I woke up at four o’clock in the morning and got ready for my good friend to pick me up. I thank his mom for the car-pool to the airport. Taking taxi from Jurong to Changi is quite expensive. So the car-pooling really helped us! We reached Changi at 6 and had a lot of time to eat breakfast and walk around before boarding at 8. We got to enjoy the sunrise from the airport. It’s special because sunrise is usually blocked by the tall buildings in the country.

We took Tigerair flight TR2992 which was scheduled to fly from Singapore Changi International Airport at 0830hrs and reach Taipei Taoyuan International Airport at 1310hrs. In actual time, the plane did land at 1310hrs. No time difference between Singapore and Taiwan. It was right on time.

After the normal immigration checks and luggage claims we managed to get out of Taoyuan airport by 1400hrs. Before we left, we bought local numbers that has unlimited data plan for 5 days at a cost of NT300 (SGD12.70) The counter is just right next to the arrival exit after the custom. The people at the counter were very efficient and friendly too. They speak english, luckily. The taxi driver we hired from the Taxi counter didn’t recognise the name of the street we wanted to go. I had the street name printed in English and he got confused. So for convinience sake, for those non-chinese speaking going to Taipei, try to get the names of places you want to visit printed in both Chinese characters and English. That should help in getting direction easily.

Our hostel is just nice, enough for good night sleep after whole-day activities. And there are a lot of eating places nearby, it’s hard to choose where to eat. Convinience stores are at every corner. The best part is that the hostel location is just 10 minutes walk to the MRT. The main focus of the day was to get three basic things: sim card, easycard, water. We got everything we need and even visited Taipei 101 which is 20 minutes walk in the cold weather.We ate early dinner at Din Tai Fung at the tower because one of the highlights of the trip is to try Taiwan’s Xiao Long Bao! I loved the atmosphere in the city. Just take a look!

We were very excited to try the YouBike back to the MRT near our hostel. The weather had gone colder by now and my hands were freezing. We decided to take some rest at the hostel and continue our journey to Raohe night market at night, not forgetting the night market which is just below our hostel.