Shortyminimad

It has been a long time since I've done anything fun. Work took up a whole lot of time, and I didn't have much life, but I squeezed in one weekend for go-karting with the people from Singapore Car Enthusiast (SCE).

A little bit of background of how SCE came about, it's a Facebook car group that the boyfriend created, initially out of boredom, however, it's manifested into a group full of amazing and fun people. It's a group whereby they mainly share their love for cars, no selling stuff on their Facebook page, meet-ups to chat and plainly have fun.

For this short trip, they decided on going to JB for go-karting. They chose Permas Go-Kart Club, and it's in Plentong (wherever in JB that is?..). The ride there was hell bumpy. I mean, you already know how the roads in JB are (not as shabby as I've always thought), but when you reach near the go kart track, you have to drive through a plantation, which means bumpy roads, muddy if you go on a rainy day. If you do drive a lowered car, I would suggest not to drive there, you'd probably have to end up taking out your bumper and putting it in your boot.

We car pooled there, there isn't a need to drive so many cars there anyway.

Cost: RM35 for about 5-10 minutes.
Fun Rating: 9/10

Above I stated the cost it is, per person, per go kart. It is REALLY REALLY fun, I mean it is about the same as driving, but in the go kart track, you can go full throttle! Asides from the fact that you should never crash the go-kart. They will make you pay exorbitant amount for the damages caused, which probably isn't even that much.

Heads up to the girls out there, dump sunblock on yourself and go out there and have tons of fun. Nothing stops you from having fun, just lather a thick layer of sunblock and you're ready to go, don't miss out the fun that the guys are having!


It's amazing how we can meet new and amazing friends through such manner.

Talks over dinner at Manbok Korean BBQ at Neil Road, which was totally amazing. It IS authentic Korean food in Singapore for a pretty affordable price I could say. Love the tender beef, the kimchi and in fact EVERYTHING about that place. The staffs were really friendly, cooked our food for us, tolerated the amount of noise we were making, and kept asking us if everything was good.

YES!!! EVERYTHING IS GOOD!!! I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH!!!

No photos at the place because after work beauty, is no beauty at all. Also, the food came in slowly, so I couldn't take food pictures anyway. And I actually gobbled down my food the minute it came, been doing that too often food pictures have just been omitted in the regime.

As it was in my title, the national day/hari raya holiday was a long weekend, after rotting at home for the longest time, boyfriend and I decided on a good meal! It all started with a craving, a craving for steak, the suggestions we got from his friends were all REALLY expensive steak houses, which we weren't too keen on busting for a day with no special event. We finally settled for coastal settlement which had many extreme reviews. People either really liked the food there or really hated it.

First things first, I LOVE the ambience of the place, with vintage looking decorations and old school beetles parked right outside. I love those details to bits. Anyway, we walked in without reservation, and I think it is pretty easy to get seats, however, less attention gotten by the servers there.

That is just the cute old school painted wooden window panes, wooden chairs, and as seen in the above photo, there's bicycles! Moving on..

Boyfriend ordered ribs ($34) which was a full rack, and tasted pretty awesome. The ribs were moist enough, not as dry as the ones we had at Chilis. I ordered medium rare rib-eye steak with rosti ($32), my steak came as medium well-done, didn't bother to ask them to redo my steak because we waited 30 minutes for our food to be served. We were really insanely hungry already, I couldn't be bothered to wait another 30 minutes for my steak, so I stuck to my medium well-done steak. If my steak was medium rare, everything about the dish would have been perfect, I think it passes off as a pretty good steak.

All in all, I think Coastal Settlement passes off as a place for a good date or a chill out place, IF you're not too hungry and willing to wait quite awhile for your food to arrive.

For people who don't know where TCS is, it's near Changi Village, and HERE is the website so you can check out the updates and food!

That was us before we had the food.

In all honesty, THE FOOD SUCKS, not to forget mentioning, it's expensive and the customer service was really bad. There's nothing much to elaborate on the toilet theme restaurant, aside from the fact that, I've tried it, and I'll never return to eat food from there, neither would I recommend anyone to go there. The nuggets that we ordered were definitely heated up finger food that was way too expensive. And the ice cream we had, tastes worse than magnolia ice cream. The chocolate balls and other stuff that was on the ice cream tasted expired, TOTALLY HORRIBLE. Trust me when I say that street food deserves much more than food served at this restaurant.

What we did when we saw a sculpture, take a cute photo under their umbrellas! It was a rainy day as well in Taipei. Walked around like true blue tourist, felt really good because although it wasn't in our plan, we just went with the flow! It was at the end of this day that we took a bus to Zhongshan and had our haircut, followed by the best meal I've ever had, Japanese Charcoal BBQ.

More about our Haircut in Taiwan HERE!

And lastly, our final Tourist days in Taipei.

My initial plan was for us to visit Yehliu where they had the most fantastic rock formations (the information I gathered), but after a tiring day the day before, we didn't want to wake up early. We skipped the morning plan and headed straight towards Bitou. Took the afternoon TRA from Taipei Main station to Ruifang, paid NT$50 and hopped on a bus called 台湾好行. It brings you to a couple of destinations near the coastal areas, then again, the bus frequency is about an hour or half an hour a bus. I would suggest that you leave Taipei Main Station early to visit more places.

So we climbed a mountain because we didn't get to the the capehouse at Bitou, we didn't know it was closed and being there already, we didn't want to turn back. Pressed on and hiked a mountain. KILL ME, it's the 2nd time I've hiked a mountain and I almost died, was panting like mad even when I haven't reached the top. But all those for a view like that, it was worth it.

After the hike up and down the mountain, we rushed to take the bus up to Jiufen, the same bus. Whilst walking towards the bus stop, we saw the bus, we ran with all our might, and frantically waved at the bus, but it drove off without us. And... We were left there looking like fools. Waited there under the scorching sun for a good 30 minutes.

Met his WM and PY in Jiufen, walked from one end to the other not buying anything at all, except for 盐酥鸡 (fried spices chicken), and decided to cab down to Keelung's night market, Miaokou. Cab shared between 4 people is so worth it, if we had the whole trip together, I would've probably suggested hiring a cab for the day trips that were further out of Taipei. Anyway, KL's night market was not bad, it was BIG, way bigger than Ningxia Night Market, and they also had way more variety of food.

Although that night we settled for dinner at 原燒, a japanese charcoal BBQ once again, we spent a total of NT$1650 for 4 people, roughly $66SGD. TOTALLY WORTH IT, we had all the wagyu beef in the world, other yummy beef and scallop, everything tasted just perfect, a great way to end our Taiwan Trip. We did return to miaokou to try some of their local delights, the CHUA BING (shaved iced), which was practically syrup in shaved ice, nothing fantastic, and their fried healthy bread, which was awesome.

Goodbye Taiwan, I'll be back some day. WhenI go back, I would like to visit other parts of Taiwan, like 花蓮 (Hualien), 高雄 (Kaohsiung) and 台中 (Taichung). Would love if I could get a sponsored trip instead.

For more on my Taipei posts:
Taipei Holiday Planning
Taipei Day 1: Taipei Zoo
Taipei Day 2: Yangmingshan , Beitou, Tamsui
Taipei Day 3: Hakka Cultural Park, CKS Memorial Hall
Taipei Day 4: Miniature Museum of Taipei, Suho Paper Museum
Taipei Day 6: Pingxi Railway Tour

We went all the way to the last stop on the railway tour, and went backwards towards Ruifang. Wanted to take a shot together with the train, but.. WE WERE TOO SLOW. Boyfriend however managed to snap a shot of me with the old school train. The best thing about visiting Jingtong first was that, it's the last stop, which means that it's a safe place to take photos without the train disturbing you! We camwhored there for the longest time under the scorching sun. If you stay there long enough to take photographs, you might be lucky enough to have no one standing in the background (as you can see in our later photographs).

Totally whoring the railway tracks..

Bought our bamboo, wrote our wishes, 一生一世,恩恩爱爱 (to eternal love). Too cheesy. But that was the point of it! And also the reason to why we took so many photographs on the lover bridge as well. Although we heard from our friend after that that we weren't supposed to hang the bamboos on the bridge. MEHHHH... I hope our bamboo doesn't get cut off though.

Whilst waiting for the train's arrival, we wandered around the old shops that were selling stuff and we bought some souvenirs back! They actually sell REALLY cute old school Chinese styled notebooks there. And they also sell many train tickets with good wishing as well, which make really good decorations.

That was all for Jingtong!

Our next stop... Pingxi!
In all honesty, there wasn't much to do in Pingxi. We climbed up to the bomb shelters, which were really quiet and slightly more cooling, and took a couple of photos, and just walked back to the train station to wait for the next train to Shifen. We did score a couple of nice photographs at the resting area outside the bomb shelter.


All in all, we had a great day out in the countryside, with bad reception, insane train crowd, but picture perfect settings. Just FYI, people push their way through to get seats in between the railway train rides, if you want to get a seat, do that as well. We ended Shifen around 6pm, but instead of taking the train back to Ruifang, we took the train to Baidu, and from there, we bought the train ticket to Taipei Main Station. Although when you do that, you'll have to top-up for the Ruifang-Baidu station (only a couple of bucks), and you'll be able to get a ride WITH SEATS back to Taipei!

By the time you get back to Taipei City, it would be roughly 7pm plus or 8pm plus, considering we already left just before sun set. Enjoy the Railway Tour as much as I did! And if you'd like more information, just leave a comment below, and I would gladly answer you!

To catch up on my previous Taipei posts:

Taipei Holiday Planning
Taipei Day 1: Taipei Zoo
Taipei Day 2: Yangmingshan , Beitou, Tamsui
Taipei Day 3: Hakka Cultural Park, CKS Memorial Hall
Taipei Day 4: Miniature Museum of Taipei, Suho Paper Museum