We visited Longshan Temple yesterday, and I totally enjoyed it yesterday than when I visited last year. Last year (see photo below), the place was jam-packed with people.
This time it was better because of the fewer people. There was also a funny monk who looked like he was meditating at first glance; but then if you look closely, he's actually sleeping. He even dropped the beads that he was holding during his slumber. :-D
After the temple, we went back to the hostel to rest for a bit. There's a common area in the hostel where we can watch TV and surf the net; there's also a bookshelf with a selection of books. My sister showed me this book ("The Gatecrasher" by Madeleine Wickham) from the bookshelf which I found to be a very good light read.
We also got into a conversation with other people in the common room. There's Johnny, the African guy, and another guy from the States (I can't remember his name at the moment). Johnny was asking us if we went to the church a lot - which I was a bit surprised to hear. I didn't realize that Philippines was that much known to be a church-going country. We also got into the whole Obama topic because CNN was on TV (announcing the death of a Kennedy).
For dinner, we went to Jay Chou's Secret-themed restaurant. It's inside the Taipei Medical University Campus, and the place is really nice. (Especially with the piano from the Secret movie!!!)
We ate random specialty pastas from the menu; it was actually the first time for me to eat Italian food in Taiwan. I think Philippines makes better pasta; but that's just me with this one experience. Anyway, the giddiness we felt from being in a Jay Chou restaurant was more than enough to make the trip worth it. :-D
On our way back to the hostel, we passed by a street filled with bookstores. We visited one of the stores and picked up two Chinese books - one has tsu-yin and one is a comic book. I tried reading the comic book, but it has too many unknown Chinese words in it to be funny to me. Maybe I will be able to properly read it within my 6 month stay here. Hahaha!
Lazier Friday
If yesterday was a lazy Thursday, then today is even a lazier day! We woke up at noon and basically just had vegetarian pien tang (bento meal) take-out. We ate lunch with Leslie who even gave us some sweet mung-bean-based Japanese dessert.
After lunch, we got into a conversation with a German guy. (Hi Stephan)! He's in Taipei looking for a place to stay, but our hostel was already full so he was calling up other places to stay in. He told us that we had Quezon City accents when we told him that we live in Metro Manila. He said that Metro Manila accents are different - I didn't even know that! Cool!
We're planning to go back to Xsimending later today so that we can eat at the Modern Toilet restaurant. I promise to put up the pictures as soon as I get the files from my sister. :-)
PS. I know I should probably buy a digital camera and not rely on my mobile phone for impromptu pictures. Sorry for crappy images. :-O
No comments:
Post a Comment