Thursday, May 19, 2011

We HEARTs TCP(9)!!!!-Sweet world from some guests from Hostelworld.com

Some sweet words from our guest again!!
AW~


From Aidan (Ireland):

"This was an excellent hostel!
The location was perfect - just 4 stops from the main station.
Also, it's on the same line as Danshui, so if you're planning a day trip, you don't have to transfer! There's a really good night market just around the corner from the hostel,
but it's still far enough so that you don't hear all the noise from the market.
The staff are super friendly and helpful.
Lukas was kind enough to show me around the night market and recommend some food to me.
I will return here!"


From JinChul Park (South Korea):

"It is located near the station.
Friendly staff, delicious food. Nearby university.
Good location!!!
Good staff and fun. I'll remember forever this guesthouse"



AWWWWW~
Jin Chul gonna remember it FOREVER!!
Thank you Aidan and JIn Chul,
hopefully we can make more people happy with their trip like what we did to you guys!!
Come back soon!! :)



Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Cat's Power: Young Transgender Woman Beaten Into Seizure At McDonald’s

Please check out the following link:



This is really really sad.
What's wrong with people just being herself anyway?
Hope this kind of thing won't happen again and please don't be afraid to speak up for yourself.
It's getting better everyday, and we will always stand on your side.




Tuesday, April 19, 2011

"Girls Night In" at The Cat's Pajamas!!


This Saturday,
come stop by at TCP and watch movie "Burlesque" with us!!
Also the TCP Girls will help you out to do your make up,
and make you pretty pretty then get ready to party party!!
So just stop by and have fun night with girls!! :)

*Guys are welcome as well!!

Monday, April 11, 2011

We HEARTs TCP(8)!!!!-Sweet world from some guests in chinese!!


Some sweet words from our chinese guests!!

Come back to hang with us again soon!! XOXO


“非常好的位置 乾淨的地方,時尚的格調!”

這裏對於背包客來說太理想了。距離shida市場只有幾步之遙。員工的都非常有幫助,設施也很不錯。


“很合算,位置真棒,人們友好,裝飾現代”

只會說一點普通話,我要在師大附近找一個便宜地方住宿,最後找到一間公寓。

這個地方已經說明了一切:位置,合算,最棒的是驚人的人們。來自世界各地的許多年輕人住在這兒,非常友好,熱情。不住在客棧的人們甚至會順便去廚房和休息區閑逛。

裝飾現代,乾淨。有洗衣服務,你甚至可以在一個非常好的廚房煮飯。距離師大著名的夜市一箭之遙,位置理想。人們也可以坐台電地鐵(Taipower MRT)旅行和旅遊觀光。如果您需要任何幫助,這家客棧的人也非常友好,樂於助人。

哦,電腦可以免費上網,沒有什麼比這更好。


“迷上這裏了!”

我喜歡這裏,我保證你也會喜歡上這裏。酒店很好找,而且位置方便,靠近Taipower地鐵站,坐地鐵就能輕鬆去城裡的所有地方。酒店周圍步行可達咖啡館,餐館,便利店等地方。酒店周圍安全(我覺得台灣絕大多數地方都很安全!)而且一點也不吵。

這個酒店溫暖,現代,客人們和工作人員都很友好。這裏的氣氛很好,設備很精良。這個酒店的名字叫貓的睡衣客棧,但奇怪的是,我沒有看到任何貓,也沒看到貓的睡衣!當我下次去台灣,我就住在這裏了。你也應該做出和我一樣的選擇。



Thanks for your sweet words to warm our heart!!

真的很感謝你們耶!! XOXO

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Reveling in the real Taiwan (From The Washington Post, By Erin Meister)





Check it out this awesome article about Taiwan written by Erin Meister,
on The Washington Post last friday (April, 8th).



"At Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport, a customs agent takes my passport and eyes it suspiciously. He looks up at me, one eyebrow raised. “Why have you come to Taiwan?” he demands.

“I heard it was a beautiful place,” I reply nervously, and the official’s gaze suddenly softens. He clutches his hands to his heart and grins widely.

“We are so happy to have you here,” he says. “I hope you find it beautiful, and tell everyone where you are from how friendly we are.”

Then he stamps my documents and waves me in, beaming long after I pass through the airport doors.

Although it has something of an international reputation as “China lite,” Taiwan possesses a vibrant national identity and pride of its own. Despite (or perhaps because of) lingering Chinese, Japanese and Dutch colonial influences, the sweet-potato-shaped island has fought to express its cultural, economic and political independence, and a strong youth culture combined with the marks of more than a dozen aboriginal tribes lend it today a dynamic air of self-rediscovery.

My delight in exploring the country’s capital city, Taipei, comes after I shed any lingering dreams of pagodas and rolling rice paddies; instead, I quickly learn to love slipping through dark, dusty doorways into shops, restaurants and seemingly secret cubbyholes where cool urban natives and hip travelers go to find the real Taiwan.

That’s what I’m after on this trip: Local color in every shape and form.

Thanks to the country’s rekindled pride, “Made in Taiwan” no longer implies the cheap production of plastic novelty items. Instead, it signifies a newfound emphasis on the local designer, the unmistakably Taiwanese artisan.

Finding them, however, can be difficult. Some of Taipei’s most adventuresome and innovative producers are tucked into the city’s claustrophobic back alleys. You have to brave the many mopeds whizzing recklessly by to reach them. But the peril’s worth it.

I discover an undeniable diamond in the rough inFigure 21, a don’t-blink sliver of a leather-goods boutique hidden in one of the East District’s many unassuming corridors. Each piece here — deliberately cockeyed change purses and meticulously hand-stitched saddlebags — has a personality of its own. The buttery-warm smell of leather hangs in the air of the studio-like boutique, where rough-and-ready briefcases rest casually alongside oddball knickknacks and vintage books, as though absent-mindedly left behind on a living-room shelf.

Venturing northeast, near the Zhongshan MRT Station, I pop into another pair of local-focused shops for a quick look around — and end up losing much of an afternoon. At the quirky, minimalist Booday, I score an armload of unique, hipstery goodies, giddily browsing through stacks of chopsticks in hand-sewn pouches, off-kilter canvas bags and playfully rough-hewn jewelry. Founded by a group of friends as a design label in 2003, Booday not only produces its own line of screen-printed notebooks that sell for about $6-$10, carry-alls ($50-$76) and T-shirts ($15-$30), it also stocks and promotes local art and artists and publishes its own quarterly magazine. In the homey upstairs cafe, I can’t decide whether to munch a house-made sandwich or get lost among the stacks of CDs by Taiwanese musicians. So naturally I find time for both.

Next door to Booday is Lovely Taiwan, a not-for-profit shop focusing on aboriginal handicrafts and art from outlying villages — from intricately detailed animal statuettes (about $26) to hand-woven fabrics adorned with native patterns (about $40). At first drawn to more banal goodies such as soaps peppered with dried local herbs, I soon find myself puzzling over a set of beautiful bottles of honey- and plum-infused drinking vinegar for about $12. A sweet-and-sour favorite throughout East Asia, sipping vinegar is often served in small cups between meal courses, purportedly to aid digestion and balance your pH. Dozens of mass-produced varieties are sold in the island’s labyrinthine grocery stores, but I was pleased to find small-batch flasks to use as an unusual cocktail mixer back home.

From mid-May, when the humidity skyrockets, sunbrella-toting locals forgo the charm of the shopping alleys to duck from one mammoth air-conditioned department store to the next. While Western designers are well represented here, most of the better malls feature local producers as well; I happily skip past racks of Calvin Klein jeans for hometown hoodies by T-shirt designer ’0416.

At the Xinyi District’s not-just-books flagship Eslite Bookstore, you can meander through seven floors stocked with gorgeous tea sets, funky pillows, hi-tech gadgets and unique stationery from Taipei-based craftspeople. Of course, the books are notable, too: The stunning photographs in such regional tour books as “Taiwan Tribes Travel” by the local publisher Guide make them great souvenirs even if you don’t read Mandarin.

Department store food courts, meanwhile, offer some of Taipei’s most delicious and inexpensive bites: crave-worthy shaved ice topped with fresh fruit (tsua bing), sizzling bibimbap (rice with vegetables), made-to-order sushi, fried rice, barbecue and even the odd twist on Western food (cone-shaped pizza, submarine sandwiches stuffed with sliced fruit). Staking out a table can be stressful, but no one seems to mind my hungry hovering as I wait to pounce on a seat.

Some malls boast fantastic sit-down eateries as well. The famous xiao long bao (steamed soup dumplings) at venerable Shanghai-style chow house Din Tai Fung are worth the long wait for a table on the basement level of the Fuxing District’s Pacific SOGO department store. Huge glass windows separate hungry patrons from the dumplingistas in the kitchen, so you can watch them hand-rolling each perfect little pouch.

Classic pork dumplings arrive screaming hot, and waiting for the morsels to cool enough before sucking out the broth is a challenge. Despite the warnings on every table about proper soup-dumpling technique, my tongue wags painfully after the first bite. Once they’re cool enough, though, the soft, salty snacks disappear quickly.

Probably no comestible is as quintessentially Taiwanese as the xiaochi, or “little eats,” found at Taipei City’s night markets. Some of these nocturnal haunts are meandering collections of stalls and food carts on streets lined with clothing and record shops (such as the Times Square-like Ximending marketplace). Others are more formal structures. The oldest of these is the covered food court at Shilin, where diners have sampled the wares of more than 500 peddlers since 1910. Year-round, a crush of students, midnight noshers and hipsters fills the pleasingly run-down enclosure lined with stalls hawking deep-fried milk, oyster omelets and da chang bao xiao chang (literally “big sausage wraps small sausage” — the little sausage is pork, stuffed inside a casing made from compressed glutinous rice).

I brace myself for another culinary rite of passage: trying chou doufu (“stinky tofu”), fermented blocks of spongy bean curd often served deep-fried and topped with pickled vegetables and a gooey, bittersweet sauce. The snack’s stench varies from vendor to vendor, but its bark can mercifully be worse than the first bite. Pleasantly chewy, it has a slightly sour flavor with a pungent, mustardlike kick.

In daylight, Taipei has a run-down quality that no one would blame you for describing as dingy. Summer’s extreme humidity leaves tracks of mold on many facades. The modern, glass-fronted buildings surrounding the massive skyscraper Taipei 101 in the Xinyi District suggest a shift toward cleaner, starker development, but a trip to older parts of the city reveals hidden corners untouched by modernity.

The oldest section, Wanhua, with its winding corridors and quiet decay, offers a glimpse of the city’s bygone days. At its bustling heart is the busy Longshan Temple. I bump past a flurry of tourists, worshipers and monks selling prayer beads outside the gates to reach the controlled chaos within, where hundreds of faithful light incense and present offerings at myriad shrines to Buddha and other deities.

Students in starched uniforms are a common sight here, coming to plead for high marks on exams and good news at the end of the school term. Other visitors leave gifts of remembrance or tokens meant to assist the unlucky in love.

In the temple’s shadow is the claustrophobic artery known as Herb Alley, a hub for Chinese-medicine vendors. Pushing past loosely bundled dried roots and dried shark fins dangling from hooks, I peruse open bags of exotic dried mushrooms, fragrant rose petals and pungent tangles of ginger and ginseng.

A short walk from Herb Alley is the city’s wholesale fabric district. At its nucleus stands a crumbling two-story building crammed with textile merchants advertising silks, satins and variations on the most popular local pattern: a vibrantly colored background splayed with peonies or other bright flowers, often referred to simply as “floral cloth.” After bargaining with a vendor selling the stuff sewn into pillowcases, I snatch it up elsewhere by the yard to use as eye-catching gift wrap.

Interested in more time travel, I take a leisurely day trip to the lush tea-growing region of Maokong, which involves a breathtaking if vertigo-inducing sky-gondola ride. The mountain’s former fame as an oolong-producing region has faded, but the gondola’s slow, 25-minute climb gives you an incredible bird’s-eye view of tiny backyard vegetable gardens and temples snuggled in the dense foliage below.

Once in hilly Maokong, I have some serious hiking to do before reaching the strip of Zhinan, the main road flanked by teahouses. I settle on a teahouse high atop a ledge for the fabled tea ceremony: a way of systematically brewing and re-brewing the leaves to draw out their flavor.

There’s often a little wistful local mysticism offered while the oolong unfurls in its clay pot. “I grew up here, and moved to the city as a young man,” the tea merchant says quietly as he pours bitter green liquid into my cup. “It gets so dark here at night, some people are afraid. But I missed this place, and I came back. I’m not afraid of the mountain. It is my home; I am from here.”

Just like the steaming cup of tea before me, he is very proudly made in Taiwan.

Meister is a New York-based writer, coffee professional and author of the blog the Nervous Cook (www.thenervouscook.com)."


See!? Come to Taiwan and stay with us, What you waiting for??


Friday, April 8, 2011

Night Owl (9): What's on this weekend (April 8th to April 9th)

So The Cat's Pajamas picks up some parties and live gigs you should go visit this weekend when you're in the town:


((Friday, 8th, April, 2011:))


*Dance Rock Taipei presents- Midnight Mix

The Wall Live House, 400NTD at door (plus 1 drink)


*After party of Spring Scream Vol.1

REVOLVER, 350NTD at door before 00:00 (with 2 drinks)


*MICASA CHARITY- Party for Japan

MICASA, 500NTD for ladies, 700NTD for gentleman (all you can drink)

P.S, 20 percent income money will be donated to the "Red Cross Japan (ICRC)"



((Saturday 9th, April , 2011:))


*Bowz Tiger + Floaty

Underworld, 300 NTD with 1 drink


*After party of Spring Scream Vol.2

REVOLVER, 350NTD at door before 00:00 (with 2 drinks)


*Sasha + East collective + Tiger

Nangang 101 Door open at 21:00, 1500NTD at door, all you can drink



Have a great weekend!! xoxo


P.S More Infos:

*The Wall Live House:

B1F, No. 200, Roosevelt Rd., Sec. 4, Wenshen District, Taipei Taiwan

台北市文山區羅斯福路四段200號 B1


*Underworld:

B1F, No.45, Shida Rd, Daan District, Taipei Taiwan

台北市大安區師大路45號 B1


*REVOLVER:

No.1-2, Roosevelt Rd, Sec 1, Jhong Jheng District,Taipei Taiwan

台北市中正區羅斯福路一段1-2號


*Micasa:

B1F, No.277, Dunhua Rd, Sec 2,Taipei Taiwan

台北市敦化南路二段277號B1


*Nangang 101:

No.71, Xignan St, Nangang District, Taipei Taiwan

台北市南港區興南街71號


Monday, March 14, 2011

Pray for Japan.


The Cat's Pajamas will donate our income from March 11th to support World Vision recovery efforts following last Friday's devastating earthquake in Japan. Please pray for Japan.

貓的睡衣將會捐出三月十一號的一日所得給台灣世界展望會,協助日本的重建根救災工作。請大家繼續為日本祈禱之餘,也別忘了愛護我們的地球。