Cing Jing Farm, Taiwan

7 Nov

En route to Cing Jing Farm (情境農場), we stopped by a few places, like the Holy Tree (神木), Yu Mountain (玉山), and Husband - Wife Tree (夫妻樹). The driver brought us to try the real local food, it was very nice and I remember it was very cheap too. I didn't see any single tourist apart from us. 

After lunch, we continued our journey to the famous Sun Moon Lake (日月潭). We took the boat around the lake, nothing special though. I didn't really like it, it was too crowded with tour groups. The day was almost always drizzling. 

We reached Zhai Xing Guesthouse (摘星民宿) pretty late at night. Zhai Xing guesthouse is really cozy and comfortable. The owner is really nice. They have pickup service to the nearest eating place in Cing Jing Farm. Finally, we had our hotpot in Taiwan. It was not authentic Taiwanese food as such, but given the cold weather, the hotpot tasted so good. The weather in Cing Jing Farm is much colder than Taipei. 

8 Nov

The weather is again not good. We were greeted by a drizzling weather. The guesthouse provided free breakfast for us. Their milk tea is really nice, I miss it now. 

The guesthouse apparently provided pickup service to the Green Grassland (青青草原). We went there after breakfast, it was really beautiful despite the unfriendly weather. Everything is so green. I love it! There is a food centre just beside the Green Grassland, serving some local delicacies. The horse performance in the afternoon was worth visiting too. 

It was amazing that we could walk for the whole day, even we managed to walk back to the Little Swiss Garden. It was too late to go in though. Hence, we went to the Carton Restaurant. The restaurant is so special, everything inside the restaurant is made of carton. Even the food was served in paper plate. 

9 Nov

Again we rent a car from Cing Jing Farm to Hualien for 2 days 1 night. It cost us TWD7500, a bit expensive but it really saved a lot of our time. We had to leave very early in the morning. Zhai Xing Guesthouse is really good, strongly recommended!

Alishan, Taiwan

After delaying this travel blog for so long, here it is, my Taiwan trip.

5 Nov
This trip is not so budget that we took Cathay Pacific flight. It is indeed one of the best service airlines except for the fact that we had to waste time by transiting in HK. We reached Taipei in the evening and took Kuo Kuang bus from airport to Taipei Main Station. The bus is convenient and the journey took about 1 hour. We bought the HSR ticket to Chiayi for the next morning. We stayed at Ni Hao Hostel for the night. The hostel is new and clean, the location is just right beside Taipei Main station.

6 Nov
The train left Taipei at 8am and reached Chiayi at 9.30am. We changed to the minibus to go to Alishan from Chiayi and reached Alisan at around noon time. We checked in to Shin Shin Guesthouse, the owner of the guesthouse is really nice and helpful. It was very kind of her to explain us how to go around in Alishan National Park. She also helped us to get the train ticket for sunrise trip the next morning.

Our Plane

First Lunch!

We started our Alishan tour by getting our local lunch. The park itself is not that big, we could finish it in half day. The main attractions of the park are the Sister's Lake (姐妹潭) and the temple (受鎮宮). Apart from those, there are some old trees and weird-shaped trees. We managed to catch a glimpse of sunset. It was beautiful.

One of the few hours with blue sky during our stay in Taiwan

Sister's Lake (姐妹潭)

Looks like a PIG?

The Temple (受鎮宮)

Sunset in Alishan

7 Nov
We woke up early at 4am in the morning to take the train up to Zhu Shan (祝山), just to find out it was drizzling. We still went up and the rain never stopped. No sunrise for us. We went bank to the guesthouse in deep disappointment and packed our stuff. We are going to our next stop, Cing Jing Farm (情境農場) in Nantou County. We rent a car for this, it cost us TWD6000 for the trip.

Cloudy Sunrise

We took this train up to Zhu Shan (祝山)