After planning for a family trip with my parents for so long, we finally managed to find a time when all four of us are free, and it happened in Taiwan! Special thanks to my father for taking leave to fly back, and my brother who was the main planner and coordinator for this trip! Taiwan is the perfect blend of natural sceneries, urban and traditional architecture, and delicious food! It also doesn't lack couple spots, for couples who are interested in travelling Taiwan together.
25 May 2016, Cloudy, Singapore
After coming back from work, my brother and I did some final edits to the itinerary, and then we left home for the airport. We ate burger king for supper before boarding. My mum seems to be really hungry! We were pretty early, so we did a lot of window shopping hehe. Flight got delayed, ah, what's new.
26 May 2016, Cloudy and rain, Taipei City
We arrived at TaoYuan airport in the morning hours. We cleared the customs and went to terminal 2 via skytrain, where the phone shop opens earlier at 7. I tried some bottled milk tea bought from a 7-11. It was extremely sweet haha, but nevertheless nice. We then took bus 1819 and left the airport. The bus ride there provided the first urban impression of Taiwan. The highways are built high above ground, such that they are literally high ways, very impressive. Upon arriving at Taipei Main Station, I had my second awe. The train station is really huge! It is the interchange station for the high speed rail and the city metro. We had to walk for 5 minutes in the train station before actually reaching the boarding place for the metro. We took a ride to XiMen, where we had our breakfast. I had LuRouFan. It is really soft and fragrant. The rice that they use are the short grained pearl rice, and they serve wasabi with soy sauce. This is noteworthy: Japanese influence! We topped up our breakfast with AhZong MianXian. I bought my first real milk tea here, but it was a disappointment! (Ps: It is called Pen Land, probably not a good idea to buy from them.) We explored the area for a bit before checking into our BnB. After throwing down our main luggage, we made our way to LongShanSi, a very traditional Chinese temple. Nothing much to see here, to be honest, just here for a picture or two. Next, we went to ChiangKaiShek Memorial Hall. This place really should be visited. The scale of everything here is just crazy! The area is so insanely huge!
You'll never find a place at this scale in Singapore! The traditional Chinese architecture is simply classy and beautiful. Our next destination is Taipei 101. After eating a light lunch in the food court, we went up to the viewing gallery at the top. The view is magnificent, but since the air is not exactly clean and we are looking through the glass, the pictures did not turn out to be impressive. Nevertheless, it is still pretty good to see all of Taipei by walking round the viewing gallery. Something interesting to note is that this tall tower has a large circular damper somewhere near the top of the tower, open to public for viewing. When the tower is hit by strong winds, the damper serves to reduce the shake experienced at the top of the tower. Engineering at its finest! It rained at this point, and we had to cancel our Elephant Mountain hiking trip. We simply rested at the food court since our legs are already very tired at this point. Next, we went to Q-square and the underground shopping street. Q-square is just like another mall in Singapore, but the underground street is very interesting. It is really really long. Imagine Orchard road, but underground, away from the sun (in summer) and the cold (in winter). An underground shopping street is really a good idea. Singapore should have more places like Citylink. After my brother added some Tomica cars to his collection, we exited the shopping street and hitched a ride on a taxi to NingXia night market. This is also our very first Taiwan night market experience.
The smell of the smelly tofu is quite a turn off. However, we still bought a lot of food from the night market! Our loot included Taiwan sausages, meat kebab, random sorts of kuehs, muah chee, thick fish soup, some oysters and fruits. We entered one of the shop there to sit down and enjoy all the food. After finishing the food, we bought even more food (glutton us, the food is too tempting not to try), and went back to our BnB to finish them up and rest for the night.
27 May 2016, Cloudy and rain, Taipei outskirts
We booked a taxi to travel around the outskirts of Taipei today. It was simply awesome and totally worth it! After eating a simple western breakfast at XiMen, we went to meet up with the taxi driver. Our first destination is YeLiu. We made a few stops as recommended by the taxi driver. One of them is the large rock near YeLiu, and looks like a turtle. We climbed to the top for some daredevil pictures. After that, we went inside the Geopark. The rock formations here are very unique indeed. The combination of large alternating tides, strong typhoon winds, the salty waves and atmosphere created the most amazing landforms indeed! Not just the queen's rock, but the entire natural landscape here is beautiful! You can choose to walk all the way to the end of the cape for an awesome scenic lookout (and get some beautiful pictures), but we turned back because it was too hot in summer. You can find a cover photo worthy shot down here. We went to Keelong city for lunch. The driver recommended a seafood restaurant to us, which charges more reasonable prices. My dad chose a fresh fish, which made him very pleased since the freshness of the fish cannot be found easily now. After lunch, we drove down to ShiFen. Here, we visited the widest waterfall in Taiwan, ShiFen Waterfall. In Chinese language, ShiFen means ten marks, or 'very', so this waterfall has many many nicknames such as 10 mark waterfall or 'Very Waterfall'. Enough of the naming! This waterfall is extremely beautiful, amazing, awe-inspiring, and everything!
This is probably the first time I am able to see a large waterfall up close. Too bad we are not allowed to go into the water. Next on the bucket list in ShiFen is releasing sky lanterns. We made our way to the old street along railway tracks. It is so classic! For the sky lanterns, I wished for world peace, good health for my family, and a successful PhD (very standard stuff I think), though most Singaporeans will wish for $$$ by drawing a huge dollar sign. I wonder if the locals will draw a huge NTD, haha. After writing up our well wishes in Chinese, we got the staff to help us light the lantern and take pictures as we rotated the lantern so that all 4 sides are captured. It was a heart touching moment, as all our well wishes rise up and disappear into the sky. We then took more pictures of the train and the old street before going to the next destination: YinYangHai and JinGuaShi. YinYangHai was supposed to be beautiful, a beach where the golden waters (due to mineral deposits) mix into the blue sea. We only saw greyish blue waters. Not wasting time, we went to the Golden Waterfall. It was named because of the shiny mineral deposits on the rock, which will reflect the sunlight, creating a sparkling waterfall. However, it was not as impressive as 10 mark waterfall because there was too little water. JinGuaShi was not very impressive as well. We took a stroll around the area and tried the lunch box that the miners will eat during their work shifts. The lunch box is very Japanese, metal container wrapped in cloth, but the food inside is Chinese. Didn't touch the large rock of pure gold. Funny that nobody was worried people will steal it because it was simply too heavy to carry away. Our next destination is JiuFen Old Street, the place which inspired the setting of anime cartoon 'Spirited Away'. Our driver was very nice and he walked the streets with us, telling us about street and shop histories, and which are the stalls that we should go to. He recommended a dessert shop, where we sat for a while to eat hand made rice balls, very chewy and yummy! He also recommended a place where we should buy pineapple pastries because they make it and sell it on the spot. We tested it ourselves and it was true to its reputation. Price was a little expensive, but it was so good that even the locals buy it! (Unfortunately or fortunately, they don't add preservatives and the quality deteriorated quickly.) We saw the Ocarina shop. The owner was playing 'Always With Me', one of my favourite pieces. His hairstyle really looked like the dragon boy in the cartoon. As night fell, the red lanterns along the streets began to lit up one by one. We walked on until a familiar building came into sight.
AhMei ChaLou, the building which the bath house in the cartoon was drawn after! The building architecture totally stands out from the rest, and was truly beautiful with the iconic red lanterns of JiuFen! There was no suspension bridge and bath house in the area though. This is one place where I actually enjoyed the entire feel of the place despite it being crowded. With the many stuff we bought along the streets, we left JiuFen for Keelong night market in front of a temple. We had more of the night market street food. Rain made it a little difficult, but it didn't completely stop us. We sat down in front of a seafood shop and ordered crabs, oysters and sea urchin, which I was extremely excited to try. The butter crabs were pretty good, but the other seafood was not as fresh as we expected them to be. After buying more food for supper, we headed back to our BnB, bidded farewell to our excellent tour guide driver, put down our loot, and headed out to XiMenDing for another round of walking and shopping. Bought a few more snacks here despite being pretty full.
28 May 2016, Cloudy, Taipei (YangMingShan > DanShui)
Today was an exceptionally tiring and damaging day. After eating Taiwan instant noodles for breakfast, we set off to YangMingShan. We took public transport all the way there and began our light hearted bush walk along the nature trial. This is my style of travelling, and I enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the sun was already out and has caused a lot of skin damage to my family. The next destination is ZhuZiHu. We waited for the public bus at the bus stop. There was a LED display that claimed that the bus (small 8, small 9) will come in 25 mins. It was a long wait, but we decided that we can save money by taking that bus. When the timer slowly dropped to 5 min, it suddenly says that the service no longer operate! Most likely, this was caused by bad frequency combined with too many people wanting to board a small bus. Cursing our luck, we decided to get a taxi up instead. After waiting for so long, we were hoping to find something nice at ZhuZiHu, but it was actually a slight disappointment. It is a beautiful mountainous farming area nonetheless.
We just walked around to look at the natural mountainous scenery and bought some food from the shops. There is a section where people can pay to enter a place with LOTS of ball-shaped hydrangea. The flowers were really pretty, but there were too many people inside. My family didn't enter because we think it wasn't worth it. Many people, tourists and locals alike, came here to take their graduation and cosplay pictures, with the mountainous and flowery scene as backdrop. This place would be a lot better to appreciate if there was an orderly way to walk around, like a nature trail. Getting out of the place was another nightmare (crowd and bad bus frequency). We just called the previous taxi driver to fetch us to the nearest metro station, BeiTou. Since we skipped lunch, we needed some food, so I bought some cheap sushi at the metro station. The salmon sushi was pretty decent :). We then took the metro and went to DanShui. We went to the old street and settled for a late lunch, trying the two famous food there, the TieDan (iron egg) and the AhGei (arcade). To me, TieDan is just very extremely overcooked tea leaf egg and AhGei is just beancurd skin with more special filling. We then walked down the old street and bought some stuff, including the famous egg cake. We missed the park walk along the river side, and I regretted this because I think it would be a lovely walk. Slowly, we found ourselves at the pier, so we decided to buy tickets to take the ferry to fisherman's wharf. It was a good decision, other than the fact that the ferry ride there was like a mini roller coaster ride. The fisherman's wharf and Lovers' bridge is an excellent place to chill out. The entire pier is 2 storeys, with shops on the first and open air walkway on the second, connecting to the Lovers' bridge. We caught the sunset here. It was simply, beautifully amazing.
Our last destination of the day is the all famous ShiLin night market, the most famous and commercialized night market of Taipei. It sure lives up to its name! The food here is really nice and the entire street is very long, not to mention it having a basement section (which is a rather bad idea since all the oil fumes stay indoors). The air quality here is not good, and the entire atmosphere is loud, smoky, messy and fast paced. Nevertheless, we bought a lot of food and sat down at the basement, ordering coffin bread to go with the multitude of other yummy snacks we bought. I really like the fried milk cubes, and the coffin bread! The milk is frozen, then rolled over batter before frying. The coffin bread is thick fried bread with additional fillings, covered by a thin piece of bread cut from itself, making a... coffin. Really enjoyed the food here. After eating, we continued to walk around the area, looking at the games that the locals play. Apparently, bursting balloons carnival style is very popular in Taiwan, because their weapons can range from guns to darts to arrows. After being really beat up from today's itinerary, we went back to our BnB, stopping by XiMen's red house, only open during weekends for a cultural exhibition.
29 May 2016, Cloudy, Taipei
Since we had a rough day the day before, we decided to sleep till a bit later. We first visited the very first Din Tai Fung in the world for brunch. It is a 4 storey building along YongKang street. We ordered XiaoLongBao, which is a must, along with other food such as noodles, GuoTie (pot stickers), noodles, chicken soup. The quality of the food is roughly similar to the one that we have in Singapore, but what made this main branch stand out is the hospitality. Even before you order your food, the waitress would bring a whole tray of appetizers for you to choose from, and they keep refilling your tea. The quality of the service here is just unparalleled! We then walked along YongKang street to find the famous mango dessert shop. It was too crowded, so we settled for an air-conditioned mango dessert shop nearby. We made the right choice because the quality of the mango ice dessert is not all that different. The ice cream and the mango ice are all extremely flavourful. Then, we just spent our whole afternoon hopping around shopping malls. We took the train around to go to different malls to find that all their malls have a common and interesting similarity. All of them are pretty small in area, but very very tall. Ten storeys of shopping, all served by escalator! It is unique because nearly all the malls are like that. There are lifts, but people usually don't use it. The toilets were also very clean. We went back to the Taipei main station to walk the rest of the underground shopping street, partly to escape the hot weather too. We went to RaoHe night market early. RaoHe night market turned out to be one of my favourites. The stalls are arranged orderly in 2 lines and is close to a river park and the rainbow bridge of Taipei. You will not get lost.
You can imagine how wonderful it would be like to eat good food while strolling down the river park or walking across the bridge. My top favourites in this night market were the fried squid and some cheese prata thingy. Just really like this night market. We then made our way back to the BnB to have a final shower. My mum was still not satisfied and she urged us to take her down to XiMenDing for a final round of shopping, haha! And so we did. We bought our very last JiPa fried chicken, bubble milk tea and AhZong MianXian. We walked around the area, then reluctantly went back to our BnB to take our luggage, then meet up with the prearranged taxi driver to take us to the airport. Flight was past midnight, and most of the duty free were already closed by the time we were there. Very reluctant to leave Taiwan, really, but every thing good still comes to an end. Taiwan, I will be back to visit you again, this time to explore your entire island from north to south!
