> Thursday, August 13, 2009
DAY TWO
Since my parents are anti shopping, the main itinerary for the trip was sight seeing. So our first destination for day 2 was to the 陽明山. It is 1 of the seven national parks in Taiwan and you can see volcanoes, hot springs, gardens etc.
The sight is spectacular but the weather is damn bad. It is about 36 degree celcius on ground level but as we go up the mountain, it started drizzling periodically so we were kept busy just from opening and keeping our umbrellas. And it just so happened that we met with a typhoon and my umbrella had a bad sprain and died eventually.
小油坑The volcano!
Can see bright yellow sulphur crystals and the sulphur smell is very very very pungent.
Getting a closer look at the gases that's noisily spew out of the vent
The lush vegetation!Green green green! :D
Here comes the rain..And I look so out of place suddenly hahaha
Tolerating the smell...Went to 冷水坑 which contains Taiwan's sole bed of precipitated sulfur for the foot spring and public bath but it was closed for cleaning and the foot spring has dried up! :( Our plans were to explore the different stops at 陽明山 like the 擎天崗 which is an undulating grassland surrounded on all sides by mountain peaks but the weather is so bad that we got to abort the plan.
classic photo while waiting for the busSo we went down the mountain then once again, we were nearly roasted to our death once we reached ground level. You really can't imagine the great transition. We then headed to
Tamshui's Fisherman's Wharf and Lover's bridge
The Lover's Bridge
A loner who came to the bridge without a lover
That's how strong the wind was! I asked my sis to take a stupid picture of my flying hair to show the extent of the strong wind but it looked too stupid that i can't bear to upload hahahaha.BUT. The weather is still so hot! Almost impossible to open your eyes without shades!
nice nice nice :D
awesome awesome awesome :DD
and i saw 3 rainbows in the sky! All together! But only 2 were captured :(The place is well known by its beautiful sunset so how can we miss it. Walked around while waiting for the sun to set and we got ourselves the long long icecream! But it's not a good idea to eat it there at all cause the wind's surely causing the icecream to melt at an incredible speed.
2 cui people with their ice cream.Still have time to pose when the icecream's melting away hahahaha.
& My fringe looks damn odd here, it's the doing of the wind!!
So we resorted to drinking ice-cream (from the bottom of the cone!) instead of licking it.
And my papa's having a good time snapping away our unglam moments.
Then we went for our all time favourite dessert: Mango paste shaved ice!
Super excitingwitnessed the beautiful sunset, left the place and headed for 淡水老街, another night market. Not very interesting, almost all the stores are selling the iron eggs and roasted cuttlefish.
Then we realised many shops are selling "阿給" too. And we were very curious what exactly that is! Never see before, never hear before, never smell before.
So we asked around and realised that it's what 淡水 is famous for. So obviously that sent us walking towards one out of the many many shops selling 阿給 and decided to give it a try.
This is my Sharkfin 阿給. Vegetarian sharkfin 阿給 to be exact hahaha.And we finally know what 阿給 is all about! - toufu with vermicelli inside.
So what's the relevance to the name?
I don't know also hahahaha.
My papa's noodle
and the famous fishballs that has meat in it.and what do these 3 food items have in common?
ALL taste equally horrible!
The 阿給 has a weird taste (seems like smelly toufu's sauce), the noodle is bland, the fishballs is simply weird. But at least we tried it!
So it's bout time to head back to our hotel. Was a long train journey back so we all were knocked out immediately after we washed up. Then in the middle of the night...
I felt my bed shaking from side to side and heard the loud knocking and creaking sound of wooden planks. I thought people were making babies then! So i asked my sister (in my half asleep mode) if she felt it too. And to my surprise she answered immediately! Apparently she was awoken by the vibrations too.
It wasn't long before we heard a commotion outside. Dashed out in our unglam pyjamas and realised that it's an earthquake! But the hotel has no plans evacuation. Vibrations stopped soon after but none of us could get back to sleep already cause we were all afraid that it's just th beginning of something disastrous! And my sleepyhead parents weren't aware of the whole thing till i called them -.-
Woke up the next day and watched the news and realised it was actually an earthquake of 3-4 magnitude! And the epicentre's (about 7 in magnitude) is not too far off from where we were.
So it's bout time to head back to our hotel. Was a long train journey back so we all were knocked out immediately after we washed up. Then in the middle of the night...
(EARTHQUAKE EXPERIENCE)
I felt my bed shaking from side to side and heard the loud knocking and creaking sound of wooden planks. I thought people were making babies then! So i asked my sister (in my half asleep mode) if she felt it too. And to my surprise she answered immediately! Apparently she was awoken by the vibrations too.
It wasn't long before we heard a commotion outside. Dashed out in our unglam pyjamas and realised that it's an earthquake! But the hotel has no plans evacuation. Vibrations stopped soon after but none of us could get back to sleep already cause we were all afraid that it's just th beginning of something disastrous! And my sleepyhead parents weren't aware of the whole thing till i called them -.-
Woke up the next day and watched the news and realised it was actually an earthquake of 3-4 magnitude! And the epicentre's (about 7 in magnitude) is not too far off from where we were.
Day 3 to be continued (:
