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!!!