Taiwan Trip Photoblog: Ye Liu - Jiu Fen - Hua Lian

After an eventful day at Tapei city, we decided to go out of  Taipei city centre for once. Our first stop was Yeliu Geopark, a cape situated in a small town in the middle of no where called Wan Li. Yeliu geopark is located between Taipei and KeeLung, whereby you can catch a bus from Taipei main station itself.

According to wiki, the stratum of yeliu is basically composed of sedimentary rocks; the formation of sea bays is due to the impact of sea erosion on softer rock layers, while those hard and solid ones may therefore turn into sea capes eventually. The total distance measured from the entrance of the Yehliu Geopark to the end of the cape is about 1.7 km; we didn't dare to meet the challenge of finishing the entire landscape simply because its too hot. Peter was basically bathed in his own sweat and we have to go hiding under the shades like every 5 minutes. Well, we cant complain much since its summer time and the picture turned out to be stunning with the cloudless clear blue sky and crystal blue sea. 

We spent around less than an hour at Yeliu Geopark and left like boiled lobsters. We took a local bus back to Kee Long town and then re-routed to our next stop Jiu Fen. This is our second time visiting Jiu Fen. Although the old town still has it charm, but we got a bit bored since there was not much of difference in terms of the scenery and stuffs you can find in the shops compare to our previous visits. Nevertheless, we had a good lunch at one of the local beef noodles shop and the famous taco balls shaved ice. 

That pretty much summarized up our short and sweet Taipei trip. 

Our next stop was Hua Lien. We had to take a 3 hours Taipei - Hualien train since the journey its quite long. One thing I have to mention is that Taipei main station is MASSIVE, there is a centre court which is so big I wonder why they would waste such a big space. The second floor is floor of eatery place but its slightly more pricey compare to normal restaurant. The train station was jam packed with locals since its summer holiday, but thanks to my good planning, we bought our train ticket online 3 days before we flew to Taiwan. *patting myself at the back*

One of the great highlight of our 3 hour train journey was 台铁便当- taiwanese bento set. The bento set which cost around NT55 have this authentic looks and tasted delicious. I bought the set which came with a big piece of pork chop and some vege. yum yum.

Hua Lian is one of the most beautiful city in Taiwan, the city face the pacific ocean and having the entire stretch of central mountain range at its back. Naturally, the tourist highlight of Hua Lian are the mountains and the seasides.

Once we have checked into a cozy minsu (B&B), we went to visit a local night market named Zi Qiang night market which was famous for their local food. The spread is not as diverse as what Shihlin market in Taipei had, but it was charming in its own way. We had some finger food and one of the highlight was the coffin bread, which is basically a thick piece of deep fried bread stuffed with all sort of ingredients such as mutton, chicken etc.    

The next morning we booked a tour guide to bring us to Taroko Gorge. But before heading to the famous tourist spot, our friendly tour guide brought us for a scrumptious breakfast at a local restaurant in Hualien which selling the famous gong zheng pao zi. The queue is super long but am not too impressed with the pao, it tasted like normal pork bun but with thicker and chewy bread dough. 

After the satisfying breakfast, we headed towards the Taroko Gorge with much anticipation. The view at Taroko Gorge were simply magnificent, long stretch of mountains, huge and deep rivers, limestones, caves and cliff. Its just great scenery one after another. Because the national park was so huge we have to drive in instead if walking. Its consist of 10 attractions, namely: 

• Tunnel of Nine Turns (九曲洞 Jiuqü Dong)
• Eternal Spring Shrine (長春祠 Changchun)
• Swallow Grotto (燕子口)
• Jinheng Park (靳珩公園)
• The Bridge of the Kind Mother (慈母橋)
• Tiansiang (天祥)
• Jhueilu Precipice (錐麓斷崖)
• Lioufang Bridge (流芳橋)
• Hill of Yu the Great (大禹嶺)
• Buluowan (布洛灣)

However, we are only able to visit just 4 spots as some were closed down for maintenance. The tour guide dropped us at each of the attraction spots and wait for us to go in and explore on our own. It was pretty strenuous as we have to walk many kilometers from the main road into the small paths in order to reach each of these attraction. At one point we were climbing up hundreds of staircase which is ascending at 60 degrees up to a temple look alike bell tower. It was so tiring but the panoramic view of the endless stretch of mountains on top of the hill worth all the effort.

There was also this suspension bridge which hanging at least 100 meters above a dangerously looking cliff. If the height is not scary enough, it basically sway from left to right whenever the wind blows.  I enjoyed the magnificent view of the cliff which heightened a few folds by the adrenaline rush. But Peter who has problem with the height not even dare to look down while crossing the bridge.

Our second day in Hua Lien ended with the visit to the famous Qi Xing Tan.The beautiful beach was consist of no sand, just tons and tons of smooth little rocks. After a whole day of strenous walking, we just sat on the beach, played with the rocks and watched the beautiful sunset. What a great way to end the day! 

Taiwan Trip Photoblog: Taipei day 1

Since I am too lazy to blog the details of my recent Taiwan Trip, i'm gonna let the photos speaks by itself. 

The first day in Taipei was fairly relaxing. We went to Taipei main station to purchase in advance our Taipei- Hua Lian Train Ticket first thing in the morning. Followed by breakfast in the famous "Yong he dou jiang dian" which can be found at the corner of every main street in Taipei.  

Hearty breakfast with soy bean drinks, xiao long bao and stuffed onion pancakes

Next we head to the Confucius temple at Datong district, whereby the temple is modeled after the original Confucius Temple in Qufu, Shandong Province of China. It was quite fun to look at all the details of the architecture and design of the chinese temple while reading about the write-about of  the famous Chinese fu-zi of all time. We even got the chance to view the famous Confucius 4D show for free!  

Then, we found out accidentally that opposite the street there is a Summer open air concert going on, and we can resist the chance to have a look inside. The whole area was super huge whereby it used to be the exhibition site for flora expo. We went from one stage arena to the next, some are open to public but some imposed restricted entry. Overall we enjoyed the atmosphere but decided to leave after a while as we cant stand the 37 degrees heat!

 

Next stop was our favorite place in whole Taiwan, the Beitou hot spring. But before that, we had simple lunch with Taiwanese local cuisine - braised mince pork rice, dry squid soup and pork balls. Yum yum. I am super in-love with the hotspring in Taiwan. The first time we came to Taiwan, we went to the Beitou public bath rather than private bath due to a simple reason- its cheaper. You can find all sort of private bath hotspring package which is basically a small bath tube in a hotel room available for 2-3 hours in ALL the big hotels in Beitou. Some may goes up to hundreds, we had chosen the public bath which only cost at a few dollars, but with much better ambiance and surrounding! The public bath is consisting of at least 4 big pools of different temperature, the pools are surrounding by tall trees which not only provide great nature view, but also shield the pools from the outsiders. Although this is not our first time being here, we still love the place!

After a good soak, we went to famous dan sui shopping district , which is just a station away from Bei Tou. The street are full with flocks of tourist, good street -food, and many many lovely dogs. Taiwanese love to walk their dogs, i think Dogs in Taiwan live a happier life compare to Malaysia's.

Peter has his 10 dollar head neck massage which is ok. But the highlight was the fisherman wharf. We hop on to the boat to go to the fisherman wharf for a sunset view.It didnt occur to me how fast the sun goes down the horizon. 1 minute the whole sea is bathing in the golden sun rays, and the next minute the whole sky turned pitch black. And the next thing you will see is the colorful neon light of the Fisherman wharf's bridge shimmering brightly in the dark. The view is simply magical. Frankly, I cant think of a better way to spend the night than this. 

Then, we ends the night with good ramen, a bit expensive but i guess you pay for the view as the restaurant was located on the harbour overlooking the sea. Then while on our way back to hotel, we were munching more snacks while passing by the shopping street. 

Stay tune for the rest of my Taiwan photoblog!

Best trip ever!

Peter and I went to Taiwan early this month. It was a long awaited holiday, and I am really glad that the trip totally worth the wait. 

Instead of staying in the Taipei city, we went to visit many scenic places this time around, such as Yi Lan and Hua Lian. We went biking, hiking, whale (more like dolphin) watching, swimming etc., basically every outdoor activities you can think of. On top of that, everywhere we go, we went hot springs-dipping, not just once, but 3 times! We even managed to check ourselves into a surfer's hostel, which is smacking right in front of one of the most beautiful beach I've ever seen before.

Just to give you glimpse of what Taiwan is all about:

Isn't it such a breath taking view? This was taken at Tarako Gorge in Hua Lian, basically you need to climb up 1km of 45 degrees steep staircase in order to see this view. 

This is Yehliu Geopark, one of the famous wonders in the world. The rock weathering, wave attack and earth movement has contribute to the formation of such a rare geological landscape.

Anyway, these are just appetizers - random pictures I've taken using my pathetic samsung phone's camera. I will show you the full horizon of my Taiwan trip in the subsequent posts, stay tuned!

Taiwan Trip part III

Here comes the long awaited third post of my Taiwan Trip. I have to admit that since the trip was like 2 months ago, i find its kinda hard to remember all the details. Well, hopefully the rest of the posts will come swiftly in no time, i cant stand myself going through another 2 months of procrastination.   

Second part of our second day of the Taiwan Trip started off with the visit to the infamous Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂). Chiang Kai Shek was the successor of SunyatSen after he died in 1925. He served as the President of the Republic of China in 1954 and moved his government to Taipei, Taiwan. 

The memorial hall is located in the Liberty square (自由広場), its a big squarish compound surrounded by a white color entrance ark, A Chinese National Theatre and a National Concert Hall at each sides and the memorial hall is facing the ark. The compound is so big (240,000 square meters) that it takes around 5-8 minutes just to walk across to the opposite site. 

Peter was greatly amazed by the Gigantic ark. Yes, we were trying out the panorama shooting mode and the output was kinda hilarious. 

Now, my turn. This is one of the Chinese Theatre or National Concert Hall (they look exactly the same anyway), and the opposite one in panorama mode.

And here i am sitting infront of the memorial hall

The building looks magnificent in white, the wide space and white tiles accentuate its magistic and i gotta say this is how a national monument supposed to look like. 

And then we started our journey of climbing up the thousands steps (okok, its only 89 steps) of staircases to the hall where the famous statue located. It almost reminded me of our very own Batu Caves 292 staircase.

The famous Chiang Kai Shek Bronze statue (the picture does not justify how big is the statue, its about 3 floors high in its actual size) and the changing of the guards which take place every hour, attracting many visitors.

There is this inscription on both side of the wall which says: The purpose of life is to improve the general life of humanity and The meaning of life is to create and sustain subsequent lives in the universe. If you have watched the recent Jacky Chan 100th movie 1911, you will understand the statement better. Its basically corroborates the ideology of democracy. The fact that the Chinese democracy was achieved through shedding of blood and sacrificing of lives, the statement sounds much more meaningful than just a fancy slogan.  

Underneath the hall (behind the staircases) is a big museum which showcases the history of Chiang Kai shek. There were so much to see and digest, from official documents, letters, to the chair he sat and the car he drove! but sadly its all written in Chinese.

So, peter can only admire all the pictures in order to figure out the historical events

The impressive miniature of the CKS Memorial hall

While we are viewing the display in the museum, i heard a loud noise from the hallway and discovered that the changing guards actually walk all the way from the museum area (underneath) up to the main hall (above) where the statue is. The funny thing is they will march all the way in and take a lift to go up, while maintaning their perfect posture and no smile at all time. how cool is that!

oh, the guards are pretty cute too. for some reason, they all look the same to me. Maybe that's their selection criteria, not too tall nor too short, slim built, short hair, dark skin and small eyes (seriously!) 

Overall, Peter and I enjoyed the visit to CKS memorial. I wish our country have a memorial hall like this, not the 'istana' type which cost billions to built but only meant for private use.

Disclaimer: This is a picture grabbed from Google

P/s: Last picture to share here, this has become our favourite thing to do for the rest of our Taiwan Trip. ;)

Taiwan Trip Part 2

The second day of Taiwan started off with onion pancake (蔥油餅) at hawkers stall at the underground shopping street of Long Shan Temple MRT Station.

Frankly the onion pancake tasted alright, i've asked the aunty to add in pork leg pieces however its still a bit bland to my taste bud. There were alot of this funny leaves (i think its 九層塔- chinese basil leaves) inside which resembles some sort of herb taste and its kinda over powering.

Anyway, back to the Long shan Temple. The temple is huge but not as huge as our Ke Lok Si at Penang, there were many lady monks (do you call them nuns as well?) praying earnestly to the idols and there are seas of people buying the lucky charm and burning joysticks.

The infamous temple is located in a very old part of Taipei city called Wan Hua District. Peter and I were amused by so many old people wandering around the old streets and run down buildings in this area. It actually felt like the other side of the coin of the Taipei City which was never surfaced in those tourist advertisement on the tele. In fact it was a stark contrast of the picture of clean and advance Taipei city which we are more familiar with.

We got to know more about the old district when we went to the next destination which is 剥皮寮. The old district were inhabited by the Taiwanese natives- Bangka or Mongka (艋舺), during those early days, the people build their lives around the tradings of goods with the Han chinese along the Danshui river, and the natives uses canoe (獨木舟) and cows as their means of transportation and that's why the place we known as Bangka (which basically means canoe in their native tongues).

剥皮寮 is one of the oldest street in Taiwan which was restored and made anew in order to preserved its historic value. We were having great fun appreciating its history, old buildings, billboards, displays, and they looked absolutely stunning in digital.

In fact there was this SHE music video and a Taiwan local movie named Monga which talks about gangsterism, underworld activities, sex trade etc. which were being filmed here!

There were many old quarters/ shop houses being converted to living museum, whereby the history was described in details through posters and pictures hang on the wall, on top of that, there is a multimedia room which shows documentary of 艋舺 to the tourists. After we get bored with all the history, we started to do some funny things to entertain ourselves.

We were giggling like children when we took those pictures. It was super funny.

Next stop was the famous shopping street Xi Men Ding. Its a shopping heaven for the youngsters, whereby there were many street performances, concert being held in this busy hippy street across the year.

It was actually kinda hard to believe that we were still in the same wan hua district (its just a station away from the old 艋舺 area) but in Xi Men Ding everything spells of modern and civilisation. Except that they do have one historical building in Xi men ding which is the red house theatre. It was originally a market building and was converted to a theatre. we find that it was kinda boring since we didnt really plan to do shopping, hence we went to have a bowl of the famous "Ah Zong Mee Sua" before we moved on to our next destination.

Well, again, its too bland to my liking. Basically its mee sua in thick sweet soy sauce with some chicken skin strips and corriander leaves. You can see from Peter's facial expression that it was not up to his expectation as well. In fact he thinks that my mom chicken essence mee sua is much better than Ah Zong mee sua. :)

Stay tune for my Taiwan Trip part III post. Gosh, i've written a full post for only half a day of the trip, and i still have another 5 1/2 days of trip to cover!!!

Taiwan Trip Part 1

Going to Taiwan was an impromptu decision.

Peter and I were browsing through Airasia website to purchase last minute tickets to Bali/ Phuket for our honeymoon and we accidentally discovered that it only cost us RM40 more per person if we are flying to Taiwan instead of Indonesia/ Thailand. Well, I've been to Hong Kong and China (Shanghai and Chong Qing) before but Taiwan remains the mysterious virgin land to me, so i'm quite excited with the idea of changing the plan. However what surprised me was that Peter was also keen to choose Taiwan. Well you need to understand that he never really showed that much of interest when it comes to the Chinese culture nor the "Chinese-ism" deep rooted in me which pretty much who i am for the first 20 years of my life. When it comes to Taiwan, what reminded him was always the image of lala mui or lala zai (bimbo girls and guys) and the Chinese entertainment show which i find extremely funny such as 棒棒堂 or 我猜 but is perceived as retarded by his standard. Being an Eurasian, marrying a Chinese girl and having in laws who only watch Chinese channels on the tele was probably something he least expected in his life. LOL

Anyway, my point is it was totally something which is unplanned for and spontaneous, but we were happy when we finally pressed the "Puchase Ticket" button on the website. And heck i was already started to look forward for the honeymoon trip the moment we did that (more than the wedding itself). And i have to say we have no regrets making that decision at all. Taiwan is definitely a FUN place to travel to. There are so many places to see and new things to experience. However, i must say that THE famous Taiwan food which we very much looking forward to was not up to our expectation. It's good but not great enough. There are not much of varieties and if you have tasted food from 1 night market, you have probably tasted all.

Now this bring us to our first night at Taiwan, which is the visit to ShihLin night market. You can tell how eager we were trying to get a taste of the Taiwan food as we literally ran to the so called biggest night market in Taipei once we checked into our lodging place. Frankly, we were expecting like a mile long of street food hawkers but i have to say that our Ming Tian food court at Taman Megah is probably better than ShihLin food stalls. There were not much of varieties and the stalls were serving the same food at every corner. And to make it worse, the smell of smelly taufu is everywhere. I described the smell as shit smell, Peter thought that it was a rotten carcass smell.

Ps: The smell will stick to your hair and Peter literally forced me to go shower and wash my hair once we back to the hotel.

However overall, it was a great eating experience as i have finally tasted "big sausage wrap small sausage". There were so many flavors such as garlic, spicy, wasabi etc., and do you know that the big sausage is actually the sticky glutenous rice?

I think no ones does chinese sausage better than Taiwanese ;)

This is something like a torayaki which filled with different fillings like Red Bean Paste, Carrot slices and butter, and it only cost like RM3 (T$30) for 3.

This is the famous O-ya-jian at RM5 (T$50). In my opinion, Malaysian version better. The taiwan version has to many gelatin like material which the texture is like jelly except it has no taste.

This is another famous pastry which called big pastry wrap small pastry. it wasnt physically appealing so we give it a skip.

We saw some other interesting food like this sausage stall which sell scallions (green onions) wrapped in bacon. This reminds me of Hannah's version of bbq must have- Shitake wrapped in bacon.

Guess what is the most satisfying meal at the end of the day which drew the biggest smile from Peter's face after being tortured by hours of the infused smell of smelly toufu.

It's Yoshinoya's beef rice (T$780). The beef was tender and it tasted heavenly with teriyaki sauce and some ginger mince. Can you imagine that Yoshinoya in Taiwan opens for 24 hours, its 7-11 equivalent. It was truly a fast food restaurant whereby you need to go to counter to order and take your own food and the best thing is the food was served within minutes of ordering.

See how long is the streaky beef strips.

Anyway, thanks to Yoshinoya. the first night of food hunt was ended satisfactorily. Stay tuned for my next post on Taiwan Trip.