Day 1, Reaching Taipei

Day 1 - Sunday 8th December 2013

There's a few things you need to do before you board the flight and head off to taiwan ;) 

- Visit Taiwan Visitors Association, collect freebies.

The office have information pamphlets on places to go etc. Is a good place to visit before you get to Taiwan. They do give out freebies for tourist as well (free stuffs, who doesn't want it eh?). You need to bring a copy of the hotel confirmation, passport (not sure, but bring along just to be safe) and flight itinerary to claim the freebie. Freebies will be different from time to time. We got a couple of gift exchange vouchers that we can exchange for some souvenirs in the airport before we fly off from Taiwan. I exchanged a cute owl key chains!

Address: 30 Raffles place, #10-1 Chevron House, Singapore 048622

Take the MRT to Raffles place and follow the direction sign to Chevron House. You need to exchange your ID for an access pass before taking the lift to get to the office.

- Change your money. 

Pretty self explanatory eh. There's a couple of money changer near Chevron House so you can pay a visit to the Taiwan Visitors Association to collect your freebie and change your money. 

- Bring umbrella and raincoat.

Depending on when are you going to visit Taiwan, if you are going to Taiwan during December, which most people are, bring an umbrella and a raincoat. It rains pretty often during that time. 

Pack your luggage, bring your passport, money (sufficient NT and some SGD), flight itinerary and you're ready to fly!

Again, before you get out of the airport, there's a couple of things to do. 

- Get a Youth Travel Card (青年旅游卡)

If you are below 30 yo, you can apply for a youth travel card which gives discounts on various entrance fee to tourist spot and shopping in particular shops (more cheap fares! YAY). This is used to encourage more youths travel to Taiwan. After you collect your luggage, passed the custom, turn right and pay a visit to the information centre and tell the staff you want to apply for a youth travel card. They will give you a form to fill in. Easy process.

Travel Youth Card

- Buy a prepaid mobile sim card with unlimited 3G data

Get it. It is really helpful. Especially when your accommodation or hotel doesn't provide any wifi (but I'm pretty sure most of em do), also you can use it for GPS to get around in Taipei, great help when you get lost ;) or not get conned by dodgy cabbies. Zhong Hua Dian Xin (中华电信) is said to have a better coverage than other company. So we got a sim card from this company, 7 days unlimited data for 500 NT (S$~25). Pretty cheap for 7 days ;)

That's all for the lecturing o: 

After getting the youth travel card and the sim card. We proceed to the bus terminal just below the arrival hall and took Airbus (大有巴士) to Taipei City Hall Bus Station (not Taipei Main station) cost us 145 NT (S$~7) After reaching Taipei City Hall Bus Station, we bought a couple of Easy Card from the counter. 

 Bus Station at the Airport, we took 1960 to City Hall Bus Station

Easy Card (悠游卡) work just like a prepaid card (touch-and-go, similar to Hong Kong's octopus card, or Singapore's Ezlink card) which you can use to pay bus fare and MRT fare, you can also use it to buy stuffs from convenience stores and some other store that accept easy card payment. You have to pay 100 NT as deposit, and whatever value you want to top it up. Once you're done with the card you can return the card back to the staff and get refund of whatever remaining value in the card and the deposit. But they do charge 20NT admin fee so you still can get back 80NT of the deposit.

After getting the Easy Card, we took the MRT to YongChun Station and walk to our accommodation for the week. We found this place from Airbnb, about $37 per night for the 2 of us. Pretty cheap and comes with free wifi too. Its 5 minutes walk to the YongChun MRT station in Taipei and 15 minutes walk to one of the famous night market in Taipei, Raohe Night Market. There's also a supermarket not far away from the MRT station.

Desk

Bed

Toilet

With our luggage and all, its actually pretty small. But hey, you're gonna spend your days outside and only sleep in during the night so who cares. The owner provides bottles of water for us daily too! Very nice of her.

But, there's always a but, I don't quite like the bed. Is too soft for me and there seems to have bed mites. I get little red itchy dots on some part of my body :/ however, my boyfriend seems to be ok with it. Maybe is just me. The room is on the 4th floor so we had to carry up our luggages up all the way to our room, not like we brought alot of stuff so that was ok. I'm pretty strong too haha. 

I didn't really sleep well throughout the night. There are other people staying on the same floor and making noises during the night, switching on the lights and not switching it off (what a bastard.)  I'm a very light sleeper. Any sort of noise or light will kill my sleeps. The little windows in the toilet are actually facing the corridor. So the light will shines through the windows. Is like having a sun in your room. Can't. Sleep. The very very kind landlord actually place a mini curtain over when I raised up the problem. Very blessed to have owner who cares eh.

Enough of the ranting. Moving on.

We dropped our luggage down and went on a food hunt. We reached the airport about 6pm and reaching our room at around 8pm. So we were starving. Extremely. Hungry. Alot of shops were closed at that time and we barely make it to this sushi place called Sushi Express (I think they were closing cause they were cleaning up, but they still let us in). 30NT per plate, sashimi 60NT. Thats about 1.5SGD per plate and 3SGD for sashimi. Freaking. Cheap. and Its GOOD. Sashimi were fresh. 

 Sushi Train System

Food. We I practically gobble up the food before taking any pictures. So, pictures of the plates.

We spent about 420NT (21SGD) in total, for 2 people. Worth it. and oh, free green tea too!

After that, we went to Seven Eleven and Family Mart (convenience stores  is everywhere in Taiwan) to get a couple of cup noddles and Yakult drink.

Cup Noodles and Yakult

I swear this is the main reason that my boy wants to visit Taiwan. 1L Yakult drink. Supermarket sells 2L version as well, just in case you're wondering. I used to love cup noodles, but I don't fancy them any more. Don't know why. But what's an overseas trip without cup noodles ;)

Watched a few dramas showing on the TV, and that's it for the first day in Taiwan.