twinkletea: May 2013

2013

023 - Taiwan Travelogue Day 4

5/10/2013 12:39:00 PM

Every morning, I'll open the hotel window and put my hand out to feel how cold the weather is. This is also the view that we see on the left of the hotel.

Mandatory daily #ootd shots.

Guess we ran out of poses somehow.

Yay, happy that today is finally a day for sightseeing and not just shopping! Can you guess where we're heading to today?

A cute advertisement at Nanjing East station to greet us good morning!

Waiting to cross to SOGO because Mr. W needs the toilet, lol.

Let's gooo!

This is the bus that brings you directly to Jiufen. There will be several mini buses offering you rides to Jiufen and other scenic places and touting for business nearby, just ignore them and take this bus.

After a 2 hour ride in which we fell asleep on the bus, we've reached Jiufen! Top of the mountains :)

This shop is situated right outside the entrance to Jiufen Old Street, so it experiences pretty high traffic. It sells all kinds of cuttlefish, we bought some back for our parents at the end of the day.

The entrance to Jiufen Old Street is crowded, the place is filled with mainly Chinese tourists. Jiufen Old Street is a one way street whereby you'd have to exit from this very entrance, so don't bother buying things once you see them. You'll always pass by the same shops a second time again.

Smells darn good! Cheese churros shop, but the taste was nothing memorable.

People mountain, people sea.

Peanut candy and ice cream with chives wrapped with popiah skin. Nice and worth the try!

This guy was shaving this huge block of peanut candy continuously.....but the block just didn't look like it was decreasing in size.

Malt candy, my favorite! Bought 2 sticks back, one in My Melody and one in An-pan Man!

Grilled mushrooms that weren't fantastic, but W finished it.

Hip aunty.

Black sausages...

Is this some red wine chicken wrapped with glutinous layer something maybe? It looks too much like human meat for me to try it. Eeps!

The cutest dog ever!? What a flat face, I'd totally kidnap him back to SG and name him pancake.

The famous Jiufen Teahouse.

Pretty scenery...air was good outside.

Someday I wanna try sitting here, sipping hot tea in the cold weather and enjoying the scenery... This place reminds me of a scene in Spirited Away, whereby the paper slips were attacking the dragon.

I love this...

When we reached the dead end, I got tired... Let's turn back now!

This is what my boyfriend does behind my back...

We saw a sweet shop.

OHOHOHHHHH. My favorite part, Ah Gan Yee Jiufen taro balls! There was a queue...

The menu.

Workers making them fresh on the spot.

We ordered the hot one!

And walk up to this place to eat, where everyone was looking for a seat with a view.. W said it reminded him of eating at some temple, lol.

Blackball in Singapore is nothing compared to this, of course :D But I think it's the closest we can get -_-

We bought soft ice cream from a newly opened shop. So full from all that eating!

We took a bus down to Ruifang Railway Station.

We forgot to check the timing for our train towards Pingxi!!!! We missed it by a few minutes, so we couldn't reach our destination on time. We wanted to go to Shifen and visit the waterfall. The place closes at 5PM though. Too bad then....was quite disappointed.

Nevertheless, we bought round trip tickets to Shifen and waited for the next train to arrive.

Happy that we're on the train already, let's go already!! :D Oh, there will also be a train conductor to go around checking your train ticket.

As I mentioned before, Taiwan gets dark really early. 6PM looks like 8PM. So we had a hard time trying to figure out which stop we were at already. We stood up too early and had to stand after because our seats were quickly snatched up soon after :(

Welcome to Shifen!! Look at the crowd waiting for the train back.

The friendly and cute train operator!

We entered this shop and spent quite some time there, alot of souvenirs. You can even buy those wooden postcards with dates and send them to whoever/wherever you want.

The day we visited Shifen.

That's the mailbox you can mail your stuff through...

We also wrote on a bamboo thingy and placed it high among the rest as a form of wish.

Next up, we were gonna light some sky lanterns and send the Sky God our wishes!!!!

Menu for you to choose the colours. The most popular option would of course be the 4-coloured lantern, which we the kiasu people bought. Hahaha.

Taking our calligraphy really seriously............

Awwww, please grant us our wishes!!!!!

My silly and excited boyfriend.

Guess what's this for?

We also put our own fireworks! First time in my life ever, it was quite scary. W lit the fireworks. I didn't dare to go near it.. We bought the one for 9 times :) It was a really amazing experience! It is also to let the Sky God know of your presence, hahaha k kidding I made that up lol.

The shaky bridge..

TADAH!!! We took the train back from Ruifang to Taipei Main Station, and then took train to XMD. Woah, what an experience because the train interchange was crazy crowded and so many different trains and routes to look out for! Glad we managed to find our way through. By the way, THIS IS THE BOMB. You need to go to this place to eat it when you go to XMD. It's at the second level, beside an orange sign of Holiday KTV. The name of the hot pot place is Ma La Yuen Yang Hot Pot. Free flow of everything including Movenpick and Haagen Daaz ice cream. The angus beef is a MUST TRY. The next time I go there, I'm just going to whack them angus beef and order 5 plates of it for myself.

We had the hot pot at 11:45PM. You are only allowed 2 hours of eating time. That's more than enough because we were so darn full after it that we could hardly breathe LOL.

One word: SHIOK!
So this marks the end of our trip to Jiufen & Shifen on the 4th day. Here's a summary of my Taiwan Travelogue so far:

Taiwan Travelogue: Day 1
Taiwan Travelogue: Day 2
Taiwan Travelogue: Day 3 Part I
Taiwan Travelogue: Day 3 Part II

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025 - Mother's Day Brunch

024 - Starbucks Visuals

023 - Taiwan Travelogue Day 4

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