Green island, Hualien, Yilan

Finally made it to the end of week 7 and it's officially my birthday month! So we planned a long trip for this weekend with lots to cover. Sit tight!

Green Island

Woke up at the break of dawn (3.30am) to make it in time for our 5am train to Taitung to catch our ferry to Green Island at 9.30am. Have to give ourselves a pat on our backs for being overzealous and buying seasickness pills because the 50min ride was so turbulent. 

Finally reached Green Island, and while we were still giddy and tired from traveling, we had to learn how to ride an electric scooter! 

Me being a first time noobie, couldn't balance and kept accelerating forward unevenly LOL. After increasing the speed of the electric scooter, I finally got the hang of it! 

Personal transport to all the attractions, shiok!

Okay... I realized I can't really remember the names of the "attractions" because they are mainly lakes, seas and rocks lol... Just scooter the whole loop of green island and stop whenever you spot the attractions! 

Once in awhile, a deer pops along

Aww Bambi!

Stray puppies so cute!

The highlight of the trip was the 夜游 (night tour) where the minsu boss brought us to go deer spotting! It was quite adventurous cause the roads were so dark and the minsu boss was driving quite fast (30km/h in pitch darkness is considered fast okay =.=). At last we reached the spot with many deers and they were out feeding on grass!

Can't really see but so cute!! That's the beam of the torch that the minsu boss was holding.

There were also sooooo many stars in the sky because it was really dark! 

Our minsu 绿鱼度假会馆。success is because we upgraded from a lousy cramped room to this room. Hehehhe.

The next morning, we scootered to finished the rest of the attractions before leaving on our 1030 ferry!

Free breakfast from the minsu!

Little Great Wall! 

Stopped by 大白沙 because there was a platform in the middle of the sea!! Awesome picture spot! Check out how beautiful the sky and sea looks!

Saying goodbye to beautiful Green Island! So awesome to scooter around with this great view!

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Hualien

After another turbulent ferry ride back to Taitung, we met up with our bao1che1 uncle Chen to travel to Hualien!

Stopped by a random field full of SUNFLOWERS for photo taking. This is taken by uncle Chen!

Next up, visited this long while structure called 北廻歸線. Quickly snap a photo from afar and run back into the car cause it was raining =.=

八仙洞

秀姑巒溪, a good place for white water rafting but weather conditions didn't allow it!

石梯坪 where there were many rocks (lol captain obvious). And boy it was so windy -skies starting to get gloomy already- 

雲山水, a super blue and clean looking lake 

This was a cave where we sat in a boat (shallow water) to see bats!!! I was in charge of holding the torch so I couldn't take any pictures of the bats. They looked quite gross anyway XD

Lastly, went shopping around 市中心 (the central?) and I bought a pair of shades (390NT) to replace the ones I lost!! Yay!

Checked in to our cosy hostel for the night!! :))

Our minsu at Hualien- 快乐岛背包客民宿. Nice and comfy place but they charged us 500nt more for bathing on the next day after being drenched in rain =.=

七星潭

Started off the day with gloomy skies and rain :(

Still, uncle Chen was ready to set off so we began our day!

Cold and windy but we still took turns to take photos!

Taroko Gorge

On the Shakadang Trail! Was still super rainy and check out my broken umbrella. It was half destroyed during bolangdadao and became much worse today lol.

Taroko has a few trails and our driver kindly brought us to the foot of each trail and met us at the end of the trail to minimize our walking :)

Swallow grotto. Wearing helmets to protect ourselves from falling rocks!

Many bridges where we took opportunity of the photo spot!

Yet another bridge XD

Love our driver uncle Chen who helped us take individual shots on this 九芎 tree!

Ended the day with Ziqiang Night Market.

This is a MUST TRY.

Yilan

Took the TRA, reached Luodong at around 1030pm and checked into our minsu!

Luodong minsu- Ye4 mao1 zi3 minsu! Looks cute and colorful! Pretty comfy too

Cultural center 

Reached the cultural center and started off with a drumming performance! This was good!

There were many photo spots there!!

Jimmy's park- 幾米公園

Lots of sculptures(?) with a traveling theme. Took lots of photos with Nicole's cam (and she hasn't uploaded them. Nicole if you are seeing this please upload your photos LOL)

Pork pottage

The original pork pottage (北門蒜味肉羹) that we wanted to go was closed but our nice driver, Uncle Tian brought us to their sister company! It was epic nice in the cold weather! Warm kway teow with garlic-y broth!!!!

亞典蛋糕工廠

Super awesome cakes and they give out ALOT of samples. Wink wink Singaporeans should be thinking the same thing now. NOM.

太陽埤

Hahaha very 古装 looking place! 

吳記花生捲冰淇淋

This tastes like the peanut ice cream from Hualien!!!!! Super good! Although we were crazy to eat ice cream in the cold weather.

柯氏蔥油餅

Happy to eat warm cong1you2bing3 right after!

深坑老街

Haha I captioned my snapchat wrongly, should be shenkeng!

Uncle Tian brought us here to hang out before our train back at 10pm. We thought he would leave because he had been driving us for 8 hours already. But he decided to wait for us to finish shopping and eating dinner @.@ We saw him eating lu3rou4fan4 in the drizzle when we walked back. Earlier in the day, he got a parking ticket and hid it when he saw us coming back. @.@ He is so nice and warm hearted that I teared thinking about it LOL. 

We then concluded our day, bought macs to eat on our hsr ride back!

LOL this is the glammest screenshot from my snapchat =.=

Finally finished updating haha. Till next time!!!

Cijin island (Kaohsiung)

We planned to go Kenting last weekend but weather forecasts showed rainy days. So...... We were stuck at Kaohsiung.... @.@

Decided to visit Cijin because Gushan Pier is only 5 mins from our place and it takes only an additional 10 mins to reach Cijin by ferry!

Rented our bikes at 100NT for the day and we were good to go!

We visited the Fort and Lighthouse first. Since bicycles were not allowed up the steep slope, we started our arduous hike up.

The following picture was only because we were exhausted and stopped for a photo break. 

#TiredButStillWerkingIt

Finally reached the lighthouse! Everyone took turns to take pictures again XD

Then we reached the beach where there was an amazing sunset.

"Catching" the sunset :)

Another attraction is the large seashell.

HI JANET. 

2nd last attraction was the windmills. The moon was already up!

I say 2nd last attraction, because the main attraction for us was:

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Our favorite duo1duo1lv4 from 50lan!!! It was immensely satisfying after cycling 15km. And we also made the realization that we get 1cup free from purchase of 5cups. The staff at the 50lan outlet near our place never told us =.= we calculated that would have had 16 cups free!!!! =.=

We decided to end the day with a seafood dinner. On first look: what a spread!!

On second look:

Jeng jeng jeng. 

We were so NOT ordering that lol.

The meal was great and satisfying (Didn't take any pictures as I was busy gobbling down the food) :)

 

Taitung

IBooked a 2 day trip to Taitung, first day to travel around Taitung attractions in the car we booked (5000NT for 8 people for 1 day) and second day to go green island!

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Day 1

Spent a very very fulfilling first day! 

Took the railway to Taichung Railway Station from 6 to 10am! Quite comfortable! Except that there were some tourists talking really loudly onboard and one of my roomies went "SHHHHHH!" really loudly, but unfortunately they still didn't get the hint LOL. She then stared at them until they realized they were talking too loudly. Such a brave roomie hahaha. 

Glad that we booked a car to travel Taichung so that we didn't have to worry about public transport!

Chulu Ranch

We started off with the ranch to catch the sunlight!

Haha have been seeing so many cows, goats and sheep that it's starting to get repetitive LOL

Walked around the small ranch and tried to selfie with the animals as usual

Snapchatted this huge pig that looks so scary compared to the little piglets from Jingyuan farm

Wee a swing to play with!

 

The ranch is pretty small so we covered it fast!

Sanxiantai

Went to this super windy beach called sanxiantai. The winds were the strongest that I've ever experienced!

Resulting in photos with my hair completely pulled back LOL.

Pixilian 比西里岸部落

This is basically a photo stop with many wooden deers to take photos with!

Secured my hair with my friend's cap! Very important to have a cap or hair tie to fight the winds!

Xiaoyehliu

Went to yehliu in the first week of exchange so I was quite curious how xiaoyehliu (small yehliu) will be. Turns out there are much fewer rocks but there are many "runways" that act as good photo spots! The girls were excitedly climbing rocks to take photos but the wind felt like it was going to blow us away so I refrained XD

There were a couple chilling in a pavilion, the girl playing the 二胡 and the guy on the guitar. And the music was so romantic and nice!!! -heart eyes-

Tiehua Music Village

We thought we wouldn't be able to appreciate the "music" village but were pleasantly surprised by the beautiful lanterns!! Really felt like a scene from Tangled! 

Unfortunately it was quite dark so our faces looked quite dark in all the pictures.

Xingxingbuluo

Our 包车 ends at 7pm that day and this starry place was last on our agenda. We were quite worried since we didn't know what time the stars would come out. But it's really hard to go there by ourselves so we just decided to try!

And yay! We saw many stars! Although it looks like nothing in my picture above because none of our phones could capture the stars. XD Happy that we didn't make a wasted trip!

Wenhua Night Market

Finally finished all our agenda and it was time for dinner at the night market! We immediately tried meesua and oyster omelette when we entered and they were yummy! The ice cream waffle dessert was good also! 

Somehow we were still hungry and went hunting for more food... Lol.

And we went for 姜母鸭！(Ginger Female Duck?) I love love steamboat and it was slightly cold so it was good! Each of us bought a serving of meesua (yup, again) and dipped it into the soup and it was so good! Duck was overcooked and hard though. Overall still a good dish!

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Day 2

Unfortunately, we were unable to go Green Island because the ferry closes at 2.30pm as the Typhoon may hit today. :(

So we held a midnight meeting for a new itinerary and it became another 包车 day to visit more attractions! This time it was 4000NT for 8 of us! :000

Bolangdadao

Went to cycle around at the paddy fields! It was a super windy and sunny day!

The scenery and sunlight made the girls super excited for pictures.

I hid under my umbrella while watching them in amazement.

Anyways it was a fun 2hour cycle with awesome scenery to enjoy!

Cishang Biandang 池上便当

Went to try this famed bento! It was not spectacular but we really enjoyed it after the exhausting cycling trip.

There was this classroom place where we took a lot of pictures haha

Pretending to do class discussions.

Fake trains to take photos with! XD

Luyegaotai (鹿野高台）

This place is supposed to be mainly for hot air balloons and paragliding but now's not the season so we didn't get to try it!

Paragliding take off platform

So in the end we tried the slide down the slope! It costs 100NT per person, which meant that $4SGD vanishes in 15 seconds that is the duration of the journey down. XD still pretty fun as the slide was pretty fast and we got a nice picture:

Unfortunately I lost my shades on the way down TTTTTTTT

Toyogi Hot Spring

Last stop of the day was Toyogi Hot Springs! There were quite a number of pools to try: hot (44deg), cold (33deg), jacuzzi pool, saunas, steam rooms and even a real swimming pool LOL. The counter even sells eggs for us to cook in the hot spring but I think it would take forever to get cooked if the water is not boiling? @.@

We stayed at the pool meant for whitening the longest to reverse the tanning from cycling this morning X.X Jacuzzi pools were comfy as well! 

So that sums up our 2day 1night trip to Taitung! A very beautiful place with lots of greenery. Glad the weather was good too! On the railway back to Kaohsiung now! :)