To Be Or Not To Be.... A Bee Man...: April 2011

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Sakura at Yangming Shan National Park Taiwan (陽明山國家公園)

To go to Yangming Shan National Park, first you need to stop at the Jiantan MRT Station (劍潭). There are two buses going to Yangming Shan National Park (Bus 126 and 127) as shown in the photo below. Actually it is not on the 'Holiday' only, but on weekends only. The 'bus stop' is just outside the MRT Jiantan MRT Station (劍潭), Exit 1.

This is the 'bus stop' to Yangming Shan National Park Taiwan (陽明山國家公園). Don't worry about the stops, as Yangming Shan is at the last stop of the route. So, just sit back and relax...

Remember to buy easy card at any of the MRT Station, so that it is easier for you to commute by using public transport around Taipei. There are many packages offered by the Easycard Corporation and there are 2 packages which could be bought by the tourist. The first one is TaipeiPass (台北觀光護照). You can buy the one, two, three or five-day package for unlimited ride of all public transports within the duration of the package. The price is as follow:
1. 1 day pass: NTD 180
2. 2 day pass: NTD 310
3. 3 day pass: NTD 440
4. 5 day pass: NTD 700

However, there is no refund of the card, so after the duration of the card, you can bring it back as a souvenir. The package that i use is the second one which called Normal card. You have to pay NTD500 to buy the card, NTD100 is the deposit which can be refunded when you returned the card to any of the MRT counter. NTD400 is the credit for you to use and it can be recharged upon your need.

At the entrance of the Park. Oh, i have to mention here, there is no entrance fee!!!

On the half way to see Sakura, there are many stalls at the road side for you to enjoy the snacks and foods of Taiwan. Quite cheap and the most important thing is... tasty!!! We tried the fresh tomato, very small in size but very juicy!!!

Three juicy sausages for NTW100 (around RM10)

Finally

The 'must take photo' place!!!

Try to pose with the flowers without looking like a gay... hahaha

Ladies: 'scream'!!!!!

Para-para Sakura!!!

In action...

After this stop, we were taking an internal shutter bus to go another interesting point for lunch and sightseeing which will be posted on the next post.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Taipei City 臺北

First day in Taipei!!! I was very tired in the first day because i have to overnight at Kota Kinabalu Airport in order catch the flight to Taipei at 6.20am.

View of Taoyuan, Taiwan

View of Taoyuan, Taiwan

Welcome by Fahrenheit 飞轮海 at the Taoyuan Airport, haha

To ease our hunger while waiting for my sister in law to arrive from Singapore, we bought this sushi from the airport 7-11. Cost us around RM4 and it was huge and delicious. Another purpose of buying the sushi was because of changing notes. The notes that we got from Malaysia money changer are all NTD 1000. So we need to buy something in order to get small notes. Gentle reminder to tourists, please change your money at the airport money changer as there is no place for you to change your notes in the city except the HQ of certain banks such as Taiwan Bank. During my trip, I thought I can find money changer in the city just like other countries. However, that is not the case in Taiwan.

Mostly Chinese words on the packaging. If you can't read, then you better ask. Don't worry about asking people because they are very friendly and polite. In order to commute from the Taoyuan International Airport to the Taipei city, we have taken bus no. 5201 which cost us NTD150 (around RM15). It takes around 35 minutes to reach Shuanglian MRT Station which is only a stop away from Zhongshan MRT Station, the place where we stayed. If you wanna go to Taipei 101, just take the MRT to Taipei City Hall stop, from there you can either walk, will take you about 15 minutes, or Taxi, which will cost you about NTD70, to reach Taipei 101.