Our departure time from Singapore was 8.30am, it's a pretty good timing in my opinion! We stopped for a transit in Hong Kong International Airport. And you know what, we actually crossed path with Richard Li (!!!!!!!!!!) while walking in the airport. He is Li Ka-Sheng (The richest person of Asian descent in the world: Wikipedia)'s youngest son. I can totally remember the looks on CC and my face when we saw him. What a pleasant surprise!
Na, this is him and his ex-girlfriend Isabelle Leong (They were not married even though she gave birth to their children) Ok, too much of gossips! :p
Arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport around 3pm, took a picture of the custom officer bringing the drug-sniffing dogs around despite being told several times not to :p
After we went out to the public area, went straight to 台湾大哥大counter to get a phone card to report our safety to the parents and also for data usage.
This list shows the package that you can get based on the number of days you are staying. We paid NTD500 for the 5 days unlimited data usage and around 27 minutes of phone calls to Singapore. You can just get one card, put it in a friend's phone and share it among your friends to save money, that is if you are not a social network addict that needs to follow Facebook and Twitter closely.
Next, we went to the public bus counters to get our bus tickets to the hotel!
Bought tickets from the FreeGo bus counter, it is the only bus that will bring us directly to our hotel in XiMenDing! A one-way ticket costs NTD140 ~SGD6.10, a round trip costs NTD260, we did not get the round-trip tickets as our departing time from Taiwan to Hong Kong was 8am, which was too early. The lady at the counter advised us to choose flight departure time (from Taiwan) from 2pm onwards if we were to visit Taiwan again.
The list of hotels that the bus goes to.
Saw our saviour; Mr water cooler! It really seems like water cooler is a rare thing in Taiwan's airport, correct me if I am wrong. I really hate to feel thirsty and dehydrated, blame it on the airlines' no water on-board policy.
Mandatory reflection picture! :) Hehehe.
Super super friendly and funny bus driver! Seeing his photo here once again reminds me of how friendly and genuinely nice Taiwanese are.
A different type of seat orientation.
Pretty comfortable seats I must say. Plus point was that the bus was not filled!
Excited us!
One of the good things about long bus rides is that you get to see the beautiful sceneries!
Many big pieces of agricultural land along the way. Did some research, and found out that agriculture is actually the foundation of 'Taiwan Miracle'. The term 'Taiwan Miracle' refers to the rapid economic growth and rapid industrialization of Taiwan the recent years. Agriculture now only contributes around 3% to the GDP, while the service industry actually contributes a large 73% to the GDP!
I also see lots of construction work going on, my guess is that they are extending the MRT line, just like Singapore. I feel that this is somehow good for the locals and tourists such that the places which are orginally inconveniently located can then be accessed easily.
This photo sort of depicts Taiwan as a highly-industrialized country.
I wonder how much do houses like that cost.
Upon seeing these shops, I knew our destination was getting nearer! Yum yum, look at the 水煎
包, only NTD10 each (around SGD0.45)!!
0 comments:
Post a Comment