Day 2: Left hotel to find breakfast at XMD.
We found a breakfast shop right behind our hotel that serves cheap burgers and I got GW to tabao for me one every morning. Very nice, NT30 only if you wanna add a egg just top up another NT5. It's something like Ramly burger and their soya bean milk also cheap and good :)
34 degrees hot day. Trained to Zhong Xiao Fu Xing MRT station to take the bus #1026 to 九份 (Jiufen). Got approached by a taxi uncle when we came out from exit 1. He wanna charge us NT600 to Jiufen and we find it too expensive and ignore him. At the bus stop, another taxi uncle came to us and offered NT200/pax to Jiufen sharing with 3 other Japanese girls, who were already in his Toyota Wish.
Wah, cheaper than the other uncle but still we tried to push our luck further by asking NT300 for 2 pax. Uncle like sibeh despo also and ONZ us, wah the feeling like damn shiok. It's a airconditioned 55min ride up the mountain to Jiufen :)
In the back seat of the cab!
The horrible winding up the mountain journey... The taxi drivers here all like F1 racer sia.
We reached Jiufen at about 12 noon.
The scenery upon alighting the cab.
Walked into the old streets of Jiufen and started targeting at their local snacks liao.
There's many souvenir shops here as well. We will hop into one whenever we need to steal their air-conditioning to cool ourselves from the hot weather.
Love love love this snack.
花生捲冰淇淋
2 scoops of ice cream sprinkled with generous servings of crushed peanuts wrapped in a popiah skin.
MANY MANY Chinese parsley inside I LIKE!!!!
Duno what is this and quite smelly one also,
I shall pass.
GW misses this so much. Damn shiok lor.
Couldn't find any stall selling this at other night markets when we went back to Taipei city.
Sad.
Trying to get a picture with the red lanterns lining along the old streets of Jiufen.
Need a cold dessert.
Bought iced taro balls from this stall and went into their seating area next door.
It's very nice and refreshing like cheng tng with chewy taro balls.
Very big bowl too, can share and save some stomach space for other food.
Sorry about my obsession with red lanterns.
Couldn't resist.
Many teahouses at the end of the old streets.
Randomly chose one to have tea.
I ordered Rose tea. (cold one) NT 180.
Not cheap actually, I think the teahouses here exist to chop tourists one.
The view from the patio while we were having our drinks.
GW had blue mountain coffee.
Never order their snacks cuz very expensive plus we were already quite full from eating stall to stall.
Waitress was so nice to help us take a picture.
Some act chio picture.
Oh, and GW bought a car in Jiufen.
Yah and can use as a lighter also lor... HAHA!
GW finds it funny and he bought a Mercedes, Porsche and BMW.
Now he can change car everyday.
We then left Jiufen at 2.30pm and took a 10 minute bus ride to 金瓜石 (Jinguashi), a historic gold and copper mining town. We decided to head there cuz we want to touch the world's largest solid gold brick - weighing 220kg at their Gold Museum.
But there's no free lunch in this world, here we had to climb the crazy steps to the museum.
Railway track camwhore.
Ready to go for some gold mining!
At the entrance of the Gold museum. Yes it's all gold behind us!!!
But cannot touch and cannot take flash pictures.
The GOLD BRICK.
The value of that 220kg gold brick is 275815600TWD.
How I wish it's mine!!!!
Then we cabbed back to XMD.
No choice, taxi uncle outside Jinguashi just have to tempt us. He quoted NT1200. It's more expensive as it's just the two of us and no one else to share cab with. We bargained hard and got it at NT500.
We found our dinner at some random restaurant with a underwater theme and they had swings for seats and strong air-conditioning.
Bought midnight movie tickets for Word War Z.
Went back to hotel for a quick shower. I can't emphasize enough that the weather is mad hot. It's really kua zhang hot until my underwear is soaked with perspiration. Sorry for being disgusting but that's how crazy the weather was.
After a fresh change of underwear, we trained our way to Houshanpi MRT to check out the wholesale market, Wufenpu. Kinda disappointed though, I find the prices at this so called wholesale market are more expensive than at Shilin Night market, and some like can get it cheaper at our Bugis Village.
We didn't stay long at Wufenpu, bought 3 tanktops at NT100/pc. (like $4/pc.. Tried to bargain but the uncle face black leh. Fail.) Bobian must buy cuz I'm running out of tops already. Imagine I showered 3 times a day in Taipei...
Walked a long way to Raohe Night Market.
Very nice pepper biscuits, freshly bakes on the spot and super long queue at all times.
Old school carnival games.
Candy strawberry!
GW's favourite. 芒果冰 (Mango Ice)
Selling 滷味 everywhere...
Yeah, this is another GW's favourite.
Heard a lot about 大腸包小腸 from those Taiwanese food shows and dying to try it.
At first I thought it was "Big intestine wrap small intestine" and wondered how it will look like. And now I know I got it completely wrong.
It's actually means "Big sausage wrap over small sausage"
It's kind of a filling snack to me. Glutinous rice wrapping a Taiwanese sausage with crunchy sour vegetables and very big chunks of garlic in there. I'm a garlic lover so this is super shiok for me.
Bye.
Gotta train back to XMD for our late night movie liao!
