Taiwan Trip Day 1

I recently went for a trip to Taiwan. It was a couples trip sans kids. Although I missed them immensely, it was good to take a break from work and kids once in a while. 

Beautiful clouds on the way to Taiwan.

The flight took more than 4 hours. The first thing most tourists to Taiwan did was to swiftly move on to a special counter to obtain a Taiwan mobile number. It makes communication easier locally and you can use mobile data with no worries at a reasonable price. Or you can do like me, I applied for free 3G micro sim card through this Digital Tour Buddy programme at the Youth Travel in Taiwan website. But you must apply for it one month prior to your tour date. About 10 days before my tour date, I received an email approval from them and collect the sim card when I arrived to Taiwan. The sim card comes with a loaded value of NT$50 but if you feel that it's not sufficient, you can always top it up. The sim card is only for receiving and making calls only. Lucky for me, my brother in-law applied for a Taiwan mobile number. So we all shared his mobile data. Taiwan's mobile data is pretty fast and good. You won't encounter much problems with the reception and speed of the data even at the highlands. Telecommunications is highly important for us when we're in Taiwan because I need to keep in touch with my kids constantly. 

Arriving soon to Taiwan. Feeling the excitement already.

It's their winter season now and the night is longer. When we arrived at our first stop and that is Jiufen (九份), the sun had already set. The sun sets about slightly pass 5pm when we were there. So plan your activities well and try to accomplish everything before the sun sets during winter season. Otherwise, you'll either have to return to hotel or visit night markets earlier. 

Our first stop is Jiufen.

Jiufen is a nice place to visit. A must-visit place, I should say. Nice scenery, there's old streets to walk around, lots of things to see and eat. It's a tourist spot so it can be crowded at Jiufen Old Street.

Tried the ice-cream wrap. The shopgirl even present the ice-cream for me to take a pic with it. Haha.

The girl showing us how the ice-cream wrap was prepared.

Ice-cream wrap and mee can be bought from this shop. 

Seeing how the mee is done. There's no place in the shop so we had to takeaway.

We went to another shop which have seats and tried their braised pork rice and huge fishballs. The braised pork rice is not the best I've tasted. The best is still in Ximending, Taipei.

Another kind of huge fishballs too with fried vegetables. Their vegetables are always good. Fresh selection of vegetables.

This is one of the mee we takeaway. Beef noodles I guess. Tasted ok.

Prawn dumpling mee. Tasted ok.

This is the shop

The shop from another angle with the signboard.

Night view in Jiufen

Walking around the old street filled with tourists.

Inside A Mei Cafe

The waitress was very courteous.

A photo before we dig in.

Something we ordered. Don't ask me. It was all in chinese! But I do know the cookies on the right were green tea cookies.

The flower tea I ordered. So full after I drank the whole teapot finish.

Jiufen, the place who inspired the movie 'Spirited Away'.

The entrance of A Mei Cafe.

Another pic in front of that beautiful cafe again.

Our room at Windsor B & B. Room for 4 person.

Our bed.

Another part of the room

Large window overlooking a beautiful scenery which you can't see now that it's night. Instead you'll see me at the reflection. Haha.