Charlie (who’s tall) freaking out about having to sit it out on a 9hr flight in such a confined space.
Willy just as freaked out but not showing it.
Xmas decorations on the (rather old model) plane.
The airport was completely empty when we got in (around 4am from memory).
First thing we did was get cash out of an ATM.
Bought some JDM ciggs duty free, a whole carton for the price of a couple of packets locally.
We hung out at the airport 7/11 a little to re-group. Nothing else was open and we couldn’t check in until 3PM so we weren’t in any sort of rush.
Local Taxis come in all sorts, new and old, some standard and some quite modified!
Left Hand Drive! Our driver had gadgets galore all over his dash. Clear skies greeted us as the sun came up. We were cruising at 140km/hr on the freeway into the city.
We dropped off our bags at our hotel. Zi was there to greet us.
We then followed Zi on a tour of our immediate area.
We passed a temple, then Rongxing Garden Park where the oldies were getting active. Some performing Tai Chi, some doing the Tango!
Our first stop, a local feed.
This was interesting, crunchy and light. Basically deep fried bread sticks in fresh baked bread… bread in bread!
Egg in roti was delish.
And our first serving (of what was to be many) dumplings.
Next stop was a cafe that made some great coffee.
Aussie spoons on display.
The girl behind the counter made a pretty special filtered coffee (whilst we had ours) which took at least 10 minutes to make. Customer then proceeded to (on purpose) add a whole lot of salt to it for taste.
We then hopped on a train to get to Sogo, a large Japanese department store, which wasn’t quite open yet so we checked out the supermarket within. Asahi beers in all sorts of sizes and guises, even tea.
Our first Mos Burger vist; shop still wasn’t open so we just wanted to sit down more than anything.
All of us walked away from the supermarket buying some fun stuff. Whilst I bought myself some Asahi and an Initial-D toy someone else bought a variety of dried seafood.
Haha. Encouraging Charlie to try new foods.
I came across the New Era Transformers Cap Bots which I promoted on Zen a while back, got pretty excited and bought a few.
Love it that all Sogo Dept Stores all over Asia have a level dedicated to great restaurants. We went for the Katsu House.
Oyster Katsu! So good.
Our first swig of the local beer. It’s nice and crispy!
We spent the day at Sogo and later that afternoon we checked in to the hotel. King bed = score!
The Wi-Fi password and ‘in case you get lost’ hotel card inside this little folder proved very handy throughout the trip.
Just got back from my one week trip to Taipei for Zi and Gloria’s Wedding. Was so fun travelling and hanging out with the boys, who started the craziness on the plane when we were denied Chicken Rice (yet teased with it), then forced to settle for FISH PASTA. The air hostess insisting “It’s really good, I tried it myself”. The chewiness of it, brilliant, so fresh, the pasta so al dente… David even went back and asked for more (but seriously, tripple microwaved nastiness which made for a running joke the whole trip long).
As usual I slept through the entire flight, and basically teleported to Taipei. We got in crazy early, and had a LOT of time to kill before check-in at 3PM. Zi greeted us early though and kept us busy (mostly eating) all day. Later that night Stevey flew in and we hit town hard, so hard it destroyed most of my Day #2 haha.