Taipei hike

Been a bit slack updating you! So since last login we've visited Taipei, Taiwan. We think we prefer Taiwan to Hong Kong. Night markets are better, Nick bought some shoes, took them quite some time to find some to fit his big flippers. Our hotel room was right by the train station so very handy, except the last night we stayed we didn't get to sleep until about 4am because the room next door was having a party!

Anyway, we went on a hike that was meant to go to a waterfall, but when we got to the end we hadn't seen one, we later realised that there hadn't been enough rain, so the dribble we'd seen was it. We thought the walk would be super easy because it was only 3.3km long, but it must have taken us at least 2.5 hours, because it was pretty much a straight up climb on these tiny steps, it think it said there was about 1200 when we got to the top. It was quite a hot day this day.

Then we wandered down a waterfront market and met this very dapper dog, they love to dress their pets over here, they dress them like children and push them around in prams....freaks!...

 Then went to a "fishing village" which was actually code for tourist boat ride port, and Lovers Bridge (they love to theme everything here to make it seem more interesting haha.

Luckily there was a cold....kind of cold...beer available.

Lovers Bridge....

LUKANG

We took the high speed rail (280km hr) to Taichung. A nice young english speaking girl saw us having trouble at the train station and came to our aid. We said we were staying in Taipei and she said "So why would you come to Taichung?". I was a tad worried. But she helped to get us on a bus to go to an old street area in Lukang. It took about 50 mins on the bus but was well worth it. You couldn't see alot of the old street/lanes, because they're full of stalls and shops but it was still cool to wander around buildings built in the 1700s, and as always there was a temple....

To get home we found some more english speaking young girls who said they were going back to Taichung so we could follow them. Little did we know their way back was via bus for 50 mins and then a crammed, cattle class, rickety train ride to get back to the high speed rail (HSR), but without their help it would have taken us much much longer to find our way home. None of the bus drivers or information staff speak english, they just bark orders at you then turn away haha, so their help was much appreciated.

At the HSR Station there is a Carton Village where everything is made out of cardboard, there is a whole restaurant, but as usual the menu wasn't in english, it didn't have many pictures so we opted not to eat there, We tried to just order by picking random things from a menu previously and got some weird stuff - complete with what i think were baby cockroaches running around the plate :-)

Asians take pictures of the most random stuff, so you never feel out of place doing dumb stuff...

SINGAPORE

We made it! Extremely tired from not much sleep the night prior due to next door's partying, we got in 12.30am this morning. We get to our hotel at about 1.30am and there's quite a few people still out wandering the back streets around the hotel, mostly women. The hotel reception smells, bad. I notice plenty of dust bunnies and a used cotton bud on the floor, hmm. The first thing I say when we open the door to our room is "We are leaving as soon as we wake up". The sheets on the bed are see through and when I pull back the covers there's some...dirt, or something in there. There's hair on the floor in the bathroom, cigarette burns on top of the toilet and toothpaste remnants on the taps and mirror. We are soooo tired haha. The AC is rattling and we see someone has tried to jam some paper in it to fix the noise, so we cram a bit more in there, it helps for about 30 minutes. We slept in our clothes on top of the bed. We actually didn't really sleep at all, I was freaked out bed bugs might be eating me!

When we got a cab to a much better hotel this morning the cab driver confirmed we were staying in Singapore's red light district. Eew. So lesson learnt, no scrimping on hotels.

In saying that, as I sit here on our nice comfy bed there is a loud banging, graunching noise coming through the wall and it's been going on for about 30 minutes now haha, let's hope that stops by bed time.

So exhausted today we are not doing much, might do a bus tour which ends at the orchid gardens. I purchased 2 handbags today so the day is still a success :-)