Grad Trip Taiwan Fun Day 7-8Friday, July 5, 2013 |Comment(s)
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| Fredfredtan says... And so, I am back with my last post of my grad trip in Taiwan! I have so many pictures to share as we spent an entire day on the outskirts of Taipei. We hired a cab driver for NTD3000 for the whole day to bring us to Xintong, Shi Fen, Jiu Fen, Golden Waterfalls, Natural Rock Formation and Keelung. We decided to hire a cab driver to save on travelling time and it was much more convenient to travel by a cab as well! Our driver was such a jovial man and a great photographer as well. This post would be more of a photolog as I believe a picture speaks a thousand words! To kick start the exciting day ahead, we went to get Ah-Chong Flour-Rice Noodle (Mee Sua) in the morning for breakfast. It was just a stone throw away from our hotel at Ximending and we were one of the earliest customers of the day!  
阿忠面线
Excited us with our bowls of Mee Sua! There were no seats at Ah Zhong. Everyone would just stand around and have their bowls of Mee Sua, and there after empty any remnants (usually nothing left) into the rubbish bin and stack their bowls in the empty pails available.
After our sumptuous Mee Sua, off we go! Our first stop of the day was Xin Tong 莘桐。 It was actually the film site for the popular movie 那些年，我们一起追的女孩, whereby the two leads met for a date and walked along the rail tracks.
     
When this train came "Cho-Cho-ing", everyone ran from the rail tracks to the side to get a picture! The train would take you to Xintong and Shi Fen. I'm not too sure about Jiu Fen though!
   One of my favourite shot of the day. The above are bamboo poles with wishes penned by visitors. And next up, we went to Shi Fen. I was really excited because we would be lighting up a sky lantern and it was my first time lighting a sky lantern! It would be so much prettier to release them at night like in the animated movie Tangled, but I'm still excited all the same! :D     Us penning our wishes. There were a few lanterns for us to choose from as each coloured lantern represent a different wish. There were even multi-coloured ones for different types of wishes such as love, health, luck and so on. However, we just gotten the ordinary red one which was the cheapest as we reckoned that regardless of the colour, we would just write any wishes we want. Hahah. Typical Singaporean.   
My favourite shoot of the day! Hahah. We were simply following the direction of the store owner. He was amazing. Taking all the photos, guiding us what to do and lighting up the lantern for us. I was just feeling really happy and excited sending our wishes up into the sky. The materials used were recyclables and of biodegradable nature. The frames were collected back after the lanterns are burnt out and the villagers could collect them to exchange for cash with the store owners.
Our lantern! Up up and away! :D
   
And the sky with the sky lanterns!
   
And if you have a chance, go get this BBQ Stuffed Rice Chicken Wings! It was the BOMB! I really really like it. It was located just beside the rail station and the only store selling this. So really easy to spot.
Look at all the Mini Sky Lanterns! Haha. We bought a few. They were really cheaper than those selling in Taipei. So do get them over at Shi Fen. I bought one for my family and one for B & I. There were a few really funny ones that 减肥成功！
And we head to Jiu Fen. According to my driver, there used to be 9 households in Jiu Fen. And when they head to downtown to get household items, they would always get 9 sets of everything for everyone in the neighborhood. And overtime, the name 九分 - 9 sets stuck.
It was so hard to get this picture as there were so many people coming in and out and we got photobombed so many times. But our driver managed to get us a good shot in the end. He brought us around Jiu Fen to get good food! Look at all the glorious food that we had!
    
I have no idea where my eyes were looking at! Hahah, I looked so hilarious and awkward in this shot!
      
Tadah, one of my favourite shot of the day too! :D And I was holding on to one of my favorite buys of the day. They were almond flake and nuts biscuits! Apparently, a hot favorite among Singaporeans!
And next up was the Golden Waterfall.    
I forgot where did I take this photo. It was one of the random spots our driver drove us to for photos! I love how happy we all looked in this picture!
      And this doggie was so cute! Her name was Dou Dou and she kept running excitedly up and down the area.  
I was just so happy the whole day! :D Can't stop smiling the entired day! Hehe.
And off to Keelung Night Market for dinner! It was a very organized Night Market I must say and the people were less rowdy but no less crowded! Haha.   Everyone was queuing for this 泡泡冰 and we knew we had to try it! The flavour I was holding was plum， one of the best selling and it tasted sweet, sourish and refreshing! A must-try in summer! We had chocolate flavour too which was good as well. If you ain't getting their best-sellers, be prepared to wait for 10 mins at least! And we went looking for the famous "Nutritious Sandwiches" 营养三明治。We had to take queue numbers for this and there was an average of 60 people in the queue each time! We queued for about 30-45mins.   
The superb happy me after we gotten our sandwiches. There was someone trying to bribe us to jump the queue, but NO WAY. I queued for them, so will you! Hahaha.
A closer look at the Nutritious Sandwiches.The ingredients were really simple but it tasted really good. We chanced upon another store selling similar stuff, so be sure you are queuing at the right one.
And we had Braised Eel soup. It was real good too. We were lucky to get seats as this store was really popular. You can request for a top up of soup too!
  
And we ended our adventure day by heading to Taipei 101 and Ximending shopping at night!
   Superb gleeful with the buys we gotten that day! I really like the Pineapple tarts from 老珍香饼铺 at Jiu Fen. They had a bakery there and each was baked freshly daily! 
And on our last day, we just shop at Ximending area before heading to the airport! Hope you enjoy my posts about Taiwan!
For easy reference, these are the links for the other posts. :)
 Labels: Grad Trip, Jiu Fen, Keelung, Night Market, Shi Fen, Sky Lantern, Taipei, Taiwan, Xintong |