Taipei aka back to travelling

Taipei is a lady shoppers haven.  It is also a city made from many streets and night markets, pedlars selling clothes, food and trinkets ranging from medicine to mobile phone accessories, not to mention the countless boutiques selling hats, shoes and clothes. The food is far-ranging from local street snacks to high end Japanese cuisine. There are roadside stalls to expensive restaurants catering for all the different kinds of visitors and residents in Taipei.  I have stayed in Taipei and travelled to its surrounding towns and cities to enjoy the wonderful nature reserves, farmlands and villages.  The first few days were spend visiting the well known spots like Danshui and Shilin night market, in addition to the Chiang Kai Sek memorial hall which consists of beautiful gardens and arches.

The gate at Chiang Kai Shek memorial hall

National theatre

National concert hall

Chiang Kai Shek memorial hall

Change of guards

The view from the hall

The surrounding gardens

On the trip to Danshui.

A narrow band of mangrove swamp along the railway line to Danshui

Danshui station

It was a Sunday afternoon. Seems like everyone in Taipei came here.

Someone with my name selling noodles!

Light rain in Shilin night market

Pipa or loquat fruit. Only available for about 20 days in a year.

The next day, I travelled to yangmingshan nature reserve.  Unfortunately it started to rain when we reached the mountaintop.

Exposed sulfur spots.  Apparently this place was an active volcano area.  Hence the abundance of heat from the ground and hot springs.

Boiling water on the ground!

Since the weather outside was really bad, we decided to go strolling in the many Taipei shopping areas near the Taipei railway station.  At night, we continued to Ximending, for more shopping but catered towards the youth.

One of the underground shopping alleys.

Ximending

The broad streets of Ximending.  This is just outside the MRT station.

A well known shop that sells delicious noodles.

This is the only bubble tea I had in Taiwan.

Tea eggs.

The next day, we went to jiufen, a former Gold mining town located on the hills south of Keelung.  The views from the place is really nice.  We had lunch and tea overlooking the sea and hills.

A postcard worthy shot from jiufen

Map of jiufen

Tourist traps.  This alley consists of shops selling souvenirs and packaged
snacks ready to be bought by tourists.

Oooo..

A delicacy made from barbecued pork, glutinous flour and some sort of reddish wine extract.

Onion bread.  I love onions so this is super good.

The gate to Raohe St. night market

Hakka village near Hsinchu area

Pounding cereals, nuts and sesame to make lei cha

All you need to make your own lei cha

One of the days we had a day trip to yilan, on the coast of the pacific ocean.  It is the rice bowl of Taiwan.  There you can find endless rice fields and fruit trees.  We were there in April so all the trees just started flowering.  To really enjoy yilan, I suppose you have to be there during the fruit or harvest season between June to August.  Below is a video of the view from the train to the pacific ocean.

Rice fields in yilan

The pacific ocean

Smelly fried toufu

We also made it a point to visit the iconic Taipei101, which once was the tallest building in the world.  Unfortunately the ticket price to go to the viewing floor on the top of the tower was a whopping NT$450 too expensive for me at that time since most of my cash has already been used up.  We decided to do the free stuff instead like visiting the Sun Yat Sun memorial hall and an exhibition about Taipei's origins at the city hall.

Taipei 101

Winter melon made from jade.  Real expensive stuff

Petrified wood.  Don't ask me what that is.

The many aborigines of Taiwan

Sun Yat Sen memorial hall

This is how you catch roundworms in the olden days!

Kids watching their mom make mantou using flour from  US-aid.

A mobile library

Sun wukong or the Monkey God

Is this all for lunch?

Nice night view at the xinyi district

We also did a day trip by cable car or maokong gondola which starts at the Taipei zoo to the tea hills in the south of Taipei.  Misty clouds and temples on the tops of hills make us feel like we were on our way to heaven.

A maokong gondola.  Return trip NT$100.  A trip is about 45 minutes.

A tea tree.

At the tea hills, we visited the tea promotion center where we had free tea to drink and a nice tea master explaining all the different kinds of tea, how to plant tea (alternating it with the lu bing flower) and how to make the perfect cup of tea.

Baked sweet potato

Mulberry leaves and fruit.

More tea trees.

Where there is water, there are frogs.

After getting off maokong gondola, we visited the old part of Taipei close to longshanshi MRT station.  There you can have a glimpse of how it was like living in Taipei during the Qing dynasty.

Qing period shops

Even on our last day in Taiwan when we needed to board the plane to Kota Kinabalu, Taoyuan International airport seemed to be their last effort in trying to sell us tourist their souvenirs, and things to bring back home.  We managed to almost spend all our New Taiwanese dollars at the airport.  Hello Kitty may be EVA air's official mascot as you see it everywhere in the airport from nursery rooms to playgrounds.