How To Eat Abroad (Taiwan Part 1)

          So I have a lot of food posts, since all I really do is eat. I can't get all of this amazing food in San Diego!!! Since the food posts outnumber the sight seeing posts, I'll have to post them more often.

          My dad is a rather paranoid man, so he refused to let me go out on my own without a cell phone. So after nearly three weeks of just going to the office and eating nearby the office's dorm and office, my father insisting on giving me his back up sim card and phone (which took weeks and weeks to unlock), I was finally free! I contacted my friend, Minty, whom I'd met at my small, partial family reunion organized by my uncle. He had invited his friends and one of them brought their daughter to sit at the 'kids' table (though we're all adults now... it's probably better to refer to it as the 3rd generation table). She heard I was staying in Taiwan a few months and offered to take me out. She met me at the nearest MRT station.

(Foreigner hatersss!!) Haha, this ad purposely uses a foreigner to display that you cannot bring food on to their subway system.

Minty brought me to a lovely German cafe called Flugel. It was really close to the Taipower building and the Taipower building MRT station. They're most famous for their warm and cold cakes, as well as a wide selection of teas and wines.

Look at how quaint this shop is! Hi, Minty!!

Cool looking table. I'd love to study at a place like this in San Diego.

This was Minty's cake. It was warmed and it tasted like a really good traditional coffee cake.

I forgot the name of my cake, but it had a yogurt based top with lots of mangoes. The whole thing in combination was really tasty. I really enjoyed this!! Minty says her favorite flavor of this cake has berries in it. She said that berries were rare in Taiwan, so she preferred that flavor. From my perspective, mangoes are rare in america, so I opted for the mango flavor. I intend to try the berry one next time ^___^

My pot of earl grey tea in a completely see through tea pot! I loved it. It totally reminded me of this dim sum place I frequented as a child. All of the teapots looked like this except it could serve way more people.

Information for Flugel can be found at the end of the post :D.

8% Ice

Minty then took me to a gelato place called 8% Ice. We were so full, so we struggled to finish our gelatos, but they had a lot of unique flavors! Minty said her favorite was the matcha flavor, so I got that one.

Here's Minty with the mango flavor and my matcha flavored gelato. It wasn't mind numbingly sweet, which I sometimes dislike about American sweets, and I could really taste the authentic frothiness from the matcha.

 

Some cool chairs in the gelato shop.

The Cafe was called FLÜGEL
http://fluegel2008.blogspot.tw/
台北市 羅斯福路三段269巷21號1樓, Taiwan
+0928-080-973

The Gelato place was called 8% Ice. 冰淇淋專門店
https://www.facebook.com/8.percent.ice
台北市大安區永康街13巷6號1樓, Taipei, Taiwan 10651
+0223956583

Happy Dining!!

Gardens By The Bay Singapore

          So today's post is going to be about my trip to Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. The day after the wedding my new cousin's family invited us to a tour of the gardens and then dinner at their house. I had a lot of pictures of the wedding and gate crashing (which was really fun, and I'd never done it before), but I decided that the photos were too intimate. I'd also lamented that I'd have to go through each picture blocking out faces, so yay! I can be lazy.

  

Here's a picture of the bay. Recently in the news, there have been a lot of fires in nearby countries which have been causing a haze.

 

Better shot of just the Ferris wheel

   

Cool looking alligator/crocodile sculpture. How do you identify the difference? I only know that alligators live in fresh water and Crocodiles are more likely to live in marshes and swamps...?

  

Some native masks

  

The ticketing counter had a really cool roof. The colors remind me of my favorite blanket back home :).

  

This was the Sands resort. Another cousin's family stayed there. The top layer has a huge pool and lounging area. My new cousin had explained that they had problems building it because all three parts were separate until they had to put them together. Like most large structures, there's a large margin of error, so it was problematic to do so.

 

This is one of the Super Trees. A few of them had walkways attached to them, and you could ride an elevator to the top. Admission was about $5 USD. I didn't get a chance to go up, but apparently it was really windy up there. I really wanted to go, but we didn't have enough time. I really wanted to feel the breeze since it was so hot that day.

  

A better shot of a solitary Super Tree with the flower dome in the background. At night, they turn on the lights for a spectacular display.

  

Another shot of the sands hotel.

  

On the left is "Uncle Happy" and to the right is my dad. We got to listen to an audio tour in English that brought us around, explaining different gardens.

  

A lot of the gardens were themed by country/region and they had accompanying sculptures that matched their area of origin.

  

They had a cool rock garden as well.

  

Baby Sculpture. By Mark Quinn and apparently called "Planet". This is apparently a 10 meter sculpture of his own son made in 2008. It is made of bronze and steel.

  

Baby Sculpture with the Singaporean city line. What really amazed me was how the entire thing was being held up and balanced with only the hand touching the ground. That's some serious planning and welding going on there.

  

A shrubbery

  

This one reminded me of Slowpoke.

  

I had to take a picture of this, since the gigantic ants really freaked me out.

  

This was a cool walkway featuring flowers as we were exiting/entering the flower dome. To the right is dear Seastar and Future-Brother-In-Law.

  

This is the roof of the flower dome. I thought it was really cool. You can see my dad adjusting his hair to take a photo.

 

A cool tree featured in the dome.


Aaaaaaand I'll stop here since Picasa freaked out and only let me import pictures up to here.

Part 2 can be read here.

Gardens By The Bay:  18 Marina Gardens Drive Singapore 018953.  Tel:+65 6420 6848
http://www.gardensbythebay.com.sg

How to Eat Abroad (Singapore part 1)

          I got the opportunity to go to Singapore because one of my favorite cousins was getting married! She lived with us for a short period of time, and I probably annoyed the hell out of her. I have very fond memories with her, however, and wouldn't have missed her wedding for the world. 

          Singapore was incredibly hot and humid. I couldn't stand it, especially after being spoiled by San Diego weather for quite some time now. Also, I never thought I'd be jealous of an entire country, so fluent in both Mandarin and English. Some people we encountered on the street had thick accents, but for the most part, everybody was essentially perfectly bilingual. 

           So this is my hotel room at Darby Park. It was quite comfortable, close to Orchard Road, and the bathroom was spacious.  The place also came with a full kitchen and rice cooker (it then hit me that I was finally in Asia). Unfortunately they don't do double twin beds, so Future-Brother-In-Law was too uncomfortable with staying with our uncle as originally planned and ended up sleeping on the couch in the living room. Four people to one restroom is ok, but five is too many. It was also weirdly placed, as there were two doors to the bathroom. We had a few unfortunate instances of walking in on each other -__-;;

This was a yummy fruit basket that my aunt sent to us. 

    

Some bread we bought at an underground mall on Orchard Road. The eggtarts were very creamy and delicious!

  

An adorable matcha flavored turtle bread. It reminded me of San Francisco sourdough and how Boudin will often make animal shapes out of their breads. 

    

Regular loafs of bread that smelled absolutely heavenly.

   

HardRock Cafe, Singapore. I took this because when we traveled to Australia in Highschool, our band teacher would include the HardRock Cafe and get herself a tshirt.

  

This was taken at the ION mall on Orchard Road. Their food court had food from all over the world! We got several dishes and ate them. This was a beef tomato based curry and a chicken rice biryani. The best part about this mall's food court however was...

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A Dim sum cart lady!! She came around, selling dim sum to you while you sat at your table. Near the Indian food was a sink so that you could eat your curry with your hands. Totally awesome!!!! I love dim sum, so I was very excited to see this. 

                 

Finally, these were taken at a local convenience store. I'd never seen a gravy dispenser, and I would love it if I could conveniently buy meat buns wherever I went. 

Overall, the food in Singapore was really good. 

WHALE SHARKS

So one night, I was really inspired to get some life goals accomplished while I was discussing plans with my good friend Icecream** for her visit to Taiwan and our trip to Japan. She mentioned that she wanted to see baby otters, as those are her favorite animal. Mine are whale sharks!!

Whale sharks are a beautiful, noble creatures with a very unique pattern on their back. They are still classified as sharks, and are the largest sharks in the world! They feed like normal gigantic whales, eating small little sea creatures, and they do not aggressively feed like most sharks and killer whales. Currently, there are 5 in captivity. Before talking about it with Icecream, I only knew about the one in Georgia. After googling it, I found that there were FOUR MORE IN ASIA!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_shark

What I love about them is their unique pattern, and their wide faces that give them a permanent, adorable look of wonder.

Their mouths open wide like Kirby :O.

How I came across them is rather embarrassing. I remembered that I read a webcomic where these animals were granted souls and could turn human,  yet still maintain their animalistic qualities, instincts, and personalities. I couldn't remember what it was called, but I remember I was linked to her DeviantArt account and I found it again! The whale shark character was rather unimportant at first, so I reread it all for the sake of this post and nostalgia. What I did not realize back then was that this comic was SUPER EXPLICIT! Despite that and the ESL grammar, the artwork is great, and it has an overall riveting story line. When I continued to read past where I had left off, it got really REALLY good and I couldn't stop, hence the delay of this post. 

Anyway, here’s his first appearance

Then his first appearance in animal form! (I showed Icecream, and she commented that I definitely would like something like this. It was love at first sight! I’d never even heard of a whale shark before)

Hehehehe.

The comic can be found here. (please don't judge me >__< I was young!!)

Icecream agreed that she wanted to go see these with me. So, we had three choices. 

• Kenting, Taiwan, the very south tip of the island, with ~$100USD round trip for bullet train rides.
•  Okinawa, Japan, which would require ~$500USD plane tickets to and back (in the peak of tourism season and because we couldn’t cancel either of our already booked AirAsia flights to Japan)
• Osaka, Japan, ~$280 USD round trip Shinkansen (bullet train)

We thought long and hard, until Icecream mentioned that Japan had Japan Railway Passes! Essentially you’d pay a predetermined amount and then you could ride for the allotted time on any JR related mode of transportation! I also remembered that Future-Brother-In-Law (Seastar’s boyfriend of 6 years) had suggested that I get one of these immediately. In the end, we decided on Osaka,and to make it really worth it, we’ve since added other destinations outside of Tokyo to our Japan trip to utilize the Shinkansen.

What a cute mascot.

And this is the Osaka aquarium website. Imma get myself one of those squishy looking Whale Shark stuffed nanermals!!!

I am so excited ^____^

Notes:

**A bit about Icecream: I’ve known  her since 8th grade, but we didn’t really become friends until high school. We met in jazz band, and I recall that she didn’t seem interested in being my friend back then. I don’t blame her because I was extra weird when I was in Jr. High hehehehe. No regrets. We’ve known eachother for a little more than a decade.

Me following her around and ‘serenading’ her (I neither knew how to play a ukulele nor sing). It’s too bad I decided not to show faces because she really harassed, and my face is super happy. 

She also has a million dollar smile.

Us and others in orchestra pit for a musical.

My drawing of her, when we were planning costumes. I kept sending that same picture with a misleading name so that she’d keep clicking on it. hehehe. It actually started off tame, with just her in the icecream costume, and then it kept getting bloodier and bloodier. (Circa '06-'07?)

LOL. I hope you don't think any less of me...

I LOVE YOU ICECREAM!!

SAN -> SFO -> TPE -> SIN

     So day 1 of travling was really hectic. I had two finals, had to pack everything, and had to get my car maintained before flying up to the first destination, San Francisco. I stuffed a bunch of clean clothes in a suitcase and folded it in the waiting area while waiting for my car. Some lady passed by, jokingly acting shocked as I folded my underwear. I smiled politely, but inside I was making sassy remarks about how she should've been minding her own business. My dear friend, whom we'll call Kashmir, came with me to keep me company, unabashed. Anyway, after all that insanity and getting to the airport, I finally had a moment to myself, so I took a picture of my boarding pass.





       The plan was to meet my sister (who endearingly calls me seastar) at the San Francisco airport. She was settling house matters and there was nobody to take her to the airport. It was pretty late so she didn't want to bother people, and her boyfriend was already in Japan, preparing to meet us in Singapore after we arrived. She sounded really stressed, and I felt bad because on top of all of that, I asked her to bring some stuff I had ordered online last minute for the trip. I accidentally shipped it to the Bay Area instead of SoCal. Sorry, Seastar!! Anyway, to make sure that we could sit together, I waited for her at the check-in area and reorganized my suitcases.


       
       My sister finally arrived, bringing an adorable, large hard-shelled hello kitty suitcase in a pastel pink. It was very cute. Seastar also brought these really awesome looking over-the-ear headphones that her and her boyfriend got on discount. The ear padding was super squishy. It made me wish I had brought headphones. My last really good pair broke, and a really good friend gave me a new pair, but I was trying to pack lightly.

       We flew to Taiwan, and I struggled to get wifi on my chrome book. There was an adorable hello kitty store, and we ventured off to try to find the Hello Kitty Terminal. We found the plane, but we were in the arrival area. We would've had to go through security first if we wanted to see the heavily decorated departure gate. Seastar, already tired from running around the entire airport, wanted to get to the gate and take a break, so we gave up.

       We ended up finding this really cool prayer area near our gate (which they changed last minute) that had prayer rooms catering to different faiths. It had these really nice lounging chairs and sculptures. We were relaxing and I figured out how to get  netflix to work abroad when these non-asian people came to the area. They occupied some massage chairs that you had to pay for. One had even unplugged it to charge her iphone. I'm pretty sure one of the two actions had set off an alarm, so sadly, we left the nice area.

       After passing through high-class shopping (I had never even seen a Hermes before) Seastar and I finally made it to our gate and then flew off to Singapore. There, we met our parents, who had flown from Taiwan on an earlier flight. From there, our adventures began!