Happy Birthday, Queen!

Today, 21st July, is Mummy's birthday! Nope, not gna reveal her age because age is women's biggest secret after 25yo! Hahah! So...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MUMMY!! 

We had an advance birthday dinner at Hai Di Lao @ 313 Somerset! It was my first time having HDL and I was so amazed by their service! It was too good to be true! I finally knw why it's such a good experience now! Because Bro had earlier reserved a table for the 6 of us, we didn't have to wait for long before a table was ready for us. Zach and I were the first to reach and the table was ready within 5mins. No chance for a free manicure. Hahah!

There was a long q, as usual. To kill time, ladies are able to get their free manicure while waiting for the tables to be ready or they can choose to have some fruits together with the guy friends instead while the kids can have their fun time in the kids room (with tv s'more! My gosh!!). Nice interaction for the kids! I like!

Didn't manage to get better photos because it was filled with people!

The following photos were what we ordered ystd. There's also mashed shrimps (?) and mixed vegetables that weren't captured! We had 2 of the same soup base as I don't take spicy + seafood, so one is without these two while the other one is without beef (for my 老豆).  But he ended up taking some of the food from the non-spicy side. Hahah!

Pork

Pork belly

Favourite: beef!!

Spicy chicken

Another favourite! Meatball. It has "soup" in it!

白鲳鱼!  It's so good and smooth! Quality is rlly good!

Ended our time at Hai Di Lao with a family shot!

My virgin experience at Hai Di Lao was rlly good! Everything there has nothing for me to hiam at all! Will definitely go back again BUT of cus not so soon! Because it's so expensive :/ Good food and service come with high price too! Hahahah!

Headed home for a mini celebration with a cake! Thanks Fel. Seah for the recommendation!! It's rlly good, omg!

So, I bought Majesty from The Patissier! This cake isn't shown on their website so one has to visit their shop to check for the designs they have on shelf on that day itself! Called in the noon and sadly, the staff was rather rude on the phone. Forget it! Food over service for this ok. Hahah! Baby and I walked from Somerset to Mhd Sultan for this shop and it's freaking far and the sun was shining mercilessly too! But nvrmind, we managed to walk past our late PM Lee's house at Oxley Rd. :)

The cake: it was so good! These are the reasons why I said food over service for this case! 1. It's pretty! 2. It's tasty. The top layer literally melts in the mouth. There's chocolate balls in the middle layer too! My kind of birthday cake. Not chips, but crispy chocolate balls! The bottom layer (sponge cake??) is neither hard nor dry! 3. The smiles on my family members' faces tell it all!

I don't like whipped cream. In fact, I hate whipped cream a lot because it always gives me the psychological effect that once I have a small "bite" of it, I'll gain like tons of weight. So, no whipped cream! But, for this cake... Even though there's cream in the middle, it doesn't give me the fat kind of feeling. It's not thick at all, hence it didn't gimme any tinge of whipped cream feeling. I highly doubt that it's whipped cream anyway!

The inside

我的漂亮妈妈

我可爱的父母

Ma familles.

Love this shot so much!

Bro and Baby have the same smile, while Fel. K and I have the same smile while my parents have the same smile! The only thing extra was my pair of hands. Hahahah! But still, so much love!

Now, 1220am, I'm gna head back to my assignment again! Damn, 2 weeks of break isn't enough! May the time pass slow. May 3rd August come slow! Hahah!

G'night! :)

Taiwan Day 2: Kenting One-Day Tour,

New semester has started and assignments are piling up! Shall now update my Taiwan travelogue before I get real busy with my assignments.

Started our day early as we had earlier booked a cab for the whole day on our first day when we reached Kaohsiung. The booking of cab was NT $4500. Not sure if it's considered expensive. Baby managed to negotiate for a lower price. Not much but an NT $200 wasn't that bad afterall. Their service was rlly good! It's a young couple anyway. Because of their good service, we decided to give them NT $200 as their tips. Not bad lah. Nego and gave them their $200 for tips. Hahah. Nice people are worth our tips!

Anyway, the itinerary for the day was: Kenting semi-submarine > 白沙湾 > 猫鼻头 > 关山 > 出火 > 垦丁大街夜市 > 新崛江夜市

I won't recommend tourists to the semi-submarine actually. There's nothing much and people got very bad motion sickness due to the choppy sea waves/ship/captain.

Looks like this. You can see the marine life from the windows at the bottom. Nothing much, rlly. All we saw was rocks, small fishes, and err... Litters.

Next up: 白沙湾

It's super crowded as it was a Saturday. The merciless sun showed no mercy (LOL!). Bought those two ice pops to quench our thirst. It was quite a stupid move. We knew it wouldn't quench any bit of our thirst but we just wanted smth cold. Anyway, we didn't stay there for long bcos we weren't in the right outfit and it was uncomfortable having the sand in our shoes

Proceeded to our next destination:猫鼻头
Apparently, there's this huge rock that looks like a cat facing the sea. But, no matter how hard Zach and I watched (from all angles), we still didn't think that the rock looks any bit like a cat :/ Ok, this goes to show that we are actually quite bad when it comes to imagining.

We stopped by a beef noodle shop for lunch along the expressway. It was good! Photos rlly don't do justice to the food. The shop was opened by 4 sisters. The name of the shop is something related to 姐妹 too. 

It was almost 5PM when we finished our late lunch. Our driver drove us to a hill to watch pretty sunset! Even though it lasted only for a few minutes, the sunset view wasn't as nice as expected, it was still quite an experience for the both of us! 

Next destination: 出火

Extracted from the posted I uploaded on Dayre:

So according to what Zach, the fuel here comes naturally out from the ground. If someone were to lit a fire to the ground of something, the fire will keep burning until the fuel depletes. Not sure if it's true because I haven't done any research yet.

... Up till now. No research has been done yet. HAHAH!

It was pitch dark. We had to switch on our phone torch for the route

People seen BBQ-ing marshmallow and corns.

 Despite the fact that we are all warned not to go beyond the chained area, people still went ahead to roast their marshmallow and corns. Hahah. Quite an epic scene because it was my first time seeing such thing. Not bad, I like it! Except that when my legs got bitten by mosquitoes, that's totally a no-go thing! Hahah!

Last stop with the driver and tour guide: Kenting Main Street

It was such a pity that I left my camera in the car! Totally forgotten about it and I was feeling quite dampened by it. Yes, I get sad over minor things. But I was happy that my phone camera quality is good! So worries after that! S6 camera is rlly awesome!!

Kenting Main Street is a long stretch of road. That night being a Saturday, the crowd, needless to say, was crazy!

LOL! Too funny not to upload!

Banana crepe

Fried oreo!! 

I swear this fried oreo in Kenting Main Street was perfect!! The oreo isn't sticky to the extent that it's like a ball sticking together when we had our first bite. We could still taste the crispiness of the minced oreo! The fried flour was perfect too! 

Speaking of fried oreo, I'll be going to Geylang Serai with Zach tomorrow! And hopefully, I'm able to try their fried oreo!!

Anyway, back to my trip! Didn't manage to take photos of my food after this because it was so crowded and we were holding onto a few bags of food and drinks. It's kinda troublesome to hold onto my phone while walking and eating at the same time. Sigh pie! My camera!! T_T

Back to the cab and we requested the driver to drop us at the nearest station to the night market we wna visit in Kaohsiung. Not sure if the way back to Kaohsiung from Kenting was fast or not beccause I could nap for awhile before reaching our destination. 

Last of the last: 新崛江夜市

Tried their chocolate ice blend/milk tea. 
My camera tends to focus at the wrong object :/

That concludes our day 2 in Taiwan and our last night in Kaohsiung!

Taiwan Day 1: SIN to Kaohsiung,

Day 1: SIN > Taoyuan Airport > Kaohsiung

"I'm flying to Taiwan again!!" This time with a different traveller with me. No special feeling. Not even on the day when I was flying. It only hit me that I'll be going to Taiwan just when I arrived at the airport. Hahah!

Bro and I were flying on the same day and the both of us had been "arguing" for ages who take which luggage with us. Hahahah! Of cus being the youngest kid in the family, I decided that I'll take the prettier one and Bro had no choice but to give in. But tbh, it's always good to take a luggage that can be expanded if you're going for a trip for more than 5 days. This luggage that I took with my burst when I was in Korea. Me being stubborn and lesson not learnt... I chose this luggage in hope that the zip won't spoil on me again.

Parents sent us to the airport that night but they didn't stay for long this time. It was a drop-off-goodbye-and-go kind of thing. My snapchat-spam started that night till the end of my trip. It was literally spam this, spam that, everything also spam! Hahah! Sorry not sorry /Gags/

Anyway, we flew with Scoot again. I think we were the only two who ordered meals and felt kinda guilty for disturbing others with the smell of our food.


Lesson learnt: never order any food when you're travelling at an unearthly hour because you won't have the appetite to eat at all. All you wna do was to slp till you reach your destination.

We landed at Taoyuan Intl Airport at about 5plus in the morning. Bought our tickets of UBus (NT $30 each) to Taoyuan HSR Station for the train to Zuoying, Kaohsiung. There's some hiccups in between because the one that Baby purchased online was at Taipei HSR but we went to Taoyuan HSR instead. Luckily, we were told that we could still continue and get our money refunded. It's cheaper to travel from Taoyuan, instead of Taipei, to Zuoying.

If nothing goes wrong, we could actually use these machines to retrieve our tickets. But...

From Zuoying > Martial Arts Stadium Station

We got lost while searching for our hotel. Ended up that it's just one street across the station -__- As the room wasn't ready yet, we were told to go for our lunch and to head back to the hotel in 2hrs' time. Left our luggage there and headed to Cultural Center Station as it was recommended by the receptionist.

Had our lunch at Vasir. It was picked randomly by the both of us as the restaurant was quite crowded and we thought "crowded means nice, so why not?" This restaurant serves dishes like our tzi char in Singapore. Nubad!

We ordered 双人套餐 that comes with 2 bowls of 卤肉饭, one vege, one dish that costs between NT $120-130, omelette, soup / 2 beverages of your choice. So, we chose these...

卤肉饭

Omelette with caipor

No idea what's this

Cabbage & seaweed soup (instead of beverages)

And guess what! You can nvr get this kind of price in Singapore. Other than the cabbage, the rest were rlly good! And it costs only NT $329 which is approx SGD15 for 2pax. WOW! Cheap pls! Back to our hotel because the weather was killing. The sun was scorching hot!

Yknw that feeling when you're finally on bed after a long day in the hot weather! Took our power naps, got up and prepared for our night activities! 

Dream Mall was the first destination but tbh, I think there's nothing much you can do there other than buying the waffles and other finger food. The ferris wheel at the rooftop arcade area was like... Nothing beautiful. The one I wanted was in Taipei :( I realised it only after I was back from my trip. Heartbroken max! 

Anyway, we still went ahead to Dream Mall 夢時代購物購物中心 @ Kaisyuan Station because we're tourists! Took the shuttle bus just outside of the station (Exit 3) to the mall.

 

Next stop: Ruifeng Night Market 瑞豐夜市

Fishball-alike food

Fried cheese cubes

Quail eggs which I thought it's nice!!

Next stop: Love River 爱河

There. Is. Nothing. Period. Maybe, just this and a bit of wefie. That's all. 

Bad lighting anyway...

Walked to Liuhe Night Market  六合夜市 and we got lost for awhile. Hahahah!! But we still managed to find our way to the night market! It's always good to have someone who knws how to read the map! 

Green bean soup which has super hard beans :/

大肠包小肠

Back to our hotel to have an early rest because we were too tired. Started our day at 10pm the previous night and we hadn't had any good rest yet. But before that, I forced Baby to have eye masks with me. HAHAHAH!

This concludes the end of Day 1 in Taiwan! All the fattening food with lots of oil accumulating in our tummies... Hahahah! 

Places we didn't cover in Kaohsiung:
- Hanshin Ju Dan Shopping Mall
- The Dome of Light (This happened because we were rushing for our last train and we had totally forgotten about this before that)
- Anning Street (wholesale market)

Goodbye!