i'm back mann.

I’M BAAAAACCCKKKKK!!!!

yup. the trip to taiwan with my parents, bro, aunt and maternal grandma was awesome. i'm not so good at expressing myself, so i can't find a word that can describe my overall feelings there. but i'm gald to be back. :) hope you guys all enjoyed your hols too!

ok. to cut a long story short, i'll just list the most memorable events that happened on our trip. it gets pretty boring so if you're not in the mood, i suggest you DON'T scroll down. :D

1. our first day. we're at changi airport. my brother decides to have a drink from the water cooler. unfortunately, as singapore is EXTREMELY modern and advanced, the water coolers are activated by touch sensors. the whole problem is: where ARE the ruddy touch sensors? in a bid to find them, my bro and i ended up groping the water cooler in odd places. when we finally got it to work and my bro bent down for a long awaited drink, it decided to turn itself off, leaving my bro in a very awkward position, seemingly trying to suck in air.

2. so we got onto the plane. you're not going to believe this, but i brought order of the phoenix to taiwan. i needed it for ideas! and i couldn't bear to put it down for 6 days. so i'm reading the book and i decide that i need music, ENLGISH music. i searched through the audio files and guess what i find? MR. BRIGHTSIDE! i love SIA...

3. the sun sets at 5 something here. this is not good. visibility is greatly hampered.

4. this is our first night in taiwan. the hotel isn't fantastic. good but not splendid. there's a radio in the bedside table. yes, in. those type with the preset channels. i decided to see what there was, expecting it all to be chinese music. voila! i turn it on and they're playing 'my humps'. -,- i was shocked, but pleased. :D there was a speaker in the bathroom too so we could listen to the radio and bathe at the same time. ah, it was wonderful...

5. 1st day in taipei, we went to this chinese medicinal place that sells stuff like royal jelly. then the salesman begins to promote something else. he waves around a brownish, dried and shrivelled up...thing. i later realise that the thing is in actual fact, a deer foetus. it looks like it's almost fully matured. legs, hooves, everything. i got a photo of it for memory's sake. i was pretty much disgusted. you don't want to know what they do with it. especially not you, bong.

6. we passed by a stall selling smelly tofu. the smell surprised me more than disgusted me. i thought it would smell dreadful, something like ammonia. but it didn't. so, i was happy. :)

7. then, we took a domestic flight to kin men. that place is much more undeveloped. we only went there because my mum, my mum's mum and my aunt had to setlle family business. ;)

8. at dinner in kin men, we had gao liang wine--kin men's trademark...um...beverage. yeah. it's really strong so my mum didn't let my bro and i drink it. we just dipped our chopsticks in and tasted it. ugh. revolting. it did come in useful later tho... the hotel there isn't very well managed, so there was a tiny cockroach on our dining table after the meal. my father overturned a small wine glass which he had just emptied of its contents on it. guess what? yes. the cockroack got drunk from the fumes and began to breakdance and do back-flips. it could do something that resembled a head spin. amazing what alcohol can do to insects. ;P

9. the hotel room was really really cold. i dare say a single digit degree of temperature? they don't have a heater in the room so we froze our butts off there. but, the good thing was the TV! AH! there was anime and cartoons! dubbed in chinese of course, but nonetheless very enthralling. :D i watched hunter x hunter and the anime version of return of the condor heroes on one channel. i switched to another channel and squealed in delight when i found out that it was cartoon network! XD watched mirmo zibang, codename: kids next door and winx club. on the first night i didn't watch the show after that, which was teen titans, cuz i wanted to work on the doujinshi and read my dear OOTP. on the second day, i could not resist the temptation. the dubbing was pretty good. unnecessary, but pretty good. :)

10. our second day in kin men involved us climbing up a mountain. t'was an enriching experience. i felt my fat being burned :p and i wasn't so cold anymore. i was sweating quite a lot actually. the thing that had the most impact on me there was this plant. people didn't vandalise the historical concrete man-made walls on the mountain. instead, they took out their vandalising instincts on plants. they scratched words, mostly chinese, on the plants leaves. not a very pretty sight, especially for a guide. ;) one of them carved: DHL on it. no i don't think it was an attempt to advertise the delivery service. i think those were his initials. XD

11. we went to many places that day, but another interesting place we went to was a wine store, yes, selling the famous, tongue-burning gao liang wine. while everyone was preoccupied with looking at bottles of wine, wine holders, even beef jerky, i made a beeline for this row of books arranged neatly on the floor. can you believe it? they were selling second hand manga in a wine store! for 50 cents each! >.< didn't buy any though. didn't recognise any. too ancient.

12. later in the afternoon we took a boat to and back from an island. i conclude that balancing on a boat is much easier than balancing on a public bus in singapore. and never sit inside the boat. stand outside. you'll find that you can actually BREATHE.

13. at a historical tunnel they used in a war, there was a river with very deep water. there was even a sign to warn you about the deep water. at some parts, you couldn't even see to the bottom. it sent shivers down my spine. well, at those parts you could actually see the bottom, as it was lit, it appeared shallower due to refraction. apparently, the river wasn't the only thing that appeared shallow in that place. my mum and bro insisted it wasn't deep and refused to believe me when i told them about refraction. oh well. shallow people.

14. at a chinese market, they sold tako yaki at 6 for about $1.50 singapore dollars! i bought it, of course! :P

15. we requested for a heater from the reception on the 2nd night. the cold was much more bearable. :)

16. not much happened on the flight back to taipei. except that i was awaken from my sleep every 5 minutes by my mum and my bro and asked to do things like help shaun find his worksheets, help shaun open his snack wrapper, put my bag down off my lap where i like it etc etc. you know, anything unnecessary thing you can think of, i was told to do it.

17. our last hotel was FANTASTIC AND SPLENDID! i was so happy and pleased and shocked that i cried tears of joy when i plonked myself onto my bed. literally. i thought i was mad afterwards. but really, it's really posh. whoo hoo.

18. we went to the shilin night market that night. oh how i love it there! the stuff there is so cool!!! it was really crowded, however. we were jostled everywhere by the crowd. oh but a strange thing happened when we entered a pasta restaurant. spaghetti bolognaise [not sure of spl] became... CARBONARA! ugh. excessive amts of cheese make me sick. just as well. there was a lot of food selling along the streets of the market, not to mention queer things like pig's blood cake or something. i wasn't going to try that but i made way for the rest of the food in my tummy. ;P most of your presents were bought there, btw. ;)

19. something i realised about the houses in taiwan was that they looked really shabby from the outside, but were so awesome on the inside! it was like that for our splendid hotel, it was the same for my aunt's taiwanese friend's house. he was really nice, bringing us places and everything. :) his house was really nice and the best part was, they had CABLE! so many jap channels! and of course there was anime! so i entertained myself by watching inuyasha there. XD TV addict...

20. my aunt's friend and his wife thought singaporeans can't speak/write mandarin. and they just had to meet me. oh, and my bro. i bet they're convinced now. XP they were really surprised when i told them i could read the chinese subtitles during inuyasha. yeah yeah, surprise surprise, nicole can read chinese fan ti zi. excellent.

21. we went to taipet 101-the tallest building IN THE WORLD. height of 1 and a half eiffel towers. guiness record for having the fastest elevator in the world. 5th to 89th floor in 37 seconds. it travels so fast that your ears hurt a little. the view was amazing. the cars and houses looked like toys from where we were. if i could fly, i would want to swoop down into the streets from there. seriously. it was really awesome to have a bird's eye view of the entire city.

22. i began panicking on the last day as i realised i didn't have enough souvenirs! AAAHHH! watsons saves lives. ;)

23. on the plane ride back, my bro was being such a prat. he gave the air stewardess a really hard time...

"We've run out of fish, would you like to have the chicken instead?"
"no."

she looked so taken aback by his reply and remained silent for awhile. hmmm. here's another strange scenario. an air stewardess and a certain rude sister are talking to shaun.

stewardess: "would you like to have a seat, sir? it's getting quite congested around here."
me: "SIT DOWN LAH GOON!" :P

oh oh oh and they gave us haagen daaz ice cream after the meal! a small tub of it! it tasted so good! i love SIA....

so ends the LONG account of trip to taiwan. i hope you guys all had/will have as much fun as i did on your hols. :D