Taiwan Trip - Highlights

There are some other places that we visited, but I am not going to talk about it in details, because most of them can be found easily when you google them up.

Sun Moon Lake 日月潭 The must-do activity will be taking a lake cruise, the cruise will depart from Shuieshe 水社码头, then Yidashao 伊达邵码头 and Syuanguang 玄光码头 and finally back to Shuieshe.
It a beautiful lake, the water is greenish and the sky is high and blue with white cloud 碧海蓝天白云... I was holding a Taiwanese beer in hand while enjoying the lake breeze... :)

This cable car station @ Yidashao 伊达邵码头 is new, now we can take the cable to the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village.


Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village

We watched perfomance by the 9 different aboriginals @ Naluwan Theather 娜鲁湾剧场, I find it quite close to the aboriginals in Malaysia, colourful costume, passionate dancing, tanned skin... Btw, we learned Naluwan, means "I love you" in their language. In the cultural village, there is also a theme park where you can play roller coaster, exciting water games... and some of us even got a very special treatment by the insect in the village, because most of us were wearing shorts and I think our blood is "sweeter" to them, we got insect bikes all over our legs... and even now, some scars still haven't subside.




Yehliu Geopark

This place is very special because all the land sculpture is formed by the influence of wind, wave and land movement. For more infomation, click on the link below:

http://www.ylgeopark.org.tw/ENG/info/YlIntroduction_en.aspx

We didn't stay in the park for very long, it is due to the unbearable hot weather (I can stand very hot weather/ environment, if I complain hot, mean really hot, probably you can melt in that weather already), so, what we did were... QUEUED to take picture with "Queen head" stone and ciao. Of course we know there are many special sculptures, but this is not a good place to visit in summer.

Coastal highway

It's not a tourist spot, but the driver was asking if we would like to travel to Yilan through the normal highway or coastal highway... of course we chose the later, at least more to see, even if there isn't anything to see, we can enjoy the sea breeze too.

The driver stopped at 2 spots for photography sessions, one of it has a natural pond where the the local people make it a abalone farm. I walked down, and saw a worker in the pond, so, I asked if he could sell 2 fresh abalone to me... then he just ignore my request... later I realised, the Taiwanese abalone is the mini type, so, of course when I say I want 2, the worker will probably think I was fooling him.

National Traditional Art Centre, Yilan

Throughout the trip, I love this place the most... I guess this place is supported by the government and it's a brilliant set-up to encourage their people to love art. There are probably 2 row of shoplots, then each lot they are not only selling art stuff, but they have guru to teach you to learn their art. There are shops selling hand-made soup, clay/ porcelain item, paper art, glasses, jewelry, charcoal, leather stuff... I signed a clay learning lesson for only NT$150, and I learned and made myself a bowl in 10 minutes! I also learned paper art, using the paper box material to make a frog doll. There are also stages for traditional Chinese opera, story telling classes, performance theaters... Frankly speaking, if you were throwing there for 2 days, I definitely will not be bored.


Eslite Bookstore

This bookstore is also in my top favourite places list. Unfortunately, I only got only 2 hours there, but I got few books in mind. This Eslite has 6 floors, when I entered, it's like a book ocean, stuffs that they are selling are very very good in quality, books are so cheap and there are so much to see. I was trying my very best to cover all floors and "jog" around (walking is not fast enough). I spent most of my time in the CD section, because my friend actually give me her wish-list, she wanted to get Jolin Tsai's latest album for her husband and my best friend asking me to get her Jay Chau's lastest album in Taiwan for her, then I bought myself 2 CDs too - YanJ's and LeeHom's lastest album.
Then I quickly rushed back to international book section and got myself a translated noval, 11 Minutes by one of my favourite author - Paulo Coelho. It's a 18sx rated noval in Malaysia, so, it's kind of difficult to find in the bookstore here. But hey, don't get me wrong, it's a meaningful noval. Paulo Coelho's books are always very inspirational... First book that I read from him was 'The Alchemist"... I've finished reading 11 minutes, it's nice, but a little bit difficult for me to understand what is he trying to tell us.
At first I couldn't find this book, I found other Paulo Coelho's book, but not this, due to time contraint, I got the customer service personel to help me locate the book. In just 5 minutes, the guy brought the book to me at the counter, so fast and efficient, bravo bravo...
Then the time's up, I had to leave to my next destination. So, I have decided, if I have a chance to go back to Taipei, I will spend a night there, save cost for a night of accomodation and I can explore the place at my preferable pace. Opps, I've left out a very important point, this flagship Eslite bookstore @ Xinyi is open 24 hours.


Jianguo Holiday Flower Market
It was our last day in Taiwan and we have a few hours in the morning before going to catch our flight back to KL. So, we went to this weekend flower market where they sell a lot of flowers and fruits. And it's because of Chinese Valentine's day, they has a lot of roses too. But this place is just good to kill time, or if you were like me, have a habit to buy fruits back to the country, you can try to see what fruit is in that season.
I bought a box of peach back (8 peaches in a box), they were all very fresh and sweet.