Sixth day: June 26th, 2010 (Taipei)
Another day in Taipei! No night market visits today though, but we were instead going to visit the landmark of Taipei, which was Taipei 101. It was listed as one of the tallest buildings in the world and lately, I discovered that it was actually that building we saw in New Year's Eve's news on TV, blasting millions of fireworks into the sky from the body of the buildings! Wow.
Anyway, before we headed towards Taipei 101, we dropped by at another landmark, which was Chiang Kai Sek Memorial Hall. The vast courtyard reminded me with Tiananmen Square outside Forbidden City in China. The memorial hall had a museum underneath it, containing records and items once owned by Chiang Kai Sek. Later we were told by the fu dao yuans to exit the museum and climbed up to the real memorial hall, to watch another shift changing guards, like the one we watched in the day before.
Have I mentioned that the amount of stairs that connected the museum to the memorial hall were believed to be the age of Chiang Kai Sek? I counted 84. So guess his age must be in his eighties.
From the memorial hall, we headed straight to the downtown, which I believed, that was where Taipei 101 was located. Before heading to Taipei 101, we stopped by at an underground food court for lunch where I had this large hot pot noodle.
Maybe it looked very expensive to you, but actually it was really cheap.
Also, we made our stop in Taipei Discovery Center. Basically, it's a museum that tells about Taipei, its culture, its city's structure, and its people. The last part of the museum visit was awesome: it was where we entered this round theatre and we watched a movie about Taiwan and the seat practically revolved. Turned out the screen was all over the round wall.
Last stop of the day, and the most anticipated one...TAIPEI 101!!! No, sadly we weren't going to climb up to the 101st floor though (because to climb up to the top floor, we must pay another NT 100). We were instead going to visit its mall located just in the first several floors of the building. When I stepped for the first time into the mall, my jaw immediately dropped by the sight of branded shops stretching in every corners of the mall.
Really, you name all the famous brands you know. Chanel, check. Versace, check, even the mall got Lagerfeld. Later we decided to stroll around the mall, not to drool over these posh stores. We shopped in an outlet, went to Page 01 bookstore, and even had an early dinner in the foodcourt.
Too bad I didn't take pictures in Taipei 101. Guess we were too busy shopping.
Anyway, we had a free time once we were back from the mall to our hotel. Have I mentioned that Xi Men Ding night market we visited the other day was actually very close to our hotel?
We only needed to walk through the MRT station and got out from the different exit. So in the evening, my friends and I got ourselves walking down the night market, and we stumbled upon this unique restaurant.
It's called Modern Toilet. You wouldn't believe what you'd see once you entered it, because you'd find actual toilets as chairs and actual bathtub covered with a glass on top of it as a dining table! The mascot is a...well...cute anthropomorphic cute poop (poop is cute??). We took a look at the menu and it was all written in Chinese.
My friend who happened to be able to read Chinese explained that the dishes' names were all disgusting, involving stuff like poop, pee, well...things that will make you go 'yuck'!
Eventually, we ordered a large icecream (my friend hesitated to tell us what the name of the icecream in the menu, since it was too disgusting for a food's name). Ice cream itself looked tasty! Except the fact that the bowl was a toilet shaped one, and that eating the icecream would be like eating....won't tell here. Especially, there was this smaller icecream laid at the corner of the large bowl, and it resembled a real...poop.
But well, it was a cute restaurant. Everyone had no problem having our late dinner dessert there, fortunately.
Even the glass itself resembled a gent's toilet!
Oh, before I forgot, this isn't really necessary but I felt like I should tell you this. Me and my roommates, including Monika, slept up to 3 am to wait for our laundry to be done. While waiting in the living room, my friend, Didi, sort of felt that everything was shaking. Another guest who happened to be there apparently felt the same thing. We concluded that it was an earthquake, despite the small shake and the fact that we were on the 6th floor at that moment. Phiew.
Seventh day: June 26th, 2010 (Taipei)
Another day in Taipei! It was Sunday, means, free time! No schedules today, so we were all given free time all day to go to wherever we wanted to. My friends and I decided to start the day by going to the camera district. I forgot the name but it was a row of camera shops that sold various cameras, except that it didn't sell lomo cameras, sadly. My friends ended up buying polaroid cameras which cost a bit cheaper than the ones sold in Indonesia. So guess it's really worth it.
From the camera district, we went to a department store which was close to it. It was a Japanese department store called Muji and we ended up buying cute things, especially stationeries (my friends were all really into stationeries). I even ended up buying a cute pink pen there. Too bad I didn't get to take its picture.
Shortly after that, we took off to Taipei City Hall, but before that, we stopped by a Baleno outlet. What we once expected to spend only a couple of minutes turned out that we ended uup spending an hour in that small store, due to the discount promotion. I had my eyes on a pair of shorts with quite reasonable prices, but too bad that my size wasn't available.
Soon we made our way to Taipei City Hall by MRT, and it was raining. We practically got stuck in the station, but anyway we managed to have our late lunch that day by munching on these tasty sushi set.
When it already stopped raining, we walked to the nearest shopping center from the station. Sure it'd be way too far to walk to Taipei 101, but then turned out that Taipei 101 was surrounded by similar yet smaller shopping malls and department stores. Our group leader, or we call her Duizhang as in Leader, told us that in this particular shopping center we headed to, there was a huge bookstore on the top floor. Bookstores = stationery.
When I said huge, I mean it was reaaaallly huge. It even got two floors, all full of books! I was about to get myself a book but then everything seemed to be written in Chinese and the store provided only a small amount of English books.
Upon returning to the hotel, we stopped by Xi Men Ding and got myself buying a pair of shoes for my mom and a pair of headset for my friend's birthday.
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