These questions were asked even before we return to Malaysia : "When are we coming back again?"
So it's easy to sum up, it's an awesome trip!
This trip is rather special I will say, compared to all other trips eg. Korea, Melbourne, San Francisco.. simply because we were free like birds! We didn't have friend who stay in Taiwan, so we could select anywhere we want to stay and what we want to do and be very flexible & carefree!
In Seoul and Melbourne, we stayed with friends and saved on accommodation. We had some inflexibility there as to we had to reach back at the house at certain time that we've promised our friend. If we kept coming back to the house late... it felt rude like we really treating it as a hotel. And dinner is always tricky, should we buy back for friend? We eating with our friend? Or our friend cooking? We wish there's more meat in their cooking? Not enough to feel full? We've been through all that. In San Francisco, we stayed with family and I went through tremendous stress trying to ensure my mum is well taken care of. There were many aunties that often give mean remarks or gossips or simply make weird decisions. Yep we managed to overcome those too.
So, Taiwan.
Me, Joshua, Jasmine, Jasper, Anne and my mum.
9D8N : 4 nights in Taiwan, 2 nights in Yi Lan and 2 nights in CingJing.
We chose to stay 4 nights in Taiwan because of the public transport so we could save on the cost to book a full day taxi. It's ranging from TWD5000 to 7000 depending on car type and driver.
Our airbnb in Taipei. Honestly, I really didn't expect our airbnb to be so small & cramp. In picture it's much more spacious @.@ We lack space to open up our luggages.
The kids didn't have place to play. The kitchen was sharing space with the stairs to upstairs & door entrance & shoes area. The OCD in me cannot accept this living environment. I guess 4 nights was more than enough. Next trip? We won't do 4 nights. We only booked driver for 1 day where we went further away to Ye Liu & Jiu Fen. Other than that the public transports were great. Trains & buses, we took them all. We walk and asked directions (actually only Anne hehe).
Yi Lan. Our awesome driver Xiao Fu said it's a beautiful place and it was a pity we chose to stay in the hotel 老爷酒店 for most of the 3 days! We jumped from airbnb to a 5 star hotel!
Our room comes with a half outdoor hot spring. ;) It's so luxurious we felt a waste if we were to go out. It also cost me a bomb. Total TWD 52800 for just 2 nights. @.@ I couldn't smile when I swipe my credit card upon checkout. Yes we had all the fun there, we even asked when are we returning again, but!! what I thought will cost me around RM6k came up to close to RM8k!! Why? Just because of weakening ringgit in just matter of months, which was completely beyond my control, come on!! Other than the hotels, our driver took us to places that was not in our original itinerary, he basically suggested better places for us to go after knowing us better. So glad he changed our plans! :) We covered a local farm with lots of cute animals and cycled around a beautiful lake for more than an hour with cold breeze on our faces!
CingJing.
This was a place I said a must to go because of all the nice photos of my colleagues & friends taken there. To me its like a mini NZ. I don't know what to expect, I just want to be there. We came... the journey was looong... because we had to go back to Taipei then take the highway to go to Cingjing. Geographically our planning was wrong. Anne and I did the itinerary first before we book our driver. Had we done the reverse, we would've gone to Cingjing first, then Yi Lan, last Taipei. That was proposed by Xiao Fu. Anyway, the journey to Cingjing was tiring enough for everyone, especially for Anne who fell sick on that day! She vomitted in the car... and we arrived at almost 10pm. Next day, we were to go up the mountain, Jasmine vomitted on me in the car. There were 2 vomits in the car, front & back. It was very very smelly... and the temperature had to be 7 degrees when Jasmine was soaked in her own puke (including my pants).
We did not enjoy the mountain part, but when I look back at the pictures, oh dear, the scenery was breathtaking!
Travel with kids in Taiwan. If you are planning to go, get prepared... or at least wait till your kids are more independent. Otherwise, ergo carrier, backpack diaper bag and sling handbag are must-haves!
I could carry all 3 with Jasper in the carrier up & down the plane while Joshua & Anne took care of our other luggages & mummy. Not just that, we also appreciate the ergo when we hike up stairs in Jiu Fen, tracking in Cingjing etc... those places were not stroller friendly. We travelled with single stroller, that's for Jasmine or Jasper but at selective places.
The restaurants generally do not provide baby chairs!! Yes! We were shocked. And we just had to make do. Put Jasper on our lap and feed him. When he refuse to eat, we feed him biscuits when he is hungry later. I never look forward to meal times. So cramp and had to take care of Jasper. -_- I have to admit, most of the time, Joshua did it.
This is just one bad thing. There are other great things for kids. The society in general prioritize the kids a lot. On the train, there's 博爱座 for elderly & children & parent with kid.
Whenever I enter the train carrying my kid, even old man with walking stick was willing to give up his seat for me!! And when we're in the bus, there was even friendly grannies talking to me & Jasmine.
Their bathrooms are also kid friendly. I noticed a few comes with adult toilet bowl, kid toilet bowl and a baby chair! It's designed for mother travelling alone with 2 kids. Although I don't need to use this facility at all... it's eye opening for me cos we don't get these in Malaysia. ;)
Bathrooms are not always nearby when Jasmine needs to pee.... so we let her pee into diapers quite a bit.
Snacks. Jasmine has a lotttt of snacks. Mummy bought so so so much of kids snacks. All the poky and biscuits... we suspect she ate too much that she kept complaining of stomachaches. :(
Jasmine fell down running at 自由广场 and was miserable the whole day. I felt very bad about it - because I was the one who encouraged her to run. Sorry little girl..
Sleep time with kids. We packed along their nap mats!
Great decision although it's bulky and on some level we overpacked or planned our check ins & non check ins wrongly, we had to pay RM150 for extra 15 kg check in baggage. :( Note to self, next time, weigh all our bags before going to airport.
So the kids sleep with us on bed but with the nap mats on top to help keep them warm and provide them a familiar surface to rest on. Jasper as usual gets up pretty frequent.. Jasmine could sleep through all nights except for the 2 nights in Cingjing... first night she peed in her sleep, second night she slept with Ah Ma on the top floor and got up to pee, while walking down she fell a few steps down (and of course cried louder). @.@
As usual, in the fashion department, I had loads of fun dressing my kids up with the winter clothing! I bought from ebay 2 knitted hats for Jasper. Both are lovely.. but the blue one is a little too small.
The white one was perfect. And he earnt the name of Master Yoda because of it! He looked extremely cute in the 老爷酒店attire and trying to walk, even the people in the hotel was attracted to him.
This is my favourite outfit of Jasmine :)
My own dressing up, I wish I could wear more dresses but I had to go with nursing friendly attire most of the time... so lets not talk about my least favourite or least confident attire, but my favourite? :) Here!
After come back from Taiwan, I bought another exact same dress from Carousell but different colour. :P Not much chances of wearing it yet, but don't care. Own it first.
Fashion mistake, I bought a black beret just about 2 weeks before our trip thinking I will wear it all the time. It came.. and it's too tight.. but I still wear it on our first day.. screwed up my hair. -_- and looking really odd in my pictures.
I didn't bring it back. I left behind some over-packed clothes in our Cingjing hotel. This black beret, a pair of old black tights (from Anne's Aber days), a pair of baby jeans (very thick & non skinny, given by Emily the mother of Ashley & Glen) and a long sleeve grey t-shirt that never got used (from koko's London days). I was trying to reduce our check in weight by leaving behind things that will end up in donation bin. Thank God, we didn't need to pay extra when we return, the counter guy allow us extra 3-4 kgs. :)
Anne and I was the master planner of the itinerary, we filled in all our research into few sheets of paper and Anne even had an offline Taipei map on her phone! But of the many places we plan to visit, we cut out at least half of them. Well, I think half is still an understatement. For example, we minus the zoo, minus the multiple shopping points, minus coffee castle, minus waterfall at Yi Lan, minus multiple tracks at Cingjing, plainly because we over-estimated ourselves. Hehe. We were travelling with 2 kids under 4, and mummy who's already 70 years old! Our driver Xiao Fu was the best decision we've made. He was recommended to me by my colleague. Fun fact, in the whole month of December 2016, colleagues that I know who went to Taiwan for holidays? 5. And 4 out of 5 hired Xiao Fu's service! He's that great. Cheaper than normal drivers. Genuine, down to earth, passionate about his job, become more than friend to us, help us carry bags/ carry kids, took pictures for us, push strollers, play with kids, buy food & drinks for us without charging, buy medicine for Anne without charging, offer up his jumper for Jasmine to keep warm... he's like family to us. :)
Here, look at the 2 foldable car seats we brought along. He helped to fix both in while we were at breakfast. :)
Even my mummy like him a lot. It's so important for mummy to like him... so really thank God for Xiao Fu. We are still in contact until now, Anne's friend has booked him for a travel in March 2017.. and we even offered Xiao Fu to stay at our place should he ever come to Malaysia for holiday. Oh, he is born in year 1983 so he's our age, not the old uncle type.
He took these nice pictures for us. Hehe now I can see the whole duck otherwise we wont remember it.
We had a weird situation with the other weird driver. Because my trip and my colleague (Pauline)'s trip has overlapped and she booked Xiao Fu first... he wasn't able to fetch us from airport. So we asked our airbnb host to help arrange, she recommended this weird driver. His surname is 孙. He drives a huge Volkwagen TX5, a 9 seater.
Very very comfortable but will cost TWD7000 a day. Xiao Fu's local car a 7 seater cost us TWD5000 a day.
Back to the weird driver. He didn't allow us to carry our luggages to the car and to the airbnb lift. In the car, he was weirdly friendly to us... giving us weird tips like don't buy cut fruits, don't simply buy pineapple tarts because some maybe produced much earlier thus not fresh etc. I should also mention that Xiao Fu also can't send us to airport on our last day because he was also pre-booked. So we resort to this weird driver as well, because it's 31 Dec and apparently is huge celebration in Taiwan where traffic will be bad. Note to self again, never plan a trip in taiwan on 31 December. Anyway in our conversations, he found out about Xiao Fu, and took him a long time to respond to Anne in normal tone, he probed us whether he is legal, that u already know that he is trying to make us switch to him! He said loud and clear that he is free on those days we are in cingjing. He didn't want to just come to pick us up and go to airport. He wants to provide us tour for the 2 days we are there. He is hinting so strongly for us to ditch Xiao Fu. He gave us his namecards and say if we ever need help he will definitely be there, if he is not booked by others. bla bla bla. Crap. Cut long story short. We initially wanted to just take free shuttle on our last day to 青青草原 but he said the shuttle cannot be trusted on punctuality. He proposed that we check out at 9pm and he come early to take us to 青青草原. After that, he take us to Taipei. With that extra 3 hours, he charged another TWD1500. That night, when we arrive at airbnb, we decided to just take this offer to reduce our headache. Thank God we did, because the shuttle was closed on 31 Dec. So thank God we booked drive to take us around, but that driver was really quite bad. On our last day, when he came. His attitude was different. He was showing sour face when we left him to take ALL our bags from our room to his car. He didn't know how to recommend places to visit like Xiao Fu and obviously took us to a rubbish shop for dinner (only meat balls & soup!) just because he wants to buy the frozen packs! And he is working together with our airbnb host. We like her place, the train station is just seconds away, but they were just plain cunning. Throughout our trip with Xiao Fu, the host will message Anne to ask whether we are happy, whether the 7 seater can really fit all our bags etc. -_- So, we are definitely going to have to dig up better airbnb in our next trip! Stay far away from the weirdos.
Food, the night market food were definitely over-rated. We can walk the whole street and I won't be impressed with any of the food. But I do have my favourites at some of the eateries we've been to. Like the 蓝家割包, we can choose all the fats pork in our bao and the 四神汤 is just best, with intestines & unique soup base.
We went there twice. ;) Another great place is the restaurant at Cingjing. Xiao Fu gets us a free dish because the owner knows him. And the food is really really delicious. To the extend mummy took pictures. Haha. We ate there lunch & dinner on our last day with Xiao Fu.
We bought TOO MUCH of 太阳饼. I love it after tasting it few times from friends who bought for me after they are back from their holiday in Taiwan. But... this time because we over-bought, I think i've had enough of them. We didn't know the expiry was 1st Feb, we kept most of them to ourselves instead of giving to friends (I have gave some away to colleagues and Uncle Aunty Yap otherwise we would have more leftovers!) and we end up really eating the last one on 31st January. Another snack we bought - almond chips, was already soft one day to expiry, so we threw about 4 packs away. So definitely should count properly (who to give, how much to self consume) before we buy next time.
Shopping, we did very minimal of those. Just didn't feel like it. But I still bought 3 pairs of shoes. 2 pairs were RM30 each and another pair was about RM50. I thought the price was reasonable and not easy to find shoes that fits all my criteria so just went with it. Anne tried to find hers but no size. The rest of us didn't buy anything, except for 2 small fridge magnets at cingjing. We got Jasmine involved, where she got 1 for Subang Jaya and another 1 for 舅舅。
Plane rides. We learnt from our Langkawi experience that Jasper is always very inspired by Jasmine, whatver she touches he wants and the chaos will begin. So we strategise to have mummy & Anne sit with Jasmine on the plane to Taiwan. They help her eat dinner and talk, play and sleep. While Joshua and I settle Jasper. Great decision. 5 hours was completely do-able. The plane back to KL, it's midnight flight so Jasmine sat with us. I have Jasper sleep on my chest the whole time, not comfortable.. but no other choice. Still, considered a good journey in the plane.
Joshua's vlogs. Yes he brought his osmo and does daily vlogs. Except for 2nd day where his sim card were corrupted and more than half photos & videos gone. He was stressed up and had to go to Samsung centre to buy new sim card. Then he's happy again.
I generally don't mind him doing it but he slows us down. Always want to do 5 minutes time lapse when we want to move on to next destination. Or make us help him hold his osmo.. or he will disappear while we have to handle the kids... Once we lost him & Anne after he tasted some durian snack while me & mummy were waiting at next door shop, they didn't see us and just walked on. Lots of raising voices.. so glad it's over.
We put in lots of hardwork so that he could have sufficient footages... so please do support his channel by subscribing to it.....
The whole trip, we spend approx RM34k. RM6k on airasia tickets. RM10k on accomodations (RM7.5k just on 老爷酒店) and RM8k on our cash expenditure.
Note for future travels
- start monitoring exchange rates 6 months or 1 year ahead for any sudden fluctuations
- weigh all our bags before going to airport
- when buy food, check expiry date to avoid over-buying
So it's easy to sum up, it's an awesome trip!
This trip is rather special I will say, compared to all other trips eg. Korea, Melbourne, San Francisco.. simply because we were free like birds! We didn't have friend who stay in Taiwan, so we could select anywhere we want to stay and what we want to do and be very flexible & carefree!
In Seoul and Melbourne, we stayed with friends and saved on accommodation. We had some inflexibility there as to we had to reach back at the house at certain time that we've promised our friend. If we kept coming back to the house late... it felt rude like we really treating it as a hotel. And dinner is always tricky, should we buy back for friend? We eating with our friend? Or our friend cooking? We wish there's more meat in their cooking? Not enough to feel full? We've been through all that. In San Francisco, we stayed with family and I went through tremendous stress trying to ensure my mum is well taken care of. There were many aunties that often give mean remarks or gossips or simply make weird decisions. Yep we managed to overcome those too.
Me, Joshua, Jasmine, Jasper, Anne and my mum.
(in taxi going to KLIA2)
We chose to stay 4 nights in Taiwan because of the public transport so we could save on the cost to book a full day taxi. It's ranging from TWD5000 to 7000 depending on car type and driver.
We stayed in Mone Resort. booked via Agoda. Not bad but how come they never provide proper cups, they provided only paper cups. That's one thing really bad. -_- And unfriendly receptionist. Thank God their chef was friendly and kind to us most mornings. :)
(moments before she puked)
(after puked, grey jumper belongs to Xiao Fu)
(black jacket also belongs to Xiao Fu)
Then my mum got so stubborn to refuse wearing her jumper under her coat! Add all the negatives, there were lots of arguing and tension in the car.
(moments after argument with mummy over her pink jumper, she didn't wear)
(me & Anne trying to feel better, with my smelly pants)
(Joshua tried to break the ice)
(family don't get angry with each other for long!)
How come we didn't realise?? It's quite a waste... :( And our 2nd day in Cingjing we were taken around by another driver which was worse than lousy. So that cut our usual fun by half again. But, again when I look back, awesome scenery... just the wrong company. Sigh.
Travel with kids in Taiwan. If you are planning to go, get prepared... or at least wait till your kids are more independent. Otherwise, ergo carrier, backpack diaper bag and sling handbag are must-haves!
Their bathrooms are also kid friendly. I noticed a few comes with adult toilet bowl, kid toilet bowl and a baby chair! It's designed for mother travelling alone with 2 kids. Although I don't need to use this facility at all... it's eye opening for me cos we don't get these in Malaysia. ;)
Snacks. Jasmine has a lotttt of snacks. Mummy bought so so so much of kids snacks. All the poky and biscuits... we suspect she ate too much that she kept complaining of stomachaches. :(
So the kids sleep with us on bed but with the nap mats on top to help keep them warm and provide them a familiar surface to rest on. Jasper as usual gets up pretty frequent.. Jasmine could sleep through all nights except for the 2 nights in Cingjing... first night she peed in her sleep, second night she slept with Ah Ma on the top floor and got up to pee, while walking down she fell a few steps down (and of course cried louder). @.@
As usual, in the fashion department, I had loads of fun dressing my kids up with the winter clothing! I bought from ebay 2 knitted hats for Jasper. Both are lovely.. but the blue one is a little too small.
My own dressing up, I wish I could wear more dresses but I had to go with nursing friendly attire most of the time... so lets not talk about my least favourite or least confident attire, but my favourite? :) Here!
Had to breastfeed on cable car... wishing no one peeks from the back! :P
Fashion mistake, I bought a black beret just about 2 weeks before our trip thinking I will wear it all the time. It came.. and it's too tight.. but I still wear it on our first day.. screwed up my hair. -_- and looking really odd in my pictures.
Anne and I was the master planner of the itinerary, we filled in all our research into few sheets of paper and Anne even had an offline Taipei map on her phone! But of the many places we plan to visit, we cut out at least half of them. Well, I think half is still an understatement. For example, we minus the zoo, minus the multiple shopping points, minus coffee castle, minus waterfall at Yi Lan, minus multiple tracks at Cingjing, plainly because we over-estimated ourselves. Hehe. We were travelling with 2 kids under 4, and mummy who's already 70 years old! Our driver Xiao Fu was the best decision we've made. He was recommended to me by my colleague. Fun fact, in the whole month of December 2016, colleagues that I know who went to Taiwan for holidays? 5. And 4 out of 5 hired Xiao Fu's service! He's that great. Cheaper than normal drivers. Genuine, down to earth, passionate about his job, become more than friend to us, help us carry bags/ carry kids, took pictures for us, push strollers, play with kids, buy food & drinks for us without charging, buy medicine for Anne without charging, offer up his jumper for Jasmine to keep warm... he's like family to us. :)
Here, look at the 2 foldable car seats we brought along. He helped to fix both in while we were at breakfast. :)
He took these nice pictures for us. Hehe now I can see the whole duck otherwise we wont remember it.
We had a weird situation with the other weird driver. Because my trip and my colleague (Pauline)'s trip has overlapped and she booked Xiao Fu first... he wasn't able to fetch us from airport. So we asked our airbnb host to help arrange, she recommended this weird driver. His surname is 孙. He drives a huge Volkwagen TX5, a 9 seater.
Food, the night market food were definitely over-rated. We can walk the whole street and I won't be impressed with any of the food. But I do have my favourites at some of the eateries we've been to. Like the 蓝家割包, we can choose all the fats pork in our bao and the 四神汤 is just best, with intestines & unique soup base.
We went there twice. ;) Another great place is the restaurant at Cingjing. Xiao Fu gets us a free dish because the owner knows him. And the food is really really delicious. To the extend mummy took pictures. Haha. We ate there lunch & dinner on our last day with Xiao Fu.
(we paid Xiao Fu about TWD2000 more than he asked, excuse that we dirtied his car, we are his firsts to puke in his car)
We bought TOO MUCH of 太阳饼. I love it after tasting it few times from friends who bought for me after they are back from their holiday in Taiwan. But... this time because we over-bought, I think i've had enough of them. We didn't know the expiry was 1st Feb, we kept most of them to ourselves instead of giving to friends (I have gave some away to colleagues and Uncle Aunty Yap otherwise we would have more leftovers!) and we end up really eating the last one on 31st January. Another snack we bought - almond chips, was already soft one day to expiry, so we threw about 4 packs away. So definitely should count properly (who to give, how much to self consume) before we buy next time.
Shopping, we did very minimal of those. Just didn't feel like it. But I still bought 3 pairs of shoes. 2 pairs were RM30 each and another pair was about RM50. I thought the price was reasonable and not easy to find shoes that fits all my criteria so just went with it. Anne tried to find hers but no size. The rest of us didn't buy anything, except for 2 small fridge magnets at cingjing. We got Jasmine involved, where she got 1 for Subang Jaya and another 1 for 舅舅。
The only time Joshua had used the ergo. :P Now he knows why everynight in Taiwan I said I have bodyaches and even after a night of sleep (still disturbed by Master Yoda) is still insufficient.
Plane rides. We learnt from our Langkawi experience that Jasper is always very inspired by Jasmine, whatver she touches he wants and the chaos will begin. So we strategise to have mummy & Anne sit with Jasmine on the plane to Taiwan. They help her eat dinner and talk, play and sleep. While Joshua and I settle Jasper. Great decision. 5 hours was completely do-able. The plane back to KL, it's midnight flight so Jasmine sat with us. I have Jasper sleep on my chest the whole time, not comfortable.. but no other choice. Still, considered a good journey in the plane.
Joshua's vlogs. Yes he brought his osmo and does daily vlogs. Except for 2nd day where his sim card were corrupted and more than half photos & videos gone. He was stressed up and had to go to Samsung centre to buy new sim card. Then he's happy again.
I generally don't mind him doing it but he slows us down. Always want to do 5 minutes time lapse when we want to move on to next destination. Or make us help him hold his osmo.. or he will disappear while we have to handle the kids... Once we lost him & Anne after he tasted some durian snack while me & mummy were waiting at next door shop, they didn't see us and just walked on. Lots of raising voices.. so glad it's over.
(Joshua's sour face just seconds after I told him to stop the annoying vlogs time lapse)
The whole trip, we spend approx RM34k. RM6k on airasia tickets. RM10k on accomodations (RM7.5k just on 老爷酒店) and RM8k on our cash expenditure.
Note for future travels
- start monitoring exchange rates 6 months or 1 year ahead for any sudden fluctuations
- weigh all our bags before going to airport
- when buy food, check expiry date to avoid over-buying
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