplayers in the world. One of my idols is Kaname (official fbpage) from Japan. Guess what? Not only is he a great cosplayer, but he can SING as well! OMG! I was so jealous when I received this video from my sister. 😆

Video credit to my sister: Clare

Enjoy fan-mates! 😘

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. 😁

Chinatown : Sydney NSW

Hi all!

I want to share an edited video for the Chinese New Year Celebration here in Sydney. For this event, I was with my friend Cyrl, hence, the video title (ft. Cyrl).

It is actually a month long event with scheduled performances every weekend. We specifically went on a Saturday for the lion/dragon dance and the evening fireworks display.

Special thanks to Ate Cy for accompanying me to different events! 😘

AN: This is another late post. At least it didn't take me a year to post it this time. 😉

AAN: If you are wondering why I've been posting videos lately instead of the usual pictures, the answer is: 

I am too lazy to sort out and edit thousands of pictures. I find it easier to edit the videos, just have to drag and drop in iMovie and cut some of them. Also, most of the videos are already on youtube. I just posted them as private before. 😅

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! 😉

Minato Box Opening Video

Here is another video that had been rotting in my draft for years. I finally had the time/motivation to edit and upload a box opening video for one of my dolls. I purchase him from Alice's collection when they still offer dolls from Illusion Spirit. During that time they also offered a 15% discount for doll purchased, free face up and free international shipping for purchases over $300. 😁

BJD's are mostly pre-ordered. This means that I had to wait for about 30 days for production and face-up (make-up) plus additional days for the actual shipping. Luckily, Alice's Collection used FedEx for doll shipping and it was a door-to-door delivery. (AN: Sometimes they use local international post for shipping that takes about 30 days to arrive and I had to go to the post office to pick-up the items)

Unfortunately, I had to pay the customs duty upon receiving the items which amounted to around P2,800. When you check the receipt, customs fee is only around P1,000. The other fees were charged by FedEx for processing everything (customs pick-up and answering the forms).

Along with My Zhuyin doll, I also purchased some clothes, shoes, and wig.  

Excuse the surroundings, I filmed the box opening in my Brother's room because we had some visitors that day. My parents let them use my room to rest 😅. I was so excited to film and didn't want to wait for them to leave. I did have the chance to get my other dolls and transfer them to my brother's room. 😉

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.