Taiwan Day 5 - Shifen & Jiufen

Greetings from Taipei Main Station! It was ZC's birthday, we went for a quick breakfast in a cafe nearby our hostel and then headed to Shifen via Taipei Main Station.  Since it's not MRT and quite similar to Malaysia's KTM, we had trouble looking for method to purchase train ticket from Taipei to Ruifang. After asking few locals as well as employees of the train station, we finally got it in our hand!

It was an... unexciting ride from Taipei to Ruifang. I was expecting a scenic ride filled with picturesque scenery since Ruifang is far away from the hectic city of Taipei, but the sceneries were a little disappointing. Nevertheless, we arrived at Ruifang and changed train to Shifen. 

Shifen is an interesting town. It's street is divided into 2 and built next to the train track. It was weekday but the station was packed to its brim!

Somehow Shifen is popular with sky lanterns, where people write their wishes on the sky lanterns, burn it like a hot air balloon, release it into the sky and wish that your dream will come true. Money money come!

Shifen is also famous with its waterfall. It is about 20mins walk from the town center. 

Plenty of stairs and steep hills along the way... But the final view is rewarding. Behold, Shifen Waterfall with rainbow. The splash were so great, we were wet in no time eventhough we are far away for photos opportunities. We had to make it quick so that our lenses wouldn't get too wet. 

Then, it was another 20mins walk back to the little town, and I was starving. Saw a stall selling BBQ chicken wing with fried rice - where the fried rice filled the (almost) boneless chicken wing!

To get to Jiufen, we have to take a train back to Ruifang, then walk a km to a bus stop, where we can hop onto a bus which heads to Jiufen. Located somewhere on top of a hill, the bus has to go through quite a number of twist and turns before reaching Jiufen. The weather was fine when we arrive, slightly cosy wind and bright sun... But soon, the sky turns dark. 

Jiufen has few famous delicacies, one of it is taro balls. The taro balls here were very 'Q' or elastic, if you get what I mean. However, I prefer if they could use much finer shaved ice. 

It was quite a crowded day, and the sky is starting to get dark. So, we decided to spend our remaining time in a cafe which has a breathtaking view of Jiufen and the sea!

It is compulsory for each person in the cafe to order a food and beverage. Ordered some food which are extraordinary. The outside skin is edible while the glutinous rice inside tasted weird, a little sweet, sour and salty at the same time @_@

We sat in the cafe until 6pm, where night time starts. Night view of Jiufen definitely gave it a different feel... I don't wanna leave this place! It was time to leave Jiufen but we found out that the public buses doesn't operate much in the night. Thus, we have to fork out extra to hitch a ride back to Taipei in a Volkswagen Caravelle.

We left 2 days before leaving Taiwan, thus we decided to pay Ximending another visit to get some souvenirs, especially 姜母茶 which my mom has been urging me to buy for her. A-Lin's song is displaying in Ximending!  

Tried out 阿宗面线 as supper, I am not a fan of noodle or vermicelli, but I found it quite delicious! Worth the try if you are dropping by Ximending.

NEXT - Taiwan Day 6: Tamsui District

Taiwan Day 4 - Taipei

Hello sunshine! After a night of cat and dog rain, thankfully the sky is clear on the fourth day. To be safe, we changed our plan to Jiufen on the fifth day. Thus, we explore the city of Taipei on the fourth day.

Flip Flop Hostel is just opposite of Q Square, where it has underground route to Taipei Main Station, which requires about 10mins walk to reach there. First stop - Ximending. Once we reached Ximending Station, we bought Easy Card from one of the ATM-like machine for easier payment when using public transport. It is something like our Touch n Go card.

 Once we got out of Ximending Station, the Red House Theatre of Ximending is just a stone throw away, literally. Since my name is Simon and Ximen is my name in Mandarin, does it mean I am the owner of the theatre? Hahaha... 

We didn't walk much in Ximending during daytime because we decided to come back at night for its night streets. Thus, we moved on to the next station which is Longshan Temple to pray for God's protection. 

A typical old Taiwan street next to Longshan Temple.

Next station - 中正纪念堂. A little far from the MRT station, but it is worth it if you like history.

It's lunch time, so we figured to head to Taipei 101 to grab a quick (and late) lunch and take some exterior shots of the magnificent skyscraper. Below is the first sight of Taipei 101 once we emerged from the MRT station. 

Hahaha! Taiwan's McDonalds - Checked! Sesame flavoured McChicken-like burger!

We walked around the mall, explored Level 5 of the mall, which is the floor to the indoor observatory at Level 89. It costed NTD500 to go up via the world's fastest elevator. The outdoor observatory is at Level 91, but it was closed due to typhoon to play safe eventhough it has deviated from Taiwan a day ago.

Walk a floor down to Level 88, and you'll get up close and personal with the golden damper. I was so excited to see it because I used it as one of my college's assignment topic. I am always fascinated about anti-earthquake devices or equipment installed in a building. I didn't get to see it swing in person, but I believe it's good news haha!

The lift is fast... like super fast! It can achieve a maximum speed of 600m/min going up or down. Making the total time needed to travel from the bottom to the top in just 40 seconds! Going down at that speed induced a little butterfly in my stomach... Partly due to I am a person who is sensitive to G-Force.  

Once we arrived at ground floor, it was the perfect time to take some night shots of the Taipei 101.

It was my friend's dream to see Taiwanese 'mei mei' in a book store, thus we went to Eslite. The store is quite big, and there was a level of food downstairs in case you are hungry in the middle of 'indulging' a book.  

The food here I can say is not bad! My fruits 西米露 is very refreshing after a long day...

Next - Shifen to Jiufen 十份 到 九分

Taiwan Day 3 - Typhoon Day

On the second night in Taiwan, we were watching the TV news, and bad news arrived. The news illustrated a typhoon is heading to Taiwan from the South-east direction, where Taipei will be hit on the next day. Our original itinerary was to head to Jiufen 九份 on the third day, but our tenant in Jiufen text us to inform that it's raining heavily at his place, and he would refund fully to us if we couldn't come due to typhoon. In the end, we chose to withdraw our booking and head straight to Taipei. 

The next morning, we were treated with 'home-cooked' breakfast done by the hotel owner. It was mostly vege plus porridge and some bread, simple but good for health though. After finishing all the food, we were packed till the brim as the portion was big, thanks boss! 

We wanted to take a ferry back to Shueishe Pier, but we accidentally took the wrong ferry and head back to Ita Shao Pier again, time wasted...

We took the bus back to Taichung HSR, hoping to be able to catch the train to Taipei before it stops operating at 3pm due to the typhoon. We ended up reaching the station at 11am, and nightmare began... The station was packed, real packed! We queued for almost 2 hours to get our 自由座 free seating tickets as they stopped selling 对号座 numbered seats tickets due to too many people rushing back to the North. Some worried about the typhoon, some just finished their Mid Autumn Festival holiday, thus all rushing back to Taipei.  

What made the matter worse, the station stop letting free-seating tickets into the train. This is so unfair as if they want to do so, they should've stop selling free-seating tickets earlier. Luckily the tickets are refundable if they are not used. Out of frustration and starvation, knowing we wouldn't be able to catch the time in time before 3pm, we headed to MOS Burger. 

It was my first time trying out MOS Burger as we don't have it in Malaysia. Price wise, slightly more expensive than McD, but it is a bit more unique. Take my burger for instance, The petty was made out off meat and seafood while the buns were made of rice! 

After refueling ourselves with the burger, we headed downstairs to queue (again) for the taxi. We queued for almost 2 hours again! By this time, we can already feel the wind is getting stronger here in Taichung, and is wondering how is the weather in Taipei. We ended up sharing a taxi with another 2 female locals, both should be in their 40s. We hopped into a Toyota Camry taxi, chit chatted a little on the way and oh my... 

On the highway, we can see the typhoon was like heavy rain in Malaysia, but with stronger wind. Imagine that all 5 adults in the big-sized Camry can feel that the car swayed when the wind blows... What made the experience scarier was the taxi driver was driving on the highway zigzagging like the weather is nothing! But according to the locals, this round of typhoon is not as great as the one they've experience in the previous month. So, maybe this is a piece of cake to them! 

We spent almost 2 and a half hours in the taxi to Taipei. By the time we reach our next accommodation, which is the Flip Flop Hostel, the sky was already dark eventhough it's around 7.00pm. We were greeted by the friendly hostel PIC at the front desk, where we were then brought around to show us the facilities in the building. Our room were on the second floor, it is a 4-person room with two double-decker bed. Both of us occupied the top bunk, while the one below me was occupied by a Japanese guy. 

We were famished again, mostly due to the exhaustion due to all the queuing that day. We grabbed an umbrella each, travelled to the 7-Eleven located about 300m away at the opposite street, and underestimated the strength of typhoon's wind. Our umbrellas were destroyed by wind moments after stepping onto the street...

We ended up buying a new umbrella in the 7-Eleven to compensate back to the hostel... Behold, my first dinner in Taipei:

Here's a panoramic view of the hostel's lobby, pretty comfy isn't it?

Next - Taiwan Day 4: Taipei!

Taiwan Day 2 - Sun Moon Lake

This is one of the view of the street around Ita Shao Pier. The most happening one in the area. You can see the far center in the picture is the hut of Ita Shao Pier. We arrived early, around 10am, checked in by depositing our luggage first before we head out to explore. As we planned to go 九族文化村 or Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village, we decided to explore the street later at night. 

It normally costs about 1000 Yuan for the admission to Formosan + cable car ride (2 ways), but some accommodation has cheaper tickets to offer, so check with your hotel/hostel before purchasing the tickets via the official channel.  

One stretch of the ropeway has a very long span between tower to tower, this is so scary @_@.

Not long later, we arrived at the entrance to Formosan.This is a beautiful place where all the history of Taiwan's nine main tribes are gathered and exhibited. Just let the photos do the talking...

After exploring this little town from one end to another, it's time for lunch. I was hungry and looking for rice (I am a rice tong), but no rice can be found in the little open air cafe which we visited. We sat there, savouring our tasty lunch while waiting for the next round of tribe performance to start. 

We had to rush back to the town after the performance ended as the cable car will stop its service at 4.30pm in weekends. A little early, don't you think? 

After a short rest in the hotel, we went out to explore the town. Plenty of nice food, but the sun set a little earlier than Malaysia. Soon, we discover its beauty at night. 

Coincidentally it was Mid Autumn Festival, where family and friends would gather around, eat moon cake and sip some tea. It was an eye opening scene in Taiwan, where Taiwanese doesn't really eat moon cake in this festival. They will gather on the street and BBQ! 

Although we didn't manage to find any kind of moon cake here, the hotel owner treated us tea which he brewed. Ahhh... What a comfortable feeling to be able to sip tea in such a warming festival. 

Lastly, we went out for a night photo shoot before hitting the sack...

Taiwan Day 3 - Typhoon Day

Taiwan Day 1 - Taoyuan International Airport > Day 2 - Taichung

 For the first time, I embarked on a one week long vacation to Taiwan. My departure flight was located in KLIA2, thus decided to try the KLIA transit for the first time. Tsk tsk tsk, it was bad, real bad. The whole journey should only take 35mins from Bandar Tasik Selatan to KLIA2, but it took the train 1 hour and 20mins due to 'technical issue'. What a start for my holiday! Lucky I was not rushing to catch a plane or something. I would die with an heart attack if I were. 

After meeting up with my college friend ZC, who was my travel companion to Taiwan, we headed into the departure hall and off we went! The flight took 4 hours plus, and we arrived at Taoyuan International Airport. ZC tried to purchase a telco SIM card in the airport but unfortunately most of them are out of stock and were closing down due to end of working hour and the next day was Mid Autumn Festival.   

So we wandered around the airport, trying to find some food to satisfy our famished stomach. Midnight, every shop was closed in the airport, except for 7-Eleven. To our surprise, the 7-Eleven in Taiwan is better equipped and has more choices of food compared to our homeland. We found something like 'lok lok' here, which is a hybrid of steamboat. 

The airport provides handphone charging stands, some people just leave their phones charging here while they wandered off to somewhere. So you can imagine the level of safety of this country. I was a long night, where we decided to give it a try to overnight in an airport. I barely manage to catch some sleep, worrying passer-bys might steal our stuff (yeah, we are 'trained' to be cautious in our own country). 

Soon, it was 6am and the ticketing counter for bus is open. Oh oh, did I mention that our itinerary was to travel to Taichung as our first destination? We took a bus number 705 to Taoyuan High Speed Rail (HSR) Station, to try out how fast the HSR can travel. P.S. Almost all of Taoyuan HSR Station's employees were good looking and polite!

My oh my, I was on the verge of falling asleep once after we boarded the HSR, but we reached Taichung HSR Station in just half an hour! We did some research and found that normal cars will need 2 hours to travel the same path! Albeit the ticket was a little expensive, but it saved us a lot of time! Then, we need to board a bus from the HSR station to Shueishe Pier in Sun Moon Lake. 

A cool breeze blew on our face once we got down from the bus. The temperature here is lower compared to Taoyuan. There were mist covering the hills and on the lake, limiting visibility. To get to our accommodation, we have to take a boat from Shueishe Pier to Ita Shao Pier, which is located at the opposite of the lake... 

We stayed at Dream House B&B, operated by a mid-aged male owner who also stay in the B&B itself. Our room was a little unexpected, largely because of the see-through bathroom wall! Thankfully there was a curtain to cover the glass area, or else we will be able to glance each other while bathing!

Next - Taiwan Day 2 - Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village