Jiufen 九份

Ruifang Station

Out the Train Station we go, there is a ramp beside the staircase for our luggage!

Once we reached Ruifang station, we decided to put most of our luggage to place at the luggage stop. We bring along one set of clothes and our important stuff to jiufen. Since jiufen have a lot of stairs, we are not that smart thinking that we could bring all of it to our accommodation. After that, we headed to the bus stop in front of the Ruifang Train station, going to Jiufen! This is also our opening ceremony of our Easycard. This card can be used in Taipei and Taichung and of course Jiufen as well. It works like touch n go! It is to use and there is no need for u to bring loose cash around if you have this, but have to remember the credit. We got this for free given by the taiwan visitor association in Malaysia. What you need to do is to exchange it with a valid airticket and you will get this card for free plus a NT 50 value inside. =)

Posing with our Easycard (Can use in Taipei & Taichung)

Exciting Bus ride!

Reached Jiu Fen

Jiufen street looks like this shown in the pictures. It is quite a small street and only one road in and along the path there are many many shops and there is a lot of staircases, because this small town is on the hilltop. For you to reach here takes awhile since it is going up up up. The scene in the bus ride was awesome if u like those hill with a lot of houses view, at night will be more nicer as all the lights will be lit on.

Jiufen streets!

There are many shops in the jiufen street but mainly food and souvenir shops. For souvenir shop, they almost have the same product along the streets, plus the price do not varies that much, so i guess its fine which shop you went in to get your souvenirs.

As for the food stalls, there are some common one as well as not so common, but mostly you have to know which one to eat. you may try them all but you only have one stomach so choose wisely. The trick is go to the shop that have extremely a lot of people. It won't go wrong!

Jiufen Stalls

Hello, to our jiufen accomodation.

i would say it is a bit overrated in the internet. The design was not bad, but we were expecting more from it. Plus it have XIAO QIANG. It could be due to the earlier customer really made the place dirty or the food of jiufen attracts this small insects. but anyway it was ewww to see them in person plus i have to kill both of them, very not pleasant to do so once u enter the place right?

Our Accommodation in Jiufen~

After leaving our luggage,we will begin the exploration in Jiufen

Different angle of our little accommodation

Another view of our accommodation

Jiufen view

I am helping him to take different shot, did i do well?

We started off, playing i am the reporter and kahhou is the celebrity. He wanted me to take candid shots of him. How did i do? Okay bah. It was hard as i was squeezed in between people and i was behind him, the front shots was even harder, cause very hard to stabilize the camera especially you go against the flow of human river traffic.

A stall selling raw materials for a dish.

Makan time AKA Eating time. Of course you must eat sausages in every part of taiwan. It is nice to taste them all. This stall one was quite yummy, we also tried the bun, not bad too!

If you like the things that is supper QQ, you should try this. It is nice if you like the texture, apparently they love to put starch into everything. It was very bouncy.

This the fish balls which have a lot of people in it. Was quite nice. 

They have varieties of balls. Just order as per your liking. The shop's wall, is full of pictures of the owner of the shop. It was quite creepy eating fish balls inside this kind of shop. but just ignore them and focus on the balls in your hand, or you could just tapao!

This jelly shop, i quite like the jelly. but it was expensive for jelly. So we ended up eating their tester to find out which flavour is the best and keep on taking it into our mouth. We did bought one in the end to taste in our little space later. hehe

Icecream + peanut popiah!

Plum drink and more

The best taro balls in jiufen (first stall once you step into jiufen)

Should have eaten more of this taroballs!

Mochi

Another taiwan train experience (Hualien > Ruifang)

So fast our three night stay in hualien come to an end, its time to go to the other parts of taiwan. Our next stop is Jiufen. In order to go to Jiufen, we need to get to ruifang station first. This is the second time we are sitting on the long distance train in taiwan and yet, i fail to buy a bento (now still regret). Y do i hesitate to buy when i got the chance to buy.

南滨夜市 Nan Bin Night Market - Hualien

Tadah, we have arrived at Nan Bin Night Market. The Taxi driver do not really recommend this place as it is a smaller night market plus according to him, this place is for children as there are many games. To him, this place have nothing much to eat therefore not worth to visit. Apparently, his description are really true. There are really more games and little food stalls. Since there are more games in the night market, we of course have to try some of them.

The picture above, the two cute little statue in the top right. It is limited edition oh, only left two of them. 

It is quite expensive too. Too pretty to even want to buy them. Even you want to buy them, you have to preorder, if not you can get them either.

The above two stalls, there actually are two different fruit juice stalls, however, their decoration and the colour of the stalls are so similar that i thought that they are of the same stalls. Whenever anyone passes by their shop, they will definitely shout and this is the first time, we experience the "Wa wa sound" of taiwan young girls. It is really irritating to or ears and yet funny at the same time. I totally can get any words of what they are saying. Although soon, we finally get what they are saying but earlier on, i only heard "ya ya wan"

LOL 

This is the best sweet potato balls ever!!!! After eating one packet, we ordered another packet. It is really very nice. Other places don't have such nice taste as it is here. This is the only thing i think we won't regret coming to Nan bin night market. 

Hehe, Ever since we reached taiwan, we seems to must try all the papaya milk wherever we go. thanks to one of our member, stella, we are addicted to Papaya milk. Truthfully, Taiwan's milk really nice to drink.

The corn in the left side, was a bit not to our taste. It says QQ, but to us it is not QQ at all, but apparently taiwan ppl really loves to eat cos the queue was very long back then. i guess we are too used to the corn we ate in Malaysia where there are a lot of juice and it is being steam which is much softer. Next is our games section. 

When the owner show us their games, they could easily played the game very well but when it comes to our turn, it was not easy i tell u. For example the one left bottom corner, you will be out once your hand trembles a lot.

Innocent White Day Continuation

After where i left in the earlier post, here we are in Shin Kong Yao Feng Ranch.

Bright Sunny and Hot day almost turn off our interest in going into the ranch. However, We still went in eventually. So It is a place where u can see many many types of animal, there is also farm and playground for children. Nice view with nice people. Overall it was indeed a nice place for family gathering and educational for children. 

 In the above picture, on the left, It was the best MILK Pudding i have ever taste in TAIWAN, regretted didn't bought many. It was so milk and silky. Excellent taste! 

The ice cream however not a bit disappointing.

The bird on the left was seen in the lobby.

It can imitate voices of human. It can say words like " hallo, Ni hao ma, tao yan"

and it was fierce too according to one tourist. He say if he was annoyed, he will grab u with its beak. 

After resting well in the lobby and enjoyed the aircon, we headed out for the train ride, which gives a tour to the whole of the ranch. As it moves, you can stop at the place you want.

 After making decision in where to stop, we sat on the train for the second time and drop of at the little animal world. The following are the pictures below where we interacted with the animals there.

I sort of ignored the birds, cos i have visited KL bird park just before the taiwan trip so not very interested with the birdy there although they are worth to see too.

In the fruit farm, It was not the right timing for us to visit the farm, so the farm was close. However, we manage to interact with the farmer there and listen to how he grow the fruits and which seasons is the best to come to visit the farm. There are also free tomatoes to taste. It is quite sour to me, hehe, as i was those that loves tomatoes. but it was tasty too, i suppose according to my frens.

Next Stop: A private housing area

Another nice place to see beautiful view with pretty houses.

According to the taxi driver uncle, he say that although now people still come here to look at this nice view.  soon, this place will be prohibited area and people will be restricted to come into the housing area. This is because this is a housing area, it reduced the quality of stay if strangers come here often. There are even people bring their dogs come to exercise, since the area is indeed large. Later we are having dinner at another night market!

Hualien Day 2- Innocent White Day

Thank you again to Ah jie minsu for buying us delicious breakfast to us while we are still sleeping like a pig. It is hard to get up when our bed is so nice and fluffy and the pillow is very nice to lean on too!!! So as the title say, today we also have dress color code and today is WHITE. 

So today our first Stop is shown in the picture below, It is a place where Japanese build it a long time ago.

Next Stop is also a place that the taxi driver recommends, he told us the name in chinese, but i couldn't remember. hehe sorry.

It is a hill top where you can see nice view from here.

Next Stop is Liyu Lake

Another breathtaking view spot!

In here we rent two two sitter bikes and one bicycle. 

Actually we can take the bike to ride for the whole day, but it is very hot and tiring as the liyu lake is extremely big it is like a small island. We really enjoyed ourselves there and if was a bit cloudy it will be the best! In there we also found a place that pumps water out and we try to make a few photoshoot out of it. It looks great! thanks to Kahhou the photographer it did comes out great, however as for me i couldn't get his shot good, my bad.

Next Stop: Time to fill our tummy!

The fried rice was quite good.