The Strategist

[bloodelves88]

ROG Strix XG27ACG Review

Continuing from my previous post about my journey to find a new monitor, I mentioned that I bought the XG27ACG. I'll do a simple review of it, but do keep in mind that I don't have the technical software or equipment to do the objective reviews that you would see on Rtings or Monitors Unboxed.

My review is given from the perspective of someone who has only used the Dell U2412M, and has never used an OLED monitor before. Because of that, I don't have a good frame of reference or comparison, so keep that in mind when I give my thoughts on the XG27ACG.

First, a quick list of the good and bad points of this monitor.

Good:

Build quality looks solid

No dead or stuck pixels

Picture quality is great

ELMB is effective at reducing motion blur

HDR400 implementation looks good to me

Asus support fixed my issue at no inconvenience to me

Bad:

Poor white/grey uniformity

Poor viewing angles for an IPS

ELMB Sync doesn't do much

ELMB needs to be used with a specific mode to look good

VRR flicker when swapping between apps

The monitor or provided cable is faulty when running high bandwidth content

OSD has bugs where some settings don't revert back to normal after turning it on and off (mainly affecting "Dynamic Dimming", "ASCR", and "sRGB mode")

Asus support is slow as they reply questions at the pace of one a week

Now to go deeper into the above points.

ELMB and ELMB Sync

ELMB is Asus's naming for backlight strobing, where black frames are inserted in between frames to reduce the effect of images persisting in between frames. This aims to reduce motion blur for objects moving on the screen.

I've tested it and it works well, making moving objects clear and sharp. However there is one quirk with it - it causes a strange halo effect around darker objects. This is what I mean:

Thanks to a comment in the video, I've managed to make the halo effect go away when the "FPS mode" is enabled, along with ensuring that the contrast settings on the monitor are set higher than what I usually use.

ELMB Sync is also backlight strobing, but it's ELMB that can be enabled while GSync/FreeSync is enabled. Without ELMB Sync, you have to disable GSync/FreeSync if you want to use it.

ELMB Sync has no halo effects, but I have also not seen any improvements in motion clarity with it enabled. It's as good as useless, if you ask me.

HDR400

HDR400 is a commonly derided standard, as it doesn't offer enough brightness or contrast to be considered proper HDR. Some comments on Reddit would even go so far as to say that HDR400 looks worse than SDR, and that HDR400 shouldn't exist at all.

This isn't my experience at all, and I've found that HDR400 looks amazing. But as mentioned at the start of this review, I've never experienced using an OLED monitor before. I do have an OLED phone and HDR videos also look great on it, but I find that the difference between it and HDR400 is far, far, smaller than the difference between SDR and HDR400.

Poor white/grey uniformity

▲ All white screen with a brightness of 5 and contrast of 15.

▲ All white screen with the "Cinema Mode", which has a brightness of 90 and contrast of 80.

This is my biggest complaint with the monitor, which made me give the monitor 4 out of 5 stars on the website I bought it from.

Coming from the Dell U2412M which has perfect uniformity (at least to my eyes), this monitor is quite a disappointment in this regard. It's the most obvious on bright scenes with a uniform colour, which means that a large part of web browsing and productivity work is affected by this issue.

This issue is improved by having higher brightness and contrast settings, so it's more of a problem for those who prefer darker screens. The images above exaggerate the problem, and I don't have a better camera or the skills to reproduce what the eyes really see.

Fortunately, when looking at entertainment media, this issue isn't visible at all and I have not been affected by this in any way beyond white screens.

Poor viewing angles for an IPS

The uniformity issue mentioned above seems to be made worse by the poor (compared to the U2412M) viewing angles of this monitor. I've noticed that the uniformity issue reduces when looking at the edges of the monitor head on, rather than from the middle.

Standing in front of the monitor and looking down at it also results in a washed out colour, something I've never experienced with the U2412M.

Check out these images, with the following monitor settings:

Brightness: 5

Contrast: 15

Color Space: sRGB

Color Temperature: 7500K

Saturation & Six-axis Saturation: All 50

Gamma: 2.2

▲ Original image

▲ Head on image

▲ Viewed from above

▲ View from the right and left

The horizontal viewing angles aren't bad when it comes to non-white content, so I have no complaints with that. It's only when standing up and looking down at my monitor where it becomes an issue.

VRR Flicker

I'm not sure if what I'm experiencing is indeed VRR flicker, but I've noticed some quick flickers whenever I alt-tab or change between windowed apps with the mouse. I do suspect VRR to be the cause, which is unfortunate as this should be an issue that only affects VA and OLED panels.

On the bright side, I don't see flicker with changing frame rates if I stay within a single application, so maybe this isn't VRR flicker. But the flicker is eliminated entirely when VRR is disabled, so I don't really know.

Provided cable (or monitor) is faulty

This monitor gave me a scare when I first enabled HDR, as doing that would bump the bit depth up to 10-bits. Doing this caused my monitor to black out, occasionally showing an image for a split second.

I didn't want to bother recording a video at first, but since Asus support requested for one, here's a video showing the issue:

And for some reason, Windows 11 does not have the usual revert timer when enabling HDR, so I had to struggle to disable HDR by relying on the short bursts of image visibility.

I've eventually learned about the HDR shortcut (win+alt+B), and I've also figured out why this happens. Basically, it seems that the cable provided seems to top out at about a capable bandwidth of approximately 18 Gbps, while DisplayPort 1.4 is rated to be capable of handing 25.92 Gbps effectively.

Using this handy bandwidth calculator, it's clear that at the base settings of 1440p, 180Hz, and 8-bit, 17.91 Gbps is needed. Using the same settings at 10-bit increases the requirement to 22.28 Gbps.

I've found that the following settings work with my monitor and cable:

10-Bit RGB 120Hz (14.49 Gbps)

10-Bit YUV422 180Hz (11.94 Gbps)

8-Bit RGB 180Hz (17.91 Gbps)

All of these stay well below the 18 Gbps limit, and they all work stably. It's unfortunate that I have to resort to lowering the requirements to be able to run HDR.

Something strange is that 10-Bit RGB 144Hz (17.60 Gbps) doesn't work, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

I am currently in communication with Asus support to see how to get this fixed. They have asked me to try a different cable, but I am somehow very unfortunate with DisplayPort cables as it seems that 4 out of 4 cables all have issues with this monitor. You would think that a sample of 4 out of 4 is quite conclusive that it's not a cable issue, but you'd be surprised. The other three cables, one from Vention (not VESA Certified) and two from Ugreen (VESA Certified) don't even work at 1440p, 180Hz, and 8-bit, which meant that they were both worse than the provided cable, which likely meant that I did manage to get four faulty cables in a row.

How? Well FML I guess.

OSD Bugs

Having on-screen display (OSD) bugs is pretty ironic, considering that I skipped the Xiaomi monitor because I wanted to avoid bugs.

On the first few days after obtaining the monitor, I naturally played around with the settings a lot. I enabled and disabled many settings, and I ended up with settings that don't seem to revert back to normal after turning them on and off.

ASCR and Dynamic Dimming both seem to have something to do with brightness, and turning them on would increase the brightness of the monitor. You would think that turning them off would set the brightness back to normal, but it doesn't. The value of the brightness setting doesn't change either, so it's not possible to lower it back to what it was. The only way was to reset the OSD, which fortunately works to solve the issues.

Turning on and off the sRGB mode of the display also caused issues. Turning on the sRGB mode would fix the brightness of the monitor, and change the color space to sRGB, along with pre-calibrated color settings. If the XG27ACG is similar to the XG27ACS, then this mode provides the best out of the box color accuracy. Turning it off, however, didn't revert the colors back to normal. While the brightness settings do revert back, the colors ended up looking dim and bland, which didn't match the colors before toggling the setting, so I'm not sure what it even reverted to. Fortunately, this issue can also be fixed by resetting the OSD.

On the bright side, the OSD is something you touch only when you get the monitor. Once done and you've settled in, it's not something you use much.

Slow Asus Support

As the HDR doesn't work properly at the maximum support bandwidth settings, I've opened a support case with Asus via email. They take a week to reply a single question, and I'm currently in week 2 of correspondence. So I'm waiting on the answer for my second question.

The person in charge of the support line seems to just be a messenger and while he is responsive, he always replies with "We have forwarded your concern to the relevant department for further checking. Hence, we will revert to you once we have received the feedback."

I'm not sure why Asus has their support system set up this way, but it's pretty bad. The only positive thing that can come out of this is that they provide a good resolution, but that remains to be seen.

---

After all these issues, I did come across this rant on Reddit, which I found very relatable: https://reddit.com/r/Monitors/comments/vgvxuu/what_happened_to_ipspanels_these_past_nine_years/

Ironically, it ends up being the Dell Ultrasharp that's able to maintain the best quality again. Maybe I should have gotten the Dell Ultrasharp? But if I did, I would be left regretting and thinking that I should have gotten a gaming monitor with all its extra features. If I had gotten the Xiaomi instead? I would probably be kicking myself with the bugs I encounter, telling myself "I told you so". Hindsight is 20/20. On the bright side, the issues with the XG27ACG aren't a problem 99% of the time, so I'm pretty happy with it.

It seems that the LCD industry kept improving its technology with higher resolutions and refresh rates, but the general picture quality has gone down across the board. Sad, but not unexpected.

Or maybe it's because the industry is focusing on OLED panels nowadays, so they don't really care about LCD. Whatever the cause, it's quite likely that my next monitor will be an OLED, probably 3-5 years down the line. Would I say I'm happy with this monitor? Yeah, probably. It definitely could have been better, and I expected better out of a monitor that's at the top of the price range for a 27 inch, 1440p, IPS. If this costed $100 less, then this be close to perfect, I would say. But again, I don't have a good frame of reference, so I don't really know.

Either way, I'm not sure if I would want to get an Asus for my next monitor. If paying top dollar doesn't get you quality, then why pay for it? I guess it would really depend on how Asus support handles my HDR issue. I'll update the post when the whole thing is resolved (or not resolved).

---

Update: my HDR bandwidth issue has been fixed.

Asus support fixed my issue at no inconvenience to me

Despite Asus support being rather slow, they did manage to settle and fix everything without any sort of inconvenience to me. What I mean by this is that this was a free on-site repair, which meant that they sent someone down to my house to check and repair the monitor on the spot.

I didn't have to travel to their support centre, and I didn't have to lose access to my monitor for days or weeks to wait for it to get fixed. It was all complete within an hour.

Pretty impressive, considering the bad reputation Asus got for their warranty earlier this year.

The guy replaced the motherboard in my monitor and everything is working fine now. The monitor's serial number did change though, so I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do about that. I'll figure it out.

Since the previous motherboard was faulty, it is possible the OSD bugs are fixed, but I didn't bother testing out the OSD again to see if the OSD bugs remained. It could also just be the ports attached to the motherboard that were faulty. I'm not going to debug this, so the case is closed.

---

Does this make me feel more positive about getting an Asus monitor in the future? I suppose so. I doubt I would be getting any sort of service at all if I got a Xiaomi, AOC, or KTC monitor. But it would definitely have been better if I didn't have to go through this to begin with. This cost me a $6 new user voucher on Lazada which I used to buy a new cable (and refunded, but the voucher was not returned). It also added a refund on my Shopee account, which probably lowers the amount of refunds I can do in the near future.

[bloodelves88]

Finding A New Monitor

Continuing from my previous post, I also got a new monitor. I did mention that I was intending to stick with my 1080p monitor, so the 12GB of VRAM on the Nvidia 5070 wouldn't be an issue, but well, plans and intentions change.

My 1080p monitor was one of the greats - the Dell Ultrasharp U2412M. It's a 24 inch, 16:10, 1920x1200, 60Hz monitor. The colours on it are vivid and beautiful, and the overall colour uniformity across the screen is pretty much perfect. The rare 16:10 resolution also provided useful vertical space on the screen, which tends to be very useful as that additional height is perfect for things like the taskbar, subtitles, or the video player bar at the bottom.

But it is a 12 year old monitor, and times change. While the picture quality remains great, the refresh rate is lacking. Time for an upgrade, and boy what a journey it was to find a new monitor. I genuinely believe that it was harder for me to find a monitor, compared to finding a new computer.

So as the start of any purchase, I searched for recommendations. I didn't want to get an OLED monitor as I didn't want to spend that amount of money on a new monitor. I didn't want to get a 4k monitor as it would stress my GPU too much, and a 5070 isn't built for 4k performance. So my requirements were:

1440p

LCD

The most widely recommended 1440p LCD monitor as of now is the AOC Q27G3XMN (SGD$450). Its key feature would be having Mini LED backlighting instead of the traditional edge lighting, which meant that areas on the monitor could be entirely turned off, just like an OLED monitor, while retaining the advantages of an LCD monitor.

However, it's a VA panel, which meant that it came with the usual downsides of a VA panel, mainly VRR flicker and black smearing. VRR might not be an issue for me as I am unable to spot it for most of the videos shown whenever VRR flicker is mentioned. It also happens only when the frame rate changes drastically, which doesn't happen constantly, so it's probably not a big deal.

What is a deal breaker for me, is the black smearing. While this video isn't of the same monitor, it's a great example of what black smearing is:

It's really disgusting, isn't it?

Another widely recommended 1440p LCD monitor is the Xiaomi G Pro 27i (SGD$440). It's another Mini LED panel, with more dimming zones (i.e. more and smaller areas that can be turned off), and it's an IPS panel. It ticks all the boxes, but there are issues reported with it. Mainly, there seems to be a pink tint on certain versions of the monitor firmware, along with several minor inconveniences after the monitor wakes from sleep. After some research, it turns out that these issues are either fixed in newer versions, or if not, it can be fixed on your own.

However, I avoid Xiaomi products nowadays, after the nonsense I encountered with their phones. I did a rant here: https://bloodelves88.tumblr.com/post/157143154228/xiaomi-miui-has-become-terrible.

Years later, from what I've heard and read online, Xiaomi still proves to be problematic and buggy, and it's further supported by their buggy monitor. It's a shame, because Xiaomi does make great hardware and offers them at great prices, but their software still hasn't improved after 10 years.

The third widely recommended 1440p LCD monitor is the ASUS ROG Strix XG27ACS (SGD$499). This monitor is often recommended as great value and sometimes even called a budget monitor (wtf?), but that doesn't seem to be the case in Singapore, as it's the most expensive of the three.

It's a standard IPS monitor with standard edge lighting, so the usual complaints of poor blacks apply here. IPS glow and poor blacks are often problems with IPS monitors, but this was never a problem to me as I use my monitors at low brightness (0-10).

However, there is yet another problem. This monitor is reported to have a grainy matte coating, which affects text clarity, picture quality, and sharpness, causing a washed out look, and could possibly cause eye strain. At this point I was banging my head on the table and wondering why every single monitor seemed to have some issue with it. Why is it so hard to find a monitor?

The fourth widely recommended 1440p LCD monitor is the Dell G2724D. However like most Dell monitors, they are poorly stocked and they seem to go off production extremely quickly. Dell monitor names are quite easy to understand - 27 is the screen size, and 24 is the year of release. So just 1 year and it's already off the market. It's unfortunate, as this monitor seemed to be perfect without any strange issues with it.

After all these failures in recommendations, I went off to do my own searching. As I had a great experience with my previous Dell Ultrasharp, I went to take a look at what Dell had to offer. Their newest 1440p Ultrasharp would be the U2724D (SGD$490), which is a 120Hz IPS Black monitor. Apparently it has darker blacks than the usual IPS monitors. But that was all it has to offer. For a $490 monitor, that seemed really poor value, so I decided against it.

I took a look at LG monitors, and came across the 27GS75Q-B (SGD$369) and 27GS85Q-B (SGD$499). The 27GS75Q-B is a standard no-frills gaming monitor that gets the job done. It's 99% sRGB, so it doesn't have a wide colour gamut. A possible choice, but should I settle?

The 27GS85Q-B bumps the specifications up to match the above recommended monitors, but another problem appears yet again. It's equipped with a Nano IPS panel, which meant that while it has more vivid colours, it's also reported to cause eye strain. It seems to be a rather common problem as searching for "nano IPS eye strain" comes up with a lot of results. Did I want to take that risk? Probably not.

So after all that, I had two ideas in mind - either to settle on one of the monitors along with its problems, or give up the idea of finding a new monitor and wait for a better time to come by. After all, if I looked for a new monitor just 6 months ago, I would probably have been able to obtain the Dell G2724D. So maybe this was just a bad time for IPS monitors with no good options on the market.

I decided to settle. The options were cut down to two - the ROG XG27ACS and the LG 27GS85Q-B. I did more research, and there was talk about how the newer XG27ACS panels did away with the grainy coating and it was better now. I decided to take a look for myself at the shop. Honestly, while it didn't seem grainy, it did look washed out. Text clarity wasn't great either.

But something I noticed with how Asus markets their monitors at the Challenger stores and the official ROG store is that they play low quality videos on it. I really don't understand why they do that. Challenger didn't allow me to try out the monitor on my own as they said it was fixed by Asus, but the official ROG store did allow me to try it out. Still didn't impress me.

I didn't manage to look at the LG 27GS85Q-B. One more issue with the LG is that it didn't come with backlight strobing. It's strange because the older generation of the LG gaming monitors came with it. Based on reviews doing motion clarity tests, backlight strobing seemed to be an amazing feature that made things extremely clear and sharp, so it was something that I wanted to try out. So I decided against the LG.

After a few days, I came across the ROG XG27ACG (SGD$529). Just a difference one letter from the XG27ACS. What was the difference? It seems that the ACG uses a semi-glossy finish, which eliminated all the issues with the ACS. But again, there was one problem - there were zero reviews about it.

All I could find were random comments on Reddit about the better coating, and how the monitor is great. I managed to find a Chinese video comparing plain colours (full white, full green, full red, etc.) on both monitors, and the ACG won all of them expect for yellow, which had a greenish tint.

So, I bought the ROG XG27ACG. I was intending to give a simple non-technical review of the monitor, but the story of my journey of finding a monitor turned out to be so long that I'll write another post for it.

[bloodelves88]

A New Desktop Computer

2025 is the year that I finally broke out of the budget gamer setup. Despite playing video games ever since I was young, I've never had a good computer. I've somehow survived playing games with low tier GPUs such as the Nvidia GT 220, Nvidia GT 520, Nvidia GTX 950, and the one from my work laptop is the best one - the Nvidia GTX 1050Ti.

I managed to play games either by waiting years until the new and weak graphics card could handle it by virtue of being new, or playing at extremely low graphics and resolutions. Imagine playing Assassin's Creed: Black Flag at 720p at the lowest graphical settings, because that's what I did.

But I'm finally free of all that. I bought a decent desktop. Here are the specifications:

CPU: AMD RYZEN 7 7700 3.8GHz 8CORE/16THREAD

Motherboard: ASUS TUF GAMING B650M-E WiFi

CPU Cooler: THERMALRIGHT ASSASSIN X 120 R DIGITAL ARGB BLACK

RAM: CRUCIAL PRO DDR5 BLACK 6000MT/s 32GB (16GBx2) CL36

GPU: MSI GeForce RTX™ 5070 SHADOW 2X 12G

Storage: ADATA LEGEND 860 1TB 6000MB/s PCIe GEN4 NVMe M.2

PSU: SILVERSTONE ET650-B 650W 80+ BRONZE PSU

Case: DARKFLASH DB330M M-ATX BLACK CASE

Price: SGD$1566. Pretty cheap for what it is, though there are reasons for that which I will go into later. I bought it from an online store named Invader PC. They're similar to Aftershock where they offer custom built PCs with lots of customization options.

I bought it at the end of May 2025, a few months after the 5070 got released. While there were many reviewers saying that 12GB of VRAM isn't satisfactory, I went with it because I was intending to stay on a 1080p resolution, which I wouldn't expect to be a problem anytime within the next 3-5 years. Choosing a 5070Ti would add about $500 to the cost, and the price increase for the performance gain doesn't make sense. I didn't go for the AMD Radeon 9070(XT) because I wanted DLSS support and also the generally better support and focus that the world gives to Nvidia cards.

Overall, I'm happy with the purchase. The computer works great and I'm able to play most games at the maximum settings, though not necessarily at the maximum frame rates (180).

There are issues with it though. These issues explain the rather cheap price of the build.

1. The GPU is a dual fan design, which causes it to get hot

While looking through the prices, I noticed that any build that uses the MSI 5070 Shadow 2X are about $100 cheaper. While this is great for the wallet, it's not so great for the thermals. The GPU reaches 85°C, which isn't ideal. I did manage to undervolt the GPU to bring the temperatures down to 75°C, while maintaining the core clocks.

2. The case has poor airflow

The case is also a cheap one. I made a mistake here as I didn't do my due diligence before hitting buy. I only checked the Amazon reviews after ordering the PC, which was really dumb of me.

The case has two fans at the top, and one fan at the back. The best airflow configuration would be to set the top front fan to be an intake, and the other two as exhaust. However, that would cause it to be a negative pressure setup, which meant that dust is more likely to get into the case. So, the case came set up with the top fans as intake, and the back fan as exhaust, and I've left it this way.

This setup generally traps the hot air at the bottom of the case, where GPU is at. Hot air does have a bit of difficulty reaching the exhaust fan. This is pretty obvious as the sides of the case gets noticeably hotter when the GPU is working hard.

The CPU also doesn't seem to be able to maintain more than 5Ghz for more than a few seconds at a time, and when doing stress tests to run the CPU at 100%, the core clocks slowly go down to about 4.5Ghz after 5 minutes. Unfortunate, but it is what it is.

---

Still, the computer is working great so far, so I'll just leave it as it is. If it starts to struggle, maybe I'll get a new case and transfer everything over. Also, the first component that would most likely require an upgrade would be the GPU, so that would solve another issue with the thermals.

As this is my first computer purchase involving something more high performance, I've learnt to look out for the things people don't usually talk about - thermals, case design, etc. People usually focus a lot on the GPU and CPU, and nothing else. All my previous computers just worked, simply because they never demanded much to begin with, so there was nothing to think about.

Hopefully things will only get better moving forward. And I managed to skip the DDR4 RAM generation, so that's an achievement.

[bloodelves88]

Gaming Mice Are Unreliable

This is something I've been thinking about for years now, and I've always wondered why this is the case. Googling around and searching about it never seems to bring up much, and it's often the case that you'll be told that gaming mice are actually more reliable.

But in my experience, gaming mice are bloody terrible at lasting for more than 2 years. Here's my experience with them:

Razer Deathadder: Double clicking in a month

Logitech Daedalus Prime (G302): Double clicking after 2 years

Redragon Centrophorus: Scroll wheel died in a month

Razer Viper Mini: Scroll wheel became jumpy after 2 years

Meanwhile any random free mice that comes with the PC, or a cheap $10 Logitech M100:

Working perfectly fine after 10 years, and it's still going strong

Because of this, I've become very jaded to the idea of buying gaming mice, and so I'll never spend anything more than $20 on them. Why bother? It's just going to spoil anyway. I can't imagine the rage and annoyance I would feel if a $100 mouse dies after 1 year.

But man, the mouse sensor of a gaming mouse is really something you come to appreciate once you've experienced a good one. I love the shape and durability of my Logitech M100, but it's really inaccurate and it's difficult to get the cursor to perform fine movements with accuracy. This doesn't just affect gaming - it affects work and productivity as well.

So once again, I'm back on a gaming mouse. Let's see how long this lasts:

Corsair Katar Pro (wired): how long will this last?

Update:

Corsair Katar Pro (wired): Double clicking after 2 months

Hooray.

Update (May 2026, approximately 1.5 years):

Corsair Katar Pro (wired): Double clicking issue went away after a few weeks. It's been going strong without issues, for now.

[bloodelves88]

I Think I Don't Like Gaming Anymore

25 years. It's been approximately 25 years since I've started playing video games as a hobby. The games that left a memorable impression on me as a child or teenager were games like Red Alert 1, Doom, Starcraft, GTA: Vice City & San Andreas, Warcraft 3, Runescape, Little Fighter 2, Worms, Dragon Age, Mass Effect Trilogy, Assassin's Creed 1 and 2, Shattered Galaxy, Rakion, and probably a lot more that isn't surfacing to the top of my head right now.

I spent so much time playing these games. I didn't even play some of these games "properly" - I don't think I ever completed GTA: Vice City. All I ever did was muck around, blowing things up, and causing chaos. But somehow, I could spend hours doing it.

In Rakion (a PvP game), I spent hundreds of hours playing from level 1 to 10. I did that because players were matchmaked into three different level brackets. 1 to 10, 11 to 30, and 31+. Rakion was a free to play game with a cash shop, and pay to win reared its ugly head beyond level 10. So what I did was to always delete my character once it hit level 11, and just repeated everything within level 1 to 10. I had fun.

These days? I get bored and tired after an hour or two.

I started playing The Last of Us Part 1 a few days ago, and I'm already using a trainer to make things easier (i.e. cheat). I can't die, I have infinite ammo, and everything dies in one shot. But why, why am I doing such a thing?

Well, I've started to notice a particular set of feelings that arise within me whenever I play a video game nowadays. These feelings can be things like:

This is a chore

What a pain in the ass

This was only fun in the first hour of the game

This was only fun the first time I did it

What a waste of time

I just want to rush through it so that I can experience the story and complete the game

Crafting, gathering, ammo management, stealth, underwater areas, dark areas, it's all a chore to me nowadays.

Maybe an argument can be made that such mechanics aren't particularly fun to begin with, so my feelings might be understandable.

But what if these feelings extend to core gameplay mechanics?

Shooters - Shooting enemies from behind cover. Running from point A to point B. Getting headshots.

RTS - Collecting resources to build your base. Training up an army. Exploring the map.

MMOs - Travelling great distances. Earning gold. Doing dungeons and raids repeatedly to farm gear and rewards. Dealing with people. Doing dailies.

Core gameplay mechanics might not be a "chore", but they tend to drift towards "this is only fun in the first hour of the game".

I do have some guesses as to why I'm getting these feelings.

There's been no new core gameplay within video games for the past 5 years that have been really solid. I've tried Rollerdrome but it got old after a while. I haven't tried Hi-Fi Rush.

There's really nothing new, man. Every single game is just made up of the same few mechanics, wrapped up in a different skin. Fantasy, sci-fi, anime style. No matter how epic, cool, or amazing it looks, deep down it's just the same old thing all over again.

Games tend to do a very poor job to keep things fresh throughout the whole game. Once you've played a few hours of it, then you've experienced all the game has to offer gameplay wise.

I've been a story motivated gamer for quite a long time, and it's possible that what I've been seeking out are good stories and good experiences. Video games were just the vessel I used to obtain these.

It's also possible that all I wanted was a sense of progression, and the methods weren't important. This is probably why I enjoy mobile gacha games with auto-play functionality nowadays. You get to progress, but you don't need to actively grind. It basically removes the problems of it being a chore, a pain in the ass, and a waste of time. Yet it allows me to progress and experience the story (Honkai: Star Rail is so far, the best game in 2023 for me).

The video game industry, especially in the AAA space, is producing a lot of junk lately. I mean, check out this wall of shame: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/13sjzft/we_would_like_to_apologize_please/

And even if the game isn't junk, it's filled with season passes and pay to win junk, still has to be bought before playing, and has none of the upsides of gacha games I mentioned above.

Everything is liked nowadays. My previous blog post: https://bloodelves88.tumblr.com/post/702607969068662784/everything-is-liked-nowadays

I'm just losing patience, growing old, getting tired, etc.?

I do still enjoy some new games though, but I'm not sure why. They don't seem to be that different, but I still enjoyed them from start to end. The Yakuza series, Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, The Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Final Fantasy XIV are examples of new games I enjoyed.

All in all, I'm still not sure what to make of these feelings I have. I think I want to set video games aside and play less of it, but it's not easy to just do that for a 25 year old hobby. I doubt I'll ever drop video games from my life completely, but to stop keeping up with video game news, to stop exploring and trying out most of the new games that come out every year - it's going to be a strange feeling. Old habits die hard.

[bloodelves88]

Everything Is Liked Nowadays

In the past 2 years, while trying to figure out if a new video game is worth playing, I've noticed something. Almost every game, good or just okay, are rated highly by users. I usually use Steam user reviews to judge a game, and it worked really well before 2020 or so. When the reviews are positive, I'm pretty much guaranteed to enjoy the game. Nowadays? It's a gamble.

I've also noticed that the exact same thing happens for anime. For anime, I use MyAnimeList ratings. The criteria for me to decide whether or not to watch an anime is if it has a score above 8. This didn't guarantee that I would like the anime, but it was pretty accurate most of the time. Again, this method of filtering seems to have stopped working since 2020.

I've been wondering why this is the case, and I've come to the conclusion that video games and anime have become a lot more mainstream in the recent years, and the lockdown period during Covid has fueled their path towards mainstream status. These two hobbies were definitely not mainstream before 2010, and it only started growing after that. It used to be the nerd thing. The thing the skinny boy with glasses does after school. It used to be something you only share with others when you knew that they were into it as well. Back then, whenever I said I played video games as a hobby, people would reply "Dota?". Nobody ever heard of Company of Heroes, Red Alert, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, or even Warcraft. Nowadays, while people still gravitate towards certain titles such as Fortnite, Valorant, Among Us, or Call of Duty, at least the titles are more varied, and people would have heard of Warcraft or Elden Ring.

Now, why would becoming mainstream cause this issue? Here's why:

Mainstream consumers are newbies or casuals.

Now put down your pitchforks, this is not an insult.

I say this as a definition of how they consume content, and the level of enjoyment they would gain from it. I simply mean that they only consume what's being hyped up, what's popular, and what has the best ratings. They are also possibly but not necessarily new in the space, with little to no experience with older content and content beyond what's popular. Think of a moviegoer who only watches Marvel movies. Something like that.

When you live in a bubble like that, the level of exposure to the medium as a whole is really small. So what happens is that these people begin to think that Spy × Family is the best anime released in the recent years, despite it having nothing much interesting going for it other than Anya being cute and funny. They think Stray is a potential game of the year, despite it being just a cat walking simulator. Don't get me wrong - these two examples are good, polished, and well made pieces of content, but ultimately they bring nothing amazing to the table. A solid 7/10 at most.

I'll use Spy × Family to make comparisons here, since MyAnimeList has scores and a top anime list which will make comparison easier.

Currently, Spy × Family has a score of 8.7/10. This puts the anime above classics such as Code Geass, Great Teacher Onizuka, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and Death Note. And it's above newer hits such as Your Lie In April, One Punch Man, Made in Abyss, Kimetsu no Yaiba, and Haikyuu. I don't know how anyone who has watched any of the listed anime above can look at me with a straight face and tell me that Spy × Family is better.

Coincidentally, all of the anime I listed came out before 2020, and Spy × Family came out after 2020. I have a strong feeling that Spy × Family was a lot of people's first, second, or third anime (and Kimetsu no Yaiba probably also being one of them), leaving them with nothing solid to benchmark against.

Think back to the point when you first stepped into gaming, anime, movies, or any sort of hobby. You were looking at content for the first time, and it just seemed that nothing could be better than what you just experienced. You would probably have rated lots of things higher back then, compared to now. I myself am guilty of this, and it's perfectly normal behaviour. As a result, a lot of popular content that newbies consume ends up being rated positively as it's designed to appeal to the masses.

Then there's the effect of social media, Youtubers, Twitch streamers, etc. Followers would naturally all have the same tastes towards certain types of content, and if the person they're following likes a certain game or anime, then it drives their followers to consume said content, which in turn brings up the ratings once more since they have a high likelihood of enjoying it. A point could be made about how these followers would be on the hardcore side of things, and you might be right. However I do think that people following Youtubers is also becoming pretty mainstream nowadays, especially among the younger folks.

Put together these two factors (and I believe that these are not the only two), and then apply it to how mainstream consumers are far more populous than the hardcore population, and this would then affect a lot of content. Out of a group of 1000 people, 200 might be hardcore, and 800 might be casual. And to make the ratings exaggerated, if the hardcores gives 0/10 ratings and the casuals give 10/10, you end up with an 8/10. More realistically, the hardcores would give it anywhere between a 6-7/10, and the casuals giving it a 9-10/10, resulting in a score of about 8.5-9.5/10. Apply this to every single piece of content out there, and you end up with everything being rated positively.

So now I have to read the reviews instead of just relying on scores. And even that is starting to become a problem, especially on Steam. The reviews on the store's front page are starting to become absolutely useless and meme-ish, since people are trying to get upvotes and funny votes. Sigh.

Finally, take everything I wrote with a pinch of salt. This is just my speculation and opinion. There's no actual research or statistics backing this up. It's just my guess as to why this has been happening. Am I right or wrong, who knows? I just know that the problem exists.

[bloodelves88]

Fundamental Game Design Problems with Genshin Impact

I’ve been playing Genshin Impact since its launch, and I’ve had some sort of a love-hate relationship with it. On one hand, I love the world, the characters, the story, and how it feels so carefree and beautiful. On the other hand, I really hate its leveling system, its gacha system, and the time-reward ratio of its activities.

I find that there are quite a few issues in Genshin Impact that just doesn’t make sense from a game design perspective. These issues make the player want to play less, or avoid features in the game that should not be avoided, and instead should be encouraged to explore. Coincidentally, the very same game design issues do encourage players to spend real money on the game, so I guess that’s the crux of the issue.

Issue 1: The Resin System

If you play Genshin Impact, we all saw this issue coming, didn’t we? 

Resin is basically the stamina/energy that you would know in other gacha games. The problem is that there’s just too little resin, which leads to almost every other problem that I’m going to talk about later.

In short, there’s just too little resin given to the player. The amount of time to recover resin is just too long for the amount of rewards given in exchange.

In Genshin Impact, you can spend resin on ley lines (random fights in the open world that give either character experience or money), domains (instanced fights that give you artifact equipment, or weapon ascension materials), and open world bosses (gives you character ascension materials). Nothing wrong with that, so far so good.

What if I told you that you need to spend approximately 5 hours worth of resin in order to get the rewards from a world boss, and that boss might not even drop the material? Just this past week alone, I spent about 5 days worth of resin on just one boss and nothing else, and I came out with no high tier materials at all. On the bright side, the game does allow you to combine lower tier materials into higher tier materials. This still doesn’t sound too bad... but read on to issue 2 and 3 to see why this becomes a problem that snowballs.

Another strange point is that the weekly quests require you to spend more resin than you can recover. This pretty much means that you must spend real money in order to complete the quest. Totally broken.

Issue 2: The World Level System

In Genshin Impact, there is something called a “World Level”. This determines the level of the monsters in the world, which in turn determines the quality of the loot that they drop.

The problem is, the world level increases as your adventure rank increases. Your adventure rank increases when you do pretty much anything in the game. Completing quests, opening chests, completing domains, defeating bosses, and completing ley lines all give you adventure rank experience. 

This means that you will be kept on your toes, and you cannot afford to spend your resin on things you do not need. God forbid that you end up with a high world level with weak characters. You’re pretty much dead if that happens. 

I’ve not found myself in such a situation yet, and I have no idea if it’s possible to break out of such an impasse. Too weak to farm materials, and no way to get around that. Big oof.  

It’s strange, because this is such a chill and calming game, but the system behind it is anything but. 

Ever since I hit adventure rank 30, I’ve avoided doing any random quests that I come across in the open world (game design problem: your players are avoiding quests). I simply do not want to level up! I’m scared of leveling up (game design problem: your players do not want to level up).

Now, why does this happen? The resin system! The player is just not able to farm enough to become strong enough to handle a higher world level.

There is a minor breather for this though. Every 10 adventure rank levels starting at level 25, there’s a trial that you have to pass before the world level will go up. This gives the you an infinite amount of time to catch up and farm whatever you want, and the world level will not go up. However, you will still earn adventure rank experience, which will all be added once you’ve passed the trial. I skipped level 26-30 this way and jumped two world levels because of this. Luckily, I was prepared enough to handle it.

You might think that this trial is there to counter this problem of being too weak in the world level you’re in. Nope. The boss (electro hypostasis) in the trial is one of the easiest bosses in the game due to a lack of an enrage timer (DPS check) and it has very obvious attacks that are easily dodged. So... it doesn’t gatekeep anything. 

Issue 3: The Leveling System

In Genshin Impact, your characters level up using character experience cards. These cards are dropped from chests, and are given as rewards from quests or ley lines.

In Genshin Impact, you also control a squad of four characters at a time, and elemental reactions and elemental advantages are a big part of the combat system. So, you aren’t just going to be able to get away with training one character, and I’d say that you would need about 6 characters to cover all your bases. 

I’ve personally leveled up two characters to 70, one to 60, two to 50, and one to 40. And I’m all out of character experience cards.

The problem? The resin system! Your main source of character experience cards in the late game would be from ley lines, and this requires resin if you want to gain rewards from it. But wait! I also need resin to farm weapon ascension materials and character ascension materials! Well, too bad. Welcome to Genshin Impact.

The fundamental game design issue from this is that it prevents the player from experimentation. You would think, “Hmm, what would character X be like if I used her in this squad? Oh wait, I don’t have the resources to level her up anyway”. You might think that’s fine, because you might think that you could just go farm some resources to level this character up and try her out. But remember issue 2? Your world level might go up while you’re doing this, which will make all content more difficult to clear. Is there really time for experimentation? What if the character doesn’t work out? Then your main squad hasn’t gained any strength while the world level went up. I guess you’re dead.

I’m not even excited about getting new characters anymore, because I know that all they’ll do is sit in my roster at level 1, and the only time they’ll ever get used is when I send them off to collect materials on expeditions. I have a Venti doing just that. Will I ever be able to train him? Ha! Who knows? Maybe when I’m stuck at adventure rank 45.

So from the start of the game, you have to pick your squad, maybe you’re allowed to deviate and level up two new characters on top of your main four, and that’s it. You got to lock that squad in and never use any other character ever again because you just can’t afford to.

Wut.

Issue 4: The Gacha Rates

In Genshin Impact, the highest rarity (5 star) comes at a 0.6% rate. Compared to other popular gacha games which come in at around 1-2%, the difference is huge.

To me, this alone is already an issue from a design perspective. When it’s too low, it can get people frustrated enough to quit the game (I was planning to, until the last roll I could afford gave me Klee). The amount of money the whales are spending just to get a single character or weapon can easily go into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Another problem that arises from the poor rates is you start to lack important archetypes in your squad. For a long time I lacked a heavy-hitting claymore user (this is important to break shields and rocks), and I also lacked someone good against frost enemies. So I spent all my free gems (six 10 rolls, worth US$180) and finally got Klee, a fire bomb user. The game does give a free claymore user, but I don’t have the resources to train another character (see, resin raises its ugly head again). The game also does give a good free fire character, but she isn’t fiery enough to fight a whole domain of frost enemies.

If Genshin Impact wants to keep its gacha rates low, fine by me. But the game needs to give all players a complete and well-rounded set of characters that can cover all bases. Every element needs to be countered, a healer is needed, and a shield-breaker is needed. And this set of characters need to do the job well. Having complete jokes of a character like Amber is not going to help. Having a difficult to understand/build character like Noelle is not going to help.

-----

I do like this game, and I do want to keep playing it. But sometimes I wonder if I should wait a little and let Mihoyo fix the game before I start playing again.

[bloodelves88]

So I just watched Promare...

And damn isn’t it a treat.

I don’t even know how to describe or explain this feeling, until I read this review on MyAnimeList:

https://myanimelist.net/anime/35848/Promare/reviews (the first review by  manofmanymanga, rating of 10)

Fast forwarding to about six hours after the movie ended, I realized that this feeling was one I had felt before. When the videogame "Doom (2016)" came out, everyone kind of had a "come to Jesus" moment. We realized that we didn't need a philosophically engorged cutscene to tell us why we were going to be shooting demons, we needed some demons to terrorize, enough ammunition to out-lead-poison the most illiterate US state, and a soundtrack to keep the blood seeping from our eyes from running dry. A videogame... that's "fun" first... good idea... when exactly did we forget about it? I don't know, but the fact that it was a big deal to remember it is proof that we did, right? Well... here we are. Promare felt fun like nothing I'd seen in years, if ever, and that's proof that we MUST have forgotten what it means to be "fun" first.

I didn't like this thought. There's no WAY that that can be right. OF COURSE anime movies are "fun" I thought to myself. I mean just LOOK at all these anime movies I can think of that are fun from start to finish that were critically acclaimed. Let's go down the list: - Your Name - A Silent Voice - Night is Long Baby Walk On Girl - In This Corner Of The World - Liz and the Blue Bird - Anthem of the Heart - Giovanni's Island - Boy and the Beast SEE! SURELY ALL OF THESE MOVIES ARE "FUN" RIGHT!?... ... I... no they aren’t... At least not first?... Beautiful, serene, provocative, inventive, colorful, cathartic, sympathetic, heart-wrenching, 'moving'; absolutely, but "fun"... I don't know. Fun is going down a waterslide. Fun is throwing a water balloon at someone then circle strafing around a picnic table with adults at it so they can’t hit you with theirs. Fun is that thing that we're supposed to have had surgically removed at the age of 17 to be hopefully replaced with concerns about the economy and thoughts of financial independence.

That comparison with Doom (2016) is 100% on the money. YES.

When I first played Doom (2016), I felt a sense of “fun” that I had never experienced for years. I’ve been gaming since I was 7 years old, and that’s 18 years of gaming. Video games started out fun. I spent hours in front of the computer, replaying games, repeating silly things, and doing stupid shit. I made my own maps in games, I used cheats in GTA, I wandered around worlds, I created dumb situations to see how they would turn out.

Then, as I grew up, all of these disappeared. 

Video games, to me, just became a bunch of game mechanics that were repackaged, reskinned, and refurbished. 

After all, without a breakthrough or novel idea, how different could it be?

First person shooters always meant running around with guns, shooting things up.

Real time strategy games always meant base building, resource gathering, territorial expansion, building armies and wiping your enemies off the map.

Action adventure games always meant running around, climbing walls, adding stats into a skill tree, getting better weapons, and finally saving the world.

Racing games always meant that you drive around on a track as fast and you could.

Action RPG games just meant a Diablo clone. 

After decades of this, it’s natural to not enjoy video games as much as you used to.

Because of this, the story of the game became my main indicator of whether the game would be “fun”. If you were to look at the list of my favourite games of all time, you would notice that a large majority of the games there have solid stories.

And if they didn’t have solid stories, they have gameplay that sets it apart from “just another Call of Duty”.

So, after Doom (2016) and Promare, I really got to agree with the above review. What happened to “fun”? What happened to “entertainment”? These media are supposed to entertain us, but what really happens instead is it just gives us an excuse to fill up our time with a refurbished game or movie, sold off under the guise of a new product.

New game IPs are rarely celebrated nowadays. It’s always the next Overwatch, the next PUBG, the next Hearthstone, the next DoTA, the next Call of Duty, the next Mobile Legends, the next Pokemon Go, the next Assassin’s Creed. 

There’s barely anything new in any of these spin-offs, clones, or sequels. Barely a thing. But it’s almost always the most popular and profitable games.

And it’s sad.

[bloodelves88]

Oppo Reno Z Camera is Strange

So I got the Oppo Reno Z in November last year, and I’m very happy with it. It’s far better than the two Xiaomi phones I’ve had so far. No bugs!! Everything works as expected! And yup, question to that post answered. I’m boycotting Xiaomi. Oh, to finally have a phone that isn’t stupid.

But there’s just one issue that has to make this phone imperfect. That’s the camera.

More specifically, the default camera app that comes with the phone.

I’ve noticed that the camera app tends to perform post processing a little poorly at times, and this is very apparent when the subject is very noisy, or has repeating patterns.

I’ll be showing a few pictures. Right click and open it in a new tab to see a bigger version of it if you need to.

For example, take a look at this picture of clouds:

Look at the clouds at the top left corner. What in the world happened to it? Why does it look like a splotch of paint? 

This issue also happens for grass. Take a look at this:

Looks fine, right? But if you zoom in and inspect certain areas, like the bottom right corner and the plants on the top left corner:

You start to notice that it starts to look very plasticky, as if the leaves are fake. What the heck.

Now let’s do a comparison of similar pictures using the default camera app and the Open Camera app. The difference is not always visible, and the winner isn’t always clear.

This picture is taken with the default app:

Let’s zoom in on the grass:

Not too bad, actually. The plastic look isn’t very apparent here. It actually looks pretty good.

This photo is taken with the Open Camera app:

Let’s zoom in on the grass.

Not as sharp. But there’s not a hint of the plasticky look. Not even a little bit.

In this case, I think the default app wins. I think we can make do with that tiny bit of plasticky look for the better sharpness and detail.

But wait! Let’s compare a cropped shot of the hen and the chicks, from the same pictures above.

The default app:

Open Camera app:

The Open Camera app wins in this case, hands down. The details of the patterns on the body and wings of the hen and chicks are still retained, and not washed away like in the default camera app.

So, after using this phone for 3 months, I still don’t have a conclusive answer as to which camera app I should use. These photos aren’t that important, so I’m not that affected by the quality. But when I go for a holiday overseas, I definitely want my photos to be without any strange issues. I don’t want to need to take photos on both apps, and comparing them later. Ugh.

So, for now, the following will be the factor that decides my choice: if it’s a picture of natural items (nature, clouds, plants, animals), then use the Open Camera app. If it’s man-made (buildings, manufactured items (tables, books, keyboards, toys, etc.)), then use the default app. The default camera also does much better in low light or high speed conditions, so that will overrule the above factors.

How about the Google Camera app? Nope, this phone uses MediaTek.

[bloodelves88]

I drew something for the Tsuki birthday art contest on Discord

[bloodelves88]

Cosfest 2019

This post is three months late... but I went to Cosfest this year. This is my second time there. 

I downgraded my cosplay by a lot this time. I mentioned in my previous cosplay related post that I wanted to cosplay Noctis, and I did. I wore the outfit there in public (without the wig and makeup), so all I needed to carry was a bag with my wig, makeup, and jacket. Totally beats the ridiculous luggage or two backpacks that I needed to lug around the two previous times I cosplayed.

And this time, I had full vision and mobility. Yes!

It’s not all good though. This is the very first time I’m cosplaying wearing a wig and makeup, which meant that I didn’t look as good as I wanted to. It’s definitely my own fault, since I didn’t practice styling the wig at all, and the makeup I put on was really just to cover the blemishes on my face, instead of shaping my face to look more like Noctis. I didn’t even get contouring makeup.

I also just kept my glasses on, cause I didn’t want to try wearing contacts. So I became a Noctis with glasses. I think it didn’t look at good as I imagined, probably because the wig and makeup was all wrong anyway. Ah well. Surprisingly, two people wanted to take a photo with me. I think one of them saw my back only and got a shock when I turned around 😅. This is really a huge difference compared to when I was cosplaying as Reaper though. Two photo requests throughout the whole afternoon versus requests every few minutes. Want to know if you’re cosplaying well? Just see how many photo requests you get.

Anyway, I’m really not keen on showing my pictures, because I honestly think I look quite bad. So nope!

I also bought considerably more merchandise this time, but I didn’t actually spend that much. Yay for clearance sales! Five badges for $10, and another two for $4. I actually wanted just Mystic Messenger badges, but they didn’t have enough, so I just got one random one that looked nice to me. I don’t even know what series this Arata guy is from.

If you follow my Twitter, you might have seen me saying that I’m done with cosplay. Well, that’s how I felt when I came home from Cosfest. Tired and worn out, I questioned myself why I’m doing this. I said I gain nothing out of this, and it’s true. But after a day or two passed, that feeling went away. I still want to cosplay. Lol.

During Cosfest I saw quite a few Persona 5 cosplayers, and it coincided with me playing Persona 5, so they kind of stood out for me. 

So... my next cosplay I have in mind is going to be Persona 5 related. And it’s going to be the protagonist in his school uniform. It’s shocking difficult to find a picture of him with his school bag for some reason, so I’ll just take a random nice one off Google search:

He’s the guy in front. The guy behind is his... alternate look.

Very simple looking, and even has glasses. I found that whole set buyable on Taobao for approximately $60+, which is really cheap, which makes it all the more tempting. Ugh.

I typed everything above shortly after Cosfest, and it was sitting in my drafts section till today. To be honest, I don’t really feel like cosplaying anymore, so I guess that’s it then? 🤔

Ah well, when I feel like it, I’ll do it. If I don’t feel like it, then I won’t do it. Simple enough. 

[owarim]

[ambris]

Please, never let this meme die.

[silkirose]

This is the best one I’ve seen so far

[wizardshark]

What kind of quantum fucking memeing from 2056 are you people beaming to us

[bloodelves88]

I don’t reblog often, but when I do, it’s high quality crap like this

[bloodelves88]

Trip to Taipei/Hualien/Taichung/Puli, Taiwan (Part 6)

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 5 here (Puli).

Day 7

Day 7. The last full day of this trip. It’s a long day today, waking up at 8am in Puli, and ending up in Taipei.

We went to A-bao again for breakfast. We didn’t eat there though. We took out our food and ate at the bus station. This time, I got a beef burger. It’s not too bad, it’s what you’d expect out of an above average beef burger.

I also bought soya milk, which was again, diluted and terrible. I threw it away after drinking half of it.

We reached the farm around 9:45am. The farm is at the mountain top, so the wind is really cool and nice. But because the sun was up, there was the uncomfortable hot-cold feeling which I really dislike. 

The first area is a food area. We would be coming back here for lunch later.

We bought the day pass tickets, which were NT$200 each.

The person selling tickets told us there was going to be a Equestrian show soon at 10:45am, so we headed there first. Along the way, we saw a shop with bees flying all over freely. 

You can’t see the bees in the picture, but there’s easily a hundred bees flying all over the entrance of the shop. Eek.

The view from the mountain top. Glorious. 

Sheep! Watch out for poop on the ground.

Horse!

The equestrian show stage. We were 13 minutes early and fortunate enough to find some seats in the shade.

The emcee. 

A clown and his pony. This was the starting act. He cycled on a unicycle first, asking the audience to throw some balls for him to catch with a net on a pole. Then he divided the audience into three sections, asking us to clap after he clapped. For example, if he clapped twice, then we would clap twice after he clapped. 

Sounds dull, but being a clown and entertainer, he did it really well. Very amusing 😆

Then they moved on to a long segment of people performing stunts with their horses. It involved them standing on the horse, hanging upside down off the side of the horse, planking on the horse, getting off the horse onto the floor and jumping back on, and various other stunts. Later on a guy with a whip would stand in the middle of the ring, always staring at the horse and occasionally whipping the ground. It’s really loud. I guess it’s to scare the horses into submission or something? I have no idea.

After all that, there was a photo taking session. You lined up in front of the horses and you could take pictures with them. The red boxes are for you to put money in if you want. I went to take a picture with the pony and the rightmost horse. 

Then, we continued our explorations in the farm. We continued the path, which eventually led to the 487 step trail. It’s just a staircase with 487 steps. Fortunately we were going down.

Made it to the end! My right shoe at the hole in the cloth near the front. I have no idea when or how it appeared.

Unfortunately, the area to the left of the equestrian show stage has nothing worth seeing. After going down the 487 steps, we were left rather far from the area we started off from. The nice way back was an elevated, side of the mountain trail which cost NT$50 to enter, so we decided to walk on the road for cars instead. Really bad idea, in hindsight. It was hot, there was nothing nice to look at, the cars sometimes came uncomfortably close, and sometimes where were plants in the way. Icky.

We started walking up around 12pm, and reached the starting area at around 12:30pm. We decided to have lunch at the area with stalls I showed earlier.

After ordering, we decided that we wouldn’t have enough time to finish our food, and changed our order to take out. Then, we went to wait for the bus. It was due to arrive at either 1pm or 1:10pm, who knows. The Nantou bus timetables were all very inconsistent, we’ve noticed. They’re all done with pen/marker and paper.

We decided to buy some goats milk egg rolls. They cost NT$100 for a pack of nine, wrapped in three packs of three each.

It’s not too bad, and because of its size and thickness, it’s much more flavourful than the love letters eaten during Chinese New Year.

As we didn’t know if we could eat on the bus, we waited until the bus was back in Puli before eating. We didn’t really have a place to go to eat, so we ate at the bus station, just like what we did for breakfast. 

I ordered some chicken with rice thing. Again, the portions are so generous for the price. I think the food item just said chicken with rice, so I wasn’t expecting all the other items that came with it. I think this was NT$60 or 75 (SGD$2.65 to $3.32). I forgot again.

My friend bought bamboo rice. It’s served in bamboo. Pretty interesting.

After eating, we headed back to J House. I was feeling a little hot, so I bought another cup of pearl milk tea from that amazing shop yesterday. Just a small cup this time though. We called the guy to get our bags, and he offered to drive us to the bus station. What great service. If we had to walk to the bus station, we probably wouldn’t have been able to catch the bus to Taichung. 

While getting into the car, I toppled my milk tea cup sideways, but not much spilled out since the only hole was the one from the straw. My friend gave me a tissue to clean it up and it was all good. Anyway, he drove us to the old bus station at first, which might have made us lose our bus. But somehow, we didn’t miss the bus. The bus was really crowded though. The driver had to count empty seats remaining to see if we could board. Ack.

Back in Taichung! The bus dropped us off near Taichung train station. I wonder why they don’t board people at the same place.

It’s 4:50pm now, and we wanted to visit two places. Chun Shui Tang’s original store, and the Painted Animation Lane. Since Chun Shui Tang was on the way towards the Painted Animation Lane, we headed there first. While planning the trip, we also wanted to go check out Miyahara Ice Cream, which was really near the station. I’m not sure why we didn’t go. Too tired to think of it, I guess. Argh.

The origin of pearl milk tea.

It’s 5:17pm now, and my friend made a good point that the sky darkens rather early in Taiwan, so we decided to go to the Painted Animation Lane first.

The Painted Animation Lane is basically a lane with many drawings and paintings of anime, cartoons, and games. I took a picture of every single drawing there, but I’m not going to show all of them.

There’s a random adult item in this claw machine. Lol why.

I don’t know why I didn’t take a panorama of this wall. Instead, I took 5 separate pictures of it, moving sideways slowly. Facepalm.

This isn’t the actual Totoro bus stop. There’s one further south of this place, which is an actual tourist attraction.

At the end of the lane, some guy who was working at a motorbike shop told us we could come in to look. There’s a huge Luffy statue here (worth NT$150,000/SGD$6,644), and a huge figurine collection. There was also a work in progress drawing. Apparently everything is his son’s. Pretty cool.

Anyway, that was it for the Painted Animation Lane. Now, back to Chun Shui Tang. 

We reached Chun Shui Tang around 6:20pm. There were no seats at the ground floor, so we were led to the basement. I was told that I could leave my luggage at the ground floor, which I did. I went to retrieve it 10 minutes later as I wasn’t comfortable leaving it there alone. There are no valuables in there, but I would be really sad if all my merchandise was stolen. I mean, clothes are easily replaceable. Merchandise isn’t. Not in Singapore, especially.

I ordered sesame oil noodles, along with one of my friends. My other friend ordered Kung Fu noodles. They also ordered a pot of tea, while I ordered the pearl milk tea. How could you not drink the pearl milk tea at the place where it originated? 

To be honest, the pearl milk tea was kind of a disappointment. The one near J House is better. The pearls here were a little hard, and I chewed on one that was harder than the rest. Inconsistent. The milk tea wasn’t as good either.

After the meal, I ordered their Signature Black Tea to go. This was also where cold black tea originated from, so I made it a point to try it as well.

Now, a walk back to Taichung train station. It was finally time to make the trip back to Taipei. It’s 8:20pm now, the day doesn’t seem to end. I was already quite tired before reaching Chun Shui Tang, and I could smell an unpleasant odour from myself. Ugh. The typhoon has passed, and it was a very hot day. There was barely any cloud cover (look at the farm pictures, the skies are so clear).

Anyway, it’s a long trip back. First a walk to Taichung train station, then a train to Taichung High Speed Rail station, then another train to Taipei Main Station, and then a walk to the hotel. We didn’t get our tickets until we reached Taichung High Speed Rail station, and fortunately there were still available seats. We weren’t able to sit together though (it was a two-one split). The train departed at 9:31pm.

My Signature Black Tea. I still haven’t drank it yet. And I dropped it on the floor while on my way here. I was wearing pants without pockets, which made my life really difficult. I already had to use one hand to pull my luggage, so accessing my phone, tickets, passport, etc. was really a pain 😭. I should have drank the tea much earlier. It’s now just warm.

11pm. We were finally at the hotel. We booked a four star hotel this time (all the previous lodgings were three star), but it was roughly the same price as all the other places we stayed at. That’s exactly why we booked it. 

I put my black tea in the fridge and went to bathe five minutes after we got into the room. I really needed a refresher. After bathing, the tea wasn’t cold, and I just gave up and drank it. It’s actually pretty good. 

Our room was in the middle of the floor, so there were no windows. Instead, there were fake windows and fake lights.

Since there was a bathtub, my friend went to play in it. I was wondering if that friend would fall asleep in the bathtub and drown, a trope commonly seen in anime 😅

Day 8

Last day in Taiwan. Our flight was at 3:25pm, so we couldn’t wake up too late. We decided to wake up at 9am. My friend ate cup noodles for breakfast, since it was bought on the first day in Taiwan in Hualien’s supermarket. It was originally meant to be a night snack, but we kept eating dinner at such a late time that snacking wasn’t required.

We walked out of the hotel and randomly turned down one street in search of breakfast. The hotel had breakfast, but it wasn’t free, and from reviews, it wasn’t good.

We ended up here. I ordered a chicken burger. Again, can’t go wrong with fried chicken. I don’t know how it’s so good everywhere.

I also ordered a cup of soya bean. They’re both pretty good. I mean how can it go wrong? I guess if you order soya bean from A-bao, it can.

My friend ordered some hot soupy thing, which took forever to eat. I was melting in the sweltering heat so I decided to go back first. They wanted to go to a supermarket they saw on the way, so I decided to go there first instead. 

Durians, and that’s a watermelon behind. I notice watermelons in Taiwan are all these strange elongated types. I’ve never seen such watermelons before.

After this, we checked out and headed to Taipei Main Station. We decided there was some time left and went to explore the mall on the other side of the station. My friend bought pineapples cakes, which are the typical food souvenir you buy whenever you go to Taiwan. I also bought a pearl milk tea keychain for NT$80. I have no idea why. I wasn’t actually interested until I realized that the pearls and milk tea in it could move. Anyway, there wasn’t many other shops of interest there, and we only had 15 minutes, so we left after a short while. Now, it’s time to head to Taoyuan Airport. 

Pretty views from the train.

We soon reached the airport. I had to check in my luggage as all our items were over the combined weight of 21kg (7kg per person). I didn’t really want to check it in as I didn’t want to wait for my luggage to appear after I landed, but ah well.

We haven’t had lunch yet, and the plane was due to reach Singapore at 8:15pm, so I decided I need to eat something hearty. We went to the airport food court, and I ordered ramen. Not worth it for the price. It was 2:25pm when I got my food, which meant that I had to gobble down my food. Not good. My friend ordered Dan Dan Noodles and pearl milk tea, and also had to gobble the noodles down. The tea was brought into the security check area, and my friend was told to finish the drink before proceeding 😅

We walked fast to the boarding gate, and reached around 3:05pm. They were calling for passengers to board, and the waiting area was totally empty. This has to be the first time I’m so late to board a plane 😅

Is that Taipei 101? Who knows. The plane flew at this altitude throughout the whole flight. If there weren’t any clouds, you could see the land or ocean easily.

We soon landed at Changi Airport Terminal 1. One of my friends wanted to shop at the duty free shop, so that one left. Another of my friends had family waiting outside, and didn’t want to make them wait, so that one left too. We didn’t go out of the arrival hall together 😢

Anyway, terminal 1 arrival now exits to the Jewel. I didn’t know that. This is my first time at the Jewel, and I quickly and easily found the fountain in the middle. Pretty nice, I guess. I managed to take a panorama while the lights changed, so there’s two colours in the photo.

I haven’t had my dinner yet, so I was looking for food. I headed to A&W first, but the queue was still long, so I went to Subway. The prices seemed to be inflated, as I don’t remember the prices being so high. Higher prices for an expensive shopping mall, I guess. I went to Burger King next, and the cashier seemed really busy and I didn’t want to bother.

I ended up at BreadTalk, and they were having an offer of three buns for $5. I bought my buns, found a taxi, and went home. 

The end.

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 5 here (Puli).

[bloodelves88]

Trip to Taipei/Hualien/Taichung/Puli, Taiwan (Part 5)

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).

Whew, this has to be the most event filled holiday I’ve ever been on. This should be the second last part.

Day 6

We woke up late today. It’s around 10:15am now. Time for breakfast. 

We went to A-bao, which was the easiest to find because we saw it the previous day, and it seems the nearest. Okay, no idea if it’s actually the nearest because we didn’t even bother looking at where the other two places were. 

They sold mostly burgers, toast, egg wraps, and drinks. Their burgers are pretty good, but their drinks are terrible. They all tasted diluted. It’s also not easy to squeeze in a burger and a drink within NT$50 (the value of the breakfast coupons from J House). I think NT$60 or 70 would be more comfortable. 

Anyway, I got a chicken burger. It’s pretty good. I’ve noticed that you can’t go wrong with fried chicken in Taiwan. They’re always delicious.

I also got Assam Milk Tea. It was disgusting. I drank one quarter of it and left the rest in the shop. I’ve also noticed that stores in Taiwan always default to the larger sized drink when you order. Staying under NT$50 would actually have been possible if I ordered the small drink.

Anyway, today’s itinerary is the Sun Moon Lake. We took the Nantou bus there.

Once we got off the bus at the lake, we were approached by people selling boat tickets. 

They were selling a day pass for the boats, which would bring you to and from any of the three piers around the lake. You’re free to take as many rides as you want, and it only cost NT$150 per person due to some discount if you used the EasyCard to tap in and out for the bus ride (original price is NT$300). A pretty good deal, I would say. I think my friends wanted to cycle around the lake, but I told them that 90% of the perimeter of the lake is just nothing but road and trees. Later on, I would be fully convinced that taking the boat is the right decision. More on that when the time comes.

We headed towards the pier (Shuishe Pier), and got approached by someone selling vinegar. It was flavoured vinegar, and it’s actually not that bad. Then we discovered that she sells tea as well, and since one of my friends is crazy about tea, we went in.

We sat there for a little more than 30 minutes, and we each made off with one can of tea. It cost NT$400, which is a little pricey for tea, but hey, it’s good tea. We were all able to test the tea before drinking it. If you read part 4, this is actually how I knew the proper steps to brewing tea.

It’s a pack of loose leaf tea in the tin, and I’m wondering how to drink it. I bought a metal tea strainer to use in the office, so I guess I’m going to have to bring that home to use. And it’s going to take forever to finish the tea.

The shop was having an offer of buying four and getting one free, and she kept trying to convince us because we were just one tin short of that. She said it’s really a waste to not take up the offer, and I do agree. But I’m not the one interested in tea... so, eh. I wasn’t even that interested in buying that tin of tea in the first place. But the tin is really pretty and the tea is genuinely good.

She also mentioned that the shop’s boss could see everything on camera and that the phone that just rang was the boss, giving her instructions because she could see there were customers. Kinda scary 😲

Anyway, we were finally done with that, and now we were truly off to Shuishe Pier.

Shaky floors, even though they look solid. Fun!

They really need less water soluble stamps. I washed my hands later and there was red water flowing off. Terrible. And ugh, my hands look really old. 

We decided to stand on the side of the boat, instead of going in to sit. Fun!

The first stop was Xuanguang Wharf. There isn’t really much here, just a temple.

View from the top. Not too shabby.

Anyway, that was it. Back to the pier, on to the next one.

On the boat, the guy in charge was saying that the two storey structure on the right was the third highest lighthouse in terms of sea level. Well, cool, I guess. Still doesn’t make it look absolutely underwhelming.

The next pier was Yidashao Wharf. There seems to be a market area here.

People singing. Not sure about their origins and why they’re dressed like that. They don’t sing in Chinese either. There was a similar group at the previous pier.

Street food vibes.

Anyway, it’s late again! And we haven’t had lunch. We walked into a Hong Kong dim sum shop.

They’re mostly pretty good. The two on the left most are just okay though. I think the best part is that all of this cost about NT$400 (SGD$17.72). I didn’t record expenses so I have no idea of the actual cost, argh.

Next up, we saw signs for a lakeside trail and a butterfly garden, so off we went.

Nice looking hotel on the way there.

Bees! Icky.

The view from the trail. Not much.

They were doing some reinforcing work on the slopes or something, and the pathway to the butterfly garden was blocked. Sad. We had to turn back. There was a cable car nearby (it’s actually the building in the distance in the picture above this), but we weren’t really interested in that. We decided to just randomly walk around the area.

We heard a rooster crowing, and we found this terrible looking skinny rooster. It seriously looks like it’s rotting and dying.

We eventually were back to the pier, and this time there were kids playing with bubbles, and there was a busker doing some balancing acts.

There were also some paddle boats, and I was somewhat interested. It was NT$300 per person though, which was a little pricey. Anyway, not much left to do or see, so we headed back to the pier, to prepare to go back to Puli.

A random fallen tree.

Sun rays! Always nice to look at.

It started to rain while we were waiting for the boat. When we got on the boat, we decided to stand at the front of it. This boat was bigger than the usual. But the rain gradually became heavier, so we went to the side of the boat which had a little bit of shelter.

Back to Shuishe Pier. The last bus to Puli was around 7:15pm, and it was only 5:30pm currently, so we decided to walk around the area. We decided to follow the lakeside trail. The rain stopped at this point.

Remember I said that it was a good idea not to cycle, and a good idea to take the boat? This is where I confirmed that thought. The trail started out fine, but the deeper we went, the more mosquitoes we encountered, we started walking into spiderwebs, and we started to see more spiders and spiderwebs dangling from the trees. We were all starting to feel very icky. It also started to rain again, and this time, it was the biggest one. We ended up pretty wet. We initially wanted to reach the Bamboo Rock Garden, which the sign said was 800m away, but we gave up when it was 600m away.

Pretty amusing, actually. We all ended up wet for quite a few of the days. We were wet by the waterfall at Taroko Gorge, we were wet by the waterfall and typhoon rains at Pingxi, and now we’re wet by the rain again.

Anyway, here are some sights along the lakeside trail.

Anyway, we made it back to civilization, and wandered around a bit. We went into a 7-11, made their floors wet, and went out. There wasn’t much to see, and we got wet some more because the rain just wouldn’t stop.

There was really nothing much left to see or do, so we decided to head back to the bus station. We reached there at around 6:45pm, and there was already a bus there waiting. We got on, and we got a private bus ride all the way back to Puli (the bus only had the three of us).

Back at Puli, we decided to look for dinner. I saw an interesting looking stationery shop, so we decided to go in. I bought a doggy keychain souvenir, as well as four anime posters. They were only NT$25 each, which was really quite ridiculous (in a good way). They’re large sized glossy colour posters at SGD$1.10 each? Of course I had to get some! I also bought a poster tube, because I didn’t want to get my posters damaged. The tube was a little too narrow for the posters, so I had a tough time getting the posters in. There was a shorter but wider poster tube on sale, but it was double the price, so I didn’t get that one. Maybe I should have.

After that, we were off in search for food. We came across a roundabout, which was a little difficult to cross. It’s still possible though, and that’s what everyone does in Puli anyway. Most of the traffic lights aren’t even in operation because there’s just so little traffic, so you just watch out for yourself. Jaywalking is a way of life, basically. One of my friends isn’t the boldest person out there, so we had to use a traffic light in the end (an additional 150m of walking, ugh 🙄).

We came across a shop selling railway lunch boxes, so we decided to buy some to bring back to our lodgings to eat. 

The box is entirely made of wood. The food is pretty good. Again, can’t go wrong with fried chicken. I don’t know how Singapore manages to mess up fried chicken. It’s so bad I don’t even eat the skin because it’s not worth the unhealthiness. In Taiwan? I eat it all. And I’ve noticed that the food portions are really good for the price. This box costs SGD$3 or something, I forget.

It comes with packet coffee too, but I don’t drink that.

I bought a cup of pearl milk tea from a shop right next to J House. I wasn’t expecting much since it was a random unassuming shop, but boy, it turned it to be the best milk tea in this whole trip.

It wasn’t too sweet, the taste of tea is strong enough, and the pearls were all consistently chewy. Amazing. A big cup costs NT$35, and a small cup costs NT$25. I didn’t specify, so they gave the big one.

When we reached the door to our room, we saw the guy in charge. Good timing, we had to ask if we could check out late, or leave our luggage here. We didn’t want to go to Qing Jing Farm the next day while lugging our luggage around. The guy was pretty flexible, and said all we had to do was leave our bags in the room. To check out, we just had to drop the keys into a box which was mounted in the lift. If our bags weren’t gone by the time 11am came about, he would keep our bags elsewhere. J House has really good service so far.

After dinner, we decided to do some planning for the next day. We wanted to visit the Painted Animation Lane and the Chun Shui Tang original store in Taichung, and this was on top of our original plan of visiting the Qing Jing Farm. It’s a pretty tight schedule, so we had to work out the times we had to take the buses, and calculate it long it would take to travel. After all that calculation, we decided we had to wake up at 8am the next day. Well, off to sleep.

End of day 6.

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).

[bloodelves88]

Trip to Taipei/Hualien/Taichung/Puli, Taiwan (Part 4)

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 5 here (Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).

Day 5

Day 5 ended up as a free day when we were planning this trip. Turns out we do have things to do. Since we didn’t manage to play with the guns last night, we decided to squeeze that in this morning before we left for Taichung.

But before that, my friend wanted to walk along the river that’s near Ximending, so off we went!

The river is alongside a pedestrian, cycling, and motorbike road. No cars allowed. Pretty cool.

Anyway there’s not much to the river, so we decided to walk back. We still haven’t eaten our breakfast yet, so we went in search of food.

We came across some graffiti while looking for food.

No idea what’s Grand Fleks Oner, but SprayStation 5. Heh.

There some some concert that’s waiting to happen. Apparently by Pets Tseng. Never heard of her.

We finally came across a 7-11, and I bought two pieces of bread. 

I keep forgetting to take pictures of my food before eating it. Ah well. Anyway, this one is really nice. I think it’s some honey cake.

A simple ham and cheese croissant. It’s quite nice.

Anyway, to the arcade! It’s finally time to shoot the gun.

That’s me. My fat stomach is kind of visible 😭

We could choose the type of gun we wanted. It’s all in Chinese so I don’t really know what they are, but there’s rifles and pistols(?). I chose the rifle and it came with 15 pellets. The types of guns come with 10 to 20 pellets, depending on what you chose. I didn’t really know how to hold the rifle properly at first, so the person in charge had to teach me. 

I got a perfect score of 150. It is pretty easy to shoot, so I got bored halfway in. They allowed us to bring the target sheet home, so I did.

11am now. We planned to check out of the hotel, then visit MagFreak nearby. It’s a store similar to Animate, but in a much smaller scale.

But plans don’t always go according to plan. My friend took 30 minutes to pack up all the stuff lying around the hotel 🙄 , so we were at MagFreak at 11:40am. I was a little hesitant to even go to MagFreak because the train tickets were for 12:31pm and there was still quite a walk away. We told ourselves to do a quick walkthrough and leave by 12pm.

Artbooks are so pretty. Everything’s so pretty. Ahh why doesn’t Singapore have an Akihabara clone. What a boring country.

Anyway, we kept on schedule and left the store at 12pm, but it wasn’t really enough. We had to walk fast. And really fast. We made it to the station around 12:25pm, and we were all sweating and feeling really hot. Terrible.

We reached Taichung at 1:18pm, but that was just the High Speed Rail (HSR) station. We still had to go to Taichung Train Station.

One thing that really stuck out to me was the sheer number of South East Asian people around Taichung Station. I’ve censored the faces, but in the image above, more than half of the people visible are South East Asian. Why? Are they on holiday, or is there some enclave nearby? What’s happening?

Anyway, we wanted to have lunch at a certain teahouse my friend pointed out (Wu Wei Tsao Tang Teahouse), so we went to the bus terminal to try to find a bus there. At the same time, we decided to look for the place to get the bus to Puli, our next destination. But alas, the bus terminal didn’t have either of the buses. We had to go out to a random road to catch a bus.

It was a 30 minute bus ride, but we finally reached the teahouse. It’s now 4:30pm. Another late lunch.

We decided to sit in a place with tatami mats. 

Anyway, we ordered tea, I ordered Hakka Smoked Duck, and my friends shared a bowl of steamboat. 

The shop people just carried the tea set to our table and left us to our devices. We didn’t really know how to brew the tea and use the cups, and they just assumed we knew how to. Ah well.

The duck is really bad. It’s hard, it’s chewy, and the skin doesn’t come off easily. I don’t eat the skin unless it’s really delicious (that usually only ever happens for fried foods). Well, at least there’s quite a bit of side dishes, bamboo soup, and tea jelly, so it’s not too bad.

You could bring up a chess board and play it. It seems the teahouse is a place you just sit and spend your whole afternoon in. It’s calm, quiet, and peaceful. Too bad we don’t really have much time to just chill.

Anyway, the method of brewing tea seems to be putting the leaves into the brown teapot, then pouring hot water in to brew. Then, you pour it into the bigger pot with the strainer once the brewing is done. This is done to prevent the leaves from brewing too long. When you want to drink, pour the tea into the tall cups, cover it with the short cups, then overturn it. Lift up the tall cups to release the tea into the short cups, and smell the tall cups to appreciate the fragrance of the tea. Drink from the short cups.

But we didn’t do this, because we didn’t know how. We weren’t too far off though. The only thing we did wrong was that we poured the tea from the tall cups into the short cups, rather than doing the covering and overturning thing. Good enough, I guess.

The tea is really good. I guess that’s expected. There isn’t really supposed to be any stray tea leaves in your cup. There’s one in the photo above because I skipped the straining step and just poured the tea into my cup directly 😅

It’s 6:30pm now, and the skies are already dark. Time to make our way to Puli. To do that, we had to take something called the Nantou bus. Apparently it’s a little south of Taichung Park. We managed to get the 7:15pm bus. But while waiting for it, there was a figurine shop two shops down. So we decided to explore it. 

Figurines for NT$390 (SGD$17.27)? That’s actually pretty cheap, I think. But how would I bring it back? I already had quite a lot of stuff. Not to mention, how would I bring it back without damaging the box?

An hour later, we were in Puli. Our next lodging is called J House. The owner apparently messaged us on the Agoda app, and offered to pick us up from the station and drive us to the lodgings. Awesome. 

The owner dropped us off and got someone else to take over. He led us to our rooms, and then told us there was another room and we could choose. The first room had a cigarette smoke smell, and we picked the second one. Then he brought us to the roof, because that’s where the washing machines are. And the roof had bunnies!

Entrance to J House. Not much to look at.

There were also meal coupons for our breakfast. We each got a NT$50 coupon, and they were usable at three different stalls in Puli. We ended up with seven coupons though, yay!

It’s a pretty big room and it’s very cozy. The beds are also the most comfortable in this trip. It’s not all good though. The WiFi is pretty bad because we were almost at the end of the corridor, and the router was at the start of the corridor. I think they really need to mount it in the middle somewhere. They also gave disposable towels instead of proper towels, which aren’t very absorbent. I guess it’s guaranteed to be clean since it’s always new, so that’s a plus.

They have giant hangers. Wallet for scale.

It’s 9:15pm, and we still haven’t had our dinner. Another day, another messed up meal timing 😅

We walked for about five minutes, but the whole place was dimly lit and most of the stores were all closed. This is similar to Hualien, being another rural area. The person who picked us up did point out a store along the way that was open late at night (it opens from 4pm to 11am), so we decided to go there. The store is called 上禾味永和豆漿大王 (Yonghe Soybean Milk King).

My dinner. Pretty oily, the taste is okay. The thing in the middle is like a Subway sandwich, except that it’s wrapped with an egg instead of bread. The drink is interesting though. I think it’s a peanut drink. It tastes very similar to the peanut soup dessert you can get at hawker centres here (image below).

I also ordered a black sesame ball. But it turned out to be a bun. They told me they had to steam some new ones, and I said I could wait (I was going to eat there anyway). When the bun finally came, I kind of regretted ordering it. I was already quite full. I bought the bun back and ate it the next morning. Come to think of it, I never tried their soybean drink. 

After dinner, we decided to wander around. We came across another supermarket. They were selling Yakult at a really cheap price (10 bottles for NT$80 (SGD$3.54)), so we got one.

Hello, your childhood called 📞

End of day 5.

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei).  Part 3 here (Taipei).  Part 5 here (Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).

[bloodelves88]

Trip to Taipei/Hualien/Taichung/Puli, Taiwan (Part 3)

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 5 here (Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).

Day 4

Woke up around 9:30am today. One of my friends wanted to go somewhere to buy tea leaves and left earlier to buy it while we waited in the hotel room. That friend came back around 10:15am, and we left to find breakfast. We went to a bread shop and I bought a baguette sandwich and some other thing I don’t remember. 

We ate while walking, and we headed off to Pingxi/Shifen. It takes a little less than two hours to get there, so it’s a pretty long journey.

Anyway, Shifen is known for two things. Its street food and releasing sky lanterns. You’re supposed to write your wishes on the lantern, then a fire is lit under it and you release it. It floats off into the sky... never to be seen again.

We didn’t release any lanterns. 

I only bought one street food item, and it was some ice cream with peanuts wrapped in a pancake. It’s pretty nice. The ice cream isn’t really ice cream though, it’s more like some sort of sorbet. I have no idea. 

We managed to see someone’s lantern (and wishes) burn to ashes. All these lanterns are being released in between two rows of two storey buildings (photo below), so there’s always a risk of the lanterns hitting the buildings. The typhoon was also due to hit today, so it’s particularly windy. 

Anyway, for some reason we decided to go to the Pingxi waterfall first instead of having lunch. It’s 2pm now. For this whole trip, our meal times are all messed up 😅

My friend’s cap got blown away and off the bridge that goes across this lake, never to be seen again 😩. Ah well.

Another suspension bridge. This one swayed from side to side rather much. 

A small waterfall on the way to the main one.

The swing on the left oh the above photo works, so we sat on it. It’s been a while since I sat on a swing. This one isn’t as nice though. I think the single person ones are nicer.

There’s a mini street food area just before the waterfall here. 

I bought a frozen dragon fruit. I thought it was ice cream but it just turned out to literally be a frozen dragon fruit.

Papaya on the tree. People actually wrapped it up already. Lol.

Doggies! Animals are very prevalent in Taiwan. They roam around freely, and owners bring them around freely. It’s great. It’s particularly cute when their owners put their pets in their bags and carry them around. They also sit in the bags while on motorbikes. 

First glimpse of the Pingxi Waterfall. It’s really wide and majestic.

And then the typhoon hit(?) I’m not really sure if it’s the typhoon, but the rain was going sideways and the winds were really strong. Fortunately there was shelter nearby and it only lasted 10 minutes or so. 

The above waterfall photo is from above Waterfall Obeservation Area 4. We decided to go to the Natural Experience Area to see what it’s about.

It turned out to be a hut, and a pathway with named plants.

Anyway, down to the Observation Area 1.

And then Observation Area 2.

Then Observation Area 4.

You can get really close here. I love the first drop of the waterfall. It’s so neat and calm and pretty. 

Anyway, that’s pretty much it for the waterfall. It’s now 4pm and we still haven’t had lunch 😅

We went through the mini street food area and my friend suggested to eat there. I didn’t really want to, since the street food didn’t look to my liking. It was mainly fried stuff.

We continued back to Shifen. We saw a cafe and just decided to enter.

We decided to sit all the way inside the cafe... and what’s this?

A cat corner!

I was pretty amused by this cat. He kept trying to stick his paw out to grab food. I think he somehow threw some food out of his cage. Later he sticks his paw out to touch the corner of the walls. Really cute and amusing.

We ordered waffles to share, and a rice dish to eat. 

The waffles are not bad. Could have been crispier though.

A fat cat suddenly walked in o.o. I think he followed the shopkeeper in. He came out and chased the cat out.

I ordered braised pork with rice. It’s pretty good, but really filling because there’s a lot of rice.

Random cats hiding under an umbrella on our way back. There were also people releasing fireworks nearby. Didn’t manage to get a picture or video of that though.

Anyway, back to the train station, back to Taipei. We decided to change our tickets to Taichung today, since the tickets we bought weren’t actually fixed yet. It’s paid for, but you still need to go to the counter and decide on a time for the tickets you want. We decided to get the tickets for 12:31pm. And since we were back at Taipei Main Station again, we decided to walk down Taipei City Mall again. This time, the other side of it (it has 2 lanes).

Sumikko Gurashi is really popular in Taiwan. They’re everywhere. Stickers, bags, plushies, gachapon, claw machines, motorbike helmets... Understandable, since they’re so cute.

Custom skinned consoles are always a joy to look at. And look at that copper controller, it’s really sexy.

Then we came across someone dancing. He was playing Just Dance using the Kinect. The Kinect is really a wonderful piece of equipment, too bad it kind fizzed out and died. There were people behind him following the dance as well. He danced really well, he’s not some amateur.

Then we came across a retro shop. Oh boy I’ve never seen most of these before.

Ancient Relics, these things.

They also sell the games to go along with the consoles. So if you want to access some of the past, I don’t think you’ll have any issues here (I’m assuming the consoles work).

I also bought a White Blood Cell. Not an actual one, but the guy from Hataraku Saibou. 

Then, we came across an Indonesian section. I was kind of perplexed by this. Hmmm.

Interesting.

Then I saw some people carry really huge ice creams, and I tried to look for the shop. NT$35 for a double scoop at that size?! A must buy. There were three shops side by side, and one of them had a queue of over ten people, so nope.

 I forgot to take a picture before eating it, so here’s a smaller half licked one. It’s matcha on top and chocolate at the bottom.

Dinner time! We walked back to Ximending and went into one random shop.

I ate the chicken noodles, and my friends ate the other two. 

I also ordered some milk tea with pearls. I mean it’s Taiwan, the origin of milk tea. How could you not order it?

It was much later than we thought, as we spent too much time walking around in Taipei City Mall. We planned to go to the arcade at night and it closes at 11pm. It’s now 9:30pm. Yup, a messed up meal time again.

My friend left an umbrella in the shop we had dinner at, so we had to go back to find it. Fortunately, the umbrella was still there. 

Anyway, arcade time!

The unique thing about this arcade is that it has a batting cage, and a BB gun shooting range. 

My friend who’s interested in baseball went to play in the batting cages, and I went with my other friend to explore the arcade. The arcade wasn’t really interesting, the games aren’t that fun. We played the taiko drums, which wasn’t fun because it was too easy. Then my friend decided to play this game where you guide a ball through a course and try not to let the ball fall off. It’s a scam! It falls off at totally unexpected places. There’s already obvious places it could fall off from, and they aren’t easy to avoid. But they just had to make it harder with unexpected traps.

After that, we wanted to try the guns, but it was too close to 11pm and they weren’t accepting anymore players. We went down to the arcade just one level below, which wasn’t very interesting either. The doors closed to leave a small gap by then. Getting chased out.

Anyway, back to the hotel, and the end of day 4.

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 5 here (Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).

[bloodelves88]

Trip to Taipei/Hualien/Taichung/Puli, Taiwan (Part 2)

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 5 here (Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).

Day 3

Morning, we had a train to catch to Taipei at 10:26am. We woke up at 8am and had breakfast at the lodging again. This time, they had a burger for us.

Also fruits and pudding. The pudding is really nice, I think it’s a piece of dragon fruit inside.

The view from outside Hualien station. 

We bought and paid for most of our train tickets and lodgings before the trip, so we had to go to the counter to get our tickets. The person at the counter said we didn’t pay for our tickets yet, which was very distressing. But apparently it’s just because the passport number entered into their system didn’t match the actual one because of website limitations or something.

We reached Taipei around 12:50pm. Our lodging this time is a hotel, right in the heart of Ximending. Ximending is known as the Akihabara of Taiwan, with video games, anime, maid cafes, butler cafes, arcades, and night life all packed into one district. It honestly felt better than the time I went to Akihabara, which I did say was rather underwhelming and overrated. Maybe it’s because the “otakuness” of Akihabara isn’t that obvious and in your face? I have no idea.

Anyway, we spent about three hours exploring the Taipei City Mall first. It’s an underground walkway right beside Taipei Main Station, and a sizeably large portion of it contains nothing but video games, figurine shops, and gachapon machine shops. 

Red, blue, and green are prevalent colors in this mall. Well, not so much green.

I have to say the gachapon machines in Taiwan are pretty badly overpriced. They didn’t even take off the Japanese Yen prices on the machines, so you could see the difference in prices. Something that was originally ¥300 (SGD$3.92) could be NT$200 (SGD$9.09). That’s just ridiculous. Some gachapon machines could go as high as NT$300 (SGD$13.29). I’m sorry but what the heck?

I bought four items here. I recently got a PlayStation 4 from a lucky draw, so I’m on a lookout for some games. Most of the games on sale here aren’t cheaper than on the PlayStation store, and I did manage to find Horizon Zero Dawn for NT$450 (SGD$19.90).

I also bought two items from the gachapon machines for NT$60 each. Here they are:

I wanted Alisaie because she’s bae, but I guess Aymeric is good too. He would be my second choice. The other possible ones are Nanamo, Kan-E Senna,  Merlwyb, and the Manderville guy. I’m quite disappointed with the quality of the keychain actually. It’s not something you’d expect out of Square Enix. It looks like a cheap knockoff since the printing is so faded and blur.

The last item I bought was a Rem figurine.

I got pretty unlucky for this one. It was those boxes where you wouldn’t know which design you would get. I think this is the worst design available. Standing on my table now, she’s looking down and her body is tilted downwards, so you can’t see her very clearly. 

I also paid too much for her. I paid NT$280, and I saw some other shops selling her for less than NT$200. Ah well.

Anyway, we spent too much time exploring and it’s now past 3pm and we haven’t had our lunch. I’ve always wanted to try a maid cafe, and since there’s maid cafes in Taiwan... why not?

I didn’t actually know where the maid cafes were, but we saw a maid walking about (to the toilet, I guess), so we followed her when she was on her way back.

We went to this maid cafe. There’s not many photos of it since they had a no photo rule, but I think it mostly applies to the maids.

The cafe has a concept of being in a train, which explains the hand grips hanging from the roof. There’s quite a few figurines standing around too.

It seems that each meal comes with soup.

I ordered omelette rice, which is obviously what you should order at a maid cafe 😆. The maid asked what I drawing I wanted on my omelette, and I asked her to decide 😅. We decided on a cat. The maid seems to make it a point to have some conversation with each customer, which isn’t really that good for me because my Mandarin isn’t that good. So, it was a little bit of an awkward and difficult situation. Not really the best environment to really enjoy a maid cafe, but I guess it would be better than in Japan. There wasn’t really anything outstanding though. You might have heard about weird chants or actions you would need to do when you got your food in maid cafes, but there was none of that here.

Anyway, there was shelf containing manga and books for people to write and draw on. Here’s some of them.

We added some stuff to the book. I drew the crab.

Some of the people writing on the books are repeat customers, constantly coming back to write on the books.

Anyway, done with lunch, and off to Ximending to find our hotel.

On the way there, we saw a rainbow. It was the brightest and boldest rainbow I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s awesome.

It’s not the faint crap you always see in Singapore. This is the real deal.

We also stopped to buy some matcha drinks. I had a matcha drink with ice cream. It’s not bad, but there was no way to eat the ice cream. I had to go back to the hotel to find a spoon.

Anyway, welcome to Ximending!

Our hotel is called ECFA Hotel Wan Nian, which is in the Wan Nian building.

Donate some blood for your waifu!

What I love about these places is they don’t shy away from such otaku and cutesy advertisements. These things would never be seen in Singapore. Singapore has to be bland and proper and boring. 

One of my friends wanted to visit the bookstore nearby, so off we went. I wasn’t very interested since it was mostly Chinese books, so I didn’t do much other than play with my phone. There was a jigsaw section and I found it interesting that they had jigsaw that wasn’t flat.

After the bookstore, we wandered around Ximending.

Then, we headed off to Animate! I’ve never been to an Animate.

There was a Mystic Messenger shelf OMG OMG.

I made away with two of the cushions. Ray and 707. Each one cost NT$500.

They even came with some bookmarks. Oh yes oh yes! I think they’re given for every NT$300 you spend.

Animate is really otaku heaven. There’s no end of the manga and merchandise you can get. Badges, figurines, files, posters, wall scrolls, keychains... almost anything you could ever want.

The King’s Avatar. Highly recommended. 

The BL section. They really don’t hide it. Some of the cover images are pretty NSFW. 

We spent a little longer than we wanted here because I decided to buy some merchandise back for some of my family. I bought two Boku no Hero Academia badges and one Haikyuu badge. It was a terrible NT$600 in total. One of the badges cost NT$400 (SGD$17.72). What the heck is the pin made of gold?

It’s about 10pm now, and we haven’t had dinner yet. Our meal times are so skewed 😅

We decided to eat at Saizeriya. We entered around 10:15pm, and they closed at 11pm. Good enough. We ordered three pizzas to share. 

Phew, what a long day. Back to the hotel to sleep.

Here are the places we visited.

The bookstore isn’t marked, and is just beside the hotel. 

End of day 3.

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 5 here (Puli). Part 6 here (Puli/Taichung/Taipei).