welcome to taiwan!
My Jetstar flight arrived in Taipei at 1155am, it was boring travelling alone and luckily I had my ipod music to keep me company. The legroom in the plane was very small and the aisle was also very narrow. I just tried to sleep throughout the whole flight and did not order anything as the food was too expensive.

It took half an hour to clear immigration, then I took an express bus from the airport to Taipei bus station. I had to lug my luggage through the crowded mrt station of taipei main station and took one train stop to jhongshan station, the mrt station nearest to the hotel that we booked. I had estimated to reach around 1.30pm, but I arrived an hour late due to the unforeseen circumstances and my cousin was worried for me.

After settling down and getting a local sim card, during which the process was very troublesome, we went to taipei main station. It was an interchange station, but there was nothing much to look around except for the high end shopping mall located above the bus station. We were wandering along the streets opposite the bus station when we chanced upon a bubble tea store with a long queue. Apparently this stores sells green bean bubble milk tea which is popular among the locals. So we joined them in the queue and when we got our bubble tea, it was warm at the bottom due to the steaming hot pearls and cold at the top from the cold fresh milk.

Next, we walked down the road to the national maritime museum. It was such a coincidence that today was international museum day and they were offering free entry, so we went in as well, but only had 10 minutes to browse through the exhibits as the museum was closing at 5pm. There was a seashells exhibit which showcased the marine biodiversity of the waters surrounding taiwan. The rice exhibit was also very engaging as we learnt how rice is an important staple in asian diet and how rice can be versatile and used to make many varieties of dishes in this country.

After the short museum visit, we walked back to taipei main station before taking the mrt to jian tan station, the location of shilin night market. This night market is the largest in taiwan and is any food lover’s paradise. We immediately went for the most fanous chicken cutlet which had the longest queue. It was worth the wait and they came to take our order in advance to speed up the process.

Other delicious night market foodstuff that we tried: honey bittergord juice, fried milk balls, wasabi fish balls, potato stuffed with bacon and cheese, bbq yakitori etc.

tired zzzzz time to sleep