Hey Kitty Kitty: 西门町

On the way to 桃园机场 airport, while talking to the taxi uncle, my mind was wondering, recapturing all the beautiful events, and trying to do a summary on why did I fell in love with this new found land which I didn't even know anything about it a week ago.

was it because of its cheap goods?

was it because of its wonderful tourist spots and beautiful scenery?

was it because that there are a lot of pet owners here in Taiwan?

or was it because that the transportation infrastructure is very good?

I was trying to search for an answer, and then I found that it wasn't exactly true at all.

cheap goods? can it be any cheaper than spending in Thainland?

wondeful tourist spots and beautiful scenery? There are a lot of other countries that can do better than this.

And then, i came to realise that, all those are just the surface that paints the picture of it.

I like Taiwan not because of the goods are cheap, but because of the attitude of the people that is selling their services and goods, the politeness.

I like Taiwan not because of the wonderful tourist attraction and beautiful scenery, but because of the effort they put to upkeep and maintain those places to be always clean, structural and organized.

I like Taiwan not because of there are a lot of pet owners here, but because of the community and people here that shows a lot of acceptance and care and love towards animals, and giving those animal a fairer share of respect and treatment.

I like Taiwan not because of their awesome infrastructure in their transportation, but because of the courtesy, the thoughtfulness, the tender, loving and care that is displayed by most of the passengers here.

The entire week during our travel was very hot, and warm, 37degree almost. The same temperament I see in most of the people here as well.

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Along the journey to the airport, the taxi driver was very warm and approachable. He even took the courtesy to ask us our flight details, and drove us straight to the exact entrance of Cathay Pacific.

We only get to know upon check-in that our flight from TW-HK got delayed for an hour. Well, I guess Danielle can live with that extra leeway of shopping spree.

Didnt did we expect that after our bags were checked in, the attendant at the counter came up apologizing to us, passed us 2 NT$120 cash voucher to be spent within the airport, and upgraded our flight from HK-PG to business class.

While in HK, after everyone boarded in the plane, they found out there was something wrong with some parts of the plane which needs replacement. And our flight got delayed another 2 hours. I was pretty worried as my parents would be waiting in the airport by then. I approached the air hostess, telling her that I need to access to wifi so that I can somehow notify my parents of the delay. She somehow saw my worriness and said that she will get back to me.

I was expecting that she could at least let me go back to the airport and so. cold make use of the free wifi there, After a while, she came back and asked me to a corner. She said that she's sorry that there's nothin she could do to allow anyone of the plane, but she could just use her smartphone as a hotspot and allow me to access to it.

All of these experience somehow came to me as if they were purposely arranged so that I could somehow get those lessons.

I was going thru some very hard time finding myself back on track for the past few months. Things and work were pretty hard. Confidence level were way down the valley. And all these incidents and long breaks and stuff seems to be coming to me at a perfect timing.

I see how the correct way of serving people in the service industry.

Although things could get pretty hard a times, they can still maintain their composure and politeness despite not loosing their assertiveness.

They stand in the shoes of the customers, do their best in understanding the hardship that the customers have to go thru, and feel them.

They work together with the customers in a common ground, finding solutions for them, and if that's not possible, give them an alternative which could mitigate and help ease the dissatisfaction, in a very sincere manner.

They talk to people, not because they wanna get your money, but I can actually feel their sincerity in really wanting to understand, to help, and to share.

Thank you to the air hostess, in teaching me the lesson in understanding the customers' worries.

Thank you to the Cathay Pacific check-in attendant, in teaching me to take the initiative and extra mile in showing sincerity when amending mistakes.

Thank you to the auntie that cooked breakfast for us n the 无赖 home stay hotel, which taught me that we should share more and expect nothing back in return.

Thank you to our drivers, 小杰 and 飞翔, in showing me the right and sincere attitude in sharing their life experience with the customers.

Thank you to all the passengers in 捷运 in showing me that, warmth and care and love is still something reachable and still exists.

Thanks to the people that work in 丽霞商旅 in 西门町, that shows me the correct attitude, and politeness a person in the service industry should have.

Thanks to 江医师, the vet in 台北猫医院, that shows me that how all people, everyone, should be treated and welcomed to share their common interest without putting revenue as the first line of consideration.

Thanks to all PKS member who followed us to this trip. for their real and true understanding, team work, and patient whenever they have to wait and tolerate for our punctuality issues and constant stop for finding toilets to unload our shit. >.<

And last but not least, thanks to Danielle for her understanding, and her willingness to share my pain, my worries, and give me a hand whenever I'm in deep shit, constantly reminding me in improving myself, to be a better person, and never give up on me no matter what, through thick and thin, sharing our dream in building a pet home together, and constantly giving me advice. I wouldn't have been able to survive thru the difficulties if it is not because of you.

Thank you Taiwan.

I'll be back!!!

Taipei Day 6 - 14 Sep 2013 (Sat)

I name this day the Ultimate Feasting Day of our trip.

We started off our day at 8am, taking 捷运 to 善道寺 for the famous 豆浆油条 introduced to us by our 乌来 driver 小杰.

The place is located about 15 min walk from the station , and is within a supermarket named 华山市场。

He told us that its gonna test our patience to the max if we were going for this, but we really didn't expect anything quite like this.

This shop is located at level 2 of this supermarket, but the queue tailed all the way into level 1, and stretched outside the building, surrounding it. Can you imagine that ? !!
It took us a good 45min to reach for our turn to make our order.

As highly recommanded by our taxi friend, we ordered the famous 厚饼煎蛋, and a tau hu fa which sounded quite unique to us, the Salty Tau Hoo Fa.

Here's the Salty Tao Hoo Fa(on the right). It tasted almost exactly like steamed eggs.

Everyone loves the 厚饼煎蛋 like nobody else's business, ass they claimed that it was very special, but i found nothing so special about it.

The only thing that i really love was the 油炸鬼. I personally found it very crispy, and not oily. Even the one that was already dipped into the tou hoo fa for a very long time retained its crispiness, which is very rare and special to me. I loved it very much.

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And that was breakfast. Now's lunch.

We took a MRT to 行天宫. 20min walk, and reached this place called 上引水产。

Its a place which is located right at the port, where seafood were harvested straight from the sea, and directly processed and put on the shelve to be sold, either to go, or for direct consumption.
Needless to say, it's all about freshness they're talking about here, as everything comes straight from the sea and immediately to the customer.

To give u an idea how fresh the seafood is, take a look at this shot clip which I've shot on a pack of squid displayed on the selling shelve:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srdwl7nvCOY

(To read more about Why squid change color, go here:- http://ca-seafood.ucdavis.edu/squid/squidcol.htm)

These seafood are alive, and you can simply choose any of your choice, and they will immediately process it for you.
You can either pack it back, and consume it there and then.

Me happily handling an abalone ...

See how huge is this crab???

And just will ya look at the crowd on the packed processed seafood ....

There is no chairs in this place. If you'd like to dine in, you will have to collect your number, and wait for like an hour until u get your turn to order, and eat standing.

And well, there's really nothing much that I can say about this place, only to say that if you love sashimi
and fresh seafood, this place is one damn freaking place you shouldn't miss.
4 pairs of us people went in there, and spent a load some of NT$2500 per pair on this meal, and
nobody was crying that the price was too expensive.
I'll just leave it to you guys to do your own wild imagination on all the following pictures of seafood that
we've consumed.

So.... enjoy :)

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We could hardly move after that meal.
On the way back, we suddenly saw a very fat cat snoozing inside a shop, and everyone goes crazy.

Surprisingly, the shop owner was very friendly and welcomed us and invited us in.
Only then we found out that it was actually a Cat Veterinary shop.

We spent almost more than 1/2 an hour there playing with the cat, and talking to the very friendly vet.

It was really one of the most fulfilling event of this trip.
It triggered a lot of thoughts, especially at this special timing where Me and Danielle have started planning on going serious about operating our own pet shop. It even triggered me to really start my 2nd career as a vet by attending a night school on Veterinary.

We exchanged ideas and talked a lot on the back, in the bus, and even when we reached our hotel.

Danielle was a person who's full of ideas, and a true visionary. She seems to have been drafted all the plans in mind.

We could do everything step by step. No rush.
We could just start off with just providing boarding services to cats. And well, they need food and litter sand, right? We could be getting those in chunks, at distributor price, and even sell them to customers.
Slowly, we could expend our offerings to other variety of food, accessories, etc .......
Services could come along when we start attending pet grooming courses and stuff.
And then we could have joint venture with other vets. We don't even need to be vet ourselves. Not to say that we couldn't. But that's an open option for discussion not for now.

And the discussion goes on and on ........

I'm really excited. And I'm really happy with how this final stop of our Taiwan trip ended in a wonderful way.
It's all about what I've learnt, and experienced, and I've gained way a lot more that I've expected. And I hope I could share those, but that would be a story for another day .....

:)

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Taipei Day 2 - 10 Sep 2013 (Tues)

Journey starts at 10 am today. And since it was already a bit late, we went straight to 台北车站 and had our lunch there in the food court.

Surprisingly, Starbucks are pretty popular in Taiwan. There is 2 even in the same single 台北车站 subway alone!

We ordered a veggie sushi box, a charamel macchiato, and I tried the Tao hu faa of Taiwan. It's a bit different from ours. Theirs is not using the thick type of black/white sugar. It's diluted sugar water. But the Tao hu faa is really soft.

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Went to 国父纪念馆 after brunch.

It was hot today!!

We walked around, but found nothing really interesting or special.

Coincidently there was a 圆明园展览 there. We decided to pay for it. T$250 per head.

No photos from here because its prohibited from taking any photographs. All is say is, if u are a person who is interested in the history of Qing dinasty (清朝）, this is a place u definitely should not miss. Plenty of genuine artifacts and photos to be seen here.

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Rushed to 故宫博物院 at 2pm.

http://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9C%8B%E7%AB%8B%E6%95%85%E5%AE%AE%E5%8D%9A%E7%89%A9%E9%99%A2

This is a 100% must visit place if you are a fan of china history.

This was taken out side of the building.

Entrance towards the building.

Again. It's a place where photography is prohibited inside the building.

The building is full of historical artifacts, which has the collection all the from 3000+ years ago.

The building is segregated into sections of prehistoric artifacts, which includes religious, culture, art, calligraphic, sculpture, weaponry, pottery, etc.....

And most of them are the originated from the original author/creator.

The place closed at 6pm. With a full 3 hour to spend there, we could hardly even finish touring the entire building. You could imagine how rich the content of what the place is offering. With only NT$200 per person, it's definitely offering a lot of what you paid for. No doubt about it. A definitely must visit place if u are a Chinese history freak like me.

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Meeting Laogu and Adele at 士林夜市 for dinner. As the usual thing. Ate a lot. Walked a lot. Shopped a lot. And saw a lot of interesting gambling games. :D

All in all, it's a travel back to china day for us. Tiring, yet rewarding :)

Monday, September 9, 2013

Taipei Day 1 - 9 Sep 2013 (Mon)

Reached 桃园 airport at around 3:15pm.

The weather was clear and bright. Nice :)

We took a bus (国光) and headed towards the central bus station. It was T$120 per head. And then from that station we took another bus to 西门町. This was free.

Our hotel is 立夏商旅. It's located at the central city. Very convenient.

Something very special about it is that, the hotel is somewhat located in a SINGLE floor of a multi stories building. Yes. Only a single floor. Pretty unique from the perspective of a Malaysian.

Ok. It was a bit pricy. T$2500+ per night. But given the strategic location, and nice room, I'd say its reasonable. U could save quite some money on transportation as well as time, and that kind of makes up for the gap, I'd say.

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Straight down from the hotel, right next to it is a very busy night street full of activities and hawkers.

We headed straight to try out the very famous 阿宗面线 at 峨眉街.

Honestly speaking , it was not bad. But really, not that really good. It's nothing quite near to Penangs Kampung Malabar's pork broth. At T$4.50 for a small bowl the size of an ais kacang, not really worth it. But if u are here, it's still worth a try la.

Now this is something really interesting. It's call 花生卷冰淇淋.

It's made up of a layer of pohpiah skin, wrapped around grinded peanut sugar, with 2 scoops of ice cream of your choice. The peanut sugar that I saw them grinding was of the size of at least a square cube of 30cmx30cmx30cm. It was HUGE. Wonder where they get that :p

As we moved on. Danielle spotted something that she have dreamt of trying badly. 大肠包小肠.

We were already bloated at that time, and so we carry it along in our backpack. But the smell of it is enough to make anyone salivate.

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Off we go to Taipei 101 building, the tallest landmark in Taiwan. It's some distance away from our current location. We need to take mrt(the blue color rail) about 7 stations, and some distance if evening walk to reach there.

Along the way, we came across this building which is a famous book store. 诚品书店。its a chain book store, just like Popular or MPH in Malaysia. Just that, there is one of it that lays in somewhere of this city, which opens for 24 hours!

Anyway, we didn't enter that building as we were short of time.

We reached Taipei 101 around 9pm, and its closing in 10pm, so we gotta hurry.

Still the queue is long.

We bought our tickets, and of we go.

The lift that took us up to the 89th floor of this building is claimed to be the fastest lift in te world. From level 5 to 89, it took us less than 15 seconds.

Honestly, with the price that we paid (T$500 per head), there was nothing really special about it. If you are for the introduction of Taipei city, I'd suggest that u go during day time. And apart from that, there is really nothing else that you can expect for. It does allow you to go to level 91, which is open air to enjoy the breeze though.

Well. That concludes our first day in Taipei.