Taiwan Trip －Day 1

Taiwan Trip (12/05/07 – 19/05/07)

12/05(Sat)
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Free Go Airport Bus/Han She Hotel/XMD

• My sis and I toured Taipei in a week. Briefly, here’s what we did.

• On Sat, we took Jetstar Asia flight to reach Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport Terminal 1. We headed for the “Buses” booths. There is a Free Go Airport Bus (飞狗机场巴士) booth that sells bus tickets and bring you direct to all hotels in XiMenDing(西门丁). The bus ticket is NT 135. There were a lot of Singaporeans on the JetStar flight, and most of us took the Free Go bus. Guess XMD is a popular choice to stay at. These are the hotels in XMD which the bus would bring people to:


喜来登 ** 天成 ** 凯撒 ** 华华 ** 城美 ** 东龙 ** 长虹 ** 万事达 ** 寒舍 ** 金帅 ** 成都 ** 富园 ** 麒麟 ** 一乐园 ** 豪景 ** 大顺 ** 内江 ** 明日 ** 国光 ** 华丽 ** 新仕界 ** 农美 ** 家美 ** 四季 ** 富妆 ** 丽来 ** 金财神 ** 金国际

• Check into Han She Hotel. We wanted to stay at TS Hotel but it was fully booked for the first 3 nights, and we wanted to stay at XMD. After much research, we finally found this hotel. Quite a decent place, with good location, near to XMD metro (捷运), and decent price, about S 94/night.


Han She Business Hotel 函舍商务旅店
台北市成都路68 号4 楼
www.handsomehotel.com.tw


• They tied in with the 台湾牛乳大王restaurant downstairs, and we got our daily breakfast from the restaurant. The hotel staff will issue you breakfast coupon every morning. At first we thought we could choose from their menu, but the food was already pre-determined by the hotel. A modest meal of toast, ham, egg, and coffee/tea. This hotel is not bad, considering most XMD hotels we tried to be fully booked. They really tidy up the rooms very well. By the way, we need to deposit the keys at the hotel counter everytime we go out, and they’d tidy up the room for us while we are away. When we come back, we just told the hotel staff the room number and they’d return us the key. There’s a difference from 酒店and 饭店 in Taiwan, as we learnt later. 酒店 refers to mostly sleezy hotels, while 饭店 are the decent types. No wonder people gave us strange stares when we asked for directions to get to 函舍酒店. Should be 函舍饭店. The hotel is quite safe, they’ve a lot of cameras at the various exits/entrance. It serves its purpose as a decent hotel I would say. But they do rent out rooms to people for just a couple of hours for them to 休息. As we were checking in, a couple came and requested for a room for 2 hours to 休息. Well, I realize that this is pretty common in Taiwan.

• Decided to just stay and explore XMD area since it’s already quite late in the evening already. XMD is like our Far East, a lot of teenagers there, dressed very fashionably and guys are really cute with stylish Japanese haircuts.

• Tried the 阿宗面线 finally. You can get them in 2 sizes, big or small. Me and my sis bought a big one and shared. They just give you a bowl and spoon and you just eat them while standing. I thought the Mian Xian is very well cooked, the soup is not too thick nor too diluted. But I don’t like the 猪肠 in the 面线 . Tot the one we had in Singapore with the oyster is better.

• Clothes and accessories in XMD are really X. In fact, clothes in Taipei are very X. One dress in a small shop can cost easily S 100 – S 200! It’s ridiculous. The people claimed coz the materials are from Korea/Japan, that’s why it’s X. I think we can get the same things in Singapore for cheaper. In general, we were quite disappointed with shopping at Taipei. Singapore really wins hands down, in terms of style and price.