Familiar stranger's thoughts

Isn't it great to have dim sum not once, but twice in a weekend? And of course the chance to catch up with old friends made it all the better!

Sat dinner with AY, KX, SW & their partners
Swee Choon Tim Sum @ 187 Jalan Besar
Yes, u read correctly, this is a place for dim sum dinner, or supper, or early breakfast. For they open from 6pm to 10am and extend to 12pm for Sundays and public holidays.

This is a suitable place for dim sum even if one is alone or in a small group as their dim sum comes in a plate of twos, instead of the normal threes.

Many of the dim sum were served in small metal plates, which somehow makes me feel like I am in Malaysia.

Must try:

• Mee suah kueh (something like fried carrot cake but made of mee suah)
• Chee cheong fun (with soya sauce and sweet sauce on the side)

Cons:

• Traffic chaos, we parked at City Square and walked over instead of manoeuvring the side roads of Little India.
• No traditional egg tart, they only have Portuguese egg tarts

Price:
With a table full of dim sum for our group of seven, we paid a total of $107 or $15 each. All of us were too full to take another morsel, so we had to pack the leftovers home.

Sun lunch with GM's friends
Peony Jade at Keppel

This is a more uppity class restaurant. Things were served in pretty bamboo baskets. This place is famous for its cute dim sum creations such as "rabbits", "dinosaur" etc and of course their great tasting dim sum. The restaurant manager says that the chef only prepares the dim sum when we order.

Have always left satisfied whenever I dined at this place. But this is mostly a lunch place especially for weekends as they are mostly booked for wedding banquets on weekend nights.

Price:
Our group of 6 adults and 5 kids, setback: $238 (after OCBC discount)

Finally a day for us to slow down, visit the book store, have afternoon tea...before our return to Singapore. We sneaked off to Macdonald's whilst GM was enjoying himself in 诚品

Read so much about 猫空, hence wanted to take the opportunity to try it, we took the MRT to the Taipei Zoo, then walked abit to reach the 猫空 station, it is somewhat like our cable car, except for NT$50 per adult, we were treated to almost 30min of cable car ride. The Taiwanese people care for the visitors' comfort, hence they let our group of 3 occupy the whole cable car, which can seat a maximum of 8.

We reached the cable car station around 10am, and although it was CNY period, it was not too crowded, and we waited at most for 5 groups ahead of us.

By the time we reached the top, we were ready for food, and walked into the roadside stalls for an early lunch.

As it had started to drizzle, we decided to make our way down. On the return journey, we chose the crystal bottom cable car, there was no wait as most people were still enjoying themselves.
When we arrived back at the station, we were glad that we were early, as the queue to get on the cable car was by then quite long.

For dinner, we went to the 便所主题餐厅 (a place XM wanted to go), GM and I was abit apprehensive, but we went along for the experience, I quite enjoyed the food there, although the surroundings were abit the disgusting.

We took the train to 基隆 station, then GM decided to grab a cab to 野柳, we were probably overcharged, but then it was CNY period, and we wanted a comfortable ride, so we paid NT$500 for the driver to take us to  野柳 from the train station.

There are now proper walkways for us to walk on, so it was like a comfortable walk in the park. After we exited from the geopark, there was a row of shops selling snacks, so we had a quick lunch of fried mee hoon, 贡丸汤，鲁肉饭。

Back to 基隆 station, we took a train back to 台北车站and took the 捷运 to 淡水。We walked around and ended up getting takeaway for dinner at 板桥station.

Friday was blocked for family lunch, so we did not make any plans. After the sumptuous lunch, we had to walk abit, 大嫂 brought us to shop at 后车站， and also brought us to eat silky  豆花, as I didn't sleep well the night before, I decided to go home and rest early, hence we had takeaway steamboat (soup + rice) for dinner.

We took the train to 瑞芳, then transferred to a bus to bring us up to 九份, the bus was crowded but it was good that we found seats at the back of the bus and could take a short nap whilst the bus goes through the jam...I think everyone was going up to 九份 that day!

True enough, when we reached the top, we realised that the street was packed with people, and we found it difficult to stop and browse in the shops. But luckily, we managed to find the charcoal peanuts that was recommended. Next, we found a place serving 芋圓which was not too crowded hence, we found seats and were served almost immediately.

After walking some more, our stomachs started to protest and we stopped by a stall which we thought was not too crowded, but alas! We still had to wait for empty tables! By the time we had a table, we were starving...each of us ordered a bowl of 牛肉面, and we were soon slurping our soups happily.

We then made our way to the bus stop, however, we found that the buses were all too crowded and didn't stop at the bus stop, hence GM decided to grab a cab instead, and we were soon on the train back to 台北车站。

After standing for the whole train journey, GM was adamant that we should have some good food, for dinner so we went to 勝博殿(a highly recommended restaurant) for pork cutlet, however, GM who doesn't like fried stuff was not too impressed...

It was about 5pm when we took the MRT to 剑潭站 to go to 士林夜市，for supper, we had 臭豆腐， 蚵仔煎 etc

But nothing interesting planned for him....hee hee

We went to 京華城 for shopping, bought some jig saw puzzles sets which comes with a frame, and can be fixed without glue...and a pair of shoes!

Lunch:
赤坂拉麵(電視冠軍拉麵) across the street from 京華城
京華店地址: 台北市八德路4段147號1樓
http://www.akasaka-ramen.com.tw/akasakaramen.html
I had the tomato based soup...sweet & sour! Nice!

GM was not too impressed becos he prefers chinese noodles to japanese ramen!

After that, we took the shuttle to nearby MRT station (Zhongxiao fuxing), and went to shop around Taipei Train Station.

Dinner:
大嫂's parents were hosting dinner at 陶板屋
新北市板橋區文化路一段145號
http://www.taoban.com.tw/menu.htm
Food was good and there was a great variety of choices...

Finally dessert at home was a cheese cake for GM.

乘搭高铁到板桥站...花了十五分钟等高铁道站，然后十分钟后就到板桥站了！

午餐：
原本想在板桥站附近的大阪百货里的餐厅用餐， 但每间都需要等两小时后才有空座， 因此我们就到了熟悉的Food Republic吃担子面与肉圆。

晚餐：
在离家不远的餐厅吃过桥米线 + 小笼汤包 + 水饺 +红豆芝麻饼

夜宵：
西门丁的阿宗面线！

10pm - 乘搭计程车到机场第一航夏