Briathrail // Albert 2MNG

Not the trip I really wanted, but maybe the trip I need for now. That’s how I viewed this brief Taiwan trip.

I stayed in Taipei from June 12 to 17. More or less a span of 5 days. A couple days longer than my last outside trip to Thailand a few months ago.

I booked this trip after things went to shit and things needed to be sorted out. Specifically, my left foot. As I detailed in a few update blogs ago, podiatrist found that I had plantar fasciitis, so I chose to have a non-invasive therapeutic procedure to “heal” the pain. So far it worked – I wake up, step on the floor every morning, no more foot pain. It was expensive, but still not bad considering I did look around and saw that I got best-in-class treatment.

And that was the shit part.

What things that are needed to be sorted out? For one, the room I was sleeping in. I am renting out an HDB 2-bedroom flat with my coworker, and my room had got moldy on the ceiling. At first, the agent had it repainted. But after two repaints, mold persisted even though I took measures like dehumidifiers and keeping my room door open on hours that I was away. To be honest, ot would’ve been solved years ago only if the agent had the whole celing repainted with the strong basketball-court paint, but the cracked parts were the only parts repainted. Now, we convinced him that repainting the whole ceiling with mold-resistant strong-bond paint will solve the problem for many years, hopefully. But he consulted with a contractor and said he’d need me out of my room for three days max.

So, I bundled it with my vacation plans. I gave the agent anywhere between June 12 to 24, do stuff anytime. And oh, I’ll definitely be out of their way. By the time I get back to Singapore, I hope the job’s done and I can sleep again in a room where the ceiling has not gone to moldy shit. Well, exaggeration. Not exactly “bad” mold, just “very annoying to look at” mold.

Second, one of the work projects I was involved in have an upcoming deployment date. June 26-28, targeting. So I have to be on hand for it. Initially I filed my leaves from June 15 to July 2, but that immediately got shot down. So I filed the next best set of dates I could think of, and it got approved. No complaints here, I’d be happy to take what I could.

Oh, I also took advantage of one holiday and my birthday leave entitlement. Sweet. Extra free days.

And also, my original plan of going to somewhere outside of Asia was dashed. Maybe next year then. Where should I go, then?

I immediately decided to see the places I felt I should cross off my Asia bucketlist as soon as I could. I already visited the top 3 (Japan, South Korea, Thailand). So I went down to the 4th one on my personal list: Taiwan.

It was an easy decision. There are lots of places to see in Taiwan, it’s likely going to be very urbanized in Taipei, and it allowed me to squeeze in a week to be back in the Philippines. Just under a 3-hour trip from TPE. Also, still visa-free.

So with that decided, I immediately looked for tickets. Initially I looked at Skyscanner (my de facto lookup), but soon I expanded the search to other places like Agoda and Expedia. The first flight can be above morning, the second flight has to be afternoon, and the third flight must be early morning. I found the cheapest package that had almost-perfect times, in Trip. First and third flight times were just perfect. Not too early and not too late. The second flight teetered towards almost non-negotiable, but I think my dad/sister can manage to go to the airport at that time. The big consolation for the second flight is that the check-in luggage was already made free, so I did not have to pay extra. I did try to look for more options, but in the end, as the Trip.com flight bundle had the best overall offer at the price it had, so in the end, I booked it. For the SG-TPE and PHL-SG, I did add on check-in for 20kg each.

With the flights settled, I then started to look for accomodation. I always used Agoda, and as I had some credits that I could use, I used it again. I used almost the same criteria I used in the past trips at Malaysia’s and Thailand’s – must be close to a train station, had 7-11s nearby, 4-star hotel, and as close to the good places as much as possible. I quickly crossed out my wish for a big room, as I noticed that unlike Bangkok, Taipei’s hotels seem to list the big rooms high when it came to price. So I changed it to “decent room”.

I zeroed in to the area near Taiwan Main Station and Ximending. That’s a good area from what I researched online, I’d like to stay there. My budget was still SGD 100 or less per day of stay. Didn’t want to spend too much on hotels this time.

I searched for a lot of areas around Taipei, and I zeroed in quickly on one particular hotel that checked all my boxes and some other boxes I did not know existed. It’s called the Roaders Hotel in Ximending. It’s within 2-3 minute walking distance from bus stops, around 11-15 minute walk to the Taipei Main Station, and within proximity as well to a night market and 7-11s. They had options for June 12-17, and the one that fit my budget was a small room. OK, found my prime candidate, cool.

I then started to look for other places near the Taipei Main Station (as it’s the one that has a direct MRT line to the airport). I did find two other hotels near the area, but in the end I found more beneficial factors that made the Roaders Hotel my hotel of choice:

• It was in walking proximity to both Taipei’s Animate and Toranoana branches. Like, a couple of blocks away. Animate’s is visible from the hotel entrance right away. I could just feasibly spend a day not leaving the Ximending area and just going thru these 2 places by walking and leaving my goods at the hotel. But to be fair, this is like a fortunate bonus. I had other things I considered. I would have booked this hotel even if Animate or Tora was far.
• It was in walking proximity to a lot of breakfast options, even if the hotel itself offered sandwiches and lots of snacks at the basement lobby for breakfast. I’d like to try a local breakfast even just once.
• They have a small fitness section at the 8th floor. One elliptical, two stationary bikes, and small weights.

I settled the flights and accomodation in the span of 3 days. Fortunately, Agoda allowed me to pay later and just book in advance, so I can fund it using next month’s pay. I then started to map out what will fill the activity days over the next week.

June 17 is a flight day to Philippines, so I just pegged it for a simple breakfast and go back to TPE.

June 16 was an easy choice for me. I did indirectly made the plan earlier, so it’s just a matter of “what day”. This day will be for anime/game merch buying around Ximending. Just walk, no bus/train. Chill day.

June 12 is a flight day to Taipei, and I was to arrive at 4:30pm, so I pegged the evening after I check in to the hotel as just scouting the Ximending area near my hotel, see what’s good for dinner.

That left 13, 14 and 15.

As I had Klook credits left to use (and discounts, but hey, everyone has a discount nowadays), I started to look for activities within that time period as I pegged 13 and 14 to be my activity days. 15 will be my DIY Taipei tour day. That made for a good progression, and I can have chill for 15-16.

This one was way harder to decide than the hotel, in my opinion. It took me a week to finalize them all, as I had to make sure I got the good tours. But reading the reviews, I noticed a lot of things:

One, some tour operators have paid for reviews.

With that, I had to be very discerning with review lookup.

Second, from what I’ve read, the tour guide makes any tour trip good. An engaging tour guide will make tours awesome, and an average tour guide might make the tour tedious and tiring. I’ve read reviews where one said X was “awesome and active”, and another where Y was “monotonous and uncaring”. And so, even if I choose a “good” tour option, I am gambling on the tour guide’s quality. Like, “Wheel of Fortune” is a great TV show to be on, until you spin the wheel.

Third, the wild price differences intimidated me at first. For example, the Yehliu-Shifen-Jiufen tours ranged from 30 to 70 SGD. But when I compared them side by side, I easily found the good ones for the more agreeable prices.

So unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, Klook had both great prices and a wide variety of stuff to do in Taiwan. I was not starved of options. There’s things to see, things to buy, things to eat, things to do.

After a full week of choosing and sitting on what I chose, I bought:

• EasyCard in Taiwan (TPE Airport Pick Up) – This one was my first buy. I guessed that I would need to access their public transport, so an EasyCard will do. It helped that it was bundled with a SIM card package, made the decision easier. I chose the EasyCard with the 400 NTD deposit, and a 7-day 4G SIM Card.
• Taipei 101 Observatory Ticket – Second one I bought. Although I admit, I hesitated a lot on which package to buy. I chose the “89F + 101F” ticket in the end. Because for me, I would be ultimately loathe to say that I was in Taipei 101 and I skipped going to the 101st floor. I selected it for the June 15th DIY tour date.
• Yehliu Geopark, Jiufen, Shifen, and Golden Waterfall Day Tour – This was the third package I bought. For this one, I sat on it for three days before I clicked to book it. Because I was initially hesitant to go to arguably one of the most tourist-y places in all of Taiwan. But what sold me in the end was it being “out there” like Ayutthaya was for me in Thailand. It’s a good adventure, and it’s going to use a bus. And I figured, if I will ever go back to Taiwan, might as well cross this off now. I chose the package that had all the listed destinations, in the daytime as a join-in tour, at June 13. No desire to see them at night, given the weather predictions I saw on Accuweather.
• ChiaTe Bakery Pineapple Pastry – Fourth package I bought. When my office boss came back from Taiwan a long while ago, he dropped by the office and gave me a single pack of ChiaTe pineapple cake as a souvenir. It was good, properly sweet, not too crumbly and not that big. So I figured, might as well make it my food souvenir. I chose the one for airport pick-up, eight of the 6-pack boxes. Perfectly gift-sized! Also, the reason I wanted it to be delivered in the airport for pick-up is to ensure my airport return will be as light as possible. I could always repack near the airport terminal’s luggage scale.
• Beitou and Yangmingshan Day Tour in Taipei – This is the last one I booked. I was looking for a smaller, chill day tour for June 14, as I predict June 13 might screw with my feet. From what I gathered, the sights aren’t all that busy or tedious – just nature and beauty for the most part, save for Beitou which I expected to be more like a historical countryside tour.

With the flights, lodging and activities all planned out by the first two weeks of May, I was relieved. Ok, back to fully concentrating on regular office work. So I did. Until June 9, and I had to do small prep for the luggage. For the carry-on, I had made the executive decision to ditch the small luggage I used for my Thailand flight. As I was going to use my big Kamiliant 79/28 luggage, I could not see myself able to manage two wheeled luggages. I am clumsy as fuck with these things. So I looked at my old faithful American Tourister backpack. We’re going again, old pal. Time to dust you off.

However… the Kamiliant luggage showed terrible signs of age on the wheels. Probably the South Korea trip had been unkind to it. The rubber on the wheels were crumbling. No choice. The next day, I checked out early off work to buy new luggage. I went to SG Chinatown and bought another 79/28 luggage, this time from Slazenger. Not sure if original or not, but I knew it was as sturdy as the Kamiliant. Slightly pricier than the Kamiliant as well, but hey, it’s the best one I found given the timeframe.

As to what I put in the luggage:

• I packed in some of my old clothes to bring back home in the Philippines. They’re still perfectly wearable, but they fell out of my clothes rotation for the past years and it’s time to replenish my home cabinet of clothes I can use whenever I chose to come home. My plan is to have enough clothes at home so that I do not have to pack too many clothes in my luggage in succeeding trips. More space for other stuff.
• My youngest sister’s souvenirs. I saved some for her on my Korea and Thailand trips, and one keychain I forgot to give her that I bought from Malaysia.
• Some knick-knacks for my second sibling. Four packets of Bacha coffee from my office stash, the entire souvenir set of beauty products I got from a colleague that also went to South Korea recently, the papaya whitening cream I bought as a package from Thailand, and some Australian nougats my office boss had in the pantry.
• Some extra souvenir items I kept around. I can store it at home, and just give it away one at a time to friends and acquaintances.
• Old manga and visual novel books that fell out of my reading rotation. Around 7 items.
• 3 days worth of casual clothes, underwear, and sleeping clothes. As the hotel has laundry facilities, I figured I can use that every two days. No extra jeans, as I thought my jeans that I would wear coming in to Taiwan can survive two days then be in laundry to dry and use the next day.
• Kinesio tape and scissors. My podiatrist recommended I “tape” my feet around the heel area to cover the plantar fascia area, and showed me how to apply it. I bought three rolls of tape from Decathlon – two black for horizontal and one blue for the vertical and side support.
• One two-sided jacket that I bought from Uniqlo.
• One umbrella. Specifically, same umbrella I have in my office bag.
• One mobile phone selfie stick that can also be configured as a tripod. I bought it to help with photo-taking.

For money, I prepared 10,000 NTD as my initial budget. I know I will likely blow past it, so I brought along 200 SGD as backup.

I was then fully prepped and ready for Taiwan.

Next part: My June 12. That one will be brief but fun to recollect. Lots of photos too.