Day 1: Tainan - 7 Aug 2013

It was early in the morning when we set off to the airport to catch our flight to Taiwan. I was on economy class but on the strength that Emma was on business class, we were able to have our breakfast at the Gold Alliance lounge.

The flight was delayed and only took off 40 minutes later. On board the flight, I caught "Iron man 3"; a very action-packed show that wasn't boring at any one bit. Also, I enjoyed a couple of Mandarin songs by David Tao and JJ Lin.

When we arrived at Taoyuan airport and having cleared the immigration, we went to Terminal 1 to fetch Papa and Mummy. It was our first three-generational trip together.

Today was literally spent on the road. We took the speed train to Tainan which took us one hour plus. When we reach Tainan station, we took a cab which took us another 45 minutes. By the time we reached 1967 City Central hotel, it was already 545pm plus and as if we were not already exhausted from the long hours of travelling, the initial hotel room that was reserved for us was totally inappropriate for the four adults (not forgetting Benji) to stay together.

Well, the initial understanding was that it was a two-storeyed room with one bed on the first floor (for my parents) and the other bed on the second floor (for us) and the cot was arranged to be put on the second floor. In reality, both the beds were on the second floor and the cot was on the first floor. It was a pathetically wrong configuration as my parents had to climb up and down the stairs if they want to visit the toilet and Emma, too, had to climb up and down the stairs to nurse Benji in the middle of the night.

Thank God! There were two available rooms for us to stay in one each and the hotel staff was flexible enough to allow us to make the switch. We were grateful that it was eventually sorted out and everything was well and good.

At about 7pm plus, we went to one of their night market - 武聖夜市. It was a typical night market with hundreds of stalls in one designated area. We ordered and shared some duck noodle and duck rice with some kind of gravy which was uniquely Taiwan. Then, we did the eat-on-the-go kind of thing. By 8pm plus, we were full and as Benji was showing signs of crankiness, we headed back to the hotel and rested for the night.