YEAR OF OX !! GONG HEY FAT CHOI~~

Went to two CNY "flower markets" the night before CNY, one in Victoria Park and one in Tuen Mun. Both markets were PACKED WITH PEOPLE... honestly i was quite excited that i can go "CNY flower markets" in HK cuz i haven't tried it for long! so i went to the one in Victoria Park in the afternoon and already thousands of ppl there... basically the markets is seperated into two sections, which are new year flowers section, and "dry stuff" section. 80% of the "dry stuff" section are Students selling those blowing, useless, plastic.... products.... but then you cannot deny the creativity of the students, because their products are useless yet pretty funny~~ so at night my grandma started to "worship god & ancestors" right at 12:00 and ppl start to explode firecrackers~~ really so new year feel~~~

1st post in 2009 :)

I didn't even notice myself, 2008 has been away from me for 14 days already. Which means 1/24 of the year has been passed and Chinese new year is approaching!! It's just like yesterday that we did the count down for 2008. There were so much things happened in 2008 - both for myself, my friends, and for the whole world. Let's do a little recap for myself: the biggest change for me sure was my relocation back to Hong Kong. Vancouver was always my comfort zone and basically I'm out of it now. I also went to Vegas in the end of 2007 and Mexico in the summer of 2008 and Taiwan in the beginning of 2009. These are the places that I've never been to before. (((maybe Saimon should do a little recap of his travel too... haha))) The trip to Cancun surely was the most memorable trip, it was soooo fun to travel with the girls, it's like the memory of life and we'll for sure still remember it when we are 50. What happened to my friends in 2008? Terence got his 2nd baby and it's a dream-come-true BOY. My another friend... (no name mentioned), he got married in a sudden and we are totally speechless. Sing opened his BBT shop and be a boss too. I'm sure it is his dream as well.

So how did i kick off my 2009? I went to TW for a 4 days trip with Ben and Mike and Carmen. We stayed at Mike's place so we saved our accomodation cost. It was so nice of his Auntie that since Mike's hse is a totally empty space so his auntie gotta bring the quilt and pillow all the way from Middle Taiwan to Taipei. It was so cold in Taipei that we would die without the quilt :). Thanks Auntie. so Taipei is somehow like China but i think it's cleaner. (((The China i mean is only refer to my homeland in ZhongShan or ShenZhen, since I never been to anywhere else.))) The air is much better than HK since it has much less ppl. If you have experienced the crowd/fighting in Sogo HongKong you would think the Sogo in Taipei is so much peaceful. There isn't any high-rise even in the city of taipei except the most significant 101, most of the buildings are like under 10 floors high and the ground floor are usually shops, and 80% of the shops are selling food. And we're so lucky that even though the weather was cloudy, we didn't have any rain at all (((although we experienced the cold air stream.....))) and Mike said usually Taipei has a lot of rain during this time of the year like Vancouver. We went to most of the tourist attractions and of cuz we eat a lot!!!! Food was cheap and me and ben liked the beef noodle the most out of everything we eat~~ Thanks Mike for his preparation and guiding, i enjoy travel without using my brain. :D

We arrived the Taoyuen International Airport and took the HST (highspeed train) from Taoyuen station to BanQiao Station (where the city Mike's home at); and it only took about 15 mins

Mike and Simon's home when they were in kindergarden~~

Taipei Station - the main transportation center of Taipei. It's where the station of HST, MRT (捷运, same as HK's MTR), and the Train (slower and cheaper transportation) at

Inside the station... it's very big and requires lot of walking

our breakfast for 2 days: the breakfast shop near Mike's place (永和豆浆), we had Siu Long Bao, Chi Fan (sticky rice roll) and Egg roll and Hot Soy Drink. Everything cost less than NT$200 = C$8? (((that's why we didn't go 鼎泰丰 cuz it costs much more!!)))