Our Taiwan trip has come to an end so quickly, today is the last day of our holiday and we will be flying back to singapore in the evening.
This morning, while the girls were sleeping, I went out early again to do some last minute shopping. I went to leeco factory outlet located at gongguan, the nearest mrt is gong guan station, along the green line. It was drizzling in the morning as usual, which really dampens the mood. At leeco factory outlet, you can find branded goods like guess, levi’s, celio, playboy, paul frank, armani, jojo, montagut. They take in the factory rejects or out of season clothing from the department stores, then sell it at the factory outlet store at heavily discounted prices, up to 50% off. However even after the discounts, it is still not within my budget, so I did not go for the branded ones. I bought a few tshirts from the local taiwanese designer as I felt that the tshirts were of good quality and the designs were nice.
After shopping, I had a lot of time left and wandered around the streets of gong guan, gu ting, taipower station. I visited their market and had an insight of how the locals did their grocery shopping. Taiwan does not have any homegrown supermarket as the space is limited and rental expensive, so the locals only shop at the wet markets or at convenience stores. Of course there are overseas supermarket brands such as wellcome, carrefour etc. The market sells all sorts of delicacies, from the usual pork, fish, poultry to the innards of animals.
I met the girls for lunch at Chiang Kai Shek station at 130pm after they settled the checkout at 1pm. They left our luggages at the hotel counter. I was not supposed to be at the scene as I am not an exact guest of the hotel. Shee and Joey wanted to eat the “hong you chao shou” and beef noodles from the famous beef noodle stall. Apparently they went to the stall yesterday and this is the third visit today, so the kind aunty gave us a bowl of vegetables for free. We had the wanton and dumpling beef soup. I think the beef noodles are not that nice as I do not like the hard, chewy texture of the noodles.
Then, we went to the beancurd shop for the final time as shee wanted to eat her favourite beancurd with yam and pumpkin balls. She even bought another one to take away to the airport. We returned to our hotel around 4pm and hailed a taxi to the airport. The cab fare was very expensive, NT1300 but luckily there were 3 people to split the fare and we cannot be lugging our luggage along the crowded taipei metro and taking a local bus to the airport. We just whiled time at the airport, I checked in first as my flight was earlier. Shee and Joey had to wait until exactly 2 hours before the flight when the counters finally open and there was already a long queue forming. At least for me, the Jetstar counter opened much earlier and I could get a window seat 5 rows from the front.
Taoyuan international airport is currently undergoing renovation to serve the passengers better. I feel that the current airport is very rundown and there is nothing much to look at for the duty free shops. 3K722 Osaka – Taipei – Singapore.
sigh. Taipei saranghae! ~
Vanité que vouloir changer le monde. Le monde change à son heure, malgré ceux qui veulent le changer.
