2020-01-13 jiaofen?

Today we'll be travelling to Jiufen. It's the place that inspired Spirited Away! A great movie to check out if you haven't already.

Meeting at Taipei main station, we came bang on time (11:45) but unfortunately the directions weren't clear. We ended up at the South Gate Exit for MRT instead of HSR! We managed to sprint (as usual) to the correct meeting point). Some stragglers never made unfortunately, glad that wasn't us.

Note for next time: ALWAYS assume you'll be lost.

From here we took a coach bus through northeastern Taiwan.

The tour guide spoke non-stop and it was frankly kind of exhausting. She must be a master of circular breathing or something.

Yehliu

First step was the yehliu park. It was okay. A bunch of rock formations.

A whale shaped rock, Steph's favourite.

Finally getting some use out of the selfie stick.

I was grinning here because Steph had a really grumpy face as she walked past since it was wet and raining.

Shilen

We're now in Shilen. Lantern focused tourism here.

Old school coal mine train tracks drop off tourists here. No mercy either, an alarm blares and everyone has to jump off the tracks as the train blasts through.

There seems to be pockets of small Vietnamese communities around Taiwan which I found interesting.

Pose #492 for the lantern. Each side represents something different based on its colour.

Happy new year!

Lantern was sent off, it worked surprisingly well. Then again, I'm not a hot air lantern professional.

Quick lame pose before train collides with all of us.

Jiufen

Next was Jiufen, the mainstay of this tour. You can definitely see the references from Spirited Away. I gotta see the movie again sometime.

We were dropped off at a point that was 350 steps away from our destination! Hard no to that, we took the bus up to the top.

As you can see the crowds were quite sparse.

This truck saw the opportunity to drive through since there was so much room! I lie, he was stuck there for ages.

Plenty of scooters push through these streets too. There's no space man!

The night view from our room. This place was soooo hilly. I'd get iron thighs just walking to get groceries.

Grandma's Best, Taro Balls.

Really good, 11/10, will eat again.

Steph-approved taro balls.

Egglets were pretty great too. The guy was a little derpy, got our order wrong and was working super slow, but the actual food was a pleasant surprise.

The teahouse in the back here is Amei Teahouse, a big part of inspiration of the Spirited Away design. As you can see a million other people know this also so were trying to take pics.

At night the lanterns go on and you get this slightly surreal environment.

A view from the side of the road. Damn those stairs!

Another!

Another! You can imagine this place being really nice during any other season.

In case you haven't realised yet, due to the Spirited Away connection, this place is a gigantic tourist trap.

Another one of the issues we had in Taiwan is the lack of cash. It's a very cash based society, yet money changers and international friendly ATM are very hard to find. Turns out you can go to the post office to change money... which closes at 4pm.