The Lion Travel van that took us from our hotel in Taipei to the train station.
We were to ride the high speed rail train (THSR) from Taipei-Tainan which would take us 2 hours and costs about RM120.
Don’t i just blend into the train station and the train itself
When i was in Porto a few years ago, i decided to go for a run along the river by myself to work off the extensive gobbling and guzzling i had been doing there (Porto is an AMAZING place for a food holiday!)
Because my running shorts had a tiny pocket, i only took my airbnb key and my credit card. I didn’t take my phone because i wanted to live without it for a tad. Surely i can survive a couple of hours without my phone?
I jogged across the wide bridge and ran along the riverbank, with the ocean in sight in the far distance. A little yellow splotch. I kept on going, past people walking their dogs, mothers out with prams, and fishermen with their rods lined up. My only intent was to keep going, without thinking about how i had to return later.
As i looked ahead, i worried a little, what if i get lost? What if i don’t know where i end up or how to go home?
And then a voice spoke in my mind: I won’t get lost! No matter how far i go, i’ll still be on this planet. No matter what happens, i am home.
I won’t get lost
cos the whole planet is my home
so no matter how far I go,
I can’t fall off
And I won’t get lost ?
Being a bit rounder than my friends hasn’t always been easy. And no, it’s not because i’m hurt when they make fun of me, I’ve learned not to take that sort of thing too personally. Being round means I’m lugging around a little extra weight whenever my friends and I are in a game of football, or on a hike up Broga Hill.
We all know losing weight is mostly about combining a healthy diet alongside constant exercise; but for some reason, there is always stubborn fat that refuses to leave us, no matter how much we sweat it out at the gym, or how many times we replace french fries with celery sticks.
Recently a solution presented itself in the form of Zimmer, a German company specializing in creating revolutionary aesthetic products and services.
Zimmer recently unveiled their brand new Z Lipo cryolipolysis treatment. For those who aren’t sure exactly what cryolipolysis is, it is a process in which a machine freezes a targeted fat packet, theoretically ‘kill’ the fat, which will then be flushed out of your system naturally. The best part is it’s quick, completely non-invasive, and free from side effects.
The Z Lipo treatment basically involves a suction cup (top right), that is applied on to the targeted area. This cup then uses suction to draw up fat and excess skin into the cup, which is then cooled to -7 ºC. This is completely safe, of course, as a special gel pad is applied to ensure the machine never comes in direct contact with your skin, hence, preventing any chance of frostbite or injury.
I was lucky enough to be invited to try out this new non-invasive procedure, and I have to admit, even after reading extensively about the procedure, I was more than a little afraid as I haven’t been to any slimming treatments or cosmetic procedures before this.
Having just been brought into Malaysia, RE Plastic Surgery Clinic is the place to be if you want to try out this out. Located in Publika, I nervously made my way there one rainy Saturday afternoon, unsure of what it would be like. Almost all my nerves were calmed the moment I stepped into the clinic, as I was greeted politely by the receptionist, before meeting Dr. Yap Lok Huei, a certified plastic surgeon who runs the clinic. Dr. Yap briefed me on the procedure to make me as comfortable as possible, before leading me to the treatment room.
The treatment room itself is pretty simple, nothing too fancy, but comfortable. The room was quiet, and considering I would be facing the ceiling for most of the treatment, definitely not too bright.
The treatment takes an hour for each targeted body part, so here’s a tip- bring along a book for you to pass the time, or bring a power bank so you can watch YouTube while waiting. I brought George R.R. Martin‘s Game of Thrones to allow myself to be surrounded by dragons and knights while hooked up to a machine slowly freezing my fat away.
Now, on to the actual treatment itself, the first step involves them applying a thin layer of gel and a pad that acts as a wall between the suction cup on the Z Lipo machine and your skin. This acts as a protective layer to prevent injury and skin damage of any kind. AND, it was cold. Wide awake from the unexpected cold, I watched as they placed the applicator on my belly.
After the applicator was placed firmly on the target area (namely the belly I had as a result of all the late-night nasi kandar and beers), the Patient Care Adviser, Phyllis, asked if I was ready.
Tainan is a city whose name has taken fair credit in our minds when we think of cities pertaining to street food. The main reason for it is due to the influx of immigrants who would make their way into Taiwan via Tainan, and what else would the Chinese turn to for comfort while being able to flex creativity, industrialism and wealth… but food. Immigrants would set up food stalls peddling the best of their provincial flavours back home, but being in a new atmosphere pushed some to merge or instil new recipes that has become a major part of Tainanese culture.
Just a 3-min saunter down the street from the Jia-Jia-at West Market Hotel where we were staying, were the two most popular roads for daytime stalls. I don’t think there are enough vendors to accommodate the demand, which results in massive queues for deemed favourites!
This was the longest queue we spotted, that stretched around the block, all for a bowl of squid noodles which we were strongly recommended to try.
I’m apprehensive when it comes to queueing for food… my longest record being standing in the cold winter air for 90 minutes outside L’Entrecote in Bordeaux, and second being 45 minutes for Kagari in Tokyo. Both were worth the wait, but both also happened across the past 8 years. It exemplifies my unwillingness at queueing (fine, a little diva in there). I find it a little harder to swallow lining up for street food. Even the crawl to buy fried chicken was shocking >
Daphne surveying the queue for fried chicken cos its one of her favourite foods. We decided that she’d start queueing for fried chicken, while Jerry stood in queue for 5 of us at the squid noodles store, and i walked to the back alleys to check out anything else worth standing for.
The alleyway was filled with street food stores selling beef noodles, desserts, and dubious-looking bean stews. They were all crowded, with the longest line stretching a few shoplots long for… a barley dessert. Incredible.
I made my way back to the fried chicken queue (which lasted 20 mins) where Uli, Daphne and i waited till we arrived at the tiny store. I mean, the guy didn’t even have a shoplot, just a hawker booth in the middle of the pavement!
We bought 4-5 pieces for all of us and crossed the street to the squid noodle store, where Jerry had just got a table. Great timing.
During our regional bloggers’ week-long stay in Taiwan jointly organized by Ever Rich x Lion Travel, they swept half the group off for a 2D/1N trip in Tainan where we stayed in a lovely boutique hotel which had interesting bits everywhere you turned.
Situated next to a century-old tree which has been accompanying the hotel since it was built, Jia-Jia-at West Market Hotel is in the middle of Tainan city within walking distance to all the main street food spots in the daytime.
A purveyor of local Tainanese culture and tourism, JJ-W describes itself as a combination of a hotel, gallery, conference hall, forum, online platform and open space to all possibility.
The establishment supports local businesses and sustainability by practicing recycling in its many forms like refurbishing antique furniture, reusing heat generated from air conditioning, and using repurposed tiles, scrap fabrics, environmentally-friendly LED lighting, and water from non-contaminated source purified by an RO system.
Besides a bonus of being able to rent bicycles to ride around to sightsee, JJ-W also rents traditional Taiwanese qipaos which all us girls donned for the day!
JJ-W also provides a local tailor to sew custom qipao for customers should they wish to choose their fave fabric and pattern, or even traditional hand craft shoes.
What makes Jia-Jia-at West Market Hotel so unique are ten individually-designed rooms, each storytelling a piece of Tainan’s history for it to interact with the visitor. Example are two rooms representing different times of a day in Tainan – “Dawn”, and “Dusk”; or a “Tainan Lattice Window Room” displaying feature white grills in the room to emulate laser cut lanterns.
There are two outstanding (also read: strange but magnetic) rooms dubbed “Rooms of Non-sleep in Non-home”. I think it’s named so cos they don’t mean for you to sleep or rest in there (like one might expect of a lavish resort) but rather take it as an experience of living in an artistic space.
Tuniez lay down on the bench in The Architecture of Pavement AKA Homeless Man’s room, which displays a blown-up image of a man sleeping in the middle of the street as the feature wall behind the bed, with cement and stained road designs as part of the bed sheet and walls.
Designed by Julian Stallabrass, the room is a paradox – offering a challenge to visitors and asking the question already asked by Walter Benjamin in The Arcades Project: “… what do we know of streetcorners, curbstones, the architecture of the pavement – we who have never felt heat, filth, and the edges of stones beneath our naked soles, and have never scrutinised the uneven placement of the paving stones with an eye bedding down on them?”
Everyone loved Ming-Liang Tsai’s room AKA the Movie Director’s Loft, which consisted of two floors. This was me taking a quick self-timed shot upstairs. Downstairs is a living room with a bathtub custom-made for Tsai’s body.
