Maokong

Hey there,

later this evening (at 16:25 h) we wanted to catch our previously reserved train (TRA train, one of the faster ones) to Hualien.

So first we checked out of our hotel, but left our big bags there.

Since we could not book a train for our journey back from Chaiyi to Taipei in two weeks we first went to Taipei Main Station to go to a ticket office there and hopefully get some train tickets.

There we noticed that TRA and the high-speed train HSR apparently are two different companies, or they only sell the tickets separately (?). So we went to a HSR ticket office and bought our tickets for the journey with the high-speed rail. It's much faster (2 h instead of 4), but also costs more (1000 NTD instead of 500-600 for the faster trains of the TRA). Even so it is much cheaper than a train in Germany...

For the remaining hours that we had in Taipei we went to go up Maokong mountain using the gondola. In order to get to the gondola you just take the MRT to Taipei Zoo and walk a few meters to the gondola station. One way costs 150 NTD. The ride itself takes roughly 30 min. There are multiple stations where you can get off, but we wanted to visit the sights at the last station first.

Maokong is famous for it's tea. You can see many plantations there.

View from the gondola

Tea ice cream with cat cookies. Maokong means cat hole, so you will see many cat symbols there.

women collecting tea

  

 

 

 

Since we also wanted to visit the temples located at the next gondola station we also went there. It costs slightly more, since you have to pay 70 NTD for a ride of one station and then pay 100 NTD from there to the bottom. But the temples are beautiful (although one was unfortunately under construction) and it's worth the extra 20 NTD.

 

 

 

 

 

We were running late however and we knew the gondola and MRT ride would take more or less an hour to our hotel and from there we needed to go to Taipei Main Station to catch the train. So we hurried back as fast as we could. No easy task with the heat going on...

For the ride from the hotel to the train station we opted for a taxi instead of the MRT. The ride was more or less 2.5 km long at cost about 130 NTD. It is quite cheap to ride taxi here.

When we arrived in Taipei Main Station we still had a little time to grab something small to eat and went to our train.

The train was really clean and spacious and was going quite fast at times (140 km/h when we checked).

View from the train

After arriving in Hualien (about 2 hours 20 min later) we checked into our very nice hotel (the Archinn) and just wandered around the neighborhood a bit to grab something small to eat.

That was it for this day.

See you tomorrow! :)

Pia

Rilakkuma and Taipei 101

Hello again,

we started this day by grabbing some coffee at the nearby Family Mart and walking to Ximen Station. From there we took the MRT to Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall.

The memorial hall itself is not as impressive as the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial but it has a beautiful little park and the views towards Taipei 101 are quite stunning. Unfortunately the hall was closed due to yearly maintenance... Yes, we managed to go there on one of the three days per year they do that maintenance.

 

 

Last time I was in Taipei, I went to the Hello Kitty Cafe and loved it. So this time I wanted to try another themed cafe. The Rilakkuma Cafe (also a mascot from Japan, just as Hello Kitty) was a logical choice (I have a plushy at home). :)

I wasn't disappointed. The Cafe is beautifully decorated and the food was also quite good. Although you should expect higher prices than in a normal cafe. Just consider it paying for the decorations.

All the food is Rilakkuma themed, so our pancakes and the cheesecake came in the Rilakkuma shape and our Matcha Latte and Black tea latte came with a little drawing of Kiiroitori (the little yellow chick) and a little Rilakkuma face.

 

 

 

Taiwanese people tend to drink their milk tea and coffee rather sweet, and some sweets (like the cheese cake we ordered) can be quite sweet. I wonder if many people here get diabetes... Or if they just don't drink and eat that much of the sweet stuff. If possible we always ask for no sugar. But in case you forget to ask you most certainly will have ordered a very sweet drink. Most of the times they let you order without sugar though (it only happened twice that they said they couldn't give us the drink without sugar).

Since later that day we wanted to go up Elephant mountain, a popular sun set viewing spot with terrific views of Taipei 101, and JJ had forgotten to bring his tripod, we decided that he would go back to the Hotel in order to get it and I stayed behind waiting by the Sun Yat-Sen memorial hall so we didn't have to pay for two people for the journey in the MRT.

Since our Hotel (located near Longshan Temple) was pretty far away it took a while for JJ to return. So when I was back we decided to eat at Din Tai Fung as a late lunch.

I highly recommend you go there! It is a little more expensive than the average restaurant here, but it is very convenient and easy to order typical and very delicious Chinese food there. The staff speaks English rather well and the menu also comes in English. Din Tai Fung is most famous for their Xiao Long Bao, soup dumplings. As the name suggests they are dumplings filled with very juicy pork. Be sure to try them!! They are sold in other places too, but as I said, Din Tai Fung is a safe bet and very easy for foreigners who don't speak the language.

As far as I know you can't reserve at Din Tai Fung but have to take a number and wait for your table to be ready. The estimated waiting time is shown on a screen. We were very lucky (I assume because we were quite late for lunch) and just had to wait 10 minutes to get a table. You don't order your food at the table, instead the system is very efficient and you get a small sheet where you write your order while waiting for your table to be ready. Once your table is ready you give the ordering sheet to the waitress.

The food also comes rather quickly and free tea is served (so you don't necessarily need to order drinks).

They also give you a little information card on how to eat your Xiao Long Bao the right way :D

You first have to carefully take one, dip it in the vinegar/soy sauce/radish (that you mix previously in the small dish with radish that they give you), then put it on the spoon. Since the dumplings are very hot inside (especially the broth inside) you then have to poke a little hole into the dumpling, so the steaming hot broth pours out a bit to cool down. Then you can proceed to eat the dumpling.

Xiao Long Bao and braised eggplant

Shrimp and pork dumplings and stir fried Taiwanese lettuce

spicy shrimp won ton

you can watch them make the dumplings in the restaurant

 

Since the day was quite nice (the clouds had almost disappeared) we decided to check out the Taipei 101 Observatory.

We expected long waiting lines in order to buy our tickets (600 NT$ per ticket) and in order to go up using the fastest elevator in the world (16.38 m per second, they get you from the fifth to the 89th floor in 37 seconds). However we were lucky again and could go straight up.

As expected the views were stunning and the building's tuned mass damper, that you can see at the 88th floor is rather impressive. The damper is the largest damper sphere in the world (5.5 m diameter, 660 tons) and reduces the buildings movement during strong winds and earthquakes by up to 40 % (source: the info screens around the damper and wikipedia). Since the damper is a popular tourist attraction now, the city designed the so called damper babies as mascots.

 

 

the buildings damper

one of the so called damper babies

After spending some time on the observatory we headed back down in order to climb Elephant mountain in time for the sun set.

The climb is not that long (it took us about 20 - 30 min, but we didn't rest until we were at the top) but sometimes the stairs are very steep. The mountain is very popular among tourists at dawn so be prepared for some crowds. If you want to have a good spot for some photography you should consider coming a little earlier and/or climb a little further than most of the tourists.

Since we were a little late we climbed a little higher and found a little spot for JJ's tripod.

The view is well worth the climb.

 

 

Afterwards we wandered a bit through Xinyi, the more expensive neighborhood around Taipei 101 and went back to the Hotel.

 

 

That's it for this day.

Thank you for reading!

Pia

Spitited Away in Jiufen

Hey there,

so today we went to Jiufen, where the inspiration for the Ghibli Movie Spirited Away is said to have come from.

After paying for and collecting our previously reserved train tickets for our future journeys (from Taipei to Hualien, from Hualien to Kaohsiung and the Forest Railway tickets back from Alishan) at Wanhua station we took the local train to Ruifang. From there you take a bus to Jiufen. All the tickets can be paid with an EasyCard or IPass. The bus station in Ruifang is not directly located at the train station, but there are signs that show you where to go and the locals will tell you right away where you have to go (they all just assume you want to go to Jiufen :D).

The journey costs 63 Taiwanese dollars (less than 2 Euros) and takes about 1 hour 15 to 1 hour 45 depending on which local train you take (there are slightly slower and faster ones).

Jiufen, you will notice right away, is very popular among tourists. When in some Taipei areas we played our new game "spot the western tourist", in Jiufen we could have tried "Spot the local"... It's quite crowded.
Nonetheless we had a wonderful time. We spend quite some money on small souvenirs (e.g. fridge magnets) and of course, food and drinks.
We tried some kind of bubble tea with flambéed brown sugar.

 

If you go a bit further away from Jiufen Old Street (where all the shops and restaurants are located) you hardly find any tourists and can enjoy the beautiful views towards the sea.

 

Old mining tunnel

As the day was turning out to be quite nice and we saw a hiking trail up Keelung Mountain, we decided to get something small to eat and go up the mountain.
We tried some kind of fried balls (no idea what they were, but they were delicious), a fatty sausage and some sweet ginger soup with taro balls and tofu topped with shaved ice.

excuse my weird face... I look weird on all the photos with the sausage...

 

 
However, after our snacks, the clouds were getting thicker and so we went up all the way to see... nothing...

I am sure the view would have been stunning, for us it was just a great workout, since the steps sometimes were pretty steep.

However, as a reward we got some kind of sweet and salty dried plum from a Taiwanese woman that she made herself :)
And there were quite some interesting insects and animals around the trail.

After hiking down again, we waited for our bus back to Ruifang to catch the next train back to Taipei. There are also buses all the way back to Taipei, as I easily get sick during bus rides in the mountains we decided to take the train back.

salty sweet dried meat (delicious!)

Back in Taipei we first went back to the hotel to rest a bit and write the blog entries. I also tried a new Kit Kat flavor (rose and berry flavor). It smells and tastes like rose soap ;) (not my favorite flavor). And JJ tried some kind of yogurt drink with probiotic bacteria inside which was very delicious.

For dinner we decided to go to the Night market just around the corner, Guangzhou Street Market. We ate some Chicken and Lamb skewers (no photos taken) and some kind of pancake with ham and egg (very delicious!) and drank another Papaya Milk.

While waiting in line for the skewers we happened to witness a small fight. Three men were following another man, one with a bar stool, one with a folding chair and one with a stick... Later the police arrested the man they were following. He was bleeding... o.O By the looks on the faces on the other people it wasn't a normal sight.
A few minutes later we saw two women with two (pretty fat) raccoons on leashes as pets...
We just wanted to get a quick bite and go back to the hotel... Well, you never know what you're going to see.

Now that we are safely back, we will go to sleep soon :)
Until tomorrow,
Pia