Last day in Taiwan 🙁 My Taiwan trip is almost over and I woke up really late LOL
Longshan Temple
Opening hours: 6am-10pm
Entrance fee: None
First stop is Longshan Temple. I took the metro from Ximen to Longshan Station. Once you’re out of the station, you just need to cross to the other side of the street and bam, you’re at Longshan Temple. It’s one of the largest and oldest temples in Taiwan.
May pa-falls! Taray! 
Old and new 🙂 
Hahahaha the uncle was probably thinking, “WTH is she doing?” LOL
Bopiliao Historic Block
Opening hours: 9am-9pm
Entrance fee: None
A few blocks away from Longshan Temple is Bopiliao Historic Block. This is something that I can’t miss out on my itinerary because one of my fave Taiwanese movies, Monga, was shot here. (Well actually as well as other famous places in the area.)
Taipei Zoo
Opening hours: 9am-5pm
Entrance fee: NTD60 (adult). I used my EasyCard and I think the entrance fee was only NTD30.
Travelling from Longshan to Taipei Zoo Station took a while. Maybe close to an hour? I had to take the blue line to Zhongxiao Fuxing, then the brown line to Taipei Zoo Station, which is the last station on this line.
Hallo Rainie! 
Sa Taipei Zoo Station palang eh ang dami ng panda! 
Map! In Chinese though 🙁
I used my EasyCard to pay for my entrance so it was really easy. Despite being a holiday, the zoo was also not very crowded. At the entrance, there’s a staff giving out a small piece of paper for the Giant Panda viewing. I arrived a little before noon and my schedule was at 12:45pm. Since I had some time, I went to see the other areas first before making my way to the Giant Panda House.
Some things I saw on the way:
You really only have 10 minutes to view the pandas. Sadly, the first panda was sleeping and the second one was hiding. Unlucky me. I’m sure I can go back and get another viewing ticket but I didn’t wanna walk back to the entrance anymore. It was really hot!
So I decided to go up and check out what’s in there. To my surprise, there was a Panda Cafe! Yaaaas! I was told that I had to wait 45 minutes and was given a number. I mean, I had nowhere else to be so I thought I’d just wait. Also, since I haven’t had lunch yet. Turns out, I didn’t actually need to wait 45 minutes to get a table. When the staff walked me to the table, she asked me if I wanted to dine with a panda and of course, I said YES! The food is definitely pricey but it’s totally fine cause more than the food, you’re paying for the experience as well. If you’re a panda lover, NTD300 for a meal is really not that much. The cafe was really cute and you’ll have hearty eyes with the amount of panda around. I think I stayed at the Giant Panda House for about 1 1/2 hours. LOL.
I spent some time at the store while waiting for my number to be called.
The Panda Cafe Experience 🙂
The only other thing I wanted to see was the penguins. But I stopped at some areas along the way just to see other interesting animals. The penguins were super cute but I feel like some of them aren’t real cause they weren’t moving! Hahaha!
Other interesting animals for me were the black bear and the red pandas – but once again, they were hiding. Why pandas, whyyyyy? 🙁 Since the Penguin House was located at the other end of the zoo, and my legs were already tired, I took the shuttle to the entrance. It’s just NT5 one-way and I also used my EasyCard for this. Seriously, EasyCard is the only thing you need to get around Taiwan! I think I only spent 3 hours at the Taipei Zoo but you could easily spend the whole day here. I felt like it’s as big as USS or Disneyland and I love how most of the animals are free to roam around.
National Taiwan University
After Taipei Zoo, I met up with Jai and Lester at NTU. Ok, travelling to NTU from Taipei Zoo was quite hard cause it required several transfers. So it’s brown line to Daan, transfer to red line to Dongmen, yellow line to Guting, and finally green line to Gongguan Station. I think the longest wait was in Guting.
There’s an entrance to NTU right next to Gongguan Station. We were welcomed by a sea of bicycles! That was a lot of bicycles! If I left mine there, I wouldn’t be able to find it again. It would get lost in a sea of bicycles. LOL. We had no idea where to go since it’s a huge campus and it’s definitely worth exploring by bike, rather than on foot. When I go back, I would definitely explore this more and bike around.
We got to go to the Drunken Moon Lake and rested for a bit there, while I watched 6 cute turtles moving around the lake. Definitely took a lot of really good photos from here.
After going around NTU, we decided to go to Jai and Lester’s hostel to rest and charge our phones. Then, it was time to go to Shilin Night Market, which is my last stop for this trip.
Shilin Night Market
Opening hours: 5pm-12mn
I only needed to buy a few ref magnets and keychains for some friends. I was already able to buy some snacks for colleagues from this store near Jai and Lester’s hostel (which was at Songshan). I also had some snacks for dinner while walking around. I swear, everything in Taiwan is soooo delicious!
I went back at around 9pm cause I still needed to get my backpack from my hostel. This was pretty tiring cause from Jiantan Station, I got off at Taipei Main Station. I then walked to my hostel, grabbed my backpack and then walked back to Taipei Main Station again with all of my stuff. I took the bus from there going to the airport. Again, I just used my EasyCard to pay for the fare, which was NTD125. You need to tap the card before and after.
Since there’s no traffic, I got there at exactly 11:00pm and was checked in and on to the boarding area withing 20 minutes. This was a huge mistake though cause there’s no restaurant open after 11pm after immigration. They only had vendos, with very limited stuff unlike in Japan. So yeah, if you’re hungry, just eat first downstairs before checking in (since it’s a breeze anyway). While looking for food though I got to see some of the many waiting lounges of Taoyuan Airport.
This is one of the cheapest trips I had considering that it’s Taiwan, people! I was surprised to find out that all I spent the 4 days I was there was PHP5,400.
Here’s the breakdown of my expenses:
Pocket money (fare, food, entrance fees) – PHP5400
Travel tax – PHP1620
Hostel – PHP2860
Klook SIM card – PHP429
Fare – PHP1860
Total: 12,169
