Taiwan Diary #1: First days, Daiso Haul and Ximending

Finally, I have found enough time to sit down and write this post :D

I arrived in Taipei on Tuesday at 4.30PM. and by the time I finally got into the city, it was almost 7PM. My flight to Taipei (with a stop in Dubai) was alright, I was lucky enough to have an aisle seat, and the food was delicious.

Emirates always offers very luxurious sounding menus

After I got into the city, I met with two friends who accompanied me to our university. But first I ate a quick dinner at a noodle soup place in Taipei Main Station. That place is amazing! I was too tired to take any photos, but omg so many cute, cheap clothes and lots of comic stuff.

On Day #2 I got a quick breakfast from Family Mart, including this yummy Milk Tea:

It looks like some cosmetic product, right? :D

The rest of the day was spent with getting all the stuff I needed: A phone card, a metro card, etc. It was quite exhausting. The highlight of the day was probably our visit to Daiso, there's so much cute stuff there! I have been to Daiso before, in Korea, but Korea does not even offer half the amount of cute items that Taiwans Daiso has!

And everything is really only 39NTD (ca 1€). I'm just gonna show you what I bought in case you've never been to a Daiso before :D they really have awesome stuff there.

I got a bunch of wire hangars because my closet here is quite small and I can save more space through hanging clothes instead of folding them .

This storage box is awesome for almost anything. And since it's foldable, I can just take it back with me to Germany when I go back.

 Because Daiso is a japanese store, they also have lots of japanese snacks there.

This one was really interesting..I have never seen any rose flavoured candy before.

It actually tastes like roses. The texture is kind of weird because it's super soft inside but the outside is kind of powdery but...it  tastes really interesting!

It tastes just how roses smell. A bit difficult to explain but if you ever see this candy, try it.

I don't have any scarves but I thought this would be great for hanging tights as well.

I heard about Daisos face pack so often, and only in a positive way so when I saw it I definitely had to try it out. After all, it's only 39NTD.

More storage boxes~

 On thursday, i had class for the first time. The teachers tend to speak quite quickly, but i'm able to understand most of it. I met 3 super nice japanese girls and we went to get lunch together afterwards.

 We got some noodles at a street stall. Mine were quite simple, with cabbage and minced pork. It only cost me 60NTD, which is about 1,50€.

The view from the campus.

After afternoon classes ended, somehow our campus ended up looking like this:

I feel like I stepped right into Silent Hill. Maybe this is why apparantly, there are so many horror stories about this university.

In the evening, we went to Ximending.

Ximending is said to be the Harajuku or Hongdae of Taipei...I can't quite agree with that. We went there on Thursday evening and from what I can tell it's nothing like Hongdae. I'd rather compare it to Myeongdong. Lots of shops, lights, a few cafés and many people, including old people and way too many kids running around. Nothing like Hongdae's college vibe with all its street musicians.

Because the bus ride took us over an  hour, I was quite tired by the time we got there so we went into a special café to get some coffee.

Their ice-cream coffee was alright, but the interior totally made up for it.

First of all, the benches at the tables were actually swings:

Sooo pretty~

Besides that, the café is actually a plushie store as well :D

It was really difficult to not buy some. They had so many Arpakassos, and a Toothless plushie too. And Baymax!

For dinner, we went to a restaurant chain called Watami. They sell a big~ variety of japanese food, reasonably priced. I really want to try out their sets sometime, 394 NTD (ca 10€)  per person is not bad for that amount of food.

We got a delicious mango juice~

And I ordered some simple Soba, since it was quite warm and i needed a refreshment.

They cost me 160NTD (about 3€)

That's it so far ^-^ 

I bought quite a few items at Etude House here so i'll probably show them to you soon too :D

See you soon~

Love, 

Lydia

Etude House Sweet Recipe Baby Choux Base Review

Etude House Sweet Recipe

Baby Choux Base Review

Today I finally have another review for you~ ^-^

Something that I almost used up by now, it's Etude House's Baby Choux Base! :D

Sweet Recipe Baby Choux Base

#02 Berry Choux

Price: 12,60$ on Amazon (new packaging only)

Amount: 25g (35g in the new packaging)

I bought this while I was in Korea last year, simply because the packaging was too sweet~

A sales assistant helped me pick it, and we had quite some trouble finding the right one. 

She told me the Baby Choux Base was made for people with oily skin, and because I told her I have very dry and sensitive skin she said it could dry out my skin even more.

However, after testing every single BB cream that was fit for dry skin in the store on the back of my hand, we came to the conclusion that all the BB creams...were too dark for me ;-;
And here I thought at least in Korea I'd be able to buy make-up...

So in the end, I got the Baby Choux Base anyways because it was light enough for my skin tone, and apparantly the #02 Base is especially good for pale skin as it brightens the skin up a bit.

As you can see on the packaging, it has an SPF too, which is great because I get sunburns so easily~

especially on my nose. ^^''

It comes in a small, adorable jar, which I usually don't like that much because it tends to be not very hygenic.

However...

It already comes with a small spatula, which is great 

It has a very specific scent to it, kind of sweet...yet still a bit chemical.

Very powdery, somehow.

The texture is quite thick and feels a bit grainy, which reminds me of peelings. I guess that is supposed to help with making your skin look soft.

You only need to use a very small amount to cover your whole face, just like BB cream.

Which is great, because that way the product will last you a lot longer 

As you (hopefully) can see, it brightens up my skin a lot.  The colour is really light~ which makes sense, since it's intended for people with pale skin, but even for me it's so light that it looks quite unnatural if I only wear the baby choux base.

But since it's just a base, it's intended to be worn underneath BB cream or other foundation, and for that it works really well. Usually foundation or BB cream is always a tad bit too dark for me, but with the baby choux base underneath, it always has the right colour. And it appears more soft too, even when my skin is very dry.

I love it~ It was not expensive, and yet it works so well for me.

And it lasts so long too~ I have been using it for over a year now and it's still not empty!

Maybe you have noticed something different about this blog post....

Those cute emoticons! 

They're from Little Miss Paintbrush and were distributed on a blog post on Kawaii.ph

They're absolutely adorable, and look a lot better than my usual usage of ^-^and :D

..right?

Tell me what you think about them in the comments below~

Also, what do you think of this product? Do you have any Etude House products yourself?

If yes, which ones are your favourites?  ^^ 

On another note, I might not be able to post something next week, as I'm moving to Taipei on February the 23rd, so I'll probably be really~ busy with packing and preparing everything. So please don't mind my short hiatus, I'll be posting lots of updates when I'm in Taipei. Hopefully, I will have many interesting stories to share then.

If you want to keep updated, feel free to follow me on my Instagram and Tumblr , I'll be posting daily photos or short diary posts on Tumblr . Right now, there's mainly photos from my Korea trip last year, but hopefully you'll enjoy those too.

Love, 

Lydia