I packed my bags and left Taipei City for Jiufen 九份.
It's a quaint little village/town on the north east side of Taipei County and it used to be a mining town. It's name if u have not read, is because it was said to have only 9 families living there before and whenever things were ordered and delivered via the sea, 9 portions of things would be delivered and hence the name Jiufen - which is 9 portions if u directly translate from mandarin.
Unfortunately, throughout my 2 days stay, it rained and rained and rained and rained. See? near the sea ya? sure rain when I'm around.
So it was a pretty cloudy, misty and rainy time in Jiufen. Everytime I get back, my jeans would be wet till mid-calf. but not my shoes! :) Thankful to Xiu who bought me my timberland shoes which are waterproof! Now I know why it cost so much. I can step into puddles without feeling it in my socks. :)
I booked a homestay/minsu 民宿 called Bafankeng八番坑41 - it was the cheapest already and had the avenue to pay your deposit via online credit card. It's not very near the old street but still walkable. There's one other homestay which is RIGHT at the old street but u pay a lot more.
It's the cheapest room but still is very nice.
They had packets of instant noodles and like a dozen of eggs and ham and bread for you to make something out of it..so I had instant noodles for dinner... I wasn't going to climb back up in the dark and in the rain to get food. .. craziness.
So after settling in, and waiting for the rain to slow down which the lady boss said, ’ 不会停的啦! 已经下了整个星期! 下雨天很麻烦!‘ (It won't stop la! It has been raining for the whole week! It's so troublesome when it's raining!) She's very cute. She came down to give me more instant noodles...
Anyway, it didn't look like the rain was slowing down, so heck, I went out and climbed at least a lot of flight of steps to get up there to where the action was.
There were a lot of tourists at the old street. Chinese and Japanese I noticed.
All the pics I took here are via my Iphone. wasn't easy to protect and use your camera when you are holding an umbrella. So pictures not very nice. THought the 7-11 sign destroyed the 'old' street part.
红糟肉圆I think. It was quite nice esp the skin. It's basically like a huge dumpling with meat inside and a kind of dough outside that after steaming becomes translucent? the skin was very bouncy.. Q Q as most people would describe.
Snails.
Fishball with meat in it..... nothing fantastic. Quite fishy. Prefer the ones back home.
The street is basically filled with shops selling all sorts of souvenirs, knick knacks.
And more steps. I must have climbed at least a 100 steps here.
These are just PART of some the flights of steps. The pic below leads to quite a few teahouses - which I didn't try becos - I don't quite appreciate Chinese tea (makes me pee faster la) I only appreciate it in my bubble tea :P It can be quite expensive for a single traveller who is on a budget.
I changed the exposure obviously. It was cloudy and dreadful. Like a cold miserable winter's day kinda feeling.
When you are at Jiufen, and you like cute stuff - be sure to visit
There are 3 of this Henry cats & friends in Jiufen. The picture on the right is of a shop selling lavender stuff. It comes from lavender cottage where you can go visit the farm that were started by 2 girls.... I meant to go but that's another story. so if visiting the farm is not in your itinerary - there's a shop here if u wanna buy lavender based products - there's rose also. quite nice. I bought a postcard for Mia and they sent it for me - I didn't have to pay for postage. Free postage if you just buy a postcard from them! She received it if u r wondering if it works.
Poor cats and kittens all huddled together in the cold... :(
Went back earlier - had my instant noodles and konked out.
The very next day, I took a bus up to Jinguashi 金瓜石 which is a mining town previously.
Some railway guy found out that the sea water nearby was glistening and realised that the area was full of gold.
The Japanese also of course took advantage - and made many POWs build and work in the mine till they died.
Anyway, what's new? Still raining. :S
There are a lot of places to visit in Jinguashi - if it's not raining.
one of them is:
Quite cool to see a dog sitting there - like a loyal dog waiting for owner to come home. And it's a black dog.
The chalet where some Japanese prince would stay when he comes to Taiwan...
I visited a ex-coal mine -exhibits showing how it was like in a coal mine...
Then on to the Gold building where everything about the history of Jinguashi and all about gold is told in the exhibit.
not exactly Gold la the building. That is a block of real gold! The number is how much it costs at that very moment (they update the price of gold daily I think)
The picture blur right? Because there was condensation IN my lens! Not on, IN. Think they had to have the room in a certain humidity and temperature.
Not funny. cos subsequent pictures had that blurry look..... not after a long time before the condensation wore off. Panicked for a while. :S
Had lunch at this cafe- NT190. almost 9 bucks. Not bad for the meal and the bento box and chopsticks! Comes with a cup of hot water. Gotten a free mousepad too! :) The meal was not too bad!
Miners had to pack their food into the mines so this is like the traditional kind of thing they would have packed for them by the wives.
There are other places you can visit - like the golden waterfall and the yinyang sea - only when its blue sky ok?
Went back to Jiufen for another walk before retreating back to my cosy room.
Forgot to say how to get to Jiufen:
There are 2 ways - Take a train to Ruifang瑞芳, get out of the train station, take any bus saying Jiufen-Jinguashi from the bus stop outside the Wellcome 顶好shop.
or,
take a direct bus from Taipei (this one I think its Keelung bus company) I'm not too sure - cos I took the former way. More popular route.
*edited* I forgot to add my favourite picture of the whole trip!!
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