I'm back!!! Haven't finished my travelogue on Taiwan so here I am with Day 5 of my trip to Taiwan with the family. If you haven't read the previous four days' here're the links to them:
Taiwan Trip Day 1 Taichung - Chun Shui Tang Teahouse, Fengchia 台湾，台中，春水堂，逢甲夜市
Taiwan Trip Day 2 Taichung - Sun Moon Lake 台湾，台中，日月潭
Taiwan Trip Day 3: Taichung to Taipei, Beitou Museum, Dan Shui 台中到台湾，北投温泉博物馆，淡水老街
Taiwan Trip Day 4: Taipei, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Tasty Xi Di Steak, Xi Men Ding, Shi Da Night Market 台湾: 中正紀念堂, Tasty 西堤牛排, 西門町, 師大夜市
I've been procrastinating a bit with this entry because it just hasn't been high on my list of priorities! But today a friend saw that I uploaded photos of my Taiwan Trip on FB and he told me that he read my blog. He asked for help regarding his upcoming trip to Taiwan and I felt like that was a bit of a push to get this done - it's always gratifying to know that my blog/words can help others or make their lives better, regardless of how slight the extent (:
For Day 5, my mom and I had planned a full day's plans, and following the advice and suggestions of certain friends and relatives who've been to Taiwan, we decided to hire a cab driver to take us around to the sights and locations of the day! This is a common practice in Taiwan, where if you have a group of 4 or 6 and wish to head to many places of interest within driving distance of a locus, it's easier to hire a cab for the entire day because it's cheaper than taking public transport and you save a lot of time!
We started our day off at 9.30am! This is our cabbie's licence... My papa was engaging him in light-hearted conversation about working as a cab driver and I initially thought he was working
illegally as a cabbie because he was talking about having to renew his licence every year - it looked as if his had expired in 2014! It was my error thou; they use the Minguo calendar in Taiwan instead of the Gregorian calendar. *sheepish
Our first destination of the day was
Yeh Liu Geopark (野柳地質公園), all the way up in the north of Taipei!
Yeliu is home to "unique geological formations" including the following, the Queen's Head
Oops, sorry, I only took a photo of the sign because I WAS SO BEWILDERED THAT SO MANY PEOPLE WERE POSING WITH THAT FORMATION THAT WASN'T EVEN THE ORIGINAL -_-" So many tourists were vying with each other to attempt to get a shot with the Queen's Head without anyone photobombing them but... I guess I just wasn't very impressed with these geological formations. Not that they needed to impress me, but as a visitor I guess I would have preferred museums or other locations.
It was also incredibly windy and cold, and it was raining!!!
Mommy is so pretty (:
The wind was unbelievably strong and my brothers, granny and I were, I'm ashamed to say, quite defeated. My brave parents went ahead in exploration of the rocks with many holes:
Heheheehehehe
"sml" was turning into a constant theme for our travels hahahahahaah
I really like this shot that I took of Kor! And as you might have noticed from a few photos, a beer was never far away from his hands.
I think this place would be really nice minus the tourists. As a place to chill out at. And if it hadn't been so chilly!
My hair was whipping around so much and slapping my face (MY FALSE EYELASHES WERE SO WINDSWEPT THAT THEY WERE ALMOST BLOWN OFF MY EYELIDS) that I tied my hair up into a bun:
Yeliu Geopark is H-U-G-E but with hordes of tourists and crazily blowing chilly wind, we weren't feeling up to exploring the vast areas (what's more, to look at more rocks with too many holes in them...) so we went shopping at the little market area instead!!!
Bought quite a few packets of cuttlefish and cod fish snacks back to Singapore.. So dim-wittedly thought that what I was having was fish - it just didn't register in my mind that it was SEAFOOD *sadface* Got a really bad case of rashes and had to visit the doctor for meds. BUT the snacks are really yummy and super worth it!! We bought a lot of ginger tea and chrysanthemum tea too. Some stalls give samples! Just try asking, the Taiwanese are usually very friendly :D
Our cabbie with his cab!
For lunch, he brought us to a restaurant in Keelung where we had the most amazingly crunchy youtiao bits with small pieces of sweet prawns, fried with chopped shallots!
Corn soup is surprisingly good almost everywhere in Taiwan! At least, at the places that we went to. I think the corn they use is super fresh and sweet!
Our next destination was
Jiu Fen (九份), which is a REALLY FAMOUS (hence really CROWDED) shopping and food district! The streets are quite narrow, thus be prepared to slowly shuffle along like a pack of sardines!
Hehe love this photo of Grams; her cheeky face is so cute
MORE SAUSAGES!!! These are from
黑桥牌 Black Bridge brand and they're extraordinarily yummy! The meat's really sweet and succulent. We bought the original flavour, also black pepper, and the one with rice wine!
Hehe
There are really many convoluting stairways and pathways that veer off from the main ones... Be careful if you're in a large group 'cos it will be easy to get lost! I, on a rare break from my guide duties, ventured slightly farther out and was separated from my family members. Luckily all three kids have data on our mobiles so I located them pretty easily. But I do imagine it can get terrifying for someone like my granny or little kids to get lost with no way of contacting their tour mates!
So many knick knacks
We finally reached the peak! It was a tad foggy
Our cabbie treated us to this mochi thingy and he bought the fermented veggie one, which had a lot of pepper and tasted a bit odd! I think the sweet red bean one would be nicer hahahahah
WE CAME ACROSS THIS FAMOUS YAM BALL (orh yee) PLACE!!! At least, according to the World Wide Web. It's called
赖阿婆芋圆 (lan a po yu yuan). But our cabbie, whom had taken it upon himself to become our consultant, said that there was a nicer place and we headed there instead!
This was the one he brought us to instead
Quite excited at the prospect of eating sweet potato and yam balls! If you know me as a friend, you'd know that I'm a huge fan of yam paste and bo bo cha cha!!! Hahahaahah. I don't like carbs but I love tang yuan and the like.
I chose the ginger soup one
Sadly, this wasn't really.. Very yummy? Even the soup wasn't piping hot! ): My mom and I were quite disappointed that we didn't insist to try the A po yam balls. Hahahahaha. So next time, even if a local says that you should try one thing over another, be more discerning. TRY BOTH!!!!
But at least I got to eat the following!!! I'm not sure if you can tell by now, but my trip to Taiwan was defined mainly by which food I had to try at each location HAHAHAHAHA.
A-Zhu Peanut Ice Cream Roll 九份阿珠雪在燒!!!
Sorry I can't provide details like addresses for these stalls because it's like tryna to tell you where the Ramly Burger stall is in a pasar malam, but this particular stall is just a little way down from the entrance of Jiu Fen!
Requested for them to cut it into halves for me:
IT WAS SO NICE AND REFRESHING! I opted not to have celery in mine (I HATE CELERY WITH A PASSION. Okay unless it's chopped very finely and kinda dissolved into soups/pasta sauces/dips). The chopped peanuts really give another dimension to the dessert, made it so fragrant! The ice cream wasn't very sweet either, just how I like it
With very full bellies, we next headed to
Jinguashih waterfall 金瓜石瀑布!
Teaching Papa how to take a selfie
很lame咯 都没什么哈哈哈哈. Ah there really wasn't much to see. There're supposed to be specks of gold in the waterfall but my intense scrutiny failed to yield any results... OKAY I'M BEING ANNOYING. Honestly I know I'm being a bit impolite in this post (rocks with many holes... waterfalls with no gold...) but personally, I don't really enjoy nature and hiking so... forgive my being annoying!!!
Day 5 was a really long day so I'm dividing up the entries; I'll blog about Shi Fen & Shilin Night Market in the next entry!
Thanks for reading, much love,
Pamela x
Labels: Ah Zhu Peanut Ice Cream Roll, Jiu Fen District, Taipei, Taiwan, the ng family, Travel Entries, Yehliu
