Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Taipei Night Life

Taipei is a wonderful city. Other than food or shopping, its night life is a must see (because that's where & when all the pretty girls would gather *wink*). Most of the pubs or night clubs are open for business till early morning around 5am. The city never sleeps!

To experience the scene, I went to some of the famous pubs, namely Room 18 and Pasoul (Lava's branch). Room 18 is well known of its guests. It's the favourite place for most celebrities , pro or amateur models and higher class groups. The pub is owned by a Taiwanese male celebrity afterall! Entrance fee is about RM80 per pax with 2 cocktail drinks (some mixed alchohol with Redbull, for the extra powa!). 2 dance pools with different kinds of music. The place is overwhelmed by sexy & beautiful girls. As they say, seeing is believing, so yeah! It was a jaw-dropping-eyes-peeling moment indeed.

Guests who booked for seats have to wait a long queue, even under the drizzling rain (psst, see the girls behind me? LMAO!). Luckily there's another entrance inside the building for "free-standing" guests. Great! The bar counter is the perfect spot. LMAO!

Room 18 scene

Pasoul, however is obviously lower standard than Room 18. The crowd mostly consists of Uni students and younger generation. People here are wilder and some of the girls even undress on stage. wtf. Too bad camera shots aren't allowed. The bouncers sure have sharp owl eyes in the dark! Pasoul entrance is about RM90 per pax with free flow drinks. Heavy drinkers would love this place.

Pasoul scene


In conclusion, Room 18 is highly recommended if you wanna feast your eyes. Though one could try Pasoul to experience the different crowd and different style of fun.

Yada yada...

Monday, August 4, 2008

Sinshi Town, Tainan County

Lookin through the windows from the train, we saw mass foliage together with some scattered buildings. Seems like we were cutting through rural area of some sort. The Tainan bullet train station is kinda empty. Guess it's not the peak season.


Welp, here we are, Tainan. Still gotta travel far to reach our rural little hostel. Dang. Bye bye civilization. We headed towards Sinshi town, a small town within Tainan county. Kinda like 30 mins driving distance from Sinshi to Tainan city. Crap.


This is the place we will call home for the next 3 months. The design is kinda unique, with 4 storeys japanese like terrace house and a small garage. There're no shops near the area. Great! ...Not. Only one 7/11 around the corner at the faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar end. Could you spot it in the pic on the right? Neither do I. It is like 10mins+ walking distance from the place I stay. There's another small mart on the other side, but there's nothing worth to mention. This is a freakin village for crying out loud. What suprised me was, even with a "rural" village like this, the hostel is equipped with a 2MB broadband. WTF?! Lousy stream-ma-arse from TMnut only gives you 1MB in the so called city area.


Sinshi town traffic and the place where we took our first meal in Tainan. Had some sort of seafood and stuff. Even tried snail like thingy. Too bad I didn't have the chance to capture the pics. It is not very polite letting hungry people wait while you take picture of the food. LMAO.


Other than work, the most things I do are eat eat and eat. The food here just so-so. Not too bad, but can't consider good too. Nothing spectacular or memorable. Maybe Taipei ones are better, but that's another story.

Had my first Taiwan beef noodle and a side dish of soy beancurd and eggs. Not bad, but as mentioned, it wasn't top notch. Just ordinary. Maybe I've already been spoilt by kolomee and laksa all these years.


One fine day, while walking & exploring around town, found this smelly bean curd stall. The taukenio claimed that this is the most famous smelly bean curd shop in Sinshi town. Yeah, right. Since I've never tasted any prior to this, so why not.


With much regret, taukenio told us that the BBQ version of the smelly beancurd wasn't ready when I arrived, so I have to make do with the soup "version" instead. Well, the benchmark = not recommended. Kinda dissapointed but at least I tried. It tasted like normal tofu soup (a lil spicy) with pig blood cubes and beef slices. One thing special I noticed was the low chairs. Look at how my long legs hit the table. It's definitely not comfortable to eat is this posture. Oh well.


Maybe a western style afternoon tea would brighten things up eh? There a nice coffee house named 85 degrees. I ordered iced Latte smoothies therefore I'm not too sure whether their hot coffees are served 85°C.


And these are our desserts. Nice eh? The white thingy is called Strawberry "Da Fu" in mandarin or whatever. Basically some sort of sticky dough with cheese and strawberry stuffed inside. Yum yum but very very sticky. The end result was not a very nice scene.


Sometimes we will pack fast food like this on our way back home from work. Meesua in a cup with a boneless drumstick burger. A hybrid of eastern and western fast food. LOL. Costs around RM9+ total plus a drink of your choice (red tea, milk tea, bla bla...). Not bad and the portion is enough to cure the hunger. *burp*...



Alright. That's all for today. Gotta continue the updates next time. More food and places.

*Taipei night life reviews soon.*