Day 1: Bijin travels to Taiwan
4 October 2023, Wednesday
Waited 6 whole months (since we purchased the air tickets) for this trip to happen, + the anxiety we felt - wondering if the friendship (that birthed through MaplestoryM) was going to make it out alive from spending 24/7 together over 11 days - after all, it is not uncommon for friends to turn foes after going on a trip together right? π
Started the day at 6 a.m. at Changi Airport Terminal 3, with half-filled baggage and excitement.
The entire flight was pretty smooth-sailing and even arrived ahead of schedule - which was fantastic for us because we did consider the possibility of shifting the THSR timing to an earlier slot than originally planned. [I used the inflight WiFi for the first ever time and its great, you can keep in contact with family & friends while on flight now which is mind-blowing for me (note: requires KrisFlyer membership no. to be included in the flight booking to have complimentary usage)]
Quick note on collecting SIM cards: there are two booths side-by-side that seem to do the exact same things, you might want to do a quick check before queueing to see if you're at the correct one because when we tried to collect our SIM cards at the below booth (where the queue was), they directed us to the other booth (which had no queue), so we were pretty confused because both booths had some Klook advertisement in their spaces and no clear differentiation between them.
Sadly, neither of us had any luck with these.
After getting our connectivity up and running, we proceeded to take the MRT to Taoyuan HSR station. (P.s. Were they always this convenient all along - I don't remember it being this seamless to get to the respective transfer stations but heck yeah!)
Managed to switch our original HSR tickets at the collection counter (again, bought through Klook) to an earlier timeslot! By then we were also a little hungry, so we decided to do a quick convenience store meal while we waited for our HSR train to Taichung.
After arriving in Taichung, we had to find the shuttle service that would bring us to Sun Moon Lake, but we kind of got a little lost with the directions - and found Mister Donut. They were having a promotion of 6 donuts for 200TWD which is like 8.50SGD so why not?! (If you know, the queues in SG for Mister Donut is just crazy at the moment, but there's no queue here so YAY).
We checked back our itinerary plan and rerouted ourselves back to Exit 5 to get to the shuttle service and bought the bus tickets from the Sun Moon Lake/Nantou counter staff (only to realise later that we could have just used our iPass / EasyCard (our EzLink equivalent) in Taiwan to pay for the ride instead π)
While on the bus, we were getting uncertain about how we would get from the terminal stop (Shuishe Pier) to our accommodation which was at the opposite end of Sun Moon Lake (Itathao Pier) because shuttle and ferry services between the two have already ended for the day.
Funny story: at some point in the bus ride, we saw that there was a bus stop named Crystal Resort & we thought we struck a pot of gold, only to be told by our instincts & GPS that it couldn't be right.
True enough, we reached Shuishe pier (the terminal stop) around 6 p.m. in front of a Police Station... STRANDED π. Bi had downloaded Uber in anticipation for such a situation and we were prepared to call for a taxi. In fact, we saw one stationary taxi opposite us, but because we were waiting for a response from Uber and hesitant to approach, we saw him drive off eventually with other travellers.
So, two ladies with their suitcases standing in front of the Police Station opposite the 7-Eleven π. We decided to reach out to the hotel to call for assistance. After a while, the hotel managed to find a driver for us (at 600TWD one-way flat rate) and we got to our final destination - The Crystal Inn where we would be staying at for 3 nights.
According to the hotel staff that helped us with our check-in, we should take a short break and come back out to settle dinner as soon as possible as the stores would all be closing around 8 p.m., so we did.
Map: No. 76θ, Yiyong St, Yuchi Township, Nantou County, Taiwan 555
We decided that we wanted something warm after such a long day of travelling (literally from Singapore - Taoyuan - Taichung - Sun Moon Lake) so we settled for this store.
No, we did not look at the google reviews prior to this, but I suppose that was also a good thing - because their vegetarian lu wei (ε€ε³) was actually memorable for me. I don't know if I was just too hungry, or too tired, but it was really good in that very moment. The tofu, tofu skins, whatever they used were all very fresh and what was even more amazing was actually their sauces that we could take to go with it.
The rest of the Dim Sum were so-so to me, but the braised pork rice was pretty nice (though portion was on the smaller side).
The Crystal Inn, Sun Moon Lake
Map: No. 110θ, Wenhua St, Yuchi Township, Nantou County, Taiwan 555
Is it time now to rave about the hotel room?!
We got a Quad room so naturally the room was pretty spacious for two (we were comparing prices and for the price range, this made a lot more sense than many others). To be very honest, I don't think we were expecting much from this hotel (because of the reviews) and maybe even a tad worried about the toilet layout/design, but oh my, look at that tatami corner over there.
This was nothing like the pictures I saw when I did the booking?
Yes, no doubt, there are some privacy issues (like curtains that don't block entirely because its against a one piece mirror that spans across the whole vanity/basin area), but if you're travelling with people mature enough to know when to look away - then this is perfect (for the price & space).
There's more to rave about this hotel - in the next post.
