TAIWAN TRAVELOG 2018 臺灣寶島之旅 DAY 2: Jingtong 菁桐 > Shifen 十分 > Taipei 臺北信義
11:59 AM
DAY 2
18th September
SHIFEN 十分
It took us around 20 minutes of train ride to reach Shifen 十分. OMG all the crowd was in Shifen! Probably because it's became a famous place to release sky lanterns after the movie " You Are the Apple of My Eye 那些年，我們追過的女孩" became a hit.
But honestly, it was a bit disappointing for me because Shifen wasn't as beautiful as what I've expected. Maybe it was because of the crowd. It just seemed like a very commercialised tourist spot.
I didn't have mood to take photos actually so let me just put one photo up here, just to summarise the place.
So basically tourists were just releasing sky lanterns on the railway and there were shops beside the railway where most of them sell sky lanterns and offer free "photography service" lol.
My family and I didn't jump on the bandwagon because it's just too environmental-unfriendly, although some shopkeepers approached us.
I wanted to try a famous Bee Hun Soup called 榕樹下米粉湯 but it was closed! :(
We also found a souvenir shop that offer stamps and hence we spent a good amount of time just stamping our notebooks there lol.
Since there was nothing much to see except souvenir shops and my parents were exhausted, we sat down at a dessert shop and ordered two bowls of shaved ice. But it was almost 1 hour so we finished it quickly and rushed back to the train station because I didn't want to stay any longer at that place and waste my time there lol.
So we took the 30-minute train back to Ruifang Station 瑞芳車站. We had to stand for half of the ride because there were too many people! And we also got our tickets checked by a ticket inspector which was my first time seeing a ticket inspector in my life lol. For Easy Card users, they have a device to check the cards.
At Ruifang, we collected back our luggage and boarded on the train to Taipei 臺北. At this point, I made a mistake while buying tickets again! LOL. I bought tickets manually because I wanted to get reserved seats since the train ride to Taipei was quite long. However, I forgot to check the type of train that I was buying ticket for and ended up getting Local Train 區間車 tickets AGAIN since it was the fastest train to reach Taipei at that moment! Wtf, wasted money again hahaha could have just used our Easy Cards. So yeah, lesson learnt: Always ALWAYS check the type of train in the train schedule first!
Oh we also had some difficulties finding the platform for our train just like the first time we took a train on the first day. Luckily though, we managed to secure our seats throughout the whole ride.
XINYI DISTRICT 信義區
We reached Taipei Station 臺北車站 after around 45 minutes. Then, we had to change to the Taipei Metro 捷運 to go to our AirBnB in Xinyi District 信義區. If I didn't remember wrongly, the metro was quite packed since it was during peak hours but we still managed to squeeze ourselves in with our luggage.
The Metro ticket price was quite cheap and you get discounts by using Easy Cards. The normal price can be checked using the Google Maps. In fact, Google Maps is a very very useful APP in Taiwan because you can literally get accurate information about route, type / number of vehicle, duration of travel and ticket fare for almost every type of transportation available in Taiwan, even Uber!
When we reached Xinyi, the sky was already dark and we were starving. However, we still needed to first get to our AirBnB to leave our luggage at the room before we go food-hunting. We had a really hard time finding our AirBnB. This was actually the first time I personally booked AirBnB myself. Previously, I've only stayed in an AirBnB in Sabah during the Mount Kinabalu trip and we didn't have any problem finding the location with Google Maps.
This AirBnB however cannot be found in Google Map with the address provided by the host. The online photo instructions provided by the host on the AirBnB APP didn't help much as I realised afterwards that one of the photos was incomplete!
After around 15-30 minutes of walking around the area with our luggage, we were so frustrated and we finally gave up and I called the host. The host sounded nice and asked us to wait at one spot for him to meet us. But while we were waiting, we still walked around and just somehow found the entrance to our building lol. Guess what? The entrance was so dark until hardly be seen because there was no light around. Then I tried to find the restaurant that was depicted in the photo instruction then I realised a part of the photo was like cropped out. =.= The host was not extra warm and friendly but he wasn't rude also, seemed like an introvert guy but quite handsome. I wondered if most Taiwanese guys are handsome because the young guy that we asked for help also looked handsome. Anyway, I think that guy was not the owner of the AirBnB but just someone who was hired to manage it.
I think we had a hard time finding the AirBnB because it's a second floor room located in a shop lot building and the entrance to the building was actually at an alley behind shop lots. Besides it's hard-to-find location, finding it in the dark made it even harder! Oh well, time is the thing we'll have to sacrifice if we want to save money coz hotel rooms are generally more expensive than AirBnB. Our AirBnb in Xinyi costed RM216.70 per night.
Accommodation: AirBnB in Xinyi 信義
Our AirBnB's link was this https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/16622805
Here's my review on the AirBnB：
The place is same as what you see in pictures. Generally clean and pleasant looking. What I like about this place is that it is self check-in and has a mini refrigerator. The only down side is the instructions to find the location is not very clear (plus u cannot find the exact place using Google Maps) and the bath towels are smaller size than normal. However if u cannot find the place u can always call Tim and he will come immediately to help.
When I was choosing a place to stay in Taipei. There were a few criteria that lead me to choosing this particular one. There were a few areas that you can choose to stay in Taipei. The most popular ones are Zhongzheng District 中正區 (staying at walking distance to Taipei Main Station 臺北車站), Wanhua District 萬華區 (where the famous shopping area Ximending 西門町 is at) and Xinyi District 信義區 (Taipei 101 臺北101).
I couldn't find a cheap and suitable stay near Taipei Station and I think Ximending area would be too noisy for me. So eventually I chose to stay in a quieter area -- Xinyi and also because it's close to the Taipei 101 and also Yongkang Street 永康街 (home to the original Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豐).
Haih in the end, I didn't even have time to visit Yongkang Street :( I even prepared a list of all the food I wanna try in Yongkang Street because it's famous with good food.
So, after we checked in, we immediately went out for dinner. I decided to just have our Din Tai Fung dinner at Taipei 101 instead of the original one in Yongkang Street because it was too late. We would have to cancel my food-hunting plan at Yongkang Street all together because we just couldn't miss taking photo with Taipei 101 lol. Dad said we should just take the taxi because our hungry and exhausted bodies couldn't walk any inch more.
So, we took a taxi to Taipei 101, which was just one to two streets away lol. It's actually just a 5 minute distance but it took us 10 minutes because of some traffic congestion. At first, I was worried that we couldn't find Din Tai Fung in Taipei 101 but it's actually the first thing we saw when we took the escalator down to the entrance of Taipei 101 shopping centre.
As expected, there were quite a crowd gathering in front of Din Tai Fung consist of foreigners. And I predicted that we had to wait at least 30 minutes. I could see from the screen that their numbers were assigned according to the number of customers per table. There was only four of us so we got our seats after around 10 minutes of waiting? I didn't even really finish deciding on what to order on the menu yet lol.
Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豐 at Taipei 101 臺北101 was huge and new. I guess if we went to the one in Yongkang Street we would have to wait very very long for our turn. And also maybe coz we went on a weekday. I was so impressed with the working speed of the staffs at Din Tai Fung. It was such a contrast to our Malaysian culture hahaha. But hmmm the cost of eating at Din Tai Fung was expensive after all. They had also had certain staffs who were responsible to refill tea for customers and they kept on asking customers whether they needed tea lol.
Dishes were served quickly.
Haha I shouldn't have ordered this cucumber dish. I ordered it because I saw someone praised about it on his blog and it was one of the recommended dish on their menu. But it's actually steamed cucumber LOL. Tasted nice but not a good choice in such an expensive restaurant.
This Beef Noodle 牛肉麵 was the first beef noodle I ate in Taiwan, little did I know that it was also the only beef nooodle I ate in Taiwan lol.
The broth was very rich and the beef were so tender. One of the best beef noodles I had but very expensive hahaha.
Of course, we cannot miss trying the XiaoLongBao that Din Tai Fung is famous for. We actually think they're overrated. They're tasty but not something that I would rave about. Perhaps I should try at the original shop of Din Tai Fung next time.
The reason I ordered this was same as the cucumber dish lol. Just a normal fried rice that was tasty. My dad loved the Taiwanese rice they used. It's almost like Japanese rice. Hmm there was actually a fried rice shop that I wanted to try at Yongkang Street. It's said to have won the title of Best Fried Rice in Taiwan. Haih too bad didn't get to try.
Our Din Tai Fung bill came in a total of NT$ 940 after including 10% service charge. I personally think that their food don't really worth the high price.
We could only take full picture of the Taipei 101 building after we had walked around 5 minutes away from the building. But it was just on our way to the Eslite Store 誠品書店 at Xinyi. OK selfie with Taipei 101 done! Still think our twin towers are more beautiful haha.
I think around noon we left Jiufen by taxi and started our day trip of Pingxi Line by train. We were just too lazy to wait for the bus. Taxi cost us the same as when we came to Jiufen which was NT$ 205. This time the taxi driver was chatty as opposed to the one who drove us to Jiufen.
Pingxi Line平溪線 is a railway branch line that is connected to Ruifang Station. Along the railway line there were a few stations that were tourist hot spots like Jingtong 菁桐, Pingxi 平溪, Shifen 十分 and Houtong 猴硐. Houtong is a cat village that have became commercialised I think so I didn't plan to go. Jingtong, Pingxi and Shifen are actually places that are quite similar because you can release sky lanterns in all three of these places so if you have limited time you can probably just choose one to visit. There are also quite a number of good food and souvenir shops in these places. I actually planned to visit all three but had to cancel Pingxi last minute due to time constraint.
JINGTONG 菁桐
JINGTONG 菁桐
We reached the Ruifang Train Station 瑞芳車站 and I bought tickets to Jingtong 菁桐 through the counter. It was a wrong move because I forgot that there were only Local Trains 區間車 that operate through Pingxi Line and it's free-seating. I should have used my Easy Card to get discounts for my train fare! If I'm not wrong, Easy Card users get 50% discounts! Tickets priced at NT$ 30 for each ride, no matter where you alight. So 50% discounts means NT$ 15 only! Saves a lot if you stop at many stations. Besides that, the train station also sells a day-pass for NT$ 80.
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| Tickets to Jingtong |
Jingtong was the last station in Pingxi Line so it took us a 45-minute train ride to get there.
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| A tired dad |
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| Jingtong station sign |
Jingtong was so empty when we reached. We could only spot a few tourists on the street. I guess it's because it was rather early on a weekday. I planned to only spend 1 hour at each stop along Pingxi Line because the train stop at each station every 1 hour. So, if you miss the train, you'll have to wait for 1 hour before you can leave the place. It was only 11AM but there's one food that we had to try at Jingtong --- the famous Pork Roll of the Yang's 楊家鷄捲 (Yang Jia Ji Juan).
It was very easy to find the shop because it was such a small street. The shop was literally few steps away from the train station and you can't possibly miss it. When we arrived, there wasn't any other customer there! Hmm... and the lady who served us wasn't friendly. She wasn't rude to us or anything though.
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| "Chicken Rolls" 楊家鷄捲 (Yang Jia Ji Juan) NT$ 50 |
In Chinese, it is called “Chicken” Roll but there wasn't any chicken inside of this food though. In fact it's supposed to have pork in it but I wasn't able to taste any meat. It's kinda like the Loh Bak / Ngoh Heang in Malaysia but hmm... this one was too dry for my liking. I was a bit disappointed since it was what this shop was famous for.
It wouldn't feel nice to just order a plate of Chicken Rolls for four of us so we ordered Fried Meat and Minced Pork Rice.
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| Fried Meat 卜肉 (Pok Bak) NT$ 50 |
I actually liked this Pok Bak more than the Pork Rolls. I can't really remember the taste because it's been one month you see... lol but I roughly remembered it’s like the chicken tender in fast food chains but tasted nicer?
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| Minced Pork Rice 滷肉飯 (Lu Rou Fan) NT$ 30 |
This was the first Minced Pork Rice we ate in Taiwan. It's just a small portion so it's cheaper than the Pork Rolls and Fried Meat. I guess most of the Minced Pork Rice in Taiwan are also in small portion. Hmm... I think it's also the first time we ate Taiwanese rice. It's texture and size are like Japanese sushi rice but less starchy I think. So, this dish was not bad but I have not tried those famous Minced Pork Rice yet so I quite liked this simple dish.
Shop name: Pork Roll of the Yang's 楊家鷄捲 (Yang Jia Ji Juan) (No.127, Jingtong Street, Pingxi District)
After we finished eating, we stroll around the street for a bit and then realised it was almost an hour! Then we rushed back to the station and found that the train had already arrived! But I haven't take any photos! The main reason I put Jingtong in my itinerary was because it has a lot of instagram-worthy places! So I quickly snapped some photos of the place lol like literally just took 2 minutes to spam photos of the abandoned building and the railway.
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| Train was waiting.... |
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| Abandoned building and wishing bamboo tubes |
I didn't even get to take photo at many cute spots including the one below... which I could only take from the train window when the train was leaving Jingtong. So sad.
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| 十分幸福 Sign |
SHIFEN 十分
It took us around 20 minutes of train ride to reach Shifen 十分. OMG all the crowd was in Shifen! Probably because it's became a famous place to release sky lanterns after the movie " You Are the Apple of My Eye 那些年，我們追過的女孩" became a hit.
But honestly, it was a bit disappointing for me because Shifen wasn't as beautiful as what I've expected. Maybe it was because of the crowd. It just seemed like a very commercialised tourist spot.
I didn't have mood to take photos actually so let me just put one photo up here, just to summarise the place.
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| People releasing sky lanterns in the background |
So basically tourists were just releasing sky lanterns on the railway and there were shops beside the railway where most of them sell sky lanterns and offer free "photography service" lol.
My family and I didn't jump on the bandwagon because it's just too environmental-unfriendly, although some shopkeepers approached us.
I wanted to try a famous Bee Hun Soup called 榕樹下米粉湯 but it was closed! :(
We also found a souvenir shop that offer stamps and hence we spent a good amount of time just stamping our notebooks there lol.
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| Stamping our notebooks |
Since there was nothing much to see except souvenir shops and my parents were exhausted, we sat down at a dessert shop and ordered two bowls of shaved ice. But it was almost 1 hour so we finished it quickly and rushed back to the train station because I didn't want to stay any longer at that place and waste my time there lol.
So we took the 30-minute train back to Ruifang Station 瑞芳車站. We had to stand for half of the ride because there were too many people! And we also got our tickets checked by a ticket inspector which was my first time seeing a ticket inspector in my life lol. For Easy Card users, they have a device to check the cards.
At Ruifang, we collected back our luggage and boarded on the train to Taipei 臺北. At this point, I made a mistake while buying tickets again! LOL. I bought tickets manually because I wanted to get reserved seats since the train ride to Taipei was quite long. However, I forgot to check the type of train that I was buying ticket for and ended up getting Local Train 區間車 tickets AGAIN since it was the fastest train to reach Taipei at that moment! Wtf, wasted money again hahaha could have just used our Easy Cards. So yeah, lesson learnt: Always ALWAYS check the type of train in the train schedule first!
Oh we also had some difficulties finding the platform for our train just like the first time we took a train on the first day. Luckily though, we managed to secure our seats throughout the whole ride.
XINYI DISTRICT 信義區
We reached Taipei Station 臺北車站 after around 45 minutes. Then, we had to change to the Taipei Metro 捷運 to go to our AirBnB in Xinyi District 信義區. If I didn't remember wrongly, the metro was quite packed since it was during peak hours but we still managed to squeeze ourselves in with our luggage.
The Metro ticket price was quite cheap and you get discounts by using Easy Cards. The normal price can be checked using the Google Maps. In fact, Google Maps is a very very useful APP in Taiwan because you can literally get accurate information about route, type / number of vehicle, duration of travel and ticket fare for almost every type of transportation available in Taiwan, even Uber!
When we reached Xinyi, the sky was already dark and we were starving. However, we still needed to first get to our AirBnB to leave our luggage at the room before we go food-hunting. We had a really hard time finding our AirBnB. This was actually the first time I personally booked AirBnB myself. Previously, I've only stayed in an AirBnB in Sabah during the Mount Kinabalu trip and we didn't have any problem finding the location with Google Maps.
This AirBnB however cannot be found in Google Map with the address provided by the host. The online photo instructions provided by the host on the AirBnB APP didn't help much as I realised afterwards that one of the photos was incomplete!
After around 15-30 minutes of walking around the area with our luggage, we were so frustrated and we finally gave up and I called the host. The host sounded nice and asked us to wait at one spot for him to meet us. But while we were waiting, we still walked around and just somehow found the entrance to our building lol. Guess what? The entrance was so dark until hardly be seen because there was no light around. Then I tried to find the restaurant that was depicted in the photo instruction then I realised a part of the photo was like cropped out. =.= The host was not extra warm and friendly but he wasn't rude also, seemed like an introvert guy but quite handsome. I wondered if most Taiwanese guys are handsome because the young guy that we asked for help also looked handsome. Anyway, I think that guy was not the owner of the AirBnB but just someone who was hired to manage it.
I think we had a hard time finding the AirBnB because it's a second floor room located in a shop lot building and the entrance to the building was actually at an alley behind shop lots. Besides it's hard-to-find location, finding it in the dark made it even harder! Oh well, time is the thing we'll have to sacrifice if we want to save money coz hotel rooms are generally more expensive than AirBnB. Our AirBnb in Xinyi costed RM216.70 per night.
Accommodation: AirBnB in Xinyi 信義
Our AirBnB's link was this https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/16622805
Here's my review on the AirBnB：
The place is same as what you see in pictures. Generally clean and pleasant looking. What I like about this place is that it is self check-in and has a mini refrigerator. The only down side is the instructions to find the location is not very clear (plus u cannot find the exact place using Google Maps) and the bath towels are smaller size than normal. However if u cannot find the place u can always call Tim and he will come immediately to help.
When I was choosing a place to stay in Taipei. There were a few criteria that lead me to choosing this particular one. There were a few areas that you can choose to stay in Taipei. The most popular ones are Zhongzheng District 中正區 (staying at walking distance to Taipei Main Station 臺北車站), Wanhua District 萬華區 (where the famous shopping area Ximending 西門町 is at) and Xinyi District 信義區 (Taipei 101 臺北101).
I couldn't find a cheap and suitable stay near Taipei Station and I think Ximending area would be too noisy for me. So eventually I chose to stay in a quieter area -- Xinyi and also because it's close to the Taipei 101 and also Yongkang Street 永康街 (home to the original Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豐).
Haih in the end, I didn't even have time to visit Yongkang Street :( I even prepared a list of all the food I wanna try in Yongkang Street because it's famous with good food.
So, after we checked in, we immediately went out for dinner. I decided to just have our Din Tai Fung dinner at Taipei 101 instead of the original one in Yongkang Street because it was too late. We would have to cancel my food-hunting plan at Yongkang Street all together because we just couldn't miss taking photo with Taipei 101 lol. Dad said we should just take the taxi because our hungry and exhausted bodies couldn't walk any inch more.
So, we took a taxi to Taipei 101, which was just one to two streets away lol. It's actually just a 5 minute distance but it took us 10 minutes because of some traffic congestion. At first, I was worried that we couldn't find Din Tai Fung in Taipei 101 but it's actually the first thing we saw when we took the escalator down to the entrance of Taipei 101 shopping centre.
As expected, there were quite a crowd gathering in front of Din Tai Fung consist of foreigners. And I predicted that we had to wait at least 30 minutes. I could see from the screen that their numbers were assigned according to the number of customers per table. There was only four of us so we got our seats after around 10 minutes of waiting? I didn't even really finish deciding on what to order on the menu yet lol.
Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豐 at Taipei 101 臺北101 was huge and new. I guess if we went to the one in Yongkang Street we would have to wait very very long for our turn. And also maybe coz we went on a weekday. I was so impressed with the working speed of the staffs at Din Tai Fung. It was such a contrast to our Malaysian culture hahaha. But hmmm the cost of eating at Din Tai Fung was expensive after all. They had also had certain staffs who were responsible to refill tea for customers and they kept on asking customers whether they needed tea lol.
Dishes were served quickly.
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| Spicy Pickled Cucumber 辣味黃瓜 NT$ 75 |
Haha I shouldn't have ordered this cucumber dish. I ordered it because I saw someone praised about it on his blog and it was one of the recommended dish on their menu. But it's actually steamed cucumber LOL. Tasted nice but not a good choice in such an expensive restaurant.
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| Braised Beef Noodle Soup 紅燒牛肉面 NT$ 260 |
This Beef Noodle 牛肉麵 was the first beef noodle I ate in Taiwan, little did I know that it was also the only beef nooodle I ate in Taiwan lol.
The broth was very rich and the beef were so tender. One of the best beef noodles I had but very expensive hahaha.
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| Pork XiaoLongBao 小籠包 NT$ 110 (5pcs) & Green Squash and Shrimp XiaoLongBao 絲瓜蝦仁小籠包 NT$ 170 (5pcs) |
Of course, we cannot miss trying the XiaoLongBao that Din Tai Fung is famous for. We actually think they're overrated. They're tasty but not something that I would rave about. Perhaps I should try at the original shop of Din Tai Fung next time.
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| Shrimp Fried Rice 蝦仁蛋炒飯 NT$ 240 |
The reason I ordered this was same as the cucumber dish lol. Just a normal fried rice that was tasty. My dad loved the Taiwanese rice they used. It's almost like Japanese rice. Hmm there was actually a fried rice shop that I wanted to try at Yongkang Street. It's said to have won the title of Best Fried Rice in Taiwan. Haih too bad didn't get to try.
Our Din Tai Fung bill came in a total of NT$ 940 after including 10% service charge. I personally think that their food don't really worth the high price.
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| Taipei 101 臺北101 |
We could only take full picture of the Taipei 101 building after we had walked around 5 minutes away from the building. But it was just on our way to the Eslite Store 誠品書店 at Xinyi. OK selfie with Taipei 101 done! Still think our twin towers are more beautiful haha.
After 15 minutes walk, we finally arrived at the Eslite Store. I felt bad for my parents because they were so exhausted. And somehow the Eslite Store didn't show up at the exact location in Google Maps which was a bit stressful to find.
Eslite Store is a must-visit if you're a stationery lover. I'm not really a stationery enthusiast but I do like to browse at cute stationery since when I was a kid. Xinyi store was huge! There were few floors of it. It was more like a department store where there were clothing floor, cafe floor, books and magazines floor and lifestyle floor. Everything looked so posh there. My parents must be thinking why did I bring them to a department store lol.
I thought I would buy some stationery here but turned out I didn't. Nothing really caught my eyes except for the cute moving music boxes. The things they sell are just fancy overpriced stuffs, things I would buy for gifts but not for my daily use perhaps. Oh BTW, their fashion magazines were quite worth to buy because they give free gifts like branded facial cleansers and cosmetic bags.
After spending around 30-45 minutes there, we took a taxi back to our stay. There was a taxi conveniently waiting outside the entrance of Eslite Store lol. We asked the taxi driver to drop us off at the Family Mart nearby our stay so that we could buy our breakfast for the next morning because we would have to catch the train to Chiayi in the early morning!
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