We woke up to a gloomy Taipei this morning and realized Typhoon had made landfall in Yilan though not Taipei. Throughout the night, I can hear the howling winds outside the window. Very scary if you asked me, I keep worrying about something might be blown up and hit our window. Didn't have a good night sleep amid the howling wind.
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| Interesting caption outside an umbrella shop |
Took breakfast and went out to search for the extra bag I wanna buy and found Ximending to be sort of a ghost town. Due to the typhoon, many shops are closed today and we are not sure whether they would be opening for the day or not.
Luckily, I managed to find the shop to buy a cheap cute looking plastic bag to throw in my stuff for our return. I have also received a message from the airlines stating that our flight will be delayed by 6hrs to 2am.
We then went to the hotel's business center to send email to our company informing them that we need to apply for an extra day of leave due to the delayed flight.
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| Wet and gloomy Taipei |
Since we are holding to the return bus ticket to airport, I need to get the it exchange for a later time as we have arranged for it to picked us up at 5pm. Learned from the receptionist that we can make a trip to the bus terminal at Taipei main station to get the tickets changed.
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| The mascot needs help to stay upright |
Turns out that the bus company we brought the ticket from doesn't operate from Taipei Main station bus terminal and it's terminal is at some other place that I didn't heard off. We decided to forgo the return tickets and buy from the company operating at Taipei Main station bus terminal since it's really time consuming to get there.
The buses here had all stopped running due to the typhoon and will only resume once the weather is good enough. Its pretty scary though that even transport ceased operation in times of typhoon, if every thing didn't return to normal by this evening, we are gonna be stuck here without a room.
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| A very quiet Ximending |
We then returned to our hotel to check out and decided to park ourselves in the Starbucks across the street to wait for time to pass since there is no where else we can go in this weather. Left our baggage with the hotel though.
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| Cosy starbucks |
There wasn't much people inside Starbucks except for a few tourists like us. Guess everyone is staying in due to the typhoon. This is gonna be our place of refuge for the net few hours till we are due at the airport.4
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| Black forest cake & hot coffee |
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| Busy with his hp |
Found a comfortable seat to park ourselves and ordered 1 cake and coffee to share. Not really in the mood for food but we cannot be sitting there without ordering anything can we?
Mr Love was toying with his phone while I continue to read my book. Thank god for my bad habit of bringing a book everywhere I go, at least I had something to do while waiting.
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| After 4 hrs of waiting |
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| Reading material for 4hrs |
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| Windows all taped up |
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| Got bored and start snapping pics of me |
At 5pm, we decided that we should go grab dinner before making our way to airport. Not knowing what was open for business here, we decided to duck into the 1st shop we see as we walked along the street.
The wind had somehow subside and few shops are opened and there is finally some crowd in XMD at 5pm.
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| Strong wind still |
We went into this shop that sells rice with soup and ordered braised pork rice for myself and pork with preserved vegetables for Mr Love. Since it's a cold and windy day, we decided to order 1 soup to share to warm us up.
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| My dinner |
Love the braised pork they served, its like they deep fry the pork before braising it. The portion is also big enough to fill your stomach even you don't eat the side dish like in my case. Hehe I didn't know they allowed you to choose other side dish like tau pok or tofu and didn't request for a chance. But I totally cannot stand the smell of the bamboo shoots served. It's like there is a peeing smell to it.
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| Mr Love's dinner |
Mr Love ordered pork with preserved vegetables (梅菜扣肉）where he was given a big piece of pork belly. I don't really fancy eating pork belly so gave this a miss. Mr Love said that the pork belly was well braised with the sauce.
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| Fish ball soup |
The fish ball here is different from our SG version. It is 2 times bigger than our version and they added minced meat inside the fish ball. Once you bite down, the sauce spilled out of the fish ball which is especially warming in this weather.
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| Big ass fish ball |
Prices here is also reasonable. The total bill came up to less than SGD10 and we had a very filling dinner. The shop is not every eye catching, situated in the middle of a rows of shop but it does served pretty good food, business is considered brisk too, at least to us for the 15min we were here.
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| Shop interior |
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| Ordering counter |
After filling our stomachs, we decided to make set off for the airport though it is still early. Am still worried about the bus services and whether there would be further delay due to the typhoon. Since we did not have any accommodation for the night, the only choice we have is to wait for our flight at the airport.
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| Random dog we saw in front of a shop |
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| Tired out by the attention |
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