Day 5: 袖珍博物馆、美丽华百乐园、饶河观光夜市

Wasnt the greatest start to a day...in fact, it rained for most parts of the day. The earlier typhoon that was threatening the east side of Taiwan had turned towards Japan, while another one formed over China was heading up along Taiwan Strait and will bring in huge volumes of rain to areas including the North...Taipei included. So yep. Rescheduled our itinerary to keep our activities mainly indoors, but navigating around...still can't avoid the rain. The rest were rather optimistically going "If we don't buy umbrellas, the rain won't come..." Sad to say...it didnt work. Sigh.

Slept in, everyone else mostly tired out from the first three days of adventure (2 sick people + 1 mosquito-bitten person)..so by the time we head out was almost 11am. Dropped by 阿宗 to try out their famous meesuah first for brunch. Travel blogs usually grade it as "nothing too fancy" and that better ones can be found elsewhere. IMO it's not fancy but not bad la...definitely different from the ones we usually have. Considering it's almost lunch time anyway we decided to head over to Taipei Main Station for lunch...but due to some sort of confusion (??) we ended up window shopping at the Underground Mall while walking towards 中山...before turning back and exit TMS. Lunch at the food court...um no comments but I remembered it wasn't very nice..very artificial (not sure if that is the way to describe it).








Meanwhile outside the rain has resumed...metro-ed to 中山, then took bus before walking in the rain to the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan. Hidden in the basement of an office building...costs NT$180 per person but we manage to get student discounts..by showing our matric cards! Hiak hiak. Museum was pretty cool but I guess after a while it gets a bit boring...mainly small figurines..models of actual places etc...the level of detail was crazy and I can imagine the effort it took to build each and every model.







Got free tickets to 故宫博物馆 from the Taiwan Tourist Association..planned it in our itinerary but because of the rain and I guess we were pretty much bored of museums...changed our mind at 剑潭 station and took the free shuttle bus to Miramar Entertainment Park. Supposedly nothing fancy there also, being just a shopping mall with a giant ferris wheel, a scene seen in many Taiwanese dramas..but the major plus is that we didnt need to get wet at any point. Hang around inside, browse past the expensive shops. Wasnt planning to go on the ferris wheel, it was closed anyway due to typhoon warnings.





Got a bit lost while trying to go to our next destination...饶河夜市! Walked around in the rain (thankfully we gave up and bought umbrellas and raincoats already) hunting for the correct bus stop and when we did found out the bus frequency was super low. Half heartedly tried to flag down a cab...just as we were about to give up then the bus came...=.= 饶河 was a bit far from the part of Taipei we live in and the bus ride took forever too...but it wasnt really raining anymore by the time we reach there. So yep.

First night market we visited in Taipei..unfortunately went at the wrong day. Due to typhoon warnings more than half of the stall owners decided against opening that night..which leaves us with a rather toned-down and relatively quiet night market. Lots of empty spaces...but of the limited amount of food we have...most of it is actually not bad. Though we never got to find out how the night market is it like usually.







Took train (not metro) back to TMS...following advice from travel blogs heehee. Coz 饶河夜市 is closer to 松山 train station as compared to the nearest metro station..Highlight of the trip back is Val's unfortunate incident lol. :) Decided that we were not exactly full from our trip to the night market so had supper in KFC...went back after that but decided to head out again as gals realize that they washed their only sleep clothes and didnt have anything else to wear to sleep. Tried their luck at the late night illegal stalls while we tried to wait for the crazy winds as the typhoon is expected to pass by Taipei at around midnight....that didnt happen, heck even the rain wasnt particularly crazy. Oh well a bit anti-climax haha.

*Posts have been slowing down...gotta pick up pace! Or else I will never get back to my present life...too many backlogged posts :(*

Labels: taiwan