green room cafe

today darling and i went to a new place for a whole new food tasting experience.

green room cafe is located at bishan park 2, and it has earned good reviews from foodies in hungrygowhere dot com.

and u noe why isit called green room? because all the food is VEGETARIAN. haha. and also because it is located right in the middle of a park, surrounded by nice greenery. if you go at night and sit outdoors, if u get the night breeze, that's good, but if no breeze, be prepared to perspire. otherwise it will be a safer option to stay indoors, cos got air-con. if you go in the day, dun even think abt it, just go indoors.

we were greeted by the waitress, and the moment she spoke to us, i stunned. how come she is from the land of contaminated milk?? cos i thought this kind of atas place should have someone that speak good english. wat if ang mor come how? but the waitress is very very nice and provide us with really great service, so i shall stop saying about this contaminated milk issue.

first we ordered the starter: indochinese spring roll, served with chilli sauce.

i must say that the spring roll together with the chilli sauce, taste very HEALTHY. i dun mean that it is tasteless, but it just taste HEALTHY. sorry for my poor vocab.

as for the main course, darling ordered a baked mushroom brown rice, and i ordered mutton curry with brown raisin rice.

both dishes taste awesome. the baked mushroom brown rice come in a very very big plate. darling only finish half of it. i finished all the mutton curry, including the gravy, cos the gravy really taste awesome, and it goes very well with the brown rice. mutton is tender and juicy, and most amazingly, the mutton is mock meat. kudos to the chef.

the dessert rocks big time. hot piping waffles with maple syrup and diced fruits.

the bill total up to 51 dollars. a bit expensive but i think is quite worth the money. dun mind going there the next time. :)

pretty hosts

this is a pure guys' post. haha.

after watching 天才冲冲冲, i must say that the show's 2 co-hosts, 小娴 and 艾莉丝, are damn pretty and hot.

and i found video clips of the two of them dancing. WOO HOO!!!

oh i forgot to mention that another 遗憾 is not being able to watch the live recordings of variety shows in taiwan. meeky told us that 吴宗宪 very 重视 singaporeans, and he will set up a 新加坡区 in the live studio just for singaporeans.

post taiwan trip thoughts

being to taiwan 5 times, i dun feel sian at all. because i really love the culture, the pple, the food and the shopping! every trip there is with different pple, and therefore will have different memories. and every trip gives me different 惊喜, but also gives me some 遗憾.

for this 5th trip to taiwan with kc and zhenhong, i must say that i feel very comfortable travelling with them. they are very 爽快 and very 随和, so going out with them is a total enjoyment. and they nv blame me when i bring them to "hor-lan", hahaha, although i do feel quite guilty about that. they will just take the guide book and help me navigate to the place that i want to bring them to. so touched... *tears rolling down my cheek*

i hope that they enjoyed taiwan as much as i do, but it seems unlikely, cos a few days after we come back to sg, i ask them whether they have withdrawal symptoms, they say dun have. hahahahaha. actually my withdrawal symptoms for this trip also not that strong, maybe its because of my 5th time being there. and i must say that i noe the 西门町 area much better than sg's 牛车水 area. :p

ok so let me list down the highs of the trip:

- eating 海之冰 at 高雄

- admiring the beautiful 日月潭 at the top of 慈恩塔

- staying at 台一 and eating the marvellous dinner

- going to 清境农场

- staying at east dragon hotel

- seeing 槟榔西施 at 近距离 (hahahaha darling pls dun kill me)

- going to 鼻头角公园

and some 遗憾s of the trip:

- not going to 盐埕区 to enjoy the good food when we were at 高雄

the good food:

http://popblog.tvbs.com.tw/Blog/Blog_manager/Blog_Content_temp.aspx?NEWS_CODE=20080707113320&NEWS_DATE=2008/07/05&path=yummytvbs&fun=comments

- nv get to sit the ferry at 日月潭, missing out some of the nice spots like 啦鲁岛 and 玄光寺

- nv get to spend more time in 台中

- the lousy breakfast provided at east dragon hotel

- nv go to the interesting uniform concept restaurants at 台北, hahahahahaha

check out the guy's orgasmic expression. btw the liquid inside the syringe is fruit juice.

- nv go to 朱铭美术馆

i will love to do wushu poses in front of the statues.

so if i may be going to taiwan again for the 6th time, i will try my best to clear the above 遗憾s. hahahaha. but the breakfast at east dragon hotel i can do nothing about it. :p

and the 6th time wun be so fast, at least must wait until 5 years later! UNLESS, somebody pay for my air ticket and give me free accomodation, then i definitely will go within this 5 years. haha.

oh and here's the cute masks that i bought:

this shows how big the mask is, and how small is darling's head.

although i bought them for H1N1, but i seriously hope that i wun need to use the masks for that purpose.

final day in taiwan!

very fast its already our last day in taiwan. we checked out of our hotel at 11 am and went around 西门町 on our own to do some last minute shopping. i bought 当归 maggi mee and some cute face masks (thanks to the outbreak of H1N1). i also bought a donut from mister donut to snack on. zhenhong bought a brown color airwalk slingbag for himself and some tshirts for his friends. oh and he bought ah zong mee sua for lunch. hahaha. kc bought a new black bag to put his taiwan shopping items as well as esther's. and he also bought a bowl of 粉圆豆花. ever since he ate his first bowl of 粉圆豆花 in 埔里夜市, he had fallen in love with it and try to buy 粉圆豆花 whenever he can but he still ranks the 粉圆豆花 in 埔里夜市 as the number one.

remember the trauma i had when taking the 客运 to the airport from 西门町? this time round i am not going to experience the same trauma again. so we decided to take a cab! and guess how much it cost? it cost us NT1000, and i tried to negotiate to NT800, but the taxi driver say cannot cos very cheap already, other taxi drivers charge NT1200. ok lor then so be it. so each of us pay NT330, and its a comfortable journey to the airport. that time darling and i paid NT250 each with lots of negative experiences. so i think NT330 per person for this time is pretty worth it.

when we reach the airport its only 130 pm, our flight is at 405 pm, so we still got alot of time. we proceeded to check in, and when we were in the check-in queue, zhenhong and kc saw their NTU lecturer. haha wat a coincidence.

oh today we wore trio tee! after kc and i wore couple tee on the first day, we decided to rope zhenhong in to become the three musketeers. haha.

we saw a very interesting "person" at the airport:

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since we got so much time left, i wanted to go terminal 2 and take a look, cos i have nv been there before. and we also want to have a good lunch, cos there's really nothing much to eat at terminal 1.

terminal 2 is so much more happening than terminal 1, and their restaurants are better. we had our lunch at this 小笼包 restaurant. i ordered a unagi don, kc ordered a 红烧牛肉面, and the 3 of us shared 30 小笼包s. hoho we ended our food tour in taiwan with a bang.

delicious~~~

we reached the departure gate, and we were told that the flight will be delayed by 15 minutes. how come china airlines always like that. but 15 minutes is ok compared to the last time when the flight was delayed like 45 minutes??

took some more pics while waiting:

a pic of us in the plane:

the in-flight entertainment system not bad. i watched valkyrie (dunno if i spell correctly) from sg to taipei. and back to sg i watched this movie of a fat guy who is a security officer in a shopping mall and he managed to break down a major robbery attempt in the shopping mall all by himself. quite entertaining. haha.

when we reached singapore, some stupid thing happened.

after collecting our luggage, we started to make our way out of the transit mall. then the immigration officers stopped us and ask us to scan our baggage first. i think we look like criminals, especially with the trio tee. so we just scan lor. then one of the immigration officers come to us and ask us if got anything to declare. we look at each other and told him nothing to declare. then he ask to check my green color bag. shit. so i let him check. and guess wat's inside??

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i bought it at the 台一 souvenir shop, for only NT100, which is around 5 sing dollars. i totally forgot that i bought it. shit.

so he direct me to the immigration security counter and ask me to take a seat. he took the nanchaku from me and ask for my passport. so i waited for like 30 minutes. i see them filling up some forms, taking pictures of the nanchaku.

that time also got one ang mor sitting beside me. he more li hai, cos he brought a 龙头拐杖, then you can take the 龙头 out, and it becomes a 龙头 dagger! wah lao damn fierce. he looks super super sian. my nanchaku cost 5 sing, i think his cost about 1000 sing?

i asked zhenhong and kc to go home first cos i dunno how long it will take. so i carried on waiting, and then 2 police officers came. i was like, wah lao need to be so 夸张 a not, need police officers to come down one ah. at the same time i was also quite pissed, just for a 5 dollar nanchaku you ask me to wait for so long, should have just let you confisgate my nanchaku and let me go home first. so i got interviewed by one of the police officers, he got no rank, so is just pass out from police sch, and the way he ask me questions he also very nervous, keep on stammering, so despite me being super pissed, i tried to be as nice as i can when answering his questions.

then dunno how long later, the more lao jiao police officer (who is a sergeant), came to me and tell me that nanchaku is a prohibited weapon in singapore, so have to confisgate it, and because i got no criminal records, and i am in the civil service, she will just let me off with a verbal warning. ok lor fine then.

now i regret not taking out the nanchaku and play with it for a while and take picture with it when i was still in taiwan. haiz cannot "her-her-har-he" anymore.

for those who dunno wat is "her-her-har-he", think of jay chou's songs. hahaha.

3rd day in taipei

our 3rd day in taipei, 7th day in taiwan. for the past six days, we have been waking up early and going out the whole day, and come back late at night. so for our 3rd day in taipei, we decide to sleep as much as we can and wake up late. but i still wake up at around 8 plus in the morning, cos used to it already. :p

zhenhong and kc woke up slightly later. i went to da bao some food from 永合豆浆 for our breakfast. the 永合豆浆 is very near, just across the street from our hotel. that's why i love 西门町. food and shopping no need to worry. very very convenient.

we watched nba while eating breakfast. really quite shiok to eat the yummy breakfast at the sofa, relaxing, watching tv. this is the ideal holiday man. btw if you all are wondering why i went to buy breakfast, actually east dragon hotel got provide breakfast, but their breakfast a bit cmi. only give us one egg, 2 small cream buns, one coffee/tea, and one fruit juice. yucks! at least toong mao hotel got buffet spread.

in the afternoon then we went out. our first place for the day is 中山站, to do a bit of shopping and find the famous 肥前屋 for their well-known yummy unagi don, BUT SADLY, the shop is closed on mondays!!! wah lao my tour book nv say that 肥前屋 is closed on mondays lor! wassup man. instead we went to another restaurant which is just beside 肥前屋, and that restaurant sell noodles, which is also quite nice!

after that we go another famous shop recommended by my tour book, which is "piece of cake". the swiss rolls that they sell are the number 1 swiss roll in the whole taiwan. wow so li hai ah. so must go and try. haha.

and they dun come cheap. one piece of cake, plus a drink, cost NT180!!! which is around 9 sing! damn expensive.

next we went to 淡水. 淡水 is another place that you must go if you visit taipei, and if you going as a couple, can go to 渔人码头 to take a look at the lovers' bridge. this time i go the weather is good, with the sun, blue sky and beautiful clouds. that time i went with darling is gloomy sky. how i wish darling is with me right now, admiring the beautiful bridge in awesome weather. :(

our final destination is 士林夜市! i think this place needs no introduction. it is simply the biggest and most happening night market in taiwan. if you go taipei and nv go 士林夜市, might as well go and die.

zhenhong very very gian to go and try the 豪大炸鸡排. hahahaha. and pls dun order the 大饼包小饼. i think is kinda over-rated, and is not that nice at all. i stupid stupid go buy 3, cos if buy 3 will be more worth it if you just buy 1. and the 4 of us just eat 1 and dun feel like eating the second one.

the delicious and famous food there is too many to list, if you want to find out more can go youtube search for 食尚玩家. i noe alot of nice places and delicious food in taiwan by watching that variety show. haha. the hosts are quite funny, and got one female host called 莎莎, very cute and quite chio.

and we ended our visit of 士林夜市 with a BANG!!!

back to the army days. haha. is real M16! but of course is not live rounds lah. is metal balls, and we have to shoot down the orange ping pong balls.

all right and that wraps up day 7 of the taiwan trip, and the next post will be my finale post of the whole taiwan trip with kc and zhenhong. :)

cool performance at tampines central

next time when you go to tampines central, look out for the big patch of field in front of tampines mrt station, and when you see a bulldozer, with a man hanging there, and got loud music, dun be too alarmed.

i got take video, but clip too big, will take ages to upload, anyway if you are lucky to see the performance, just stop in your tracks and take a look, i think its pretty amazing and daring for that ang mor guy to use the bulldozer to do pdd. hahaha.

old pics of me in vatican city

after watching angels and demons, i went to dig out my pictures that were taken in vatican city.

omg last time i was like how thin.

-.-'''

second day at taipei

our second day at taipei was on a sunday. i managed to find a taxi driver who was recommended by a few bloggers. and i must say that he is very nice and very fun to talk with, and all 4 of us were very happy with his services.

and here are his personal details:

Name: 杨振银 Meeky

HP: 0921915586

Email: Meeky589@yahoo.com.tw

he also noes a bit of english, and his computer cant read chinese words, so can just send him a email in simple english if you want to employ his services. and must do it quite early, cos he is super popular right now. pple already start booking him in late april when they only going taipei in august.

and these are the places he brought us to:

野柳

九份

金瓜石

黄金瀑布

鼻头角公园

南雅奇岩石

阴阳海

基隆夜市

and his charges are 12 hours for NT3000. he will arrive at either 830 or 9 am at your hotel lobby to pick you up, and send you back to your hotel 12 hours later. he drives a 7-seater cab.

meeky really arrived punctually at 830 am outside east dragon hotel. zhenhong, kc and his gf esther are still in the hotel room settling their "business". not threesome ok, dun think crooked. haha. so i go out and talk to meeky first. i asked him whether can bring us to taiwan bank first because kc have some old taiwanese currency to change. but he say today is sunday, all banks not open, and he say can just change the currency with him, he will find another day to change them himself. wow. first impression already 100 marks. haha.

so the first place that meeky brought us to is 野柳. its a 40 min ride and throughout the journey, meeky keep talking to us, introducing taipei, cracking a few jokes, ensuring that the journey is not boring. time passes quite fast, and we reached 野柳.


野柳 is a scenic place with many peculiar stones in peculiar shapes caused by wind and sea erosion. some of the more special stones are 女皇石，cinderalla shoe, and king's throne. i still see them a few years back. but right now, only the 女皇石 exists. the shoe and throne disappeared already.

i remember taking a similar photo like this a few years back:

(how come i am not inside??!!)


the cinderella shoe and king's throne (photos from a few years back):



after 野柳，meeky fetch us to a place to make us feel ENERGETIC. yes he bringing us to see 槟榔西施! hahaha. he told us that alot of pple in taiwan eat 槟榔 to feel more 精神, and taxi drivers always eat 槟榔 so that they wun fall asleep while driving. and some 槟榔西施 are so daring that they wear 丁字裤 and 透明比基尼 just to get more business. wow.

the 槟榔西施 that we saw is not that daring, but the way she dress is hot enough to make a guy nose bleed. she even dance a bit for us to see. omg. and of course must take pic with her lah. hahaha. and seriously i nv expect that she will put her arms around me. i was damn shocked and looked pretty awkward.

meeky bought us a 槟榔 each to try. he even provided us plastic cups to split the 槟榔 out. i must say is a bit weird and i dun think i will try it a second time. haha.

listen to wat the others have to say:

2) 九份

we tried the smelly tofu. is my second time trying it, but its the first time for zhenhong and kc. we only dared to try because esther is a fan of smelly tofu, so if we find it too unbearable and cant finish it, esther will finish up the rest. haha. and true enough, its really quite unbearable.

请看 vcr!!!

3) 金瓜石

金瓜石 is very near 九份. it was a gold mining area in the past, and it has become a tourist attraction now. the admission fee is NT50 per person, but if you got receipts from any purchases at any taipei stores, you can show them the receipts and no need to pay the admission fee. of course we dun have any receipts with us but meeky already prepared some and gave us the receipts. so nice rite?


you can go inside the tunnel to find out the working experience of gold miners, or you can go to the 黄金博物院 to see some gold exhibits, which include a 220 kg gold brick, and you can touch the gold brick to make you "high" for a while.

it was raining very heavily at 金瓜石 and all of us were super turned off and low morale. we thought of returning back to our hotel room cos no point going to the other scenic places under the rain. but luckily as we left 金瓜石 area, there was no more rain, so our trip resumed as usual. :)

4) 黄金瀑布

meeky warned us not to drink the water or use the water to clean our hands at the waterfall because the water comes from the mining areas, which is very dirty and poisonous. he said some of his passengers got skin irritation after contact with the water, and he prepared some mineral water for us at the back of his car just in case we touched the water. wow really touched by his gesture.

and when we were at the waterfall, we still see some tourists drinking the water and washing their hands with the water. wow we nearly freaked out.

5) 鼻头角公园

we took a group photo with meeky at the entrance of the 公园.



鼻头角公园 is like the taiwanese version of great wall of china, and you can see the magnificient pacific ocean. being to taipei 5 times, this is my first time visiting 鼻头角公园, and i must say that this is a really awesome place that is not to be missed.





6) 南雅奇岩石


another place with peculiar rocks.


7) 阴阳海


the sea is divided into two colors, yellow and blue. yellow is because of the contamination from the gold mining area.


8) 基隆夜市

nv take any pictures there. and its overcrowded because its a sunday. we can barely move an inch. super kua zhang.


finally, we made our trip back to east dragon hotel. kc and esther wanted to go to 五分浦 to do some shopping so meeky fetched them there. zhenhong and i went back to the hotel to put our things and we walked around 西门町 again for some shopping.

its been a fun day. thank you meeky for bringing us to so many places, and introducing to us the taiwan culture, and of course the 槟榔西施. hahahahaha.