My travel diary: TRIP TO TAIWAN!

Hi everyone!

It has been so long since I wrote and this time I want to share with you my travel experience in TAIWAN. Earlier in 2019, my fiance and I had been planning and thinking about where to go for a holiday. We went to a travel expo and were inspired by the night food market, nature, and history, that TAIWAN can offer. We wanted to see as much places as we can, that means we had to go around the island (anti clockwise) to check out the main cities on the west and east coast of Taiwan. All this is possible to do in 14 days! So here is our itinerary:

DAY 1 - 2: DEPARTED FROM SYDNEY, ARRIVED AT TAOYUAN AND HEADED STRAIGHT TO TAICHUNG

We departed from Sydney Airport on the Friday night (10.30 pm). Our flight was a Quantas-China Airlines operated. The flight took 9 hours and we arrived in Taipei, Taoyuan Airport at 6 am local time.

As we arrived, we went straight to the public shower located in the corner room of the baggage collection hall. They only provided 2 shower rooms, equipped with shampoo and soap. It was a good decision as we would have a long travel ahead to the next destination. We then proceeded to the Taoyuan MRT, then to Taipei High Speed Rail (HSR) station as we have to catch a train to go to Taichung. I recommend to buy the HSR pass in advance as this allows you to use the HSR to go to all main cities in Taiwan with any HSR rain. Check out the options here : https://pass.thsrc.com.tw/oatsb2c/home.do

In our case, we bought the 3 days pass as we planned to travel from north to south on the west coast (Taipei-Taichung-Chiayi-Kaoshiung) within 3 days.

Train from Taipei to Taichung took about 1.5 hour. It was a quick ride, and we bough some breakfast from 7-eleven at the station to eat in the train. It was the best feeling, starting our holiday with some cheap Taiwanese snacks.

When we arrived in Taichung, it was about 11 am. The weather was very humid and hot. We booked an air BnB near the Taichung station. Most Air BnB and hotels there usually have their check in time at 3 or 4 pm, so we had to first drop our luggage and walked around to explore the city.

view from our Air BnB in Taichung. The Taichung station is just on the top left corner

First, we walked a little bit away from the station and found the most iconic dessert place called "Miyahara". They sell all sort of cakes, pastries, candies, teas, and most importantly the most instagrammable Ice Cream! From the outside, Miyahara building was always surrounded by young people and visitors. They make the best pineapple cake with different varieties, sour or sweet pineapple!

Next, we kept walking around and found the Taichung 2nd market. Here, they sell fresh produce, food, toys, clothes, bubble teas, desserts, just everything you need to see about Taiwan! We also found this one stall selling mice pork, rice and soup, and since many people lined up, we decided to try it out!

The famous rice and mice pork stall
at Taichung 2nd market

Since I didn't eat any of the meat dishes, we walked to the place where Bubble tea was originated. It is called "Chun Shui Tang". Besides various selection of teas, they also serve hot meals like noodle, rice, salads. I had the original pearl milk tea and it changed my mind about this drink. Tea was at its best version from this place! it was definitely made with high quality pearls, oolong tea, and fresh milk. The pearls tasted so smooth and less chewy compared to those you get from vendors like Gong cha, Cha time, etc. It s definitely worth it!

at the Rainbow village

Chun Shui Tang

Then we walked and took a bus a bit further towards the north east of Taichung. There is a place called Rainbow Village, which basically an art site where the small houses have the Taiwanese aboriginal style colorful paintings. It is a nice place to check out the design, painting styles if you are into arts, and also to take photos with the cute paintings!

At night we went to check out the Fengjia night market to have dinner. This market is located quite far from where we stayed, so we had to take a bus and uber to go back.

DAY 3 - SUN MOON LAKE

Sun Moon Lake view

At the visitor centre with Formosa bear

Cycling around Sun Moon Lake

The tofu stall at Ita Thao

We woke up early and walked a little bit east from our Air BNB to Gancheng Station. On this day, we we went to have a day trip to SUN MOON LAKE. It was a good value to just buy a Sun Moon lake pass which costs hmm about 20 and it already includes discounted bike rental, boat trip across the lake, ropeway /cable car (return), round-the-lake bus. From Ganchen station, the Sun Moon lake bus departed at around 8 am.

The bus stopped at the Formosa village. When we went there, it was on a Sunday that happened to be the day of a swimming competition, plus a traffic control, so was really hard to get around the other side of lake, also to get back home. We got off at a random stop and had to rent an Uber to the Shuise Visitor Centre. This is where the bus should stop and depart. So we got there, and directly rented a bike at the rental shop just downstairs called the GIANT BIKE RENTAL SHOP since we had a discount coupon from the Sun Moon Lake Pass.

Then we spend the whole morning - afternoon surrounding the west side of the lake. We stopped at the Xiangshan Visitor Centre and explored the interesting stuff , souvenirs at the shop. Then we cycled back to Shuise to return the bicycles. Then, we took the ferry to the opposite site of the lake, which is the Ita Thao centre. There are plenty of food stalls selling variety of Taiwanese taste, from mice pork rice to vegetarian dishes like the soy tofu that I tried. Everything was really good!

DAY 4 - ALISHAN MOUNTAIN, CHIAYI and ARIVED in KAOSHIUNG at NIGHT

The next day, we checked out from our Air BNB, and went straight to Taichung station with our luggage, to start our adventure to the south, to Alishan forest in Chiayi. We booked a tour in advance from Klook (check out this page: https://www.klook.com/en-AU/activity/19534-alishan-forest-railway-day-trip-taichung/#krt=r30&krid=9e22d4b9-f1f7-47f5-6e7a-6d37c1121dc3). You can choose the pick up city, or your starting point, and the tour includes everything you need to get to inside Alishan, the guide , the train ride, also includes lunch. Our tour Guide name Angel is super nice and friendly. So the whole experience was really worth it!

The Alishan forest with tall trees

Alishan Train rail for train that departs every 30 mins

Beautiful Alishan

On the way, we also stopped by a couple of times at local fruit shops, snacks, cakes and souvenirs that are unique to Taiwan and Alisah in particular. We tried Alishan Mountain tea, wasabi nougat, some rice krispies with nori and other bunch of delicious Taiwanese snacks!
At the end of the day, the tour bus dropped us at Chiayi station, and from there we could easily take our next train to Kaoshiung. We were so excited to continue this adventure to another city in Taiwan.

My fiance booked a really nice hotel (it is somewhat 5 star) named Holiday Garden Hotel in Kaoshiung. Although it look old from the outside, in the inside it is actually quite modern. There is also a swiiming pool, which really added more fun to our time there because the 16 degree water in the pool really helped us coped with the hot 30 degree humid temperature in the morning!
Check out the page here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Holiday+Garden+Hotel/@22.6290501,120.2908714,15z/data=!4m8!3m7!1s0x0:0x4167c3e3a3d6fbb5!5m2!4m1!1i2!8m2!3d22.6290501!4d120.2908714

When we arrived at Kaoshiung that night, we directly went to one of the famous noodle place that we found from Instagram. The noodle was so savory (i think it's tossed in lard) served with boiled veggies, tofu, and meat stripes.
Check out the place here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/22%C2%B037'39.4%22N+120%C2%B017'40.2%22E/@22.62762,120.2923013,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d22.62762!4d120.29449.

That's how the store front look like

DAY 5 - KAOSHIUNG CITY - Tiger and Dragon pagoda
We woke up to a really nice sound of bustling city, and steams from the breakfast places at every cornier of the street. We started the day by going to the breakfast place that's very close to our hotel. It is called Xing Long Ju! We had a meat mun, savoury soy milk with fry bread and scallions, fry bread with egg and pickle, then some cold sweet soymilk. I also had extra pastries with red bean, egg and chive buns from the other shop.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Xing+Long+Ju/@22.6290074,120.2911664,16.06z/data=!4m15!1m9!3m8!1s0x0:0x4167c3e3a3d6fbb5!2sHoliday+Garden+Hotel!5m2!4m1!1i2!8m2!3d22.6290501!4d120.2908714!3m4!1s0x346e04630e2e9a21:0x3a80490248e30bbd!8m2!3d22.6303737!4d120.2936786

We then continue our journey to Dragon Tiger Pagoda.

DAY 6 - MORE KAOSHIUNG
Still in Kaoshiung, we explored some more around the city. We took the bus to Fo Guang Shan temple which is located just outside Kaoshiung, in Dashu District. You can take the bus easily from the Kaoshiung station, or the Zuoying HSR station and at platform 5, get the bus direct to Fo Guang Shan.

DAY 7 - TRAIN TO HUALIEN

This is the day when we had to depart early to Hualien and said goodbye to Kaoshiung :( we bought the train ticket and the train ride took about 5 hours. To prepare for this, we checked out early from the hotel and went straight to the station. We had breakfast from 7-eleven which is my mot favorite part, that is to eat all the sweet bread, sushi, snacks and tea eggs, plus the interesting kind of milk in carton. We also bought bento box from the Railway store for our lunch in the train.

vegetarian bento

pork bento

DAY 8 - HUALIEN SIGHT SEEING

We stayed at Kindness hotel in Hualien which i think is very nice! We were given coupons for breakfast and dinner! Plus, there are snack, soft serve, unlimited teas and coffee every afternoon that we can enjoy. Such a heaven and really worth your money!

We also joined another tour from Klook, which was organized by a private tour company for Hualien sightseeing plus adventure walk in Taroko cave.

Taroko Mountain from Hualien city

DAY 9 - TAROKO HIKE

This one is the hero of our Hualien trip and the main activity that we had been waiting for. We started the day at 6 am. The tour guide pick us up and other participants (total 7 people), and we started climbing since then. The climb was quite hard but we were told that it was actually the shortcut and way much harder back in the day when the Japanese built the track. We even saw tiny village up in the mountain with ruins of what used to be hotel, police station, school. It was amazing to see how they travel up and down back then in such a narrow steep track. We reached the top probably at around 9 am, we ate our food, and took photos from the 1000 m above the ocean. It was really worth it! and then went back down and arrived around 11 am. We survived the 6 hours no toilet rule!!!

DAY 10 - BACK to TAIPEI

The train from Hualien to Taipei only took us about 1.5 hour. We stayed in a hotel called Taipei Garden Hotel which was another splurge booked by my fiance. It is a 5 star hotel and we got to eat breakfast buffet everyday so we did not have to worry about waking up early to find breakfast, and we just started our day straight to exploring the city!

As we arrived, we directly visited the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial museum. The entry was free and we got to learn a lot of things from the exhibition, the history of Taiwanese government, Chiang's way of leadership , family and so much more. We entered from the front gate of the memorial and got to see the ceremony held by the security / army personnel.

We went to Taipei 101, explored the food court and free samples from the sweets/cake stores. Really Taipei is big and has so much going on! As we blend in with the Taipei night life , we explored the night markets.

view from my hotel room

DAY 11 - 14 -> TAIPEI sightseeing and day trips

The next day we went for a day trip to the 2 very famous villages called Shifen and Jiufen, the place from movie Spirited Away. We took the PingXi line and arrived at Shifen. It was amazing. Where we got off, we directly experience the bustle in the market, the narrow street, and all the vendors stepped away from the railway when a train was approaching. We spent half the day there playing with the lantern and at the waterfall.

We tried to head back to Taipei at around 5 pm because we didn't want to miss any train or transport. At night when we went back to Taipei, we tried a very unique ramen with tomato-based soup.

On the last day, we decided to visit the tower of Taipei 101 and really witness the whole city from the 101th floor! We booked a ticket in Klook again (because it is cheaper than the price at the counter). To enter, we had to stay in the line for quite sometime, then we got into an elevator with other 10 people we it took us at a very high speed , up to the 99th floor. I felt sick but excited! When we arrived, it was great to see the whole Taipei, the Chiang's memorial. We even learned about the damper inside the building that is used to prevent the building from collapsing in case of earthquake.