How to take Taiwan's Airport MRT - My experience!

After 7 weeks of doing our medical electives in Taiwan, we finally had to go home on 3rd March which was a Friday. It wasn't my first time to Taiwan so I was quite familiar with the public transportation there. Previously when we had to travel from the airport to Taipei City (or vice versa), we can either take the airport taxi or the buses which are my primary choice since it is the cheapest option. When I first arrived in Taiwan, I took the Kuo Kuang bus which cost NT 125 per person for a one way trip. When you take buses, the trip will definitely be slower compared to taxis and subjected to the traffic condition's on that day. Usually the time taken will be about 45-50 mins to reach Taipei Main Station. Fortunately for me, about 2 weeks into my electives I heard news that the Taoyuan Airport MRT which has been in construction for nearly 20 years will finally be opened for public use. Needless to say, I was excited to try it out!

On the day of our departure, we took the metro to Taipei Main Station and scanned our cards to exit the station. Bear in mind, the platforms where you board the blue/red line is NOT where you take the Airport MRT. It is just not connected inside there. You need to scan your Easycards/insert your token to exit the platform first before you walk to the Airport MRT.

Once you exit the Red/Blue line platforms, look at the signs which direct you to "Airport MRT" or you can head to M1 exit.

As you can see, below the M1 sign there is another sign directing you to the
airport MRT. Do not exit here, just follow the directions and walk straight left.

As you continue walking, you will see many more signs along the way. But sometimes, it is quite confusing as some of the signs are covered by the on-going constructions.

Taadaa! This is finally the entrance to the new Airport MRT!
The pathways after this are brightly lit and very spacious.

One thing good that I realized was that they made the pathways very smooth and flat. No steps other than escalators. So people like me who had to drag along super-size luggage bags find it easier to manoeuvre even if I am alone.

Welcome!

Another cool thing that we discovered was that they have in-town check in which means you can check-in at the check-in counters before boarding the MRT. How cool is that? That means we don't need to drag along our luggages with us onboard the MRT! 

Just follow the signs!

You can do self check-in to get your boarding pass.

See all these new check-in counters. Currently, in-town check in services are
only available for Eva Airways and China Airlines.

Unfortunately, I was taking AirAsia so I could not try out the new in-town check in services. Maybe they will improve their services in the future and provide in-town check in for more airlines in the future. Hoping for that day! ☺

Head to the purple machines and purchase a token!

Cute purple token! Everything is still very new.

For us, we had half price discounts as we were travelling in between March 1-March 31. We paid NT 80 for one person/one way. Starting from April 1 onwards, I think it has been announced that passengers will have to pay the full fare which is NT 160 to both Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 at Taoyuan Airport.

There are two types of trains under the Taoyuan Airport MRT line. There is the commuter train which stops on every stop on the line, and also the Express train which only stops in 5 stops along the line. If you plan to go to the airport, it is always better to take the Express train as you can save more time. You can check out the full fares below:

Commuter train stops: blue and purple color
Express train stops: purple color only

Both the commuter trains and the express trains are very frequent. You will get one train every 15 minutes so you don't have to worry about missing the train. Just in case you want to refer to their train timetable and match with your flight itinerary, you can access the train timetables here.

It is quite easy to distinguish between express and commuter trains as they have
labelled the train as such. Anyway, express trains have purple lining on the body,
while the commuter ones have blue lining on the body.

There are places to put your luggage separately inside the train. For larger luggage,
you can slot it in the lower compartment.

For smaller hand carry, it is easier to put them at the upper compartment.

So off we go! It takes about 40 minutes to reach the Airport terminals from Taipei Main Station. It is evidently faster than taking bus or taxi. The seats inside the Express trains are also very comfortable. There are also monitor screens that shows the Arrival and Departure information of the latest flights to update passengers on their flight info. So, you will know if your flight has been delayed or cancelled! Depending on which terminal your airline departs from, just alight when you reach that station and you're good to go! So convenient right? 

Feel free to ask me if you have questions. If I know the answers, I'll try my best to solve your query.

Happy travellin' ☺

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Ayam Goreng Kunyit Recipe [Turmeric Fried Chicken 炸黄姜鸡]

Hello everyone, today I am going to share the recipe of a dish that I really love: Ayam Goreng Kunyit! When I was still studying in secondary school, my grandma used to cook this dish for my family and I every other week and we will finish it in a matter of minutes. After I moved to Kedah, I had many meals in Malay restaurants where they serve this dish too, but none of them taste even half as good as the one my grandmother made. Those that are sold outside are just so bland in taste and texture... and I blame that on using turmeric powder instead of using real pounded turmeric. I have been longing for my grandmother's turmeric fried chicken so I decided to make them for my family and myself last weekend when I was home. It was a last minute decision so I did not manage to consult my grandmother beforehand... but it turns out to be 90% similar. Hehehe, maybe I should cook this dish again for my grandma to try one day and see if she approves.

Can you see all the crunchy fried turmeric at the top? How to get this if you use
turmeric powder only? Impossible! Good food requires hard work too!

Ingredients: Serves 4-5 people

4 whole chicken leg

6-7 bulbs of turmeric

3 tbsp of salt

Cooking oil

Click to read more!

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Korean Pan-Fried Zucchini (Hobak-jeon) Recipe

Hi folks, it's been awhile since I last updated this blog. Last holiday, I went to a korean BBQ buffet with my boyfie and sisters. The food was pretty average in general except the seaweed soup and the hobak-jeon! OMG, I had like 2-3 bowls of soup and so many slices of the hobak-jeon. After flying back to Kedah, I was still so hooked on to the taste of hobak-jeon. Plus, seeing it in korean dramas once in awhile just fires up my craving for it even more. 90% of the time the situation goes like this: it is late at night and you're catching up on your Korean dramas... then suddenly they show you a scene of them eating dinner and you see hobak-jeon. Damn... I went to sleep with a grumbling tummy. 

So, last weekend, I actually bought a small little zucchini and decided I need to make this dish myself. It is near impossible to get Korean food in my current city, so I just gotta take things into my own hands if I want to fix my cravings. With all that said, this is how my hobak-jeon turned out ☺

It is really just pan-fried zucchini... but oh god, it is so yummy.

Ingredients: Serves 1-2 person

1 small-sized zucchini (I used Japanese zucchini as I couldn't find the thick and fat ones)

1 egg, beaten

1 cup of all-purpose flour

Salt

Click on 'read more'!

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Swedish Meatballs

Hello everyone ♥ Today I am going to be blogging about meatballs and it is going to be a worth try, trust me!
This whole meatball thing started from me making a lot of fuss about not getting a chance to try the IKEA meatballs yet up until today. Well, sometimes even if you're in IKEA... you will tend to give up on waiting for the meatballs as the cafe is always so packed with humans everywhere, long ass lines and messy tables which are left like that because we Malaysians really don't know how to clean up after ourselves. I hate to admit that we take this as our 'culture'... LOL *shakes head*.

I think I actually left the cafe on two separate occasions, both 5 minutes after walking in, as I don't see any hope of even getting a messy table to eat on after actually getting my food. The crowd is really crazy especially on weekends. So, just one fine day, I decided to Google "How to make IKEA meatballs" and I found the perfect recipe that I committed myself to try. I cooked this recipe for the second time already, so I can safely say that it is really a good one! Take a look!

Ingredients:

For the meatballs: 

900g of minced beef

1/2 cup of Japanese breadcrumbs

2 large egg yolks

1/4 tsp of ground allspice

1/4 tsp of ground nutmeg

1 large onion (diced)

Cooking oil

Salt and ground black pepper to taste

For the gravy:

1/4 cup of butter

1/3 cup of all-purpose flour

3 cups of beef broth (I used beef bouillons)

3/4 cups of sour cream

Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Freshly chopped parsley for garnishing

Click the button below to see the pictorial!

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Red Braised Pork Belly 红烧肉 (Hong Shao Rou) Recipe

Hello folks, Happy Winter Solstice to everyone! Tonight is supposed to be the shortest day of the year (so obviously night time is going to be longer). For the Chinese, today we celebrate 冬至 which literally means winter solstice festival in English. We will prepare glutinous rice ball (tong yuen) in the morning and offer some for prayers before eating them ourselves later in the day. They used to say every year you eat tong yuen and that signifies that you're getting one year older. Every year, Winter Solstice is an important day as my extended family will all gather together and have a great feast for dinner! With a great feast, comes a long day of slaving away in the kitchen preparing dish after dish of food for the dinner. Today I am going to share the recipe of a dish which I just made for the first time ever: 红烧肉! The source of inspiration for this dish is due to all the mainland chinese dramas that I've been watching previously where they keep bringing up this dish! Hehe...

Ingredients:

600g of pork belly

40g of rock sugar (crushed - about one small rice bowl)

4 cloves of garlic

10 g of ginger (approx. 1 inch block)

10 g of the white parts of green onions

2 tbsp of soy sauce

1 tbsp of cooking wine

1 1/2 tsp of salt

4-5 tbsp of cooking oil

Water

Click to read more!

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Chicken Quesadillas

Hello everyone, it's been 5 months since my last blog update. How are all of you? Hope all of you are doing well.

I guess the long hiatus in my food blog was simply due to lack of inspiration and motivation in the last 5 months. I could not bring myself to check out interesting new recipes nor did I have the mood to cook anything a little more than simple. It was a dull period where I cooked only to eat... and I ate almost the same few things every day. Come to think of it now, I really have no idea what was going on during that time. I just felt so unmotivated. About 2 weeks ago, I made Chicken Quesadilla (inspired by a recipe I saw in one of my cookbooks) because I figured I had left over tortilla wraps anyway. Personally, I simplified the whole recipe into a really easy one because I do not have some of the ingredients as stated in the book. So today, I am going to share my version of this easy Chicken Quesadilla which is quite a good comfort food when you really need some TLC.

Ingredients: (Serves 1)

Tortilla wrap (any flavour) 1 piece

2 slices of Cheddar cheese

1 chicken breast about 120g, sliced

3 shitake mushrooms, sliced

1/4 of a big onion, sliced

10-15 spinach leaves

3 cloves of garlic, minced

Red pepper flakes 1 tsp

Chilli powder 1 tsp

Dried basil leaves 1 tsp

Salt

Coarse black pepper

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Waroeng Penyet (Langkawi branch)

Somewhere around mid-March, boyfie and I went on our first trip to Langkawi together. The main purpose of the trip was to attend LIMA 2015 which is an aero-exhibition and they have very beautiful airshows. After a whole day of standing under the sun, the both of us were so sunburned that our skin were dark red. Long story cut short, we had dinner at this small little restaurant called Waroeng Penyet that night. It is located inside Langkawi Parade Megamall, also known as Teow Soon Huat Mall by the locals. 

The little restaurant is located right next to the side entrance of Hotel
Langkasuka. It is also quite near the main entrance of the mall.

This is the restaurant's dining which is kind of built out of the main restaurant itself.
As you can see, there quite many locals having their dinner so it must be good!

We were given a menu and order forms to write down whatever we wanted to order from the menu. Then, we have to walk to the cashier counter to pay for our order first before they serve our food. We waited for about 10-15 minutes and our food and drinks arrived. At first look, they all look very dry and unappetizing. Fortunately, the moment you bite on it... it is really soft on the inside while remaining crunchy and fragrant on the outside.

Ayam Penyet ♥

Daging Empal Penyet (Beef) ♥

I guess this is the main bomb of the restaurant. The chilli sauces are what makes
these penyet dishes so wonderful. Makes your rice and chicken so yummy!
You can self-serve these chilli sauces by yourself at the sauce counter
near the entrance of the restaurant. I chose two of my favourite!

As I remember, each dish that we ordered came with one plate of white rice and you can refill your chilli sauce as much as you want. Each dish cost about RM 7-9 so I think it is still quite affordable. Besides these meat dishes, there are one or two vegetable dish such as sambal kangkung. All in all, it was a good dining experience for the two of us ☺

You can check their menu here at their website: Waroeng Penyet Menu

LANGKAWI PARADE MALL

hop 19 level one
Langkawi Parade Mall
A14-15 Pokok Asam
Kuah Langkawi, 070000

Tel Phone: +60 11 2335 1951

 Happy eatin' ☺

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Easy Kimchi recipe

Few weeks ago, I decided to make my own kimchi. I did it mostly because many Korean recipes that I wanted to try require the use of kimchi and store-bought kimchi are so rare here in SP. Many years ago, when I was still a secondary school student, I used to make bottles of kimchi and store them at home because I really liked them a lot. Even my grandmother likes it, so we are like two big fans of these pickled vegetables. Experimenting with it again now, I was half expecting it to fail. But thank God, it turned out to taste exactly how I would like it to be. I got this recipe for kimchi from Maangchi.com, a website owned by a cute Korean food blogger who generously shares all her recipes too. Of course, I did some alterations in the recipe as some ingredients cannot be found here in Malaysia. Still, thanks to her recipe, my bottle of kimchi turned out be quite pleasing and useful for many other Korean dishes. 

Ingredients:

500g of napa cabbage (or also known as chinese long cabbage)

1/4 cups of salt

For the porridge

1 cup of water

1/8 cup of glutinous rice flour

1 tbsp of sugar

For the kimchi paste

1 1/2 tbsp of fish sauce

3/4 cups of hot pepper flakes

4 cloves of garlic

1 tbsp of minced ginger

1 small onion

3-4 stalks of green onion

1/2 cup of radish (julienned)

1/4 cup of carrots (julienned)

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