First to Ximending

So on the same day that I hit up Taipei 101 we also went to Ximending in the evening. It is an area kinda like a street market but really trendy for young women. Although we did see a lot of guys you could tell that it obviously wasn't their main target audience.  Also if you were expecting like a night market type feel you might be disappointed because Ximending is more of a lot of little trendy stores instead of stalls. Oh and it is pretty easy to get to just take the MRT to Ximen station and get off at either Exit 1 or Exit 6 and bam there you are. 

So if you take Exit 1 one of the first buildings that you will see is this little building that has Doritos on it. As far as we could tell it doesn't sell Doritos and has a TV in it besides from that no idea what it is. We were going to check it out on our way out but there was a line and we were tired. 

Anyway walking around there is a lot of different shops and brands. One of the things that we loved was all the shops that had tons of kpop and Taiwanese idols. I didn't buy anything this time but I can totally see myself spending a lot of money here. There was also a lot of make up stores that have some of the cutest make up out there.

As you might have noticed that not only were the make up adorable but they were also advertising with some Korean Idols.

This is probably the closest that I would ever get to Jang Geun Suk

It was pretty crowded even though it was was a week day. There were tons of young people and families out and about. I have to say I was a little shocked on how many small children were out even though it was like nine at night. Anyway there were a lot of small little places to each and some themed cafes. My friend and I didn't really stop at any of them because I was still feeling off from jet lag at that point. 

After walking around for a while we got back onto the MRT and headed back to our hotel for a night's rest. 

My room at the First Hotel

So the hotel that I've been staying at is the First Hotel in Taipei. All honestly it's not a very nice hotel. I'm only staying here because well this is where my company put me up (although I did have to pay for the first couple of nights).

My bed

The view from my bed

So this has been one of the worst hotels that I've ever been in. Looking on the walls I can see weird stains and scuff marks. Also walking down the hallway to get to my room you can see where they piled all the extra/ needed to be repaired furniture. There is also only one key for the hotel room, that we have to turn in whenever we leave the building. Also we don't have to show ID when we pick up the key. We just walk up to the front desk and tell them our room number and they hand us the key. 

the view from my room's window

I have to say that the service though hasn't been bad at all. We have our room cleaned every day by a really nice Taiwanese women that asks us "Want to Make Room?". I must say that I'm really going to miss coming back to a made bed. 

The weirdest thing and probably the most annoying thing is that  we aren't suppose to flush toilet paper down the toilet. It has been a real pain remembering that rule. It is also the reason why we have our room cleaned everyday. Also there is a phone in the bathroom that took me like 4 days to notice it. We are also not suppose to drink the water, so they give us bottled water every day. 

They are renovating some of the rooms but unfortunately my room was not one of them. One last thing to mention is that everyone's room is set up a little bit differently. In my room we have two chairs and a bench but in the next room it is smaller and they only have one chair. Also we have no place to put our stuff and it kinda sucks living out of our suitcases but in another one of my group's rooms they have a dresser so it is not as bad for them.

All in all I understand why this hotel has a 2.5-3 rating

First Trip to Taipei 101 and Mitsukoshi

So for my first full day in Taiwan a group of us decided to go over to the Taipei 101 building after lunch. Thankfully I had my trusty tour book so we were able to figure out which station on the metro to get off at (btw it is the Taipei City Hall station). 

Getting to the station and over there wasn't that hard but it was a little bit afterwards. Thankfully there was a nice Taiwanese gentleman who explained to us how to go. All honestly once we got out behind the one building it was easy to spot Taipei 101.

So why did we go over to Taipei 101 you might ask? Well it is the second largest building in the world and the largest in Asia. I also have heard that the food court was amazing and well we had nothing better to do.

 

One thing that we realized when we got there was that unlike in America where most stores open around 9am is they don't open here till 11amish. When we got there although the building was open like only 6 stores were. Two of the guys from the group got a drink from one of the only open food shops. We sat down to debate if we wanted to hang out around there since it was only just turning 10am and we still had a while for the stores to open or to leave. We decided to go but not before I discovered a toy store and got a picture with my favorite Kamen Rider.

After a failed attempt at trying to find the Taiwan Discovery Center when we left Taipei 101, we headed over to one of the Mitsukoshi branches that was near by. Over there, my friend and I headed into the ETUDE HOUSE store because one of our favorite Korean boy bands ,SHINee, is currently representing them. I have to say that it was some of the cutest make up I've ever seen.

My favorite member: Key

My friends favorite member: Taemin

We headed towards the Mister Doughnut shop, I have have was really cute.

I got a doughnut pop

my friend got this mini marshmallow covered doughnut

Our last stop was to go to the food court in the bottom of the building. I ordered a plate of fried rice which came with a drink, soup, and a flavorless rice pudding/soup thing. I didn't really take any pictures of lunch because well I was super tired from my jet lag. I did not finish my lunch because the plate was bigger than my head and my stomach was feeling off from traveling. I was thirsty though and quickly finished the drink and went and bought another one. I though was adventurous and decided to try the plum juice... Worst mistake. It smelled and tasted like soy sauce. It was super gross and I am now sticking clear of any plum drink. Anyway afterwards we went back to our hotel room and promptly took a nap.

I will try to keep you posted of my activities but I have started training for work so it will be hard. Till next time

First night and Shilin Night Market

So right after I arrived in Taiwan got into my hotel room and freshened up my friend and I met up with a couple other people from our company's training group to go over to Shilin Night Market. For those of you who don't know it is basically the largest of the night markets in Taipei and you can find cheep food and clothing there. Although I was super tired I went out with them just so I could start meeting people.

From our hotel the Metro is only a few blocks away and an easy walk. We were shocked on how easy it is to use and how clean it was. Later we found out that you get fined if you eat or drink on the subway. 

Anyway we made our way over to the market which was full of people and stuff. I will have to go back some other time that I'm not dead tired because it seems like an interesting place to explore. The clothing was really cheap and had some interesting things on it. The one t-shirt read "Sorry I make Handsome" but for the most part the English wasn't overly bad. As for the food there was a lot there so you really need to just decided on where you would like to eat. I had this meat bun. 

It was pretty good, hot in both in temperature and spiciness. It was also the first bit of Taiwanese food that I had. There were several other people who got it in my group too. The only thing was it made you very thirsty but luckily there are all these fruit drink sellers around. I personally got cranberry lime drink.

I rather enjoyed it because it was a little sour and I liked sour things. Any way there were tons of food venders. In my group some people got a dessert called ice mountain which is sweetened shaved ice with fruit on top of it. They shared some with me and it was delicious. Although most of the stalls were your typical food stalls we did find this one which was probably the weirdest thing that we found there.

Yep penis shaped food. We were guessing that they were some kind of pastry but no one was willing to try them. also knowing our luck they would be delicious. Anyway after wandering around a while and getting lost in trying to find the exit we headed back to the hotel because I was ready to pass out from exhaustion. All in all it was a great first evening in Taiwan. 

Missadventures in Traveling to Taiwan

So I had quite the adventure traveling to Taiwan. My first flight was suppose to leave at 11ish on Monday July 15. Everything went really well, I got to the airport early, got passed security no problem and waited outside of my terminal. I even was the first in my section to board the plane. I was also doing really well considering that all my previous experiences with flying I didn't do well. Well and that is to say that everything went really well until we got two hours into the flight and they told us that they had to turn the flight around. By the time that we got back to the airport it was already 6pm and there weren't any other flights till the next day.

Thankfully the airline put me up to a local hotel and gave me a meal voucher but since there was like 250 of us it took a while to sort it out. By the time that I got over to the hotel and checked in it was like 9pm. I then had to message my company and my parents to let them know all what was going on. 

the hotel room that the airline set me up with

Needless to say that it was not the experience that I thought it was going to be. It was a hey you are now an adult experience  This was also the first time that I was ever in a hotel room by myself. All other times that I have been in a hotel I was either with my family or with friends for like an anime convention. 

Anyway I got up super early because of my flight.I originally had an aisle seat but this time they put me on a window seat. I was nervous cause as I said before I didn't really use to be good with flying but the window seat was AWESOME!!!! I saw so many cool sights like snow covered mountains, really cool cloud formations and the Pacific ocean for the first time. I was really surprised that I was able to see waves on the ocean. The only down side was that I had to climb over this little British girl every time that I needed to get up but I did warn her and apologized to needing to get up often. On the flight I either read, watched a movie, or slept.

After my first flight which was 13 hours long I landed in Japan for about a 3 hour lay over. This was my first time in Japan but I will totally go back someday. My first thing that I did was went in search of some tokusatsu merchandise because I figure that they would have some. There was a lot of  anime and HelloKitty and only one thing of tokusatsu and that was from Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger and out of my price ranger. I had only hat $20 converted because I wanted snacks. I mostly then sat outside of my terminal and waited for my plane to arrive. 

I kid you not it was a HelloKitty plane

So after taking in all that is the HelloKitty plane. I had a nice Japanese man sit next to me. We talked a little and he told me I was crazy because of how long I had been on a plane that day. He was rather nice. I do kinda regret snaking earlier because we were served a meal on the plane which of course was HelloKitty themed.

All honestly I just wanted off that plane. I totally spent too much time on a plane that day. It wasn't that long of a plane trip either only like 3hrs well not compared to the other flight. But when it was said and done the nice Japanese guy even helped me get down my suitcase from above.

Once in the Airport I exchanged some money and went through immigration. I was so glad that I didn't have to go through security again like I had to landing in Japan. Immigration honestly didn't take that long and we moved pretty quickly. Since I'm from the USA I just got a 90 day landing visa that I will transfer over to a regular visa later. 

Another one of my first in this part of my adventure was that I had to take a taxi to the hotel. I had never taken a taxi before. I also should have taken pictures as we rode into Taipei but I was rather tired and didn't. Once at the hotel I checked in and found out that I was rooming with my one friend that went over with me. I will save what we did for another post. Till next time. 

BT: To the Shore

Yesterday I had an awesome Fourth of July and today I am continuing on with doing really American things and going to the New Jersey Shore. Like I had in Philly one of my best friends lives out there so I'm going to visit her. I also haven't been to the Jersey Shore since I was in High School so it should be fun. 

As much as I am excited to see the shore today I'm more excited to go the beach in Taiwan. I have never seen the Pacific Ocean before. The closest I've gotten to it was living vicariously through my brother who lived out in California for a bit. He poked it for me. Unlike where he was I will be able to swim in it. I actually already made plans with my one friend who is going over with me to go to the beach. It will be tons of fun. Well it is now time for me to head to the beach so until next bye. 

BT: Fourth of July

Happy Forth of July!!! It's Independence Day here and America and I celebrated it with one of my good friends down in Philadelphia. I came down yesterday and spend the night. It took a little while longer to get down to his place than I had originally planed (it took me a good 40 minutes to move like 2 miles). We went over to a Korean marketplace and picked up the ingredients for dinner, which was curry and really good.

Today though was the Fourth of July. I was up way earlier than anyone else in the apartment so I made pancakes for everyone. Needless to say because of doing that I believe I've become my friends favorite house guess ever. 

For the rest of the day I didn't really do much since my friend had to work. I did though watch the Kamen Rider Fourze movie finally. Then after my friend came home we headed over to the park were we were meeting a group of friends to watch the firework show later that evening. We were there for almost four hours before the firework show started. 

Before the fireworks they played the national anthem and I have to say that I got a little chocked up. This was probably the last time that I will hear it play in a while. I only have about 10 more days before I go and I'm in a mixture of being really exited and sad because I'm going to miss all of my friends. The fireworks themselves were really great. It kept on having parts that could have been the finally but just kept on going. It had been a long time since I seen firework and let's just say that I had forgotten how much I love fireworks. It honestly was a great way to spend my last Fourth of July in the States in a while. Till next time. 

here are the pancakes I made

BT: Boring Day

So today wasn't very eventful. I went shopping with my mom, not because I needed anything but so I could keep her company. While at the store I tried on a bowtie as you can see. I didn't buy it because well I really shouldn't be buying things that I don't need before Taiwan. 

After shopping we went over and canceled my AAA membership since I won't be in the country. My mom had already taken me off of the other insurances so this was the last one. I don't plan on driving when I'm in Taiwan. Taiwan has a good public transport so I will just use that.

For the rest of the day I cleaned and helped my Mom with the pool. 

BT: Hershey Park

So yet again it has been several days since I last posted. I've really been trying to get on my computer but I've just been busy. It's amazing how I did't really have a social life and in the last three weeks of moving to Taiwan I magically get one and become super busy. 

As mention in an earlier post I'm trying to do things that are really American before I leave. Well to help me with this my sister took me to Hershey Park. Her fiancee and our Aunt also went along with us. Our Aunt use to take us to Hershey Park when we were younger so it was rather nostalgic. I hadn't been to the park since I was probably twelve (or younger I don't remember) and I have to say a lot has changed but they did have some of my favorite rides (the swing ride and Lightning Racers). I have to say that I was proud of myself because I went on three separate roller coasters. For those of you who don't know me I'm really scared of heights so the fact that I was able to go on three roller coasters and a Ferris wheel and not really freak out is a huge step for me, although my sister kept on saying that I looked like I was going to get sick.

Anyway after we had our fill of all the rides we headed over to Chocolate World (it's free and right outside the park) for the mini tour of how chocolate is made and the shop. We though had awesome timing because it only started raining once we got inside. After the tour I stocked up on my favorite Hershey's Chocolate. Over all it was a really good day. Till next time and enjoy my picture of the park.