Taiwan Travelogue 1 – Xi Men Ding 西門町 – Celine Chiam | Singapore Lifestyle, Beauty and Travel Blogger
你好！！
I am finally back from taiwan holiday and now my life is entirely desk-bounded.
Nevertheless, I will be blogging about my taiwan trip with all the bits and pieces I did in Taiwan. I honestly enjoyed myself very very much with all the street food and scenery viewing. Can’t emphasize how much I love Taiwan!
The people (well, MOST) are nice, polite and gentle.
The street food are mad cheap, tasty and unique.
So today’s post will be talking about half of my first day in Taiwan, where I touched down at Tao Yuan 桃园 Airport and took their 快铁 (Bullet train) to Taipei 台北.
This is my nephew! He is so so cute. He brought us a lot of laughters during the 8 days trip too!
Because I was on a holiday with my family, parents usually prefer viewing the scenery rather than going free and easy. Free and easy is usually more for youngsters because their main aim is to shop. But that of course doesn’t apply to my family so we went on a package tour.
And because we reached Taipei at around 5am, nothing was opened yet so the tour guide brought us to macdonalds and try out their pork burger!
One thing I love about taiwan is the signboards they have hanging on the building. In the night, it can be really beautiful with all the lightings!
As soon as we reached the macs, it wasn’t unfamiliar. Looking pretty much like Singapore’s macdonald. I also tried the pork burger, but honestly nothing much about it :p Probably just satisfied the curiosity of how a pork burger would taste.
We also got to see some 槟榔西施!
This lady is so young!
Later on after the breakfast, we moved on to the railway station to take the railway, which is meant to be faster than our MRT here. The tour guide wanted us to have a try of the railway, which I thought was very down to earth and local!
This is my family! ♥
It took about 20mins to travel from Taoyuan to Taipei on their bullet train 快捷公车.
Before that, we went to buy some snack from 7-11. Their 7-11 here is much special and sell quite a variety of food.
I have a confession to make!
I always without fail will buy something from their 7-11 because they sell many things that can’t be found in Singapore. It’s more like “Hey this looks cool, let me try it” kind of mentality hahaha. This is especially more addictive because the items at 7-11 in Taiwan won’t go very expensive.
My mum totally into candy crush.. Are your parents too?
Taiwan doens’t adopt the tapping system like how we tap our ez-link card. We actually have to insert into the slot and pull it out in order to make the gantry open.
Leaving Taoyuan 桃园 to TaiPei 台北!
Their bullet train (快捷公车）, which is different from mrt.
All ready to enjoy myself in Taiwan!!
My poor nephew has no one to play with when everyone is so engrossed with candy crush. Hahaha!
The moment we reached Taipei, we went to visit Xi Men Ding 西門町。But because it was still early, about 10am when I reached, most of the shops were not opened yet. There are some food stalls along the streets though. Here’s the few things of the many choices at 西門町.
The very first thing I tried was the 水煎包, pan-fried bun. There are a few flavours and the particularly nice ones are the vegetables one and the one stuffed with minced meat. The skin of the bun was very soft and chewy.
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| Very happy with my first bite in Taiwan! |
The one with meat on top, and the one with vegetables at the bottom! It cost only 15NT!! (~60cents sgd)
Fried egg omelette 葱抓饼／葱油饼(45NT), with added cheese and egg was another tasty street food. Though a little oily, but it’s really good and authentic.
西門町阿宗豬腸麵線 (mee sua) was the third one I tried. The vast difference between the one here and singapore’s one is definitely the gravy sauce and the QQ chewy noodles. It’s definitely less watery, but not too diluted at the same time! This one is without oyster but with pig intestine. I did try one with oyster in the next few days, will blog about it!
Apparently, 阿宗豬腸麵線 is really famous among taiwanese themselves. So be sure to try it out when you reach Xi Men Ding 西門町. Just ask passers-by about Ah zong mian xian and they will surely know how to direct you there.
All these are in Xi Men Ding 西門町. It’s really huge and full of shops and push carts selling food! It will only start to be crowded after 12pm and more street food in the night.
Hello!
Xi Men Ding 西門町 also has this shop opened by Show Luo, 罗志祥. It wasn’t opened when I reached so I didn’t take a look inside.
THIS, is also very nice and popular.
豪大大鸡排 has really humongous fried chicken fillet for about sgd $2 only. I didn’t buy it here because I bought one from the main outlet at ShiLin 士林夜市 few days later. You’ll have to read the upcoming posts to know how huge is the chicken fillet!
We also tried the ice shavings dessert here and argh, it wasn’t exactly nice and it’s very pricey too. Wouldn’t really recommend this. Spend your money on street food please.
It cost about sgd$4 a bowl.
For some reason the students in taiwan dressed very similar.
And I also chanced upon the Risotto Cafe 阿毛石锅燉饭, with the star at the store front as well!!
It is really huge and I think when it’s lifted up, it can be as tall as the lady in front of her HAHAHA.
The lady wasn’t exactly friendly so I didn’t take many photos of it 🙁
Mua Chee 麻薯, which was a tad disappointing.
There’s many variation and stalls for the street food. Here’s another stall selling Fried egg omelette 葱抓饼／葱油饼. Fried egg omelette can be a little oily but honestly, how often can you come to Taiwan and taste their local food? I wouldn’t mind the little bit more oil since I’ve travelled all the way here already.
Left: Pork floss and egg
Right: Cheese and egg
Cheese flavour still faired better!
Next post: I left Xi Men Ding 西門町 to Wu Fen Pu 五分埔!
Wu Fen Pu is almost like bangkok’s chatuchak, pretty much a shopping paradise because of their cheaper items. Stay tuned for the post or follow me on instagram (@chiamhuiy) to be notified when I’ve posted!
Rate my post for me if you are reading this! Let me know if the travelogue is useful or interesting 🙂
Hui Yan-
