Yehliu-Jiufen-Keelung

Woke up to a terrible morning, with the raining continuing all day, never once giving it a rest. While it wasn't raining cats and dogs, it was enough to be annoying. But since we were going out of the city, I was hoping for sunshine on the other side. But no, it was raining there too :(.

Our first destination was Yehliu Geological Park located about an hour away by bus from Taipei. The ride was an adventure itself, it was an old bus the types that probably ruled the roads in KL 5-10 years ago. There was no signages in the bus station, so we had to ask around. The bus to Yehliu is at counter 19, run by Kuokang Bus Co. from Taipei Main Bus Station which is outside Taipei Railway Station.

Yehliu, here we come!

Walking towards the geological park

The 'port''

Yehliu is located in Wanli of the Taipei County, is a long cape formed by the Datum Mountain reaching into the sea. The park is famous for it's naturally formed rocks by sea erosions and waethering. It dates back about 10-25 million years ago.

Mushroom rocks

There is about 180 mushroom rocks here in Yehliu characteristically shaped by the sea erosion, the sun and wind. The landmark mushroom rock in the area is the Queen's Head.

Queen's Head

Holes on the rocks

There are several type of rocks there, namely mushroom, candles, honeycomb, ginger and pot holes.

Pot holes

Although a common sight on Malaysian roads, the pot holes here beg to differ :P. Quote, "Pebbles were brought in by sea waves to wave-out platform and then bumped deeper and deeper to form many pot-shaped holes."

Ginger rocks

The protruding bits does remind me of ginger's skin.

There was a marketplace just as you exit the park, which sold a variety of food especially seafood. We had our lunch from a mixture of stuffs - crackers, mushrooms and the delicious delicious grilled squid!! :D

The market place

Food

Grilled squids! *yummy*

We had to walk back to the main street to catch a bus to Keelung in order to get to Jiufen, which was a pretty great effort :( . But on our way out, I saw this :

Look at the size of the squid!! (shoe size 5-6)

The journey to Jiufen was a great effort because the bus ride to Keelung was confusing, we ended up getting off the bus too early that we had to walk for another 15 minutes before arriving at Keelung Bus Station. Not only that, when we got there, there was like 3 main bus stop areas, and we were given wrong directions on which to go to. If anyone needs to get there, the bus stop is not in the main station itself, it is near the shops, just in front of Zen Shyang Clinic, just about below the pedestrian bridge.

Keelung Main Station *Where I stood to take this picture, is where the bus stop is*

We waited for almost 30 minutes before the bus arrived. There was a little lady who gave us instructions on which bus to get on exactly which was helpful :). The ride was about another 40 minutes to Jiufen, going through the valley. Jiufen was actually on a little hilltop, and the traffic was pretty bad. It was jammed packed before the entrance to Jinshan Street which was where we wanted to go to.

Jinshan Street

There was several famous food on Jinshan, mainly fishballs, yam balls, grilled mushrooms and sausages. It is also famous for teahouses.

Fishball stall

Grilled mushrooms

The grilled mushrooms are out of the world! They've got to be the best ever! A definite must try for anyone heading to Jinshan street! Like definitely..

45 degrees to the mushroom stall was a sausage stall which no one can possibly miss. The vendor is dressed for attention, and obviously had much business due to that. It's a great gimmick, and I think that's probably why she had more customers than others selling the same thing. The sausage though, was only so-so. Nothing extraordinary.

Isn't she just a sight!! :D

Towards the end of Jinshan street, at the right, was Suichi Street, which is famous for it's red lanterns, and has hosted several scenes in chinese movies. Before heading off to Suichi street, slightly further down Jinshan St was Jiufen Tea House. It is the first teahouse in Jiufen according to the owner. Prettily built, the house was built in wooden structure, the front part a tea shop, the inner area a teahouse with an outdoor verandah looking down from the hill. As it was chilly outside, plus the rustic older wooden feel on the inside - we decided to have our tea inside.

We had a seat on the little areas, rather than the tables which was pretty nice. They will take your orders, and then a lady will come to the table and teaches the right way to brew and drink the tea. The teapot is kept boiling on the table, with a bigger pot to the either side of the seat for water refills. Truly an experience to enjoy, plus we were so tired that we welcomed any resting moments :).

Our little tea set

Demonstrating the right way to brew tea

Refilling the coals for boiling the tea

After the refreshing rest and great tea, we headed to Suichi Street to complete our Jiufen visit. There was more teahouse on Suichi Street, but none of them as traditional as the one we've been too. It was more of a photo taking session here as the lanterns are so prettily lit, along with the steps.

Suichi Street

At the bottom of the street, was where the bus stop to Keelung is located, which was really convenient as it meant that we didn't need to climb the steps to get back to the stop where we got off on arriving to Jiufen. We headed back to Keelung for their night market, also known as the Keelung Miaokou Night Market.

Keelung Miaokou

This arrangement reminds me of Brussels :)

More food

We had dinner here, which was pretty good. I had no idea what we ordered but my guess it is was a sort of local food. It was called '8 treasures something'.

Dinner

Shrine in the market area

From there, we rushed back to Keelung Main Station to catch Taiwan's version of the bullet train, Tze Chiang. It wasn't that expensive to get back to Taipei, slight over NTD 100 for a 45 minute ride.

As it is, we were rushing for the train because we arrived 3 minutes prior to it's departure. The ticket officer actually handed us 1 ticket instead of 2, and as we were walking (or rather, running) did we notice it. We then had to run back to get the other ticket that he LEFT ON THE COUNTER, and then run back to the platform 2 as he told us. When we got there, much to our distraught, there was platform 2A and 2B, both had trains! And neither wrote in English.. or Taipei for that matter. So we asked a stranger -who then pointed us to the WRONG train! When I entered that train, I noticed that there was no labelled seats. Damn, this got to be the wrong train! and quickly ran out. DAMMIT! Thankfully, the other train has started and we got in just in time. That was some adrenaline pumping experience.

Needless to say, we were both deadbeat tired when we arrived back in the hotel.