Sunday, February 23, 2014

Beautiful Taichung Day 1

23/7/2013

It was my first time travelling with my dear's family. As the old saying goes, it's easy to socialize but much harder to live together, I got kinda nervous about getting along with his parents for a few days. (Even though they seem to like me very much) I was feeling lucky to turn out everything fine during the trip.

Flight schedule: (HKD2099/ person)
1215- 1355 KA490 (Hong Kong to Taichung)
1450- 1620 KA491 (Taichung to Hong Kong)

Itinerary of today:
Car rental @Car-plus
Lunch @street market
Tea @Miyahara
Taichung Station
Sasha Motel
Tiger City
Dinner @motel

We arrived at the airport 2 hours in advance as usual. I kept reminding myself with DBS AE credit card, I could get a complimentary copy of a magazine/ newspaper from Page One for free as I always forget to do so! Immediately got my favourite travel magazine after I checked all my baggage at the counter. 





































Then of course we ate a bit at the airport food court before we boarded. Had a nice meal on the plane and arrived at Taichung in less than 2 hours. That's the best thing why I love visiting Taiwan I would say.



Arriving at Taichung, we got our baggage without any trouble. Maybe due to not much travellers at that time. On the way to the taxi stand, we saw an ATM machine. To my surprise, withdrawing money directly through the ATM machine really seemed to have a better exchange rate then getting it done in Hong Kong. (Actually I read those advise online and most of the people say so on the Internet) Took the cab to Car-plus to meet up my friend Katherine, get our car and started our road journey. (NT480)





We did online reservation on Car-plus website 2 months before the trip. This time we got the cheapest car instead. Toyota VIOS 1.5 (NT2250/ day) was good enough as we tended to spend our money on other aspects. What's better was the promotion ran that moment. There would be 50% off discount for those renting with local ID. Thanks to my local friend Katherine, we got the good price with her help at last as she was gonna meet us up on the first day. (NT4500 for 4 days) Petrol was fully filled before getting to us. All we needa do was simply filling it up before we returned it back to the company.



I told Katherine that we wanna visit Miyahara, so she took us to a street market nearby for lunch. Indeed, I like Taiwan street market so much. A whole lot of dishes with drinks only cost us less then NT500.







Miyahara was just 10 minutes drive away. Miyahara was initially an eye hospital ran by a Japanese. It was almost forced to close due to the serious damage of the earthquake and typhoon, but later being renovated to promote cultural and architectural expression. 

Though it becomes a place selling souvenirs, ice cream and bubbles tea nowadays, we could still find artisans and crafts displayed in this beautiful historical building. 











































We also tried the ice cream. With a waffle cup, a scoop of ice cream and 1 topping, it was just NT110. That looked cute but not tasting very special though.




Taichung Station was another 15 minutes walk away. Seeing the cute building from far away, we made up our mind to go and take a quick look of that. It was quite interesting to see the architecture dates from the era of Japanese rule.







After a long day, especially for the parents, we made our way to our stay tonight- Sasha Motel to take a rest. (NT1680/ night) It was my first time to live in a motel with a garage for every single room. Generally, the interior and size of the motel surprised me a lot. The room was cheap yet spacious with nice interior design. Unfortunately, arriving at the motel means I had to say goodbye to Katherine. It had been another nice time having a local friend as a companion when I went travelling. 






































While the parents were taking a rest at the motel, we went out again buying take away back for our dinner. Didn't want them to get too exhausted already for the very first day of the trip. 

Tiger City was quite close to our motel. It was quite fun to see hundreds of people doing exercise together outside the shopping centre. Took a quick look but we were not very into those chained restaurants, especially when we were in a street market paradise. So we drove around again looking for a more local food stall. 





































Finally we found this! Bought a few boxes of take away (NT320) and some fruit to eat back in our room. That's it for our dinner!
































Total expenses for 4 =HKD8396 + NT9380
Flight                        HKD2099 X4 =HKD8396
Cab                           NT480
Car rental @Car-plus    NT4500 for 4 days
Lunch @street market  NT500 for 4
Tea @Miyahara            NT110 X2 =NT220
Taichung Station          /
Sasha Motel                NT1680 X2 =NT3360
Tiger City                    /
Dinner @motel            NT320 for 4

2 comments:

  1. 嘿! 真係橋! 大家同一時間寫緊既都係請屋企人去旅行喎~

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    Replies
    1. 你個個正好多!!! 我好期待你Guam 個blog!

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