Tip: When wanting to get out of city, it's best to read up on the Internet to check on how people get to a certain area.
Jiu Fen 九份 is located at the northern part of Taiwan, which is very far away from Ximending. It's super duper alien to me, but many people are recommending this to me as one of a must-go place when at Taiwan, which means information are bound to be easily-found on the net!
I followed the directions from this site (click here). After getting off the station at Zhongxiao Fuxing, immediately at the exit was there a bunch of uncles holding clear holders in their hands. BEWARE OF THEM! They aren't scammers, but I'd like to say that they are kinda like scammers to tourists. They know how to differentiate locals and tourists, so once they spot you, they immediately asked if you're heading to Jiu Fen and will then start introducing you to their 'tour' buses.
Obviously their information were not true at all. A public bus ride only takes 1hr maximum (inclusive of waiting time) and it costed only NT102 (SGD$4.25). However, these uncles will tell you it takes 2hrs and the public bus will cost you NT120. They'll tell you they can bring you over within 40minutes and that'll cost you NT200 (SGD$8.50). If you take a package chartered bus (Jiu Fen > Gold Mine Museum > Shi Fen) it'll cost you NT4500 (SGD$191.40) per person. Totally ridiculous!
If you're absolutely lost, simply go to bus stops with many tourists and listen to what they ask of the bus driver. When unsure of where to alight, follow the crowd also! You're never alone when it comes to travelling.
Note: Just don't follow the wrong crowd....!
The view was magnificent and breath-taking. Being able to get away from the bustling city area for a day felt great! After alighting from the bus, we started our walking journey up and down the hill of streets.
This pastry is very similar to Breadtalk's. While Breadtalk has got cinnamon coated or other coated flavors with cream inside (if my memory did not fail on me), this is just a simple breaded stick with milk and cheese taste. Very delish and cheap as usual!
Mulled Pork Rice (NT30/SGD$1.25)
The serving of rice was quite small, but it'll be just nice for your tummy as you filled it with other street food!
Drunken Chicken 醉鸡 (NT160/SGD$6.80) is prolly the worst choice made. Totally not worth it and the appearance turned me off. This was the only dish that blew up our bill!
This greedy boy was so adorable!! There were 2 other dogs but this stick to us the most, maybe because bf was handsome or that because we had chicken on the table!
Continued our journey but halfway thru it rained again, as expected.
Tip: Follow the weather forecast and you'll never go wrong!
While people have been saying that this is the period of time where the weather will be super sunny and hot, it reflected otherwise on the weather forecast. I checked mine from here and yes it was extremely accurate for all days!
Thanks to the forecast, we were pretty safe with an umbrella being our bestfriend until we get to the nearest shelter -- Tourist Center in this case since we exited from one of the staircases which brought us from the street to another end, totally far away from where we started our journey!!
We had to settle for something extremely cooling and refreshing after climbing that few flights of stairs just to go back to where we came from. This stall can be found at the very first stretch of streets of Jiu Fen, so no worries! BK said their taro balls were way much better than Black Balls. I had to admit, I liked this too! Coming from someone who don't even eat yam, you know what it means. ;)
The rain stopped, but we realised that getting to Shi Fen from Jiu Fen wasn't near at all. You've to get back to Ruei Fang Station and take another bus to Shi Fen, pretty troublesome! We decided to simply head back to hotel then to Shilin Market for our dinner :)
Then to the next stall, bf helped me satisfy my coffin-bread craving and we also ordered additional dishes -- Escargots and Taiwan XXL Chicken! 豪大大鸡扒 was prolly the more famous one, but we settled for another instead, since the coffin-bread stall is affiliated with the other 2 stalls beside it.
Shilin Market is more of eating and street-games playing. We both had fun shooting the balloons to earn prizes or simply for fun, as well as playing Bingo in mahjong kind. Simply grab any 15 tiles and match it with the picture on the table. Once you successfully matched one row without needing the chance of adding extra tiles, you get to win any stuffed toys!
So many street food, all selling almost different food. I had a good time walking in and out of the many stores and got myself 2 tops and a bracelet for my sister. We stayed there until 12AM before we take their last train (00:10hrs) back to our hotel!
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