In Danshui there are a couple of attractions to view.  The Hongmao Castle (Fort San Domingo), Tamsui Fisherman’s Wharf and the lover’s bridge. You can also take the ferry to Ba Li. But in this post I’m only gonna focus on Danshui Old Street. The main draw for me is multitude of local specialties.

The street stretches from near the Danshui MRT station all the way to the ferry docks. Some of the local foods include iron egg which is stewed in spices then air dried so you get a chewy tiny egg at the end of the process. The famous stall is Grandma’s Tiedan 阿婆鐵蛋.

Another local specialty is A-Gei 阿給 which are deep fried tofu that have been stuff with flavoured crystal noodles (tang hoon) and sealed with fish paste and some sauce over. Apparently Danshui is the place of origin for this dish.

You can also try the Danshui fish balls 淡水魚丸 and  fried fish snacks 魚酥. Among these I also tried the fried cheese which is great for cheese lovers but might be overpowering for those who are not used to the strong taste of pure cheese.

Not forgetting the famous Da Chang Bao Xiao Chang. It looks like a hotdog but like the name suggests, instead of using bread to wrap over the sausage, they use an even bigger sausage to wrap over the smaller sausage and stuff it with pickles and lettuce and sauce. The content of the larger sausage is filled with a mixture of meat and glutinous rice.

My personal favorite is the muah chee!

Freshly made with a spoonful of peanut inside every muah chee ball before getting coated with more peanut. It’s so very soft and chewy! I came back for seconds!

I’m now gonna leave you with a video of the hot spring session we had at Beitou and shots of Danshui old street. Hope you enjoy! You have to be on www.renzze.com to view the videos though.

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I’ve been extremely inconsistent about my blog updates and I do apologize. I haven’t been around much and the furry of Chinese New Year festivities and parties doesn’t help much to give me more spare time to work on hobbies such as blogging. But hopefully things will settle down to a good humdrum and my blog posts will start to churn predictably again.

Continuing from where I left off at Taroko Gorge in Hualien, Taiwan. One of the interesting trails was the Tunnel of Nine Turns or Nine Turns of the Coiled Dragon 九曲洞步道.  There are more than 9 turns but 9 is a representative number in the Chinese culture to signify “many”. Since rockfall is extremely common in these parts, we had to put on safety helmets. Don’t I look like I belong in construction?

In case you are wondering, there is no charge at all for the helmets but it is absolutely a requirement when walking this trail. There were quite a few marvelous sights (such as the one below) which I didn’t capture on my camera… I did however capture them on my video which I would post soon.

The gorge is so narrow that only a very narrow area is open to the view of the sky and thus the Chinese named this area “a thread of sky.” You can see the many different colors of marble rocks in the opposite cliff. In the photo above, you can see the Keelun river and the “Fish leaping across the dragon gate” natural structure. The rock formation is supposed to look like a fish trying to swim upstream.

After the Tunnel of Nine Turns, we moved on to several places in the gorge reserve.   The pavilion above, on the east side of the Chimu bridge is called the Cihmu pavilion and was built by former president Chiang Kai-shek, in memory of his mother, Mrs. Wang. The Chimu bridge was built by former President Chiang Jing-guo, in memory of his mother, during construction of the road.

We also stopped by this tiny suspension bridge to view a high waterfall. This suspension bridge was built by the Japanese and is hardly used anymore as there is a bigger and stronger suspension bridge built to cross the cliffs. My sister who is insanely afraid of heights had a  really difficult time crossing this and almost cried.

Our last stop before heading down the mountains was to the Siangde Temple across the Liwu River. The temple is built in the midst of mountains and is also known as Jiuhuashan (Nine Lotus) of Taiwan. To reach the temple and pagoda and the other sights, you would need to walk across Pudu Bridge, then climb up quite a number of  steps. The round trip will take around 50 minutes.

Besides the main temple, you can also visit the Dasiong Dadian temple, Tianfeng Pagoda, and the White Robed Guanyin.

I’ve also added a video below for your pleasure. Do note that if you are reading this post anywhere else other than www.renzze.com, you won’t be able to view the video.

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I know a couple my readers emailed me about Taiwan or Hualian. Unfortunately it got sent to my spam mail and I accidentally permanently deleted them. I only saw the titles and never even got  a chance to read the message. So if you sent those emails, please resend them or I won’t be able to reply.

Remember I told you we stopped to pick up some bento sets? Well, our driver stopped us at a park next to Taroko Gorge visitors center for us to enjoy our lunch. There was actually some Taiwan variety show filming going on behind us while we ate.

The food was pretty good (either that or I was really hungry) but I found the local version of homemade picked chilli extremely spicy and tasty which went nicely with the food.

After lunch we explored the visitor’s center for a bit. It shows you the Taroko Gorge habitats and history.

As promised, here’s the video of the 1st part of my Hualian trips… a consolidation of all that I’ve posted so far on Hualian.

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I guess you can’t have gone Taipei and not take a little trip to Shilin Night Market 士林夜市 . It’s one of the most famous night market in Taipei!

A quick MRT ride to the Jiantan Station 劍潭站 on the Danshui line. They also have a Shilin Station but oddly the Shilin Night Market 士林夜市 is actually much nearer to the  Jiantan Station 劍潭站.

The old Shilin Market 士林夜市 was actually torn down in October 2002 due to hygiene reasons so all the food stalls were relocated to a temporary area a short walk away from Jiantan Station 劍潭站.

Shilin Night Market  士林夜市 opens from about 4pm to 2am and there are 2 sections. The food area and the shopping area. We headed over to the food area first.

Here I’ll try to show you some of the famous food stuff that Shilin Night Market  士林夜市 offers. In the picture above you can see Lemon Aiyu Jelly 檸檬愛玉 .

Above are some grilled taiwan sausages.

There were so many stores selling the same dishes we eventually just randomly chose one that looked decent enough.

This is a bowl of cuttlefish with gravy. I’m allergic to seafood so I didn’t try it personally. Dad said it was okay while Mum didn’t like it.

Another famous dish… Oyster omelet (蚵仔煎). I ate some of the egg… it’s not bad but on the slightly sweet side compared to our Singapore version.

And of course we ordered Smelly tofu. You may have read my post on Smelly toufu before but this version is not deep fried. It was just lightly fried with some gravy. My sister tried smelly toufu for the first time and you should watch the video attached at the end of this post to see her reaction! LOL.

My mum’s favorite store was this teppanyaki store on the right side of the food section. I’ve heard that is a rather popular store as well.  They ordered quite a few dishes and they were all really good. The best was probably the gindara or cod fish.

We ordered the drinks from the nearby vending machine. The lemon winter melon drink was actually quite nice!

My own favorite would probably be the Deep fried chicken fillet (豪大大雞排). The portion is huge so I strongly advise that you share it! I heard that this was the very store that sold those original fried chicken that sparked the huge trend.

There were quite a few food that we had and wasn’t captured on film so if you are there you can also try the Fried chicken steak (炸雞排), Small bun wrapped in large bun (大餅包小餅), Fried buns (生煎包), Peanut candy (花生糖), Tempura (甜不辣) and Bubble tea (珍珠奶茶) amongst many more.

A street away is the shopping area of Shilin Night Market 士林夜市. Here is like a huge maze of stores selling anything and everything. From clothes, bags, CDs, lingerie, pets, shoes and so on. The assortment is just too huge to describe.

My sister had an exciting day buying and buying! Mum decided to do some foot massage here as well. Although the market closes at 2am, do note that the last train leaves Jiantan station 劍潭站 at 12mn! Not much photos were taken once we started to shop so here’s the video below instead.

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Back to sharing with you my Taiwan travels =)

We took a quick little train ride to watch the flag lowering ceremony at Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. The single trip “tickets” are actually plastic coin tokens. It was the only time I used those tokens because later on we just bought the stored value cards similar to our Singapore’s ezy-link for the rest of the holiday as it’s cheaper and more convenient.

This monument is built in memory of Chiang Kai Shek,a political, military leader who ruled as former President of the Republic of China (Taiwan). He was  also an influential member of the Kuomintang(KMT) and Sun Yat-sen’s close ally. The hall was officially open on the 5th anniversary of the leader’s death.

This areas also houses the National Concert Hall and the National Theater.

Above is the ceremonial gateway at the entrance to the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial.

We were there early for the flag lowering ceremony so we had sometime to look around and explore the place. There were pigeons and manicured gardens lining the way to the memorial hall and many of the Taiwanese brought their little dogs for walks there.

There were lots of locals but I wasn’t the only tourist around. Many tourists from the People Republic of China and a student tour group from Japan were there as well.

Here I am taking photos with the main building of the memorial hall. Memorial Hall is white with four sides. The octagonal roof rises 70 meters above the ground and is covered with blue glazed tiles. The blue and white colors of the building and the red colour of the flowerbeds echo the colours in the flag of the Republic of China. The octagonal shape picks up the symbolism of the number 8, a number traditionally associated in Asia with abundance and good fortune.

Two sets of white stairs, each with 89 steps to represent Chiang’s age at the time of his death, lead to the main entrance.

I got up the flight of stairs just in time as the flag lowering ceremony starts. The whole procession begins from inside the main memorial hall with the huge bronze statue of Chang Kai Shek. Inscriptions on the side walls read The purpose of life is to improve the general life of humanity and The meaning of life is to create and sustain subsequent lives in the universe.

Representatives of the armed forces guard the main hall during its open hours and the branch of service represented changes periodically according to a rotating schedule. They have a change of guard every hour so if you didn’t catch the flag lowering ceremony you can still catch the change of guards.

The flag lowering ceremony happens around 5pm and in the contingent you have 5 military representatives and 2 body guards in black to shoo enthusiastic tourists away. The military representatives twirl their bayonet guns expertly as part of the ceremony and a show of their awe.

As for the colors of the military uniforms you see, the Army wears the  green uniform, navy wears  the black in summer and white in winter, and the air force wears blue. You can see all the different representative during the flag lowering but during the normal hours, you would only see one branch on duty as the 3 branches rotated their guard duty only once in 4 months.

Here we can see the representatives from the Navy handling the flag with much respect and solemn duty.

After the ceremony, I hung around the National Cultural Center and the parks for a bit before heading for dinner. As you can tell in the photos, it’s really windy in Taipei!

I’ve had the whole ceremony down on video so you can watch it here too! If you are viewing my post on anywhere other then my blog (eg. iphone, BB or FB) you won’t be able to see the video so if you want to watch it you’ll have to go to www.renzze.com.

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As with most of my birthdays… I usually celebrate them out of Singapore. I left for Taiwan the very morning after I had my birthday celebration at 1-caramel. It was quite a rush for me and I had to wake up at 5am to pack my luggage and head to the airport!

It was near deepavali so the transit area of T3 Changi Airport was filled with lovely flowers. This flower elephant caught my eyes!

Singapore has one of the loveliest airports around and I dare say one of the most friendly custom officers!

Ushered into the flight and off to Taiwan I go. I slept for the most part of this flight to make up for all the sleep debt I accumulated while in Singapore and only woke up for my meal before going back to dreamland . A lovely nasi lemak breakfast was my choice. Dessert was chocolate with vanilla ice-cream.

Because I was so tired, the flight felt really short and in a blink of an eyelid I was in Taiwan’s airport! I’m always amazed how transportation has evolved to allow us to wander the globe with such ease. It’s almost unthinkable for me that people used to sail months and months just to get to another land or that they walked and road horses till blisters formed just to explore beyond their territory. Nowadays catching a plane is almost like catching a long bus ride home… pop into the seat… take a nap and you’re there!

One of the first things I saw after passing customs was this tomato man! So cute! It definitely worked as a advertisement for the airport’s free WiFi service  cause it caught my attention.

I proceed via bus to the hotel. Thanks to my dearest Bernice for giving loads of good and detailed information on Taiwan! She gave me maps and notes too!

I picked Rainbow hotel to stay with after several recommendation. I hear it’s ever-popular with Singaporeans because of it’s good location in the heart of Xi Men Ding. It’s a relatively cheap accommodation and one of the winning points for me was that it offered family rooms that sleep up to 5 people so my whole family could stay together.

Well, I didn’t take much photos of the room but you can see it in the video below where I recorded my journey from Singapore to Taipei. Enjoy the video!

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I’ll continue to cover about my little trip with my family to Taiwan in the up coming posts so look out for them!

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Warning! This post is going to be an explosion of photos!

I celebrated my 28th birthday in October 2009 but didn’t get round to posting it up till now. As we get older we have more and more groups of different friends and I celebrated my birthday with little dinners and gatherings with different groups of friends in October. However, one of the more memorable ones is the little “early” birthday party I threw at 1-caramel for some close friends and special people.

The whole place was reserved and it was a lovely cozy venue with a wonderful catered buffet spread. In addition to having my most treasured friends to spend the evening with me… what more can a girl ask for?

As it turns out that day… the birthday girl (that’s me!) was late for her own party due to some last minute issues with her flight the next day! So I was a little embarrassed to have my guests waiting for me to start!

Unlike the crazy birthday parties of my youth, I wanted it to be a really small relaxed affair. No big effort needed… just an evening’s company with the people that matter to me.

There was a lot of laughter and catching up amongst friends and I’ll like to thank all of you for being there for me always! Friendship is a precious commodity which requires time and effort to allow it to grow strong and in such hectic times  where spare time is hard to find… I’m blessed to have friends that still make that effort to spend it with me. It’s the time spent with people that make us grounded and offer us support.

Some of them I’ve know for decades and still have so much to share with each other while others I’ve met only for months and clicked instantaneously. All of them possessing the unique quality of knowing that people matters more than possessions or positions. To embrace each other for who they are… learning and accepting. My birthday was merely an excuse to have them all around for a meetup.

It’s odd but a lot of my closest friends have moved out of Singapore to seek their fortunes elsewhere and even among this group of friends there are a few that would be moving in the near future. But I’ve been lucky to be able to maintain my friendship over long distances and I hope that I’ll have such strong bonds every birthday to be thankful for.

After everyone had their fill of food and drinks it was time for the cake! And I have to say that this has got to be one of my favorite birthday cake.

All my favorite brands consolidated in one cake! And everything is edible!

There were tons of cameras snapping as they sung me my birthday song and I made my wish before blowing the candles out. My camera was handled by Clara that day which gamely took over the role of the official camera woman since I was busy catching up with everyone.

A few snapshots with the guys…

And then with my lovely ladies!

Of course there were lots of lovely presents from my dearest friends as well. I haven’t showcased everyone’s presents here as there’s too many… from bags to makeup to books to vouchers to champagnes and wines… I love and appreciate them all! Just for the sake of sharing… I’ll just randomly picked a couple of photos here.

Sushi gave me a the very same coach wristlet I was thinking of getting sometime back. For some reason we always end up liking the same things!

Lots of beauty products to keep my skin moisturized for those frequent travels.

A Che Che bag from Bernice… I haven’t used it yet but I think it’ll be great for keeping the ang pows during this coming Chinese New Year.

The most creative gift award goes to Ben for taking the effort to compile so many of my favorite hobbies into a mix-up of cake box presents.

Time for everyone to have a slice of the birthday cake!

It was really rich dark chocolate cake… absolutely sinful!

The cake toppings was made of sugar craft and was to pretty to be eaten so I took photos with them and brought them home. The pastry chef said that as long as I keep them in a cool dry place in room temperature, they’ll actually last indefinitely.

The night ended around midnight or so as I had to catch an early flight the next morning. But I had a lovely birthday celebration. Thank you my dear friends for making me feel so blessed. For your love and generosity, I would like to dedicate a poem to you and to those whom were unable to make it that night but sent their greetings from afar.

As we walk our path in life,

we meet people everyday.

Most are simply met by chance,

but some are sent our way.

These become special friends,

who’s bond we can’t explain -

the ones that understand us

and share our joys and pain.

Their love contains no boundaries,

so even when apart,

their presences still embraces us

with a warmth felt in the heart.

This love becomes a passageway

where even miles disappear.

And so these friends life sends our way

remain forever near.

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Nope, there is no error in the title. I’m aware it’s already 2010 but regular readers would know that my posts are incredibly backlogged. In fact one of my new year resolutions is to catch up on blogging. I’m away so often it’s hard to blog consistently. Sometimes it’s an everyday thing and sometimes you’ll seen an update once a week. I usually try to schedule posts while I’m away so friends and readers can still catch up on what I’ve been up too even though I’m too far and to busy to be online.

Speaking of which, I will be away again for the whole of January. I’ll be putting up my away banner soon. And while there will be new posts appearing, my replies to comments and emails will be slow since I generally only reply work and immediate family when I’m away. Do keep your comments coming though… I love hearing from you and I will eventually reply to the comments once I’ve time on my hands.

Now back to the Hossan Leong Show I attended in 2009.

It was held in The Drama Centre at the National Library and before the performance we had a quick bite at the Hans located just outside. I haven’t had Hans in many years now but the Aglio Olio I had was pretty nice. I honestly don’t remember Hans having nice spaghetti or maybe only the Aglio Olio is good? The last time I had Hans was eons ago with Bernice at Far East Plaza and that was because we shopped for her wedding stuffs till it was too late and most of the stores were already closed.

This was the clapper given during the show among other freebies. If you missed it in 2009 there will be another Hossan Leong show in 2010. I’m a huge fan of local acts and went even though live mock talk shows aren’t exactly my thing. I found some songs pretty creative and entertaining though I can’t peg this as one of the better shows in 2009. But since it’s hes’ first I guess some leeway is to be given. Hopefully the 2010 version is bigger and better.

Here’s a video intro of his show.

After the show we headed to Raffles city for some ice-cream. I ended ordering the Ben and Jerry’s Thick Shake in my favorite flavor, Strawberry Cheesecake.

I drank the whole thing down in one go! Slurrrrrrrrp! It was fantastic! In fact thinking about it sends a craving to my tastes buds now! It’s the best thing ever and usually I sip my shakes cause they tend to make you really full but with this one… I finished it and wondered why there wasn’t more!

And as for my outfit of the day… here you go! Work wear… I love the details of this dress.

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On early Saturday morning I headed out to Bedok Reservoir to meet some friends for a day of Forest Adventure. This outing was organised by Kailing and her hubby.

First thing was to fill up the indemnity forms which basically states that whatever happens, the company is not liable for any injuries so watch out for yourself!

Next thing was to gear up and listen closely to the safety briefing cause we all wanted a fun experience with no casualties!

And then we were all set to go!

If you ask how I would rate Singapore’s forest adventures vs the other treetop adventures I’ve tried, I’ve got to say that this one is the most mild. It’s not that high and the hardest course that we tried was all still very easy so if you want to bring your family along or have a group that includes less adventurous friends then this is really suitable. For the more adventurous, I’ll recommend Skytrek in Malaysia for the height and the Treetop adventure in Bali for more difficult obstacles.

And here’s the video to share with you all! Check out the Chun-li move on the zip line!

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After our little drumming stint at MASKA, we sped off to meet our friends at Jalan Kayu to have dinner at the Sunset Grill & Pub. This little gem is nestled deep inside the super secluded Seletar Camp area. It’s an ulu, middle of no where place where the darker you drive into the darkness, the more on track you are. Of course we got a little lost finding the place at first! And once you reach the Singapore Flying Club with small plane parked on either side of you, you’ve reached the place.

The whole place had an old school out of Singapore vibe about it. We settle in quickly and took some group shots before ordering our food and beer.

We were there on a Saturday night so the place was pretty crowded. I was amazed that there were so many people willing to come so far for dinner. It’s one place you can’t get to without a car.

Having good company and a whole lot of patience is essential in this place cause while the food was not bad, the service took forever! Best not to come hungry or when in a hurry. Maybe it won’t be that bad on the weekdays but that night, it could take about an hour for food to be served! Which is a huge deterrent for me to go back there even though I like the place. And do make all your orders at one go if you decide to try this place out cause a 2nd order later on might take another hour to deliver.

I had my grilled fish was was pretty good. But the main reason we came here was to try out their infamous super hot buffalo wings! The hotness or spiciness came in different levels. On the menu, you can find level 1 to 10. But few people know that there is a secret level 30 which is not stated in the menu.

We ordered level 5 wings to see how hot it possibly was. I manage to finish my wing but my mouth was already burning so when my group suggested conquering the Level 30 wings I decided to sit out and play camera/video person instead. Call me a coward but the horror stories I heard from those who had tried level 30 wings before scared me!

After everyone’s tummy was lined with food, the level 30 wings came. I had one taste of the sauce and stood by my decision to stay out of this dare devil competition! Besides the initial spiciness, the worst thing about having these  is that after the taste in your month dies off and you feel good again, the worst is yet to come! The huge amount of chilli in your system will manifest it’s symptoms  for the next few days, you will have tummy runs, sore throat, flu, fever and even hives! I already have a sensitive tummy and skin so I doubt my body could handle it well.

But my group was roaring and ready to prove that fear is not a factor for them. So while some went in armed with just water, others were armed with milk, ice or even a huge packet of sugar! Each hoping their remedies will help ease the after effects of the chilli. The common strategy here is to cut up all the chicken to bite size pieces first then shove it in your mouth without touching your lips so your lips won’t swell.

Turn by turn they went and they all finished up their share of the wings! The tears came streaming down for some and eyes and lips swell but they conquered it all!

Here’s the list of winners. Those names with a – in them meant that the Wing was shared by 2 people.

Each of them had a certificate given to them by Sunset Gill and Pub and their names will be listed up in the restaurant’s board of level 30 wings achievers!

Lots of group shots were taken of the winners! Lol…

And we also took some shots of the girls in that table…

The night was not over yet but my post has to end here… will be back for more of that night soon. Meanwhile, here’s a video specially for the challengers.

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