airasia

Don’t think I’ll be able to keep this Taiwan travelogue short. So go on and read it if you have spare time. 🙂

I have never seriously considered visiting Taiwan before this trip. Whenever my friends ask me to go Taiwan, I always say no. In my thoughts, Taiwan is boring and besides I don’t fancy their food (e.g. sausages, fried food). But because moderately affordable is my 2015 travel motto… after thinking long and hard, yes… I decided on Taiwan. That was a year ago. My other option was Hong Kong but I thought wouldn’t it be better to visit a new country? Although I wanted to visit Hong Kong again pretty badly!

I booked my flight with AirAsia X (yes I know I sworn them off) because what they offered were the cheapest even after including meal, seat and luggage cost). Four months before flying off, I received an email from AirAsia. The title of the email? Your return flight from Taipei to KL has been cancelled and moved to next flight. Oh how lucky am I? 3 years back AirAsia X cancelled my London flight and now this. Thankfully this time it was quite smooth sailing. A week later, I received my new flight itinerary. So apparently they cancelled the early afternoon flight and bumped us into the late afternoon flight.

When I booked my Taiwan flight a year back, I have this sense of uneasiness (like something bad is going to happen before the trip) but I decided it was just my over-thinking-over-worrying mind. I purposely booked the trip about a month after Chester’s birthday so that I get to celebrate his birthday first before going holiday. Fast forward to present day, I knew now what that uneasiness feeling was. 🙁 🙁 🙁 Talk about a woman’s intuition! Sometimes it really scares me that my premonition does come true (always the bad things, perhaps I attract it?). I will never know when exactly Chester took his last breath. Was it 4th October or 5th October? And guess what? I flew off to Taipei on 5th November (a month later). Talk about coincidence!!! Yes, this trip did healed me quite a bit… emotionally.

As with all my independent travels, I’m the master planner. As I plan and dig deeper on what to see and eat, unknowingly to me, I fell in love with Taiwan. Before long, I was super excited and can’t wait for this trip to happen. This Taiwan holiday was a 6 days 5 nights trip (5th-10th Nov 2015) where my family and me mainly stay in Taipei except for a day trip to Jiufen. Expect to see lots of food photos as this trip is mainly for that.

I lugged my Nikon DSLR with a lighter 50mm lens with me to this trip but I ended up only using it for 2.5 days… even though I carried a backpack this time to distribute the weight between my shoulders. The rest of the trip, I kept it in my luggage. Even with lighter lens it was still heavy! I no longer have the strength like in my youthful years. LOL. For the rest of the trip, I relied on my sis’ P&S Lumix and our camera phones. So yes, most photos won’t be as good as I would like. No choice.

Btw, make sure you stick to the end of this Taiwan travelogue. Something happened!

Malaysians are exempted from visa if you stay less than 30 days in Taiwan. Yeah!

It was my first time at KLIA2. TBH, I dislike the planning of this airport. Why are the departure/arrival gates so far far far away? Allow ample time of 30 minutes or more of unplanned trekking. They do provide buggy transport but expect to walk more and go down some stairs after that.

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