This year will mark the end of Shannon's kiddy years and the start of her Primary School life. While it is a rite of passage for all children in Singapore, it fills me with a little apprehension and lots of excitement. We really wanted to bring the family for a fun-filled holiday during the 'off-peak' season for one last time before we are forced to join the main stream tourists heading for jam-packed pricy holidays in either March, June, Sept, or December, YUCKS! So we are off to Taiwan for a LAST BINGE TRIP!! :)
And this time, Wendy and family are joining us, hurray!
4th November 2011
We reached the airport bright and early at 630am, thanks to trusty Seeni and his Maxicab. The girls were excited and after meeting up with Wendy, Alfred, Ben and Ethan and their Ah-ma, we headed off to the airplane for an uneventful SQ flight to Taipei.
The SQ air stwardess serving us was great, she was friendly, helpful and really good with the kids, thank you Ms Chang Yun Chan! Thumbs up to SQ for having this good air stewardess, its rare to see such good service nowadays!
We arrived in Taoyuan airport at about 1pm and headed to Hotel Quote, Taipei, in two taxis. The journey was uneventful and we arrived at the hotel about 2pm+. Due to a screw-up with the travel agents, we have had to change hotel plans 3 times before we finally got a confirmation with Hotel QUOTE, so it was a relief to see that the rooms was up to and even beyond our expectation.
This hotel is part of the SLH (Small Luxury Hotel) brand, like the former Beaufort Sentosa, and the hotel sure didn’t disappoint! It did not have a swimming pool, and with only about 40 over rooms, the breakfast area was really tiny. But the staff at the hotel were extremely friendly and helpful and our rooms was great! We had to pay an upgrade fee to move from a single superior room to 2 rooms connected by a common main doorway, as the hotel does not provide extra beds or baby cots. But it was well worth the extra cost as the rooms were luxurious with free wifi, a iPod docking station, high quality bedding, well-appointed bathrooms, plushy towels and bathrobes and oh sooo comfortable mattresses! Our main bedroom even had a smart & modern coffeemaker, and a tiny enclosed balcony!
All rooms in the hotel also enjoy unlimited minibar access, with the pantry drawer and fridge stocked up with Oreo cookies, chips, canned drinks and beer! The girls were thrilled with their own cosy room, with a king-sized bed, huge bathroom and a 36inch flat screen TV all to themselves. Lauren claimed the room by removing her shoes at the doorway and plunked herself onto the fluffy bed!
The staff also took the time to show us the 24hour lounge, equipped with coffee maker, cookies, M & Ms, nuts, biscuits, all kinds of chips, fruits, puddings, buns, cakes etc! The fridge was stocked with unlimited free flow of drinks (Milo, tea, juice, milk, fizzy soda), some in travel sized bottles, so we could just throw one into our bag for our daily travel! Kids Heaven!
That’s not all the lounge had – they had huge glass vases filled to the brim with free bath salts (I counted 6 vases, all filled with a different fragrance), disposable shavers with shaving cream, hair bands, Toothbrushes with toothpaste, shower caps etc. Whatever you see in a standard hotel bathroom, you can just grab a handful at the lounge... it’s that easy :) The manager explained that they wanted travellers to feel totally at ease in the hotel, and be able to get whatever they needed, much like their own home, hence the free accessibility :) Luckily they haven't met TOO many kiasu Singaporeans to withdraw thie compliementary service, cos' you all know what some SIngaporeans would do.... pour the contents of the whole vase into their suitcase!
So much for praise for the hotel! We finally settled down and freshened up before leaving the hotel at about 5pm to Taipei 101. We were hoping to catch a spectacular sunset as the sky was very clear that day, but little did we know that the sun set by 530pm everyday in the winter months! By the time we reached Taipei 101 at 6pm, it was totally darkness!
We braved the long queue of about 1 hour, and grabbed a quick dinner at one of the food courts in the shopping area before heading up again and gaining access to the top. The night view was a maze of endless twinkling nights, and we managed to get out to the outdoor observatory for a better view.
Being so high up there, we could actually feel the building swaying with the wind, stabilised by the enormous damper (round metal ball) located in the centre of the top few floors.
After a quick descent in the world’s fastest lift, (20sec to travel 98 stories), we left Taipei 101 and headed to RaoHe Night market. The market was bustling with crowds and the smell of Taiwan sausages and smelly tofu was everywhere. We walked the streets and sampled the Taiwanese eats, XXL Chicken cutlets, Sausages, ice jelly, rice-cakes etc, all very yummy... but after a while the kids got whiney and we headed back to the hotel for a good night rest.
5th November 2011
We woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel before heading out to Babyboss. Babyboss is an indoor play area which is very unique in concept. Children enter into the play area at a fixed price, and when they enter this playground, they enter into a transformed ‘mini city’ with ‘shops’, ‘offices’, parks, and a ‘airport’ Kids can pick a profession and enter into these ‘shops’, get dressed in the profession, to learn to ‘work’. At the end of the 20 – 45min ‘work’ session, they get paid in babyboss currency. They can do as many professions as they wish and once time is up, they can head to the redemption shop to select items for purchase and pay with their babyboss money.
The kids started out very tentatively, they refused to try many professions, probably out of shyness. But once they started on the first one which was to be an architect, they warmed up very quickly. Outfitted in cure orange helmets, and grey vests, they shovelled sand and built building blocks in front of a construction site and got paid for their effort!
And after that, it was no stopping them! They went on to do Dentistry, where they brushed teeth models, and extracted loose teeth from a dummy patient (complete with dentist chair and lamp, and forceps thongs!).
Shannon and Ben then went on to be Dunkin Donuts staff and learned to glaze and decorate donuts, which they got to keep and eat!
After that, they were paramedics and got driven in an ambulance to aid an injured dummy, swapping iodine on its wounds, and placing him on a stretcher back to the emergency room. 
And lastly, they donned on red helmets and became firemen, sliding down poles, and operating a miniature fire hose, complete with spouting water to put out orange fires (orange lights) in a warehouse!
And all this time, what was Lauren up to? She vehemently refused to take part in what the other kids were doing, and were content just to....
I find this picture of her looks like Taiwan's fast talking Matilda Tao! Any of you see the resemblance?
Armed with their hard-earned money, they exchanged them with stickers, and we left babyboss feeling totally satisfied!
We then headed to Danshui to see the Lover’s bridge with plans to have a good seafood dinner for once!
In a funny, twisted way, every friend who heard that we were heading to Taiwan would say ‘oh lucky you, good food in Taiwan!’ But the truth is, we either ate in food courts cos we just didn’t have time to go search for food, or just grabbed whatever was available then cos we were occupied (fries and nuggets at Babyboss cafe)! And the whole trip was like that.. I have vague impressions of some street streets, but no raving reviews of any famous eats on this trip! But I disgress...so we were almost desperate for a proper sit-down hearty Chinese meal!
We arrived Danshui too late to catch the sunset (again!) but we took some very beautiful pictures of Lover’s bridge. The reflection of the light of the bridge on the water presented a gorgeous photo opportunity, no wonder there were people camped out at the pier with complicated huge DSLR cameras and tripods!
We then headed to the seafood restaurant and bagged ourselves two live fish, live prawns, live crabs, vegetables and tofu dishes for only SGD $100 for all of us, 5 adults and 4 kids, not bad huh?
After that, it was a leisurely walk by the pier and playing with little street-bought plastic helicopters with blinking lights. The atmosphere was festively lively, and thongs of people walking by the shops and window shopping.
Little Mischievous Lauren did some window shopping of her own and the end result? While I didn't get a handbag I saw and coverted, SHE left Danshui with her very own Minnie Mouse Suitcase! The little monkey had been clambering after her own suitcase after seeing Shannon lugging her princess cloth bag on rollers, and had been pestering us for a Minnie Mouse one every time she sees one in Singapore.
As luck would have it, sitting squarely at the entrance of a shopping mall in Danshui, on the way to the toilet, was a gleaming red, Minnie mouse 20inch hard case, amidst all of the other dull and large suitcases. And as luck would have it, she WOULD pass by it, while waiting for her sister to come back from the toilet…. need I say more? *roll eyes*
6th November 2011 (Sunday)
Upon hindsight, if you would ask me what I could have done differently, I would have planned the Pingxi day trip either on a weekday, or rented a driver to take us there and back. Then we could have avoided the horribly jammed packed train and crowds and probably got in enough time to see Shifen as well. Oh well, next time!
Pingxi is a little quaint town where you can release sky lanterns into the sky, carrying away all your good wishes to the heavens above, but for us, it was more for the unique experience.
We headed out and changed trains in Taipei to get to Pingxi on this day. We left the hotel fairly early, but factoring in travel time, and changing trains, it was almost 11am by the time we arrived at Pingxi.
We sampled their unique shaved-peanut popiah wrapped ice-cream which was very delicious, and went searching for a shop selling sky lanterns.
We finally found one away from the crowds and selected a multi-coloured lantern which is supposed to represent different wishes. We then painted our good wishes on the sides of the lantern, much to the amusement of the locals I’m sure, as most of our wishes were in horizontal left-to-right English and not the traditional up-to-down mandarin! And we didn't know sooo many chinese characters! Wendy was smarter and used her phone to check on strokes, so in the end we copied a few from her family's lantern!
The shopkeeper then helped us bring the night lanterns to the bridge, and lit the oiled wad of paper at the bottom, sending heated warm air into the lantern and lifting it. At the count of 1-2-3, we let go of our lantern and watched it fly up into the sky, bearing all our good wishes.
After a simple chinese lunch of fried vegetable, tofu soup, eggs and hainanese chicken with rice, we squeezed aboard the crowded trains and headed back to our little blissfully peaceful hotel. I so wanted to stop at Shifen where the train tracks roll in between the pictureques village streets but it was getting late and dark, and the train was horribly crowded, so we didn't in the end.
En route back to the hotel in Taipei, Wendy stopped by a bakery and bought a Mango cake for a very special celebration, BEN'S BIRTHDAY! We headed back to their room, sang Happy birthday and cut the cake, much to the delight of the happy birthday boy.
We then opted for a late dinner at Outback (Haha, of all the food!) purely because it was just by the side of the hotel, and we just wanted a fuss free dinner. The food was up to the usual Outback standard though the servers couldn’t seem to get the varying doneness of the beef correctly. My medium rare steak (yup, I love my meat bloody!) came out well-done the first time, and the 2nd time, it was medium… They were however very helpful, polite and no request was to little. They also offered Ben, the birthday boy free dessert and threw in another complimentary slice of cake for us.
After a heavy and full dinner, we headed back to the hotel for the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment