Taiwan Day 1

Day 1 Singapore to Taipei (4/7/06)

My mum fetched me to the airport at 11 am and all of us had lunch at Burger King before boarding the plane.


Photo at the gate before departure

The Jetstar Asia plane has only 1 big compartment and there are around 30 rows of 6 people each. There were quite a lot of people on board as well. The seat was not as cramped as i imagined and some of us ordered food midway through the journey. The food is catered by SATS and its not bad also. Each hot meal costs $8 though.


Coastline of Singapore


Flying over Taiwan

The flight took around 4 hours 30 mins and we checked out of the airport at around 5 pm.


Chiang Kai Shek International Airport

The airport looked rather old and it definitely needs a revamp.


CKS Airport before hopping onto a coach

We bought return coach tickets to Taipei main city for NT240 ($12) and the ride was around 1 hour. Didn't know before that CKS airport is so far away from the city.


On the coach

The driver dropped us along a main road and told us the directions to Future Star Hotel. We walked along Ximending streets for some time and discovered that we were lost. We then asked the passerbys for help but most of them did not know where is the hotel.

After searching for a while, we finally found the rather secluded Future Star Hotel. The 9 of us had missed the hotel as the hotel was along a small lane and only part of the building is a hotel. We went up to the hotel at 7th storey and spoke to the receptionist for the booking. We had booked the hotel rooms a few days before the trip as it was quite cheap. It costs only around $26 per pax per night. However, the rooms were not up to standard especially the room shared by Derrick and i. The mirror was large and overlooking the bed, there was a stale smell in the room, the bed was very hard and there was a rather large hole in the cabinet (maybe due to rats or cockroaches).

We wanted to change back to Rainbow Hotel (also at Ximending) which was the hotel which we booked initially, but we had paid the money for the night already. So we left our luggage in the hotel and proceeded to have our dinner.

We went to an eatery and had fried rice, noodles, soya tofu, century egg, oyster omelette, etc. The price is cheaper but the serving is smaller compared to Singapore.


Local eatery


Ximending at night


----------------------------------------------------Shopping spree-------------------------------------------

There is much more to shop and the night scene is definitely more vibrant compared to Singapore.

Watched the soccer match between Germany and Italy after the shopping. Slept at 5.45 am!!