Day 3: 20 August 2016; Taipei Zoo, Mao Kong

Our adventures for the third day starts at the Taipei zoo!!
The entrance tickets for the zoo is super cheap and we even bought it at a discounted price of NTD 50 as we used EasyCard. (Normal price is NTD 60)

Near the entrance, the staff gave out entrance tickets with different time slots to the Giant panda house. We grabbed our maps from the visitor center and proceeded to the Formosa Animal area while waiting for our time to enter the Giant panda house.

Taiwan Black Bear is sooo cute

The weather was scorching hot that day, all the animals seem to prefer to laze in the shade so there wasn't much to see. :( I had multiple failed attempts to spot the animals that were hiding from the heat haha.

Hot and tired like me

 The Giant panda house was equally disappointing. Due to the crowd, we were only able to catch a glimpse of the pandas before we were made to move forward. To escape from the sun, we sought refuge in the air-conditioned panda house and took nice pictures with the wall painting.

My favorite spot at the zoo is the Penguin house!! Apart from it being air-conditioned (major plus point, hundreds of people stayed in the penguin house to avoid the heat outdoors), the penguins are ultra cute!!

To be fair, the zoo is really big and had a large variety of animals. However, the heat really killed us all and we fast-forwarded our tour. We couldn't spend a minute in the sun without the protection of our umbrellas, that's how bad it was.

Next was Mao Kong!! We took a shuttle tram from Taipei Zoo and sat a cable car up to Mao Kong. As we used EasyCard to pay for Taipei Zoo tickets, we were entitled to a NTD 40 discount off the cable car tickets (original price was NTD 120). The cable car ride was not bad, though it was a relatively short ride. (Around 15 minutes)
Note: Mao Kong is closed on Mondays

Fresh air with breath-taking view was my first impression of Mao Kong. :) We immediately began food hunting once we reach Mao Kong as we didn't ate any food in the morning. After some effort, we finally found 清泉山莊 (Qing Quan Shan Zhuang), famous for their tea leaves dishes.

Hidden restaurant in a corner

We ordered 茶籽油麵線 (Tea tree oil vermicelli), 龍鬚菜 (Stir fry vegetables), 烏龍茶香炒飯 (Oolong tea leaves with fried rice) and 肉絲炒飯 (Fried rice). All dishes were absolutely DELICIOUS!!!

Happy JJ with her food

When we were leaving 清泉山莊, it started to drizzle. Afraid that the rain will get heavier, we went into 雪敲 (Ice Climber) to 避雨 (shelter from the rain). Ordered the shaved ice, but the rain stopped after a while. T.T Oh well, at least the dessert was really nice. XD

西瓜奇異記 (Watermelon and Kiwi shaved ice)

We decided not to take the cable car down as it was too pricey for us but ended up waiting 30 minutes for the bus to arrive.

We were so tired that day that we all knocked out on the bumpy bus ride down.

Next was 遼寧夜市 (Liao Ning Night Market) (變肥#3)!! We had 滷肉飯 (Braised pork rice) , 牛肉湯 (Beef soup) and 鹹蛋炒苦瓜 (Stir fried bitter gourd with salted eggs) at a small shop. Surprisingly nice as it was just a random shop that we decided to walk into.

Deprived of fruits for several days, we took time to search for a fruits store and bought some kiwi and oranges. It's just too hard to look for fruits in Taiwan!! The readily available ones are just too expensive. :(

Our day ended with oranges and yoghurt drink in our hotel room~ ^^