[Travel] Taipei Itinerary for the budget traveller- Pre-planation

This post was originally posted on bimbosandwich.wordpress.com

Taipei Itinerary for the budget traveller- Pre-planation
I know better than anyone that I'd went to Taiwan recently (less than 6 months ago) but I'm flying there again as a treat for myself before university. Please correct me if I've the wrong impression of university. This is the first free & easy trip I've ever had without a tour guide. Travels with my paranoid dad always involved ripping of unnecessary money. To save money as for more potential activities, I've booked a budget airline, and hostels prior to my mom's knowledge, must be a hard thing for another leo.

Accomodation

http://www.hostelworld.com/ had been a great help in locating a good hostel, they have hostel facilities, reviews all listed there. Many hostels offer both privates and dorms and the pricings are pretty reasonable. They have good currency exchange rates too! Just type in your particulars to pay the 10% deposit (and maybe the admin fee), they accept paypal, visa and MasterCard. The only downside is perhaps  the charge of USD$2 admin fee per hostel booking (Or you can get their "Gold Card for US$10.00 and pay no fees for 12 months"). But you can easily get by that by contacting the hostel owners directly. Their contact info is not listed on hostelworld (I reckon they are prohibited to do so) but you can do an quick search on google. I paid an average of S$60/night for "standard double bed private ensuite". Hostels are really fun to reside in, I'll do reviews on my hostel experiences on my next few posts.

Flight

An uncomfy flight of 8 hours really not seem much to me, while I can reach my destination at the end of the day anyway. I have yet to lay my butt on any budget planes or even been to the budget terminal. I've still yet to step in the budget terminal as it has been closed to pave way for the new terminal 4. What bugs me is that the flight prices are changing constantly EVERY SINGLE DAY! So I stalked the prices for 3 good days (not consecutive) until I'm satisfied with the flight cost. I bookmarked Tiger, Scoot, Jetstar, but since Tiger offer keener prices and timings, I booked my flight with them. Midnight flights would be more wallet friendly but they involve hefty taxi fares. Booking too was simple but beware of the additional taxes and fees. To get to the total cost page, you would have to fill in a bunch of particulars. Do note that they'll try to make you pay for everything, from the baggage weight to food and drinks on board. But that doesn't bother me that much as I normally do not even visit the toilet at all on clouds. I bought the "board-me-first" as I was curious about it was $6/pax and it is just as the name suggests. I had a very bad impression of mobs on budget airplanes but its really not that horrendous as I thought it would be. LOL


Packing List
Here's something I came up with for a summer vacation. Yes, girls. Whatever!  Try peeking into the packing list of other girls. hahaa

Itinerary

I'll be just loitering around Taipei for 9 days, the furthest I'll travel is most probably Keelung. Getting around Taipei isn't that bad of an headache with their comprehensive metro. Metro is slightly more expensive than buses but I'm still sticking with it as I don't speak much mandarin (neither do my mom). I'm sure passer-bys whom I asked had a good laugh at my pronunciation of the stations. One thing that I don't really get is that most of the stations are destined for tourism spots (museums, zoo), while most of the stops in Singapore are in residential estates.


Its not that hard to plan out an itinerary with the reference of other blogs, the metro map and the hostels that I have chosen. I did not eventually follow the itinerary I've planned as I did get lost here and there or I'm just lazy to get out of the comfy hostel bed I mean recommendation by the locals. But here's my preliminary itinerary which I traveled with. Please pardon the romanji alongside with the Chinese characters and vice versa, I have no idea of the English names of most places while the Chinese characters are for getting help from passer-bys.

P.S.: Yes, I do understand the frustration reading an itinerary with 2 languages here and there. But you need it if you can't read mandarin, at least you can show it to passerbys for directions HAHA


To be continued (with the authentic itinerary)