All the latest buzz

Oh man oh man oh man... so much's been happening lately and I barely have time to take it all in, much less have a moment to myself! So I'd better blog all this before it leaks out of my head. I'm off to Australia on Monday to reunite with the bro and sis, so there'll be more pics and more stories to tell real soon. Okayyyyyyyyyyy! Let's start with Taiwan then ;)
This is gonna be really abbreviated - I'll just let the pics do the talking. I have tons and tons of photos thanks to Gerald! =P Team Taiwan comprised four Rovers committee alumni - Gerald from the 20^th comm., Kailun and Weixi from the 21^st, and me from the 24^th. Nice to know after all these years, the spirit of adventure and friendship still survives ;)

So we arrived in Taipei on 3 Nov and hopped on a train to Jiayi the next day. I had egg rolls for breakfast!!!! An absolute first for me. (There wasn't much else to eat!)

Then another train to Alishan for a night's stay, where we had our first taste of authentic Taiwanese salt-and-pepper chicken.

Mmmmm-mmmmmm! See us clustering round the little bag of chicken like some kinda addicts getting our fixes...

And on to a biiiiig steamboat dinner...

And coffee at Starbucks...

while we played bridge of course =P It's a Rovers thing ;)

And on 5 Nov - da da da da! - we started our trek up Yushan, or Jade Mountain. One full day's worth of trekking - 9 to 5! It was just 8.5km but some of it was pretty hard going, especially at the beginning. Man, it was steep! And there were something like 87 bridges... I was counting each one. Ow.

Distance marker along the way. This was at the beginning of the trek. If I recall correctly, at that point, seeing the marker, my reaction was, "We've covered only 0.5km???? No way!!!!"

We took lots of pics along the way - well, Gerald did, anyway. These two are my favourites from the whole trip. I love the second one especially - don't we look cool? ;)

We made it to the lodge, Paiyun Manor, before it got dark. The sunset up there is truly magnficent. Check it out.

We had a quick meal, cooking by headlamp.

I was offered ginger tea by a guy cooking at the next table - it's good to be a girl =P

Then a quick sleep (interrupted by a few minutes of star-gazing while shivering in my socks), and a very early wake up call (2am! Just like Mount K) to tackle the summits. Standing at 3952m at the highest point, Jade Mountain is the highest mountain in East Asia. Whoooo!

The plan was to scale both the North and the Main summits (the furthest and the highest peaks respectively), but I only made the North one. I *might* go back for the other one someday - I totally LOVE Taiwan. Yeah.

"We're freezing our butts off... but we made it!" And was the sunrise worth it?

You betcha. Absolute awesomeness.

Then it was back down to Paiyun, and from there to the start point at Tatajia by 5. And off to Cherry Lodge in Dongpu (an absolutely fantastic little lodge, with an ultra-nice lady boss who cut guava for us at night and specially prepared soya milk for us for breakfast!), with a personal hot springs bath with every room.

Mmmmmm freshly made soy milk. Hearty goodness in every sip.

The lady boss - that's her on the extreme left - was really really nice. She tour guided us around Dongpu. Here we are at the Dongpu bridge, a really really high suspension bridge. Weixi's not so good with heights, so he was quite antsy taking this shot =P That's him in the middle front - he's very bravely not clutching the sides!

Nice lady boss also brought us to Shiuli - bubble tea!!!!! - and Jiji - beef noodles!!! Yum yum. Trekking sure makes you hungry. And Taiwan food is goooooood. See Kailun eating his noodles with such great relish. Heh.

Back to Taipei we went for a shopping/eating spree! We checked out the night market in Jilong...



Fried mushrooms! Whee!!!



Yummy food on sticks! Whee!!!!!



Cheap stuff to buy! Whee!!!! (I bought socks.)



Seafood dinner. "We're eating this lot. What are YOU gonna eat?"



And tons of sweets! Sweeeeeeeeet. "Just one of each... one basket of each."



And we got our feet massaged too. Relaxing. This is before the screaming started. Eaaaaurrrrghhhhhhh!!!!

We trooped around Jiufen...



Yam soup. I had yam AND eggs in Taiwan. Two things I normally avoid like the plague. Wow. Taiwan really does something to me.



Ahhhhhh! So cute! They're little magnets with waggly heads. I bought like $25 worth of these babies back as souvenirs. So cute!!!!!!



Mochi!!!! Big, fat and juicy. Yummmmmm.



More cute stuff at the mochi shop.



Kailun doing product placement.

We explored Ximending...



Do candied apples count as eating healthy? It's still fruit right?



The look on Kailun's face says it all...

Next stop Danshui! On the train...





You gotta love their ads.

After a long hard search we finally found our precious fried mushrooms. We love the magic mushrooms!

'Tie dan' or um, iron eggs? Bleurgh. Everyone else seems to love them though.

Yeah that was the Taiwan trip. Taiwan ROCKS!!!!!! I so wanna go back. Soon =P

In other news, I just completed my second marathon a week ago! The Standard Chartered Marathon 2008! Rowr!



I like this shot the best - see my swishy hair? Nice. Total race time 7:08. Whooooo! Much better than the Sundown. Yeah I think I'll do at least one more next year. Heh... just call me a sucker for punishment ;)

In other other news, we've had our team Christmas dinner! AND we've had our company Year End Party!!!! Which was totally awesome, by the way. I'll post pics when I get them. Meantime, here's my party name tag =P Whooooo!!!!!