Taiwan Trip －Day 4

15/05(Tue)
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Wu Fen Pu/Raohe NM/EZ5

• We had to check into TaShun Hotel today.


TS Hotel 大顺大饭店
台北市汉中街 170 - 172 号
www.tshotel.com.tw

• It was very near to 寒舍. We just need to walk past 2 intersections and we reached. It was a simple functional hotel. As the cheapest room was fully booked we went for the deluxe suit which costs about S104/night. The shower facilities were very good. There were 3 kinds of shower head you can choose from. The beds are very very comfortable.

So much so that we cannot wake up in time for the next few mornings as it was simply too comfortable (or coz we were getting increasingly tired from our travel). In fact, out of the 4 breakfasts we were entitled to, we only had 1. The small restaurant had about 10 tables and it was filled with mostly Singaporeans on the only morning we had breakfast. I guess it’s just as popular with Singaporeans as Rainbow Hotel is.

• The counter staff told us we could only check in at 2pm, so we deposited our luggage and ate at the 麻辣 Steamboat near the hotel. In addition to the steamboat, we had this charcoal grill in front of us. The soup based ranged from 麻辣, to clear soup, kimchi and even soya bean! The buffet had a huge selection of food, compared to Singapore’s. Other than the usual meat and veg, there were also a variety of ice-cream, salads, soft-drinks (those in bottles! Not cans), coffee/tea, etc. We were almost the only customers in the shop, I guess most people eat this at night? Anyway, we filled our stomachs with a lot of food. It cost about S28/pax. Not exactly as cheap as I would have thought.

• Then we returned to the hotel. After putting our luggage in the room, we headed off to Wu Fen Pu. We took the metro to Houshanpi station. Wu Fen Pu is about 10 mins walk from the station. The place is basically filled with shops who are into 批发/distribution. They also sell clothes in single piece, but too bad, you cant try the clothes. It was not as cheap as I would have thought. Maybe coz I’ve been to Bangkok and it was really cheap there.

One spagetti top can cost easily S20. they claimed that the materials are from Korea/Japan, that’s why they are more expensive. I only bought a casual top that cost about S30 and I thought I could probably get better stuff in Singapore for the same price. After shopping for a while, we realized that the shops are selling more or less the same stuff. Slightly disappointed as we thought we could really find bargains there.

• Then we headed to Songshan train station. After crossing the orange bridge, we reached Raohe Night Market （饶河 夜市）. Cant really remember anything special at this NM. It reminded me of Singapore Pasa Malam though, with those stalls selling alarm clocks, wallets, bags. As we were quite tired from walking at Wu Fen Pu, we sat down at a stall selling beancurd. ( I thought the beancurd in Taiwan is really yummy. Those in Singapore has got too much “flour”. In Taiwan, the beancurd is more dense, and got more soyabean.)

Then we continued exploring the place. After eating some street-snacks, we sat down again at a stall seeing Ai Yu/Ice-Jelly and just listened to the hawkers chatting. They were talking in Hokkien and I’m glad we could understand. They were gossiping about a guy marrying a not so good-looking girl, and their kids also ended up not good looking. These sort of things. It was quite amusing. I thought the way they speak Hokkein is more refined than Singaporeans.

• Then we headed off to EZ5. We took a bus which brought us to a metro station and alighted at Liuzhangli station. We walked about 10 mins to get to AnHe road. It was a pub, decorated with lightbulbs on the outside. I did my research early and planned for this day to coincide with a singer that we know to perform there. The entry fee was NT600/pax but you can order 2 things from the menu. We ordered 1 food and 1 drink each, as we did not eat much at Raohe NM. The food came in quite huge portions, so I thought it was worth it. It would cost more in Singapore pubs. There were a lot of people there already. It was not just a place for young people, but there were a lot of families too!

There was a very cute but blur waiter. He mistook my order of tomato juice for beer. He probably couldn’t believe that anyone would wanna drink fruit juice at a place like that. As he was quite cute, and I just kept quiet and took the beer.

The first singer was a Taiwanese but seemed to have been educated in the states, he’s good at singing David Tao and Wang Li Hong’s songs.

The second singer, which most people came for, is Pen Jia Hui. She looked slightly older than what I remembered, wore a pretty short dress, but wow..her singing is really really good. She has a strong stage presence, took care of the band that was playing for her, and she sang the 经典/ classic – 旧梦. My NT 600 is really worth it. After her performance, almost half the people at the pub left. We were hovering between staying and leaving too, as if we leave then, we could catch the last metro back to XMD. Then we decided to stay for the last round of performance, as we could not get this back in Singapore and as we had already paid to get in.

The last singer was a guy who was dolled up like a lady. His voice is good for singing Power Station’s songs, and I guess he hated that (coz he got a lot of requests to sing their songs) . I thought his performance was quite boring, as he talked way too much. He talked about his singing career, how his work recently got appreciated by Ah-Xin, a member of May Day, and asked people to join his singing school he just set up. I go there to hear people sing, not talk about life stories k. Oh well, but I thought the people there enjoyed it.

After his performance, we left the place and took one of the cabs that was lined up outside the pub. The taxi-driver was pleasantly surprised that tourists like us came to know about the place. We chatted with him for a while on the way back. We realized that he used to be a boss, owning a travel agency, and has been to 30 over countries. He got married and had a baby boy recently, so he quitted being boss, and became a taxi-driver so that he could spend more time with his kid. (We thought something must have gone wrong with his business, which is why he ‘downgraded’ to a cab-driver, but he didn’t go into the details.) We were surprised that the place is quite close to XMD, only about 10-15 minutes cab ride.