[Here is the photostream of Bhutan 2013 Day 4, for those who prefer pictures to tell a story. 🙂]
Breakfast was the usual museli and toast, with bananas by the side. We could choose how we wanted our eggs done, and the cheese and mushroom omelette that we ordered was very delicious! We had some time after breakfast, so we went around to take some pictures. There was actually a pretty good view of the valley.
[Here is the photostream of Bhutan 2013 Day 3, for those who prefer pictures to tell a story. 🙂]
Today’s breakfast was served as a set, so we chose to have muesli and scrambled eggs, with toast. Seems like tourists only get continental breakfast! Muesli was deliciously crunchy if you ate it quickly enough, and the scrambled eggs were so much, we wondered if they had given us 4 eggs each… Starting to get overdose of eggs! The toast came wrapped within a paper napkin, very cute, but very hard as usual.
[Here is the photostream of Bhutan 2013 Day 2, for those who prefer pictures to tell a story. 🙂]
Indeed peaceful
Woke up bright and early to have breakfast at 7:00 so that we can some time after breakfast to check out the rest of the hotel. We liked the beautiful flowers that were blooming in the little gardens! Then we realised another advantage of arriving at the beginning of breakfast time – we would definitely get hot food! However, breakfast was only ready around 07:15, so it might be a bit difficult if one was in a rush…
[Here is the photostream of Bhutan 2013 Day 1, for those who prefer pictures to tell a story. 🙂]
Happy couple landing in Paro
It was a very early morning for us! Managed to squeeze in a 4-hour nap before leaving house at 3:45am Singapore time to attempt to catch a cab to Changi Terminal 1. We were quite lucky to spot 2 empty cabs almost immediately! Managed to check in by 4:15… By then, there were already many people who had requested for seats on the left side of the plane (so that we can see the Himalayan mountain ranges from the plane)! Looks like everyone got the same advice from their tour agencies, or maybe we are all using the same agency, DrukAsia, the only Bhutanese agency that has a branch in Singapore currently 🙂 We had initially tried to get an upgrade to business class, unfortunately there was only 1 seat available. However, the staff was very kind to offer us an alternative – the economy seats with extra leg space (1 row behind business class) on the left side of the plane, and hubby got me the window seat!!! Woohoo!! I haven’t had a window seat for the last 4.5 years :p Thank you hubby!!!
Beautiful station in Kaohsiung
[I know we started this blog in Aug 2013 and this trip was in Jun 2013, so it’s kinda backdated. But after documenting the Taipei trip, we thought we should ‘complete’ it by documenting the Taiwan trip as well, even if it’s just a photostream. So here it is. 🙂]
And so we went on a Taiwan trip in June this year after more than 4 years. I believe many Singaporeans goes to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Bangkok probably once every year or maybe even more than once, so > 4 years sounds incredibly long.
But this trip was not really planned for, because I was supposed to be going to Boston for a conference, and wifey was supposed to come join me after that and we could tour around the academic city of Boston and Cambridge. But for a totally incredible reason, we ended up booking on a trip to Taiwan instead. You wouldn’t want to get me started on that incredible reason…
FInal day in Taipei!
Today is our final day in Taipei and our flight was 3:35pm. We planned to reach the airport 3 hours before departure, so we had plenty of time in the morning.
Morning was basically slept-in till 8am, enjoyed room facilities (Nespresso and the super nice tea bags provided) with cheesecake bought from 7-11 just behind the hotel the night before.
Simply but delicious Minsu breakfast
Breakfast was served at 8:30am at the Minsu and we were stunned when we stepped out of our room at 8:30am sharp. All but one table were filled! Everyone was already tucking in and there was this mummy from a big family (Singaporeans :-() who practically swept away all the sandwiches. We were shocked by the speed and ferocity that everyone was attacking their breakfast 😮 I guess that they must all be rushing off, just like us, aiming to catch the 9:15am 臺灣好行 黃金福隆線 (Tour Taiwan Shuttle Bus Service – Golden Fulong Route) to 金瓜石 (Jinguashi). Luckily, the Minsu owners were also very quick in replenishing the food, so we still managed to have a hearty breakfast which consisted of very yummy home-made sandwiches, slightly burnt but still delicious thick corn soup, steamed buns and refreshing iced red tea/hot coffee.
Shifen is our first destination
This was an exciting morning! We woke up at very early at 5:45am to check out of hotel and to go queue for Bus #1061 (stops at 瑞芳 Ruifang) or Bus #1062 (continues to 九份 Jiufen and 金瓜石 Jinguashi after 瑞芳 Ruifang) because we saw a very long queue yesterday afternoon. The first bus on Sunday was at 7:10am and was empty! There were also very few people waiting for the bus early in the morning. So we got up, set alarm for 8:15am, thinking that the ride would be around 90min, and promptly went to nap. Luckily hubby was a light sleeper! I woke up briefly just before 8am and decided to continue to nap a bit more and hubby woke me up just 1min later and pointed to the display screen: next stop Ruifang! Wah seh! 50min ride (NT61? with EasyCard) was way shorter than expected, which meant that we would be able to grab breakfast before the 8.45am train ride! The bus stop was near the police station, about 5min walk away from Ruifang train station. After you get off the bus, turn right and walk straight all the way till you reach a big junction. The train station is on the right side.
Slept in and went for late breakfast at 姜太太包子店 , this time getting a 韭菜肉包 (chives pork bun – loved the aroma of chives!) and 雪里红肉包 (pickled potherb mustard pork bun – the veggie was slightly bitter and crunchy), as well as the soya bean drink (slightly burnt taste today).
Addiction Aquatic Development
Took MRT to 捷運中山國中站 Zhongshan MRT Station, cross the road to take Bus #74 till terminal and walked less than 5min to reach 上引水產 (Addiction Aquatic Development). Actually we could have taken the bus from Zhongxiao Fuxing too but we didn’t know that till we checked out the bus route. Not much savings in time when comparing taking MRT for 2 stations and taking the bus directly (about 10 min bus ride between the 2 MRT stations).
Flight TZ202
Let’s Scoot out of here! Thanks to the $0.02 promotion 2 months ago, we are Scooting out on a nice Friday morning! Very early indeed, on flight TZ202 departing at 12:55am on 13 Sep 2013 at Changi Airport T1 Gate F50. Check-in was a breeze as there was no queue when we arrived 2.5 hours before flight time.
Flight time was 4.5 hours and we touched down ahead of schedule at Taoyuan Airport in Taipei around 5:25am and were greeted by the beautiful sunrise. It was a very smooth flight, and the plane was very clean with very decent leg space! Descent was very lovely with the countless lights from the grounds that shone through as we watched the skies slowly change from dark to light. Too bad there was a toddler crying for perhaps ⅓ of the time and was sometimes crying directly into hubby’s face so he didn’t get to rest much.
