Sudoku Jan, 1st week

Rule: Fill the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9.

The day I went for massage

After the Taiwan trip, my body was aching all over. Li Cheng decided to gather us for a massage session. So the House of Balinese Traditional Massage we went. :)

We had taken the Balinese Traditional Massage (using the herbal oil) for 1hr session.
*Think Li Cheng has member privilege cos' her 1hr session becomes 1.5hr session.

Anyway, for those who are interested, see for information at www.balinesemassage.com.sg
*Note: For those who dare not bare their body, you may feel uncomfortable.

Our Taiwan Trip: 6th Day

This morning, start your journey to Alishan National Park. Alishan National Park has three wonders which are its forests, legend of clouds and the sunrise view. Some worldwide peculiar timbers are produced in this area. When spring arrives, the cherry trees blossom everywhere of the mountains and plains.

Top left: Li Cheng coming down of train.

Top right: Before starting our journey up the Alishan, we saw a few stalls.

On the mountain there is an alpine plant park. In this park, a lot of fantastic and strange trees are on display.

Top left: Railway track

Top right: The Alishan map

Top left: Known to be Sisters pond

Top right: Our tour group photo
After trekking down Alishan, we saw a school and temple.

After Alishan, the tour guide brought us to Sun Moon Lake. This place had a severe earthquakes few years back.

We continued our journey to Lushan.

During the night, we walked out of the Lushan hotel and bought us a lot of yummy makan.

Our Taiwan Trip: 5th Day

After breakfast, we head to visit Fo Kuan Shan Monastery. Since established in 1967, it has evolved from a mountain-top bamboo monastery to the largest Buddhist monastery in Taiwan and it is an internationally recognized site of pilgrimage. The Great Buddha land has an Amitabha Buddha statue standing 120ft tall and is surrounded by 480 small statues. Here, we experienced the tremor from the earthquake again. But it only lasted few seconds. And this was the last that we experienced for the rest of our trip.


Next, head to Mei-Nong Village, the hometown of paper umbrellas and Hakka culture. In this town steeped in history and culture, you will see many charming traditional houses.


Li Cheng with our tour guide

Next, as we had lots of time, the local guide dropped us at a park in Kaohsiung to rest and relax.



Finally, we headed for our dinner. Hungry... hungry... Food, here we come.
But before we could get to our food, we had to cross a river to Cijin.
Oh no, before we could get to the boat to cross the river for our food, we were stopped by a few students (should be, even though some dun look like students) to take a group photo. Since we were asked to be models, so we gave face and posed for the photoshoot. See how happy we looked. ;)


1st photo: The boat takes motorcyclists as well. This is an unusual scene.
2nd photo: We finally got onto the boat. Tricia's posing for photoshoot.

1st photo: Before we got onto the boat, we din forget to pose for photoshoot.
2nd photo: Our boat were leaving the pier. This is how the pier looks like.

1st photo: Finally, we reached Cijin.
2nd photo: See what we found at Cijin. It's a pig happily wandering in its garden.

1st photo: See what Li Cheng spotted. It's a cake in pig shape. Cute!!!
2nd photo: A photo taken by Li Cheng from the boat on way back to mainland.

After dinner, we had headed back to our hotel. What a long day!!!

Our Taiwan Trip: 4th Day

In the morning, we had came out early to take photos and have our breakfast.



After breakfast, we departed for kaoshiung - the second largest city and commercial seaport in Taiwan. On the way, we visited the world-class National Aquarium to understand the Marine Live and enjoyed the spectacular view of underwater world.


Bottom 2nd photo: We had tried the seafood ice cream. It has different kind of taste compared with normal ice cream. Worth a try.


Next, we made our journey down to the KaoShiung Love River, which flows into Kaoshiung harbour. Here, we got to enjoy the beautiful scenery onboard the boat cruise.


After the river cruise, we had proceeded to Leo Ho Night Market. This was the place that we had experienced something that we would remembered for life: Earthquake. It was rated grade 4 in Kaoshiung. We didn't know what to do at that point of time, whether to run or hide. We just stood still and waited for it to be over. In fact, the earthquakes happened twice while we roamed around Leo Ho Night Market.


After we checked into hotel, we came out of hotel to 7-eleven to get drinks. In order to forget the earthquakes event, we stopped by a shop and bought three pairs of shoes each. We really put the earthquakes behind us while busy trying out the shoes.

However, after returning back to the hotel room, I felt trumbled again. Nearly, gotten Li Cheng out from toilet. Ha... That night was my most uneasy sleeping night.

What an experience!!!

Our Taiwan Trip: 3rd Day

Wow... It's Christmas Day. Yupee...
After breakfast, we left Astor Hotel and made our way to the Taroko Park.


We had stayed at the Taroko Gorge (one of the most spectacular natural wonders of the world) for a while to take photos. Heard from local guide Tommy that the road around Taroko was built by soldiers and these soldiers had sacrificed building the road.

Small corner on the left: If you peep closerly, you may spot our local guide, Tommy and tour leader, Jaslin.

Three happy ladies happily taking photos at Taroko.

Next, the coach had driven us to the other end of Taroko to walk the "Eternal Spring Shrine Trail".

Saw that temple in the midst of hill? This was built to remember those soldiers who sacrificed when building the road around Taroko. During one of a major earthquakes, the temple was destroyed and it was rebuilt again at its current position.

Crossing over the bridge, we will walk the "Eternal Spring Shrine Trail".

Things we saw along the trail.

Waterfall near the Shrine.

Notice that the floor is made of marble.

Bottom right: Guess whose legs & shoes?

End of trail. Back to who our coach park.
Bottom left: Li Cheng showing the "marble" basin.
Bottom right: Tricia trying to contact June and Dawn, who were in Taipei.

Next, the coach drove us across the bridge to another photo-taking place.

Before making our journey down to Taitung, Tommy had brought us to a beach. This beach was special. Instead of sand, it is filled with stones.

Tonight we overnite in Master Bear Resort. After dinner, the resort management actually organised some Christmas activities, including fireworks and Kong Min Deng. Later that night, Tommy tried to have his own concert with his karaoke singing. However, it seemed the limelight had been stolen by Jaslin. Before we retired for the night, we managed to see how people made "glutinous rice cake" and we had a share to finish it.

Having fun during the Christmas party.

Eating glutinous rice cake. Yummy...

After eating, we went back to our little bear room and little bear bed to have our snoring session.