Bye bye Singapore, Hello Country No. 8!

5am...ring ring ring... Ahhhh!! I've not missed this feeling... Up we get for country number eight, Taiwan! Upon booking our trip we didn't have Taiwan on the cards but after finding very cheap flights it quickly became our top destination and after a bit more research we got more and more excited. Taiwan is an island with great food, beaches, mountains and affordable. Tick, tick, tick.

Definitely got the hang of our airport efficiency, Grab taxi setup, breakfast (leftover biryani), packed, clothes laid out, all we had to do was roll out of bed, check-in, and find a seat. So, I'm not sure if other people play the game "Let's see what we can get with the leftover currency", but it is always a highlight of our early morning airport trips (we are pretty tired so need some excitement!). Today we were able to get two coffees (£1.50 total) and two mentos tubes (£1.10 total), bargain!! You couldn't even get that in a normal shop in the UK never mind an airport. Singapore is such an affordable, yet established country, we really love it here.

Now on our flight waiting to jet off. Taipei here we come!

Of course we do the majority of our research for Taipei on the plane over. First panic... after being in Singapore for a while I forgot that actually everything here will be in Mandarin. Well downloading Google translate offline will be the first job when I get WiFi! Many people have said 2 weeks is more than enough time but from reading more about it I don't think 3 weeks is enough, let's see.

On arrival everything went pretty smoothly, immigration was straightforward, grabbed a Sim card, got out cash, jumped on the MRT, walked for a bit and checked into our hostel.

The hostel is very modern inside and seems pretty quiet so far but it is the middle of the day. Our "room" is pretty cute. We booked a double bed in a dorm room. There are 4 doubles and 4 singles each with their own compartment. Of course ours is the tiny hatch in the corner on the bottom, we literally have to crawl in 😂 Inside it is super roomy though so overall its looking good.

By the time we got in it was dinner time as we hadn't had lunch so we headed to one of the largest night markets in Taiwan, Shilin Night Market. It absolutely chucked it downWe tried Peppered Pork Bun (really yummy), Chargrilled Spring Onions Wrapped in Bacon (way too oniony), King Oyster Mushrooms in a lemon, pepper and seaweed rub(number 1 of the night), Long Xao Bao (tasty) and "Small cake wrapped in large cake" (the lady smashes up a crunchy sugary thing into a pancake and sprinkles coconut on but it was tasteless and a waste of calories). All in all a success 😊Read more