Taiwan Day 1

My mom, P and myself are going to Taiwan! We signed up with Chan Brothers at the August Natas fair for their Little Tots can Fly tour. This tour is specially catered for young kids - later morning calls, longer meal times. The program included farm stays, farming activities, theme parks, indoor playground, all of which I think P will really enjoy. The best part is probably the Hello Kitty airplane that we were going to fly on. It was going to be P's first flight and I wanted it to be awesome. 

We received a call from our tour leader Ms Boey the night before. She told us to meet at 1145pm the next day. Our flight is at 3am, so I was kind of shocked we had to meet so early. It turned out to be quite good though. P was still awake when we make our way to the airport, chattering non stop excitedly. The airline q wasn't opened when we reached. It only opened at 12mn. 

We went to KFC for a quick bite with hubby who was so nice to fetch us there. Probably the first time we ate KFC at midnight, hehe, fat die us. P started showing signs of fatigue so we decided to get past immigration and find some spot for her to sleep. 

Who knows, there is a Mickey Mouse display that is going on after the immigration and the girl totally jumped up again. 

There was also a social tree which I thought was quite cool. You take a photo at their booths and flick it up to the tree where you see yourself floating around on balloons, haha. Cool max. 

P finally fell asleep in my trusty ergo while we were walking to our boarding gate. I sat for close to 2 hours with her in it and it was still backbreaking. EVA airlines finally did the plane boarding at close to 3am. Upon entering the plane, P was immediately awakened and asked "Did you hear that? It's jingle bells." Haha, ya, the plane was playing Christmas songs due to the Christmas season.

The few months of prepping her for the flight really paid off. She was stellar, totally not afraid of the take off and even made herself very comfortable with in flight entertainment. Her only peeve is that the headphones were too big for her and it kept slipping off. I forgot to ask if they had kid sizes, which I will do during the return flight. 

After the seat belt sign went off, the stewardesses started serving food. Kids had preordered meals, so their food came first. Check it out

P didn't have much appetite and didn't eat much. 

The adult meal fared better than the kids meal in terms of taste. 

A Hello Kitty snack was served after the meal.

We barely slept on the plane because it was so disruptive. Take off took a while, the meals were served mid flight and before we know it, bam, we are in Taiwan!

The weather was much colder than we expected. We thought we had enough for P, but the wind was quite brutal. We had to wrap an adult windbreaker over her when we are on the streets. Our tour group had 36 people and it was mostly families with kids. 

First up, breakfast. 

P made new friends. 

Lunch was at an aboriginal restaurant, and it was quite a dining experience. Very tribal and the dish I remembered most was their soup, made up of flower petals and roots and leaves. 

We went to a Museum of Tiny after lunch and it was really amazing how they managed to shrink many world monuments into tiny replicas. I loved many of the works and took lots of pics. Hopefully I can replicate some of the decor and furnishing in my house one day. 

The tour guide stopped at a Central square for us to take pics of Taipei 101 building. After that, we set off for Toucheng Farm and arrived in time for a BBQ dinner. The food was average but boy, do they make super yummy 汤圆. I look forward to every meal in order to eat their 汤圆, haha. It was 天灯 time after the sky darkens. The farm conducted a DIY session and taught us how to create a heavenly lantern from scratch. It was a lt simpler than I thought! Of coz, all 天灯 must be put to the fire test, and ours did really well. It flew way way up until the fire extinguished. I'm pretty sure heaven heard our wishes, yay!! The night ended with fireworks and we had plenty of time to unpack, bath and hit the pillows at 10pm. 

Morning call was to be at 7am the next day. Looking forward to Day 2!