#ack that might also mean really bad typhoons …

[solcarow]

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[bloodelves88]

Trip to Taipei/Hualien/Taichung/Puli, Taiwan (Part 6)

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 5 here (Puli).

Day 7

Day 7. The last full day of this trip. It’s a long day today, waking up at 8am in Puli, and ending up in Taipei.

We went to A-bao again for breakfast. We didn’t eat there though. We took out our food and ate at the bus station. This time, I got a beef burger. It’s not too bad, it’s what you’d expect out of an above average beef burger.

I also bought soya milk, which was again, diluted and terrible. I threw it away after drinking half of it.

We reached the farm around 9:45am. The farm is at the mountain top, so the wind is really cool and nice. But because the sun was up, there was the uncomfortable hot-cold feeling which I really dislike. 

The first area is a food area. We would be coming back here for lunch later.

We bought the day pass tickets, which were NT$200 each.

The person selling tickets told us there was going to be a Equestrian show soon at 10:45am, so we headed there first. Along the way, we saw a shop with bees flying all over freely. 

You can’t see the bees in the picture, but there’s easily a hundred bees flying all over the entrance of the shop. Eek.

The view from the mountain top. Glorious. 

Sheep! Watch out for poop on the ground.

Horse!

The equestrian show stage. We were 13 minutes early and fortunate enough to find some seats in the shade.

The emcee. 

A clown and his pony. This was the starting act. He cycled on a unicycle first, asking the audience to throw some balls for him to catch with a net on a pole. Then he divided the audience into three sections, asking us to clap after he clapped. For example, if he clapped twice, then we would clap twice after he clapped. 

Sounds dull, but being a clown and entertainer, he did it really well. Very amusing 😆

Then they moved on to a long segment of people performing stunts with their horses. It involved them standing on the horse, hanging upside down off the side of the horse, planking on the horse, getting off the horse onto the floor and jumping back on, and various other stunts. Later on a guy with a whip would stand in the middle of the ring, always staring at the horse and occasionally whipping the ground. It’s really loud. I guess it’s to scare the horses into submission or something? I have no idea.

After all that, there was a photo taking session. You lined up in front of the horses and you could take pictures with them. The red boxes are for you to put money in if you want. I went to take a picture with the pony and the rightmost horse. 

Then, we continued our explorations in the farm. We continued the path, which eventually led to the 487 step trail. It’s just a staircase with 487 steps. Fortunately we were going down.

Made it to the end! My right shoe at the hole in the cloth near the front. I have no idea when or how it appeared.

Unfortunately, the area to the left of the equestrian show stage has nothing worth seeing. After going down the 487 steps, we were left rather far from the area we started off from. The nice way back was an elevated, side of the mountain trail which cost NT$50 to enter, so we decided to walk on the road for cars instead. Really bad idea, in hindsight. It was hot, there was nothing nice to look at, the cars sometimes came uncomfortably close, and sometimes where were plants in the way. Icky.

We started walking up around 12pm, and reached the starting area at around 12:30pm. We decided to have lunch at the area with stalls I showed earlier.

After ordering, we decided that we wouldn’t have enough time to finish our food, and changed our order to take out. Then, we went to wait for the bus. It was due to arrive at either 1pm or 1:10pm, who knows. The Nantou bus timetables were all very inconsistent, we’ve noticed. They’re all done with pen/marker and paper.

We decided to buy some goats milk egg rolls. They cost NT$100 for a pack of nine, wrapped in three packs of three each.

It’s not too bad, and because of its size and thickness, it’s much more flavourful than the love letters eaten during Chinese New Year.

As we didn’t know if we could eat on the bus, we waited until the bus was back in Puli before eating. We didn’t really have a place to go to eat, so we ate at the bus station, just like what we did for breakfast. 

I ordered some chicken with rice thing. Again, the portions are so generous for the price. I think the food item just said chicken with rice, so I wasn’t expecting all the other items that came with it. I think this was NT$60 or 75 (SGD$2.65 to $3.32). I forgot again.

My friend bought bamboo rice. It’s served in bamboo. Pretty interesting.

After eating, we headed back to J House. I was feeling a little hot, so I bought another cup of pearl milk tea from that amazing shop yesterday. Just a small cup this time though. We called the guy to get our bags, and he offered to drive us to the bus station. What great service. If we had to walk to the bus station, we probably wouldn’t have been able to catch the bus to Taichung. 

While getting into the car, I toppled my milk tea cup sideways, but not much spilled out since the only hole was the one from the straw. My friend gave me a tissue to clean it up and it was all good. Anyway, he drove us to the old bus station at first, which might have made us lose our bus. But somehow, we didn’t miss the bus. The bus was really crowded though. The driver had to count empty seats remaining to see if we could board. Ack.

Back in Taichung! The bus dropped us off near Taichung train station. I wonder why they don’t board people at the same place.

It’s 4:50pm now, and we wanted to visit two places. Chun Shui Tang’s original store, and the Painted Animation Lane. Since Chun Shui Tang was on the way towards the Painted Animation Lane, we headed there first. While planning the trip, we also wanted to go check out Miyahara Ice Cream, which was really near the station. I’m not sure why we didn’t go. Too tired to think of it, I guess. Argh.

The origin of pearl milk tea.

It’s 5:17pm now, and my friend made a good point that the sky darkens rather early in Taiwan, so we decided to go to the Painted Animation Lane first.

The Painted Animation Lane is basically a lane with many drawings and paintings of anime, cartoons, and games. I took a picture of every single drawing there, but I’m not going to show all of them.

There’s a random adult item in this claw machine. Lol why.

I don’t know why I didn’t take a panorama of this wall. Instead, I took 5 separate pictures of it, moving sideways slowly. Facepalm.

This isn’t the actual Totoro bus stop. There’s one further south of this place, which is an actual tourist attraction.

At the end of the lane, some guy who was working at a motorbike shop told us we could come in to look. There’s a huge Luffy statue here (worth NT$150,000/SGD$6,644), and a huge figurine collection. There was also a work in progress drawing. Apparently everything is his son’s. Pretty cool.

Anyway, that was it for the Painted Animation Lane. Now, back to Chun Shui Tang. 

We reached Chun Shui Tang around 6:20pm. There were no seats at the ground floor, so we were led to the basement. I was told that I could leave my luggage at the ground floor, which I did. I went to retrieve it 10 minutes later as I wasn’t comfortable leaving it there alone. There are no valuables in there, but I would be really sad if all my merchandise was stolen. I mean, clothes are easily replaceable. Merchandise isn’t. Not in Singapore, especially.

I ordered sesame oil noodles, along with one of my friends. My other friend ordered Kung Fu noodles. They also ordered a pot of tea, while I ordered the pearl milk tea. How could you not drink the pearl milk tea at the place where it originated? 

To be honest, the pearl milk tea was kind of a disappointment. The one near J House is better. The pearls here were a little hard, and I chewed on one that was harder than the rest. Inconsistent. The milk tea wasn’t as good either.

After the meal, I ordered their Signature Black Tea to go. This was also where cold black tea originated from, so I made it a point to try it as well.

Now, a walk back to Taichung train station. It was finally time to make the trip back to Taipei. It’s 8:20pm now, the day doesn’t seem to end. I was already quite tired before reaching Chun Shui Tang, and I could smell an unpleasant odour from myself. Ugh. The typhoon has passed, and it was a very hot day. There was barely any cloud cover (look at the farm pictures, the skies are so clear).

Anyway, it’s a long trip back. First a walk to Taichung train station, then a train to Taichung High Speed Rail station, then another train to Taipei Main Station, and then a walk to the hotel. We didn’t get our tickets until we reached Taichung High Speed Rail station, and fortunately there were still available seats. We weren’t able to sit together though (it was a two-one split). The train departed at 9:31pm.

My Signature Black Tea. I still haven’t drank it yet. And I dropped it on the floor while on my way here. I was wearing pants without pockets, which made my life really difficult. I already had to use one hand to pull my luggage, so accessing my phone, tickets, passport, etc. was really a pain 😭. I should have drank the tea much earlier. It’s now just warm.

11pm. We were finally at the hotel. We booked a four star hotel this time (all the previous lodgings were three star), but it was roughly the same price as all the other places we stayed at. That’s exactly why we booked it. 

I put my black tea in the fridge and went to bathe five minutes after we got into the room. I really needed a refresher. After bathing, the tea wasn’t cold, and I just gave up and drank it. It’s actually pretty good. 

Our room was in the middle of the floor, so there were no windows. Instead, there were fake windows and fake lights.

Since there was a bathtub, my friend went to play in it. I was wondering if that friend would fall asleep in the bathtub and drown, a trope commonly seen in anime 😅

Day 8

Last day in Taiwan. Our flight was at 3:25pm, so we couldn’t wake up too late. We decided to wake up at 9am. My friend ate cup noodles for breakfast, since it was bought on the first day in Taiwan in Hualien’s supermarket. It was originally meant to be a night snack, but we kept eating dinner at such a late time that snacking wasn’t required.

We walked out of the hotel and randomly turned down one street in search of breakfast. The hotel had breakfast, but it wasn’t free, and from reviews, it wasn’t good.

We ended up here. I ordered a chicken burger. Again, can’t go wrong with fried chicken. I don’t know how it’s so good everywhere.

I also ordered a cup of soya bean. They’re both pretty good. I mean how can it go wrong? I guess if you order soya bean from A-bao, it can.

My friend ordered some hot soupy thing, which took forever to eat. I was melting in the sweltering heat so I decided to go back first. They wanted to go to a supermarket they saw on the way, so I decided to go there first instead. 

Durians, and that’s a watermelon behind. I notice watermelons in Taiwan are all these strange elongated types. I’ve never seen such watermelons before.

After this, we checked out and headed to Taipei Main Station. We decided there was some time left and went to explore the mall on the other side of the station. My friend bought pineapples cakes, which are the typical food souvenir you buy whenever you go to Taiwan. I also bought a pearl milk tea keychain for NT$80. I have no idea why. I wasn’t actually interested until I realized that the pearls and milk tea in it could move. Anyway, there wasn’t many other shops of interest there, and we only had 15 minutes, so we left after a short while. Now, it’s time to head to Taoyuan Airport. 

Pretty views from the train.

We soon reached the airport. I had to check in my luggage as all our items were over the combined weight of 21kg (7kg per person). I didn’t really want to check it in as I didn’t want to wait for my luggage to appear after I landed, but ah well.

We haven’t had lunch yet, and the plane was due to reach Singapore at 8:15pm, so I decided I need to eat something hearty. We went to the airport food court, and I ordered ramen. Not worth it for the price. It was 2:25pm when I got my food, which meant that I had to gobble down my food. Not good. My friend ordered Dan Dan Noodles and pearl milk tea, and also had to gobble the noodles down. The tea was brought into the security check area, and my friend was told to finish the drink before proceeding 😅

We walked fast to the boarding gate, and reached around 3:05pm. They were calling for passengers to board, and the waiting area was totally empty. This has to be the first time I’m so late to board a plane 😅

Is that Taipei 101? Who knows. The plane flew at this altitude throughout the whole flight. If there weren’t any clouds, you could see the land or ocean easily.

We soon landed at Changi Airport Terminal 1. One of my friends wanted to shop at the duty free shop, so that one left. Another of my friends had family waiting outside, and didn’t want to make them wait, so that one left too. We didn’t go out of the arrival hall together 😢

Anyway, terminal 1 arrival now exits to the Jewel. I didn’t know that. This is my first time at the Jewel, and I quickly and easily found the fountain in the middle. Pretty nice, I guess. I managed to take a panorama while the lights changed, so there’s two colours in the photo.

I haven’t had my dinner yet, so I was looking for food. I headed to A&W first, but the queue was still long, so I went to Subway. The prices seemed to be inflated, as I don’t remember the prices being so high. Higher prices for an expensive shopping mall, I guess. I went to Burger King next, and the cashier seemed really busy and I didn’t want to bother.

I ended up at BreadTalk, and they were having an offer of three buns for $5. I bought my buns, found a taxi, and went home. 

The end.

Part 1 here (Hualien). Part 2 here (Taipei). Part 3 here (Taipei). Part 4 here (Taichung/Puli). Part 5 here (Puli).