Taiwan Day 2 — Taoyuan

Continuing my Taiwan post from ... 

http://linayee.blogspot.sg/2016/05/taiwan-day-1-taoyuan.html

So glad for the morning because the weather was slightly better (warmer because of the sun). We left his apartment at around 11 am for brunch at a random eatery. Everyone knows my Chinese sucks. So I have no idea what I was gonna order. But the moment I saw the word 魚 as seen in the picture, I decided to order that because I love fish!

Was a little confused when the bowl was presented in front of me because I was expecting fish meat instead of.. pork?? Little did I know that this was the moment I fell head over heels in LOVE with this I have no idea how and why but it's so HEAVENLY. The way the meat melts in the mouth. Omg. I'm missing it so much now. :( 

I actually had a teeny weeny bit of difficulty trying to find the first 滷肉飯 (lu rou fan) picture that I had eaten because over the course of two and a half weeks, I ate quite a lot of bowls of it. 

And the best part? This particular bowl was only 25 TWD. Wthell right?! That's only about a dollar plus SGD. And apparently most places are selling it at around 25 - 40 TWD only! The funniest thing is that it's my third time in Taiwan and I've never had it the past two trips?!

Ok, I should stop harping about the rice. But please go try it if you are heading to Taiwan! It's by far my favourite dish throughout my trip.

I also got myself an easycard. Oli and I were in a hurry so we hurriedly purchased the card. I was quite upset that there were a lot more cuter designs than my standard boring zebra stripes card. T_T

We took a bus to Daxi Old Street. Apparently was a recommended place to visit, however it was quite a deserted area.

Climbing down the stairs was okay, but back up was ...

Psst, it's a different temple from the one above! 

We walked and we walked and found some farms where there were rice crops. 

Then we also saw an area with a few washing boards. Since the area was pretty countryside-ish, i'll assume that the villagers really do use the washing boards to wash their clothing?

Snap some pictures, had 干面 (gan mian) and we left the place.

Idk why the picture looks like spaghetti bolognese but that's the gan mian.

Oli needed to get some fish food so he brought me to a pet shop! It's a pretty big pet shop selling various animals like really cute white mice, hedgehog, crickets and even SNAKES!

Super adorable right?! 

And apparently uber is banned in Taiwan. And people are going to say im crazy for saying that because my friends did debate with me over the ban. But it's true la guys. IT IS BANNED, don't ask me why. Go google yourself. But ya, despite the ban, we uber back to Oli's apartment. Continue watching Amazing Race for awhile before we went down for Oli to get ingredients for dinner!

He actually forgotten that I cannot eat beef and bought beef! But that's okay because the meal was actually really good!

The day ended and that was actually my last night in taoyuan!

Till then!

Crazy for DIY

Shall blog while I can. Hehehe, I've been wanting to share with you all the process of the minion doll house making right ?

My posts are soooo not consistent. Suddenly talk about miniatures then hop to my Taiwan trip and back to miniatures.

So continuing to where I left off, J and I only managed to cut out the prints but have not gotten down and dirty with the gluing part yet. This is actually my second time doing a doll house (kinda second time but I didn't complete the first). And I swear, first times are the messiest because I had to figure which glue works best on which material. And using the wrong glue like white glue for cloth would create a wet mess that takes a reaaaaaally long time to dry.

J fixing the wardrobe on the double decked bed. I swear that the stairs for the top bed was the most troublesome part.

This picture depicts a completed bed frame (Yay! It's also quite annoying to do.), wallpaper and frames up and we are about to get started on the cloth materials which includes the bedding, pillows and stuff. 

Making the pillows weren't easy because we didn't bother using needle and thread (which might make the job a lot easier than gluing the pillow together). J worked with the fabrics while I focused on the miniature furniture.

Snap of two seats, a box of minion posters (REAL ADORABLE POSTER DESIGNS, I actually used loom bands as rubber bands to hold the shape of rolled up posters.), a bottle with wires hanging out that are meant for the lamps later on and a really cute minion plushie. 

It's sooooo cute that I was actually really excited to make it. But oh god, it was so tough because of the tiny details like the 6 strip of hair on his head.I dropped one of it and had a really hard time finding it.

Our final product actually look really similar to the one displayed on the box. I would say that it's a job well done! Go back to the post http://linayee.blogspot.sg/2016/05/miniature-dollhouses.html and you'll see that we did a pretty good job right? Hehehe. Last last Friday was J's brother birthday and we gave it to him already! 

I've been doing other craft stuff over the past few days. Not sure if I would wanna blog about my crafting adventures but i'll probably be doing something about it! ^^

Taiwan Day 1 — Taoyuan

I'm finally getting down to blog about my trip to Taiwan! Kinda drafted up the post but since I've yet to upload my photos to my computer (due to some hiccups with my OS) for the past few weeks, I refuse to publish this post. You've probably seen my instagram feed with my Taiwan photos but not sure where I've been or what I've done throughout my backpacking trip to Taiwan right? So here's a quick run thru of what happened.

I booked my trip intending to backpack around Taiwan with no plans ahead of me. Just a destination to conquer and a strike off my life goals. Then... on a supper nights out with my friends, we all discovered that we are heading to Taiwan around the same period of time?! I decided to join Jiahao and his friend, Eric on their trip abandoning half my plan (of having no plans). But despite having no real plan,I still had to reschedule a couple of my stays with some of my host and rejecting a couple of them. And in exchange of a planned trip throughout the stay. Pros and cons I guess. But it's definitely more fun to be travelling with friends right?

I decided to join them on a trip around the entire Taiwan only on 1 April.

So let's start off with the day I left Singapore! It was 27 March 2016 and Justus sent me to the airport, I couldn't bare to leave him and neither could he. It had been a torturous 18 days without him although I did have my fun in Taiwan. Thank god for Skype!

(Here's J carrying my backpack, refusing to let me carry because its heavy. keke.)

Backpack is actually dad's. I did order a 50L one online but it didn't arrive until April. :( 

Did I mention he made me a jar of notes for me to read. 18 in total, 1 for each day. And i'll open it every night before I sleep.

(Since the bottle is too bulky for my backpack, I brought the 18 notes to Taiwan in a ziploc bag.)

My flight was scheduled to depart at 3:55pm but there was a flight delay and it only flew off at 5:10pm! Guys, that is what you get for opting budget airline. I was flying on tigerairways because I don't really see a point on the extra cost of a better quality airline. You see, it's only a 4.5 hours flight, i'm the kind who can sleep wherever so I pretty much would sleep the whole flight. If you're talking about comfort, I would say that i'm quite petite so I don't need much room for my legs, it's definitely comfortable enough for me to travel alone.

(Cup noodles always taste a little tastier on planes.)

Touched down Taoyuan International Airport at 9:40pm. Did I mention I was couchsurfing? I swear it's a whole new experience for me and really opened my tiny little life. My first host was Oliver, he was so super nice to meet me at the arrival hall. The first thing I did was of cos, get myself a data plan! My trip was 18 days but it's either I get a 15 days 4G data plan or a 30 days 3G data plan. Obviously I would rather 4G, it's faster isn't it? Although locals say there is not much of a difference, but since there is a difference in SG, i'll go the SG way.

Oli cabs everywhere. He claims that comparing the price of cabbing in Taiwan to Singapore, it is way cheaper and more convenient. Before my arrival, he told me he will be making crepes. I was so excited because I loooooove crepes. How else would my abandoned instagram account be renamed pinkcrepes as well as my steam IGN? So I watched him made and tried to make one my own. The batter was enough for 8 pieces. It's actually really filling! I had only 3 pieces with nutella spread. He was showing me the various TV applications he had on his smart TV and we ended up watching survivor and amazing race through the night.

The weather was pretty darn cold. I had to keep my parka that Justus bought for me on the entire day even when I slept because that was just how cold it is! I love how thin my parka was and it still manage to keep me warm. Fell asleep at 3 and had to wake up around 9 am!

(Toilet selfie with my Parka!)

There isn't much content on the places I went as it's basically me arriving in Taiwan. From next post on, i'll be sharing on the places I went!

Miniature dollhouses!

Woken up to the sound of the doorbell because J came over to find me! Opened the door and lazed in bed for awhile before we got our asses ready to get crafty!

Drum rolls........

And we are going to work on the minion miniature dollhouse kit! Because J's brother love minion so we decide to make this collectible for him! 

Here's the box , showing us what the dollhouse (room) will look like after completion. Pretty promising isn't it?

You must be wondering what's in the kit right? 

You guessed it! Everything has to be done from SCRATCH! They provide the materials and we gotta use our nifty fingers to cut and glue the materials together!

First up , an instruction booklet (I swear the instructions are super detailed so even a 10 years old can help with your craft!) , beads (with super useful functions you never knew you can create mini furniture with them!), cloth (mainly to make pillows, bed linen & sheets), some wires, pillow stuffings and even glue!

Also, without these wooden pieces, the bed cannot be formed! (Forgotten to snap a pic of the wooden pieces that are used for the walls and flooring)

There's also a pretty large sheet of prints that needs to be cut out to form and complete the adorable minion room.

Because J & I had to attend vivi's 21st birthday at night, we only had time to cut out the prints. So we left everything else to Sunday and went to the birthday. 

So yup! *teleports to venue*

Really happy to be able to see the girls again. Our froyo moment that night felt pretty nostalgic of our Grunge chalet days. Haha! And not forgetting the boys, it was nice to see them after sooo long! ^^ Happy birthday to vivi! It's her actual day today! 

I'll continue about our DIY journey hopefully tomorrow!

Miniatures

It's a public holiday today! Started off the morning with nasi lemak from lee wee brother's that my parents bought for us. Then lazed at home with Justus playing slither.io for half the morning. It's super duper addictive I swear! HAHAHA

We could play for hours and hours. The other day, we were on the phone discussing about the game while playing it for about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Crazy HAHAH. And he have work the next day!

Anyway, after playing, we had the idea to play with popin' cookin' takoyaki kit! 

This is how it looks like! (Picture from Pinterest)

We didn't have a microwave oven, cos I make an egg burst in the old one so we threw it away, so we tried our luck with the conventional oven. It took much much longer to "cook" the tako balls. 

And we got so into making the tako balls that we ended up creating more than just the balls! 

We went ahead and created a few "bowls" , skewers, spoon, chopsticks and even the fake grass HAHAHA. 

So here is our final product with two sets of takoyaki and the small bowl behind is mashed potatoes (can't really be seen from this view though).

Yes and the sushi is real HAHAH. We didn't waste food okay? Gobbled it down right after the shots were taken. 

So that's how we spent labor day holiday! Really do enjoy chill days like this. ^^ 

TV DAY!

Two months back my dad bought the smart TV and I swear it brings television to a whole new level! The moment I got hooked onto the computer, I hardly find myself at the television.

But because of YouTube , Internet and Netflix (free trial HAHA) I found myself using more of it after we got the TV! 

Today, Justus & I got on Netflix and watched Walt before Mickey and The Social Network. Because I wanted to watch them HEHE. I've always wanted to watch The Social Network and I finally did! Yay. They were great movies! Inspirational, definitely. Glad we bought chips the day before!

After the movies, we went on channel 8 and watched some local dramas and then star awards 2016! Haven't really sat down to watched it and I realize local drama are actually not bad? (At least from the short clips that I saw just now) 

Maybe I'll go on toggle to watch some of them like 118 and dream maker! Haven't seen them yet. 

Yeah and my Taiwan trip posts will be up soon I promise! (Once I stop being lazy)

I'm back again!

Hello everyone. I am back on blogger again! This time, not sure how long I will be staying on this platform though. Everyone knows i'm always back for maybe one or two posts and i'll disappear for another few months before coming back again! But i'm pretty determined to stick around for some time for now. Yay?

I'm actually using back one of my old blog URLs god knows how long ago but the posts ( that i've already deleted because I realize I was a fraking rude bitch back then ) are dated back to 2008 which was is a wholly EIGHT years ago! Gosh, how much I have changed.

So anyway, from March 27 to April 13 I actually daringly went on a trip to Taiwan. First up, I booked the trip around end February and had been so overly excited for it because it's gonna be the first time i'm gonna be travelling ALONE! (At least thats what I thought)  It kinda feels pretty intimidating at first. I was up for a backpacking trip so I went ahead and got myself a new set of travel towel (really compact and convenient, I swear a normal towel is 5x its size), backpack (which didn't arrive until 2 days before I returned from my trip *rolls eye*) and other essentials.

Few days before I flew, found out that Jiahao was also going to be on a backpacking trip to Taiwan! So I conveniently joined in with him and his friend, Eric! I'll be posting more about the trip in a few posts to give a more detailed overview of how it went, from my experience staying in strangers house to joining the guys on the journey!

Yeah and god must have played a trick on me, making me fall in love just weeks before I depart Singapore. But i'm so ever thankful for my boyfriend for helping me prepare for my trip, from packing my bag and ensuring I had everything I needed, buying a parka for me because I really liked it, sending me off and everything he has ever done! Especially grateful for his patience of 17 nights.

Sorry for always being so wordy with no pictures. I promise Taiwan posts will be colorful. ^^