Eat Your Rainbows

I'll be doing a 6 (or 7)-day Banana Island starting today! (Sorry for the short notice.) I've been eating quite unhealthily in recent months - more processed foods, sodium and fat. Not just during the Taiwan trip, but also before and after the trip! My digestion is the worst it's been in 2 years - and I can tell because I've had that acid reflux thing (vomit coming up throat ewwww) twice in the past month, when I never used to get that! Also, I usually have something light within 2 hours before going for Bikram yoga. I used to be able to handle 6 bananas (and I even start to feel hungry midway through the class), but now even when I just have an apple I feel nauseous during class. -_- And I'm starting to understand why some people don't eat breakfast - because there's leftover food from the night before in their stomach, so they don't get hungry! For as long as I can remember, I woke up hungry, but nowadays I don't because of my sluggish digestion. :(

So, I'm doing this to 'reset' my digestion and tastebuds (it's so much easier to stick to eating healthier and more raw after), and feel more motivated to exercise!

Here's a list of answers to questions I was asked previously.

I'll eat spotty-ripe bananas (NOTE: bananas shown above aren't ripe enough for eating yet), medjool dates, raw carob and organic cinnamon, and maybe add in tender greens (spinach, romaine etc.) and cucumber at dinner. I plan to consume most of bananas frozen. Btw, if you've not tried it, bananas + dates = heaven in your mouth!
The most important thing is to EAT IN ABUNDANCE. I'll make sure to consume a MINIMUM of 2500kcal daily! It's essential even if you're ~~short~~ petite like me. I'll count calories using Cronometer to make sure I get enough!
If you're wondering whether I'll work my butt off to burn off those extra calories, the answer is NO. I'll probably do light exercise and then catch up on some reading/kdrams & complete my to-do list (which I'm 3 days behind because I procrastinate everything -_-). However, it's likely that you'll be more motivated to exercise as it gives you energy!
I'm not an expert on this, so you can find our more from these lovely people from Instagram: @freeleethebananagirl (watch her vids on YouTube!), @kalecrush and @rawkorean.
By the way, this won't give you a sugar high, nor a potassium overdose (to get that you'll need to eat 400 bananas in 30 sec). I didn't get diarrhea or constipation either!
The only difficult thing (at least for me) about this is that people who think that you've gone bananas! (Pun intended) All you need to do is to block those comments out, because you don't need such negativity in your life. ^^
Oh yes, your house might stink of ripening bananas too ._. You'll get used to it.
I buy my medjool dates from Mustafa, and it goes at $3.90 for a 1/2kg box, which is half the price of what's sold in regular supermarkets! Previously I bought my bananas from Pasir Panjang Wholesale Market at $25 for an 18kg box, but I wasn't able to get bananas there this time. I got bananas from Sheng Siong at $30 for 15kg, and I might buy more later this week.

Hehehe people were staring.

I weigh and label boxes of sliced bananas before I freeze them, because from my previous experience, I often forget how many there are in each box hehe :x

You can view these links to see my previous raw weeks and 3-day banana island experience, and view the hashtag #sereneeatsraw on Instagram. :)

It was the last day of our trip, and we were all sad to leave Taiwan! :'(

Our flight was at 7.55pm that day, so we decided to leave the apartment at about 3pm - just to be safe. ^^;

This is a chinese pancake stall right below our apartment!

This is 葱油饼 (cong you bing) which is 'a salty, unleavened flatbread whose dough contains oil and minced scallions (green onions)' according to wiki. We've had it a couple of times because it's delicious, cheap (NT50 for a huge slice), and as far as I know, vegan! (It's obviously unhealthy though.) There's also other flavours like radish and pumpkin, but we didn't get to try those :(

We went for lunch at this Japanese-style hotpot buffet restaurant, which was a walking distance from our apartment. I don't get what was Japanese about it though ._.

It costs just NT330 (about SGD$14) for an eating time of 90 minutes. But it seems like they're not so strict on the time limit when the restaurant isn't crowded; we stayed slightly longer than that and no-one chased us out!

The view from our table. The restaurant was on the second floor.

The selection of vegan items was small, but it was good enough for me! I think that this was the best meal haha. ^^

There were no carrots though :( They've would've made my soup sweeter.

We each had individual hotpot which was great!! They didn't have a vegetarian broth (the default one was dried fish + kelp I think), so I just had water, with miso paste mixed in.

Yam, some unknown chinese melon, corn, mushrooms, alfalfa, baby corn, tomatoes, tofu, pumpkin and shirataki noodles. Yum!!

I had lots more corn and yam! SO YUMMY.

They also had already-roasted SWEET POTATO! I kinda wiped out half of what was there. They were cold but I dipped them in the hotpot to heat them up. They were so soft and sweet omg!!! I also smuggled a few pieces in my bag to eat at the airport hahaha. :x

My friends saw a small cockroach near the drinks machine o_o We didn't get a stomachache from our food or anything though.

After a bit of last minute magazine & convenience store shopping, we lugged our luggages to a bus stop just beside the entrance of our metro station (Zhongshan Elementary School). A few days back we saw a lady rushing for this bus, and after some Google-ing we found that it could take us to Taoyuan airport! It was much more convenient than the other route that involved taking the train - I can't imagine how I'd be able to handle my nearly-exploding luggage if we were to do that!

The bus was comfortable. I spent the most part of the journey sleeping, and I think my friends all fell asleep too!

However, we had this really rude and unhelpful bus driver >:( We've seen all the other bus drivers help passengers with their luggage. Ours didn't even try helping any of us load or unload the luggages!!! We were visibly struggling and he just stood there watching. UGH.

The bus ride costed NT83 from our stop, and if I remember correctly the ride was about 45 mins to 1 hour. The frequency is about 15 mins, which was what another bus driver told us.

It was a rainy day. Luckily, the weather was good for most of the trip; it rained on 2 other days too but the weather was forecasted to be worse. Also, rain in cooler countries doesn't feel as horrible as rain in Singapore. Maybe because of the difference in humidity.

Talking about the difference in humidity, I love going to drier countries. I miss how my hair was like in Taiwan - it was still frizzy, but it was significantly less frizzy! And how my face didn't seem as oily (maybe because I didn't sweat much). Sigh the moisture-rich air in Singapore doesn't suit my hair.

This is another bus at the same bus stop. It seems like it goes to Taoyuan airport too!

All our luggages were stuffed to the brim!

I'm really glad that we've become closer through this trip!!

Hopefully there'll be many years of friendship to come ^^

We flew by Jetstar; I have no idea why our air ticket looked like this. The lady at the counter was SO STRICT omg. In all my years of flying I've never encountered this. She limited us to only 2 pieces hand-carry, so we had to check in 4 luggages (though only Cassandra & I bought the check-in baggage thing) because all of us already had 2 pieces of hand carry, excluding the luggage. Luckily we had 40kg available for check-in - I initially thought that it was more than enough!

Anyway, our flight was delayed and we could only start boarding at about 7.55pm. We got to Singapore on time though!

A blurry but beautiful aerial night scene.

Here's what I bought:

8 pieces of clothing, including one hood thing that I've got no idea when I'll wear ._.
Furry panda cap (NT150) and kitty flats (NT200)
Sunglasses (NT200)
6 packets of chewing gum. :x Chewing gum is hard to quit, even though I know that they're filled with chemicals and artificial ingredients. I've never checked whether chewing gum is vegan. *living in denial*
Lotsa food, including a brown sugar ginger blocks which are to be made into a drink. (NT500 for 3 packs)
Miniatures, cute stationery, towels and llamas!
Japanese magazines from 2013, just to look at the pretty pictures! (NT79 each)

Cute overpriced (NT150) smelly tofu magnet!

That's the end of my posts about Taiwan. Sigh I really miss it and the fun times with my friends!

Time flew by quickly, and soon it was already the second last day of the trip! Our group of 5 split up for the first part of the day; Ya Fan, Eunice and Cassandra went to see some museums, while Amanda and I went to the iVegan Supermarket (since we've already been to those museums)!

It's located at Wanlong metro station. Just go out through Exit 1, and look down the alley at the left! There's signs all the way to the supermarket ^^ It's nestled in an area of low-rise housing.

We hardly saw any supermarkets in our area and as we travelled around, though there were lots and lots of convenience stores!

In Chinese, iVegan is 爱维根, where 爱 (ai) means love and sounds like 'i', and 维根 (wei gen) isn't a formal phrase but it sounds like 'vegan'.

I was so happy. :D I love going to supermarkets, and this is the first fully vegan supermarket I've been too!! Thanks Amanda for pei-ing me. ^^

Lols that store personnel saw me taking this photo and told me that no photography is allowed :x

It was quite a small supermarket, but the variety of fresh produce was impressive! It had what you'll normally find in a supermarket, but everything's VEGAN! :D Of course there's unhealthy food here too, including MSG-laden stuff, but it's still wonderful as there's no need to scrutinize labels for non-vegan ingredients, and you can shop with a peace of mind!! Other than fresh produce, frozen mock meats, packaged food (they had Tofutti cream cheese and some Earth Balance spreads too), cooking equipment, there was also cruelty-free makeup, shampoo and bath soap! Wow I wish that there's such a thing in Singapore. But there isn't enough demand as of now, I guess. :( And yet, maybe replacing regular supermarkets with vegan ones is what it takes for people to eat more compassionately.

I only got a few items as it was the first stop of the day and I didn't want to lug a whole bag of stuff around! The glass bottles of plant milks were AS HEAVY AS HEAVY ROCKS though (I wanted to bring them back home). ><

I bought mushroom seaweed floss, vegetarian instant curry (it has MSG, but this is the first time I've seen this veganized!), bamboo salt & pepper seasoning (just a dash makes food taste wonderful!), and plant milks. I spent NT354 in total.

There were quite a lot of choices of plant milks there. I chose peanut & rice milk and almond milk. Both are sweetened, but they were only NT16 each (I think). They were of just the right thickness, but it's be great if it contained just a quarter of the sugar!

I also bought Loving Hut's Blue-green Algae cookies, which were far from healthy (according to my standards) but how can I resist blue-green cookies?! Haha. However, when I got back to Singapore, mum noticed that it's already EXPIRED! :O It was best before the end of December last year -_- They weren't really fresh but I didn't get a stomach ache from eating them. They were crumbly but kinda heavy - like butter cookies I guess. Still, I finished it in 3 days... :x

We were done with the supermarket much earlier that we'd expected, so we wandered around and found this bakery!

By the way, this was a Sunday and so many shops were closed!!!

This bakery had so many delicious looking things, portions were generous, and everything was quite cheap! I didn't ask whether anything was vegan though.

Amanda's banana cake.

I bought this walnut coffee bread to eat on the night flight back the next day.

There were reduced-to-clear baked goods (NT10 each, about SGD$0.40, so cheap!!!!!) that had to be eaten that day. I bought these super fluffy (non-vegan) cakes to snack on.

Hehe super cute FamilyMart stickers! We shopped around at the convenience stores to kill time.

Then, we met up with the others and went to the About Animals cafe for lunch! They only open at 2pm. It's located near the iVegan supermarket. It's in some alley, so I had to use Google maps to find it! Somehow I couldn't locate it by typing in the address or the name, so I looked for it via Instagram - search for #動物誌 and use the location thing.

The exterior looks quite non-descript; I can't even tell that it's a cafe just by looking from here!

I knew about this cafe and the iVegan supermarket from my vegan friend Shimin (@shiminsuar on Instagram). Thanks Shimin!! :)

They've a small-ish selection of food and drinks - English menu inside.

This is so cute! ^^

At the top it says that if you don't want onions, you have to tell them.

You can add NT40 to the purchase of any main in order to get a non-alcoholic beverage. We just stuck with the mains though!

They had cats too! There was another black one, I think.

They run away from strangers though.

Kimchi Burger.

Sesame Tofu Burger

Onion Mushroom Burger.

It came with a side of very crispy fries and fruit! I find the addition of fruit weird though. Especially since they left the skin on the (not-ripe-enough) kiwi... am I not the only one who loves eating kiwi skins?? Or are they just lazy to peel it?

I had the Onion Mushroom burger, but we tasted all the patties. I really think they all taste great!!

The 'flag' makes for a nice souvenir too ^^

Yes, it's a spelling error.

I love the simplicity of this place!

Hmm sculpture of a man holding a dead chicken. What does it mean?

Then, we hopped on over to Cafe' Dog & Cats. It's at Zhi Shan metro station. Exit and turn right, and you'll see it immediately.

The interior is dimly lit, and it's quite cosy.

Huge cat mural on the wall!

The cafe only has one dog - hence the cafe name.

The pricing here (at least for drinks) is quite reasonable, if you take into account the 'entrance fee' to interact with the pets. Singapore also has a cat cafe, but there is a per-hour 'cuddle charge' and there's many negative reviews about how restrictive it is. ._.

My Kumquat Lemon Sorbet! It was delicious - a perfect balance of sweetness and tangy-ness!

As usual mine is the only drink without the cute stuff.

Most of the cats were sleepy or half-asleep.

This dog Bembi is so cute and friendly!

Bembi is actually looking at a treat hehe.

There are treats on sale to feed the pets! ^^

Everyone's asleep.

No idea why they kept this bird in a cage though ><

I like her the most. Mini.

Mini is so white, so fluffy and so grumpy-looking!!!

AHHH SO CUTE

Always giving the 臭脸 (black face) LOL

This one (QQ) is so fun and playful!

Bembi was digging into the tiles o_o

He presented us with a blob of poo (on the floor right behind where my friends were sitting) not long after we sat down hahaha.

花花 (hua hua) finally woke up!

We're all actually wearing something animal related lols. You can't see my bunny sweater though!

There's also a book you can write in at the table on the left!

I hope it's okay that I photograph and share this photo! The doodles are all so cute!!!

We then headed to Longshan Temple night market. As it's name suggests, it's located at Longshan Temple metro station! You won't see it immediately when you exit the metro station, so it's best to just ask for directions!

...Oh wait. The tourist map says that you can get there via the Longshan Temple Underground Shopping Bazaar. o_o

One of the first things I saw was steamed corn! And not just any corn, but PURPLE corn!! ♡_♡

Of course I had to get it. This tastes like regular corn (as expected) but it wasn't as hot as I'd liked it to be.

This water caltrop looks like the horns of a buffalo. Lols I thought that it was some weird thing of animal origin but my grandma told me that it's some nut. I googled it and I found that people boil it, crack it open, and eat the insides. Interesting o_o

You won't find many clothing stores here, but there's a wide variety of street food! There are also game booths and some other things (I can't recall what) on other streets.

This street is SCARY I tell you. Raw & cooked meat displayed on every stall. ><

Found some malt candy coated fruits at the main street! Sadly there wasn't any malt candy haw skewers D: That'll be the first street food I'll look for when I travel to Taiwan next time.

This cost NT100 - NT40 for the strawberry one, NT30 for the cherry tomato & plum one and NT30 for the pear one.

The strawberry one was my favorite! Once you bite through the crunchy sweet shell of candy, your tastebuds are greeted with the softness and juiciness of the strawberries!!

As for the pear one.. have you seen such tiny china pears before?! :O They look so cute. But these are preserved pears and the seeds and core was annoying.

A rice dumpling stall! I think this is the first time I've seen these kinda dumplings at the night markets. Vegetarian options are clearly marked.

I bought a red bean dumpling for NT25.

I expected it to look like this but IT DIDN'T!!! It was the yellow kinda dumpling (I hate the taste of the yellow stuff, the same stuff they add to yellow noodles) with like a teaspoon of redbean paste in the middle -_-