TAIPEI DIARY (Day 3) > Taipei Zoo, Maokong Tea Garden / Maokong Gondola

Hey guys!

Sorry for the lack of updates, i didn't even realize it's been so long since my last post till now.
It's really quite hard to balance between having time for work, relationship, friends and myself and of course this blog.

Sigh, it really needs quite a lot of getting used to!!

If you havent read on day 1 and you want to plan out your own itinerary, many details are on that post so click here!
Anyway, as mentioned previously, day 3 was spent with my taiwanese friends!
They wanted to bring us to Taipei Zoo and Maokong which is like a mountain with tea houses, cherry blossoms, cafes and we had to take a gondola up there
It was really quite fun haha. And ritche loves animals so i'm glad we had quite a long tour of the zoo as well.

We set off quite early at about 9plus but we still ended up being late cause it's about an hr's ride to the zoo from XiMen.
There is a direct train THANKFULLY if not we'd probably have to take a bus and get lost in the process.

Morning's puffy face omg i can never run away from this?! it takes at least an hr to go back to norm

I ended up scraping whatever i had in mind for my day 3 outfit cause i figured i'll freeze to death
So i decided to wear my boyfriend's new checkered shirt inside, with his pullover,
added with my new pair of fluffy and super comfy boots i bought for just 190 NTD ($8 SGD) when i was in Shilin night market!!

Was really lucky to have come across such cheap buys hehe
But of course, now that i'm back in Singapore i have no use for these shoes >_>
Waiting for my next winter holiday (soon pls)

Had street food in the morning cause we were in a rush haha, and i absolutely LOVE dumplings
It's normal to see me ordering gyoza at jap restaurants and you'll always always see me ordering dumpling noodles

Sigh every part of taipei seems to have hidden gems, if only we had more time to just drop off at random stations and explore!!

Finally reached Taipei Zoo Station and as you can see, the zoo is right next to the Gondola up to Maokong mountain!
If you don't know what a gondola is, it's actually just a cable car LOL
Yes, i was quite confused at first cause i would know of gondola to be the rowing boat in Venice.

i wanted to be included in the picture and Ritche refused to take the photo hence the face HAHAHA

Finally met up with Jacko at the station!
He didn't take the train with us cause he drives a scooter.
And thank god for free wifi at the station cause we were standing inside the station thinking we were so freaking punctual
but they were actually standing outside the station waiting for us HAHAHA my god we are such a burden

Okay, so the Singapore Zoo's ticket costs $32 SGD, which is 730 NTD.
AND their Taipei Zoo's ticket costs $2 SGD, only 60 NTD (it's only a dollar for students btw)
It was really damn hard to believe the price difference, considering the fact that Singapore Zoo doesn't even have pandas?!

Psh. And not to forget all the super duper expensive souvenirs and food they sell in the Singapore zoo,
to the extent i dont even remember buying a single thing when i'm there cause it's just not worth it at all?!
Aiyo it's really time to migrate as soon as i can already

Was super lucky to have visited the panda during it's feeding time!!
omg it's so cute it almost looks like i ripped this photo off the net HAHA

Look at that, they keep track of how many animals they have in their zoo
Oh and one very good thing is that the zoo is really really big, so even if there are many visitors it isn't crowded at all!
You wouldn't have to deliberately stand around just to wait for a chance to see the animals if you know what i mean

This is Jacko's favourite animal HAHAHA i only remember the chinese name cause they keep saying "ma lai mu" and it sounds really funny
I just googled it!! It's called the Malayan Tapir.
Apparently when they are lying down, animals would see them more as a rock rather than a prey HAHA WHAT???
I see 0 similarities of it to rocks leh camouflage maybe yes but rock is a nono.

The super qt sun bear!

When kids can't spot the animals they'll go "mei you ban zhiiiiii", the only thing cuter than the animals would be taiwanese kids really

Taking a break and thought we could buy a quick snack before exploring the rest of the zoo!
When it was my turn and i wanted to get 2 of their milk sticks, they were only left with 1
so i had to stand outside their shop for more than 20mins to wait for them to make more........
I have no idea why but these things always ALWAYS happen to me

Ritche went to get these cute little things, and they're actually egg puddings in real egg shells cause the machine just
cuts off the top of the shell, then milk is put in it and steamed i think?? Something along those lines!

It is super obvious when Ritche manages to find wifi, you'll 100% see him scrolling through instagram TRUST ME

And finally the milk sticks were ready!!!
It's like a dough stick with a very crispy and sugar coated exterior....need this right now.

The staff saw me holding a camera and she went like "want to take a photo first before i start preparing all of it?"
Taiwanese people are really so nice :''''(

Lunch time at lastttttttt.

The food was quite bad la hahaha but normally when you visit such attractions, the food they serve in there would somehow be bad.
The only reason why these shops survive is because people still have to find something and somewhere to have their meals #reality
Well at least the food wasn't costly, 130 NTD ($5.50 SGD) with the drink.
If you bought the odd tasting mango pudding in USS, it'll cost you 5 bucks as well LOL

Hippos cuddling and taking an afternoon nap together, they really know how to enjoy life

Lion acting cool and all #lionswag 

most of the animals looked really tired, i think it's because of the super cold weather

The apes are feeling really cold that's for sure!! Aw man they need to provide little sweaters for these cuties :(

That's really the "Bitch please" pose captured at the right moment HAHA

We spot these 2 weird brown non-penguin like creatures and they're actually baby penguins!!

And finally at 4plus we made our way to the Gondola/cable car to get to Maokong!!
The ride cost us 50 NTD ($2 SGD) per pax, which is really very cheap compared to the one in Singapore that costs 29 SGD (15 times more expensive).
They even have a special cable car that is called the "Crystal Gondola" in which the flooring is made of glass as well
so you could look at the view directly down below, it's pretty scary HAHA esp if you have fear of heights but it was nice!
And you don't even have to pay extra for this Gondola, it's just a separate queue!

It seemed a little crowded at the areas with street food so we took a stroll and explored the place first!
When we went back an hr later it was really really empty?

Jacko told us that dark pink cherry blossoms are taiwanese cherry blossoms, and those light pink ones are japanese!!
I never knew taiwanese cherry blossoms existed lol but they're really pretty

Jacko and his girlfriend! They're wearing couple pullovers inside haha super cute

These plots of land are rented out to people and they just plant whatever that they want!!

Yes that's a selfie stick HAHA and my boyfriend right there just photobombing them

Didn't even realize them taking a photo of me taking a photo of them HAHAHA

Dangerously placed my camera on the narrow ledge just so we could manage a self timer shot together, i'm getting quite good at this LOL

My cutie :')

If you were wondering why i haven't taken much selfies on days 1 and 2, it's because of the lens we were using, the 45mm is so close up,
if i tried taking a selfie i can only capture like HALF of my face??
So just try to imagine how far i'd have to stand when Ritche takes my outfit photos and stuff LOL

An entire row of cherry blossoms! But its really sad cause the flowers only bloom for 2 weeks in an entire year before they start to fall off.
So just imagine the chances of you getting to see them is just 14/365 days in a year! Lucky us

could hardly capture this photo cause out of nowhere it suddenly became super dark + i was shivering like crazy i couldnt stabilize the camera :(

And so it was dinner time!! We ordered the typical chinese dishes, vege, stir fried beef and there was this fish we ordered,
I have no idea what it's called but it's nothing like what i've ever had in my life.
There was like crispy stuff on the fish, and the sauce was tasty like soup. If you visit this place you should try ordering that!!
Sorry i can't tell you the name of the fish cause the whole menu was in traditional chinese so i couldn't read a word >_>

And this was pretty cool! Tea leaves fried in the fried rice, so it was really fragrant.

The whole meal cost us 1000 NTD ($43 SGD) and i think it's quite okay considering that it's 4 pax.
How often do you get to enjoy a meal in the mountains????

So it was already pitch dark, we were all shivering and i still went on and tried taking photos LOL
I was shaking so bad you could see me moving the camera up and down (well i took these all just for the blog)

We decided to go for coffee after cause wa, a hot coffee is all we need in this weather.

Ritche ordered the hazelnut tea and it came in this cute pot. He had to drink 5 full glasses of it before he was done HAHA.
But within 20minutes it was cold already thanks to the weather.

And over coffee we were comparing the cost of living in Singapore and Taipei cause if one day i could migrate here i really would!
A 3 room flat in an old estate rather near the city would cost 300k in sgd (i have no idea why i'm sharing this HAHA)
So singapore's housing would still be about 1.5x more expensive.
And those normal jobs under the service line such as a full time waiter would be 1.2k, so singaporeans get paid only 1.2x more?
And of course, the price of food here is definitely a lot cheaper, there was no need to calculate that at all!

I believe many singaporeans especially people my age want to migrate elsewhere
and so i asked them if they would ever want to leave taiwan for good and the answer was no.
Yeah la true why would anyone want to leave taiwan for good anyway :(

We also went on to discuss about like how their locals have more rights and freedom of speech etc.
I have no idea how i managed these topics in chinese LOL

We left the place early cause as soon as we were done with our drinks because the cold was getting more unbearable.
Jacko's girlfriend was actually feeling unwell from the weather so we headed for the gondola.
12 degrees isn't that cold but with the extremely strong winds it really was!

We were rather glad to leave early as well cause we wanted to go back for THISSSSSS
HEHE mua chee back at ximen ding. Just to repeat myself again it operates from 12.30pm to 10pm!!
We ordered the peanut, condensed milk, cheese and chocolate flavour.
I would think my fav would be the condensed milk and chocolate one, they should create a fusion of both maybe.

As per normal we would go to 7-11 before heading back for the hotel to get drinks and stuff!
I decided to get a cup of soup cause i was still feeling cold in the hotel though the aircon was already off wtf
The soup had noodles in them and it was so damn tasty i should i brought some back to sg!!

Actually on the following morning we woke up panicking because while looking through the photos in the camera,
they were detected to be CORRUPTED and we couldn't view the photos at all.
So i was thinking to myself, how the hell am i supposed to blog day 2 and 3 without any photos LOL
Just imagine, half of day 2's photos and the whole of day 3's photos all GONE.
Thankfully when we came back to Singapore there was a way to restore like 95% of them!!
My uncle (a photographer) said that it's one of the reasons why it's important to get a better SD card.
Well lesson learnt, i dont want to go through that again >_>

My next taipei post would be on day 4, we went to jiu fen, shi fen (where they filmed you're the apple of my eye)
and miao kou night market which is one of the best night markets for food!!
It was quite an eventful day hehe will try to do up the post as soon as i can

Anyway, i'll be holding a flea for Stylehacks.net on the 28th March, this Saturday, at TripleOne Somerset!
If you're free do drop by hehe.