The Tan's Diary: Taiwan 2013 (Day 2

Rise and shine! It's day 2 in Taiwan.

We had a filling breakfast in the hotel before heading out. We booked the same driver who picked us up at the airport yesterday for NT4,000 for eight hours. The itinerary for the day was to visit Jiufen, Yeliu and Danshui, and to alight us at Taipei 101.

After an hour, we arrived at Jiufen. The scenery from the mountain overlooking the Pacific ocean was great.

Jiufen is much like a daytime night market. It is a very long uphill old street with many shops and eateries along the way. The problem is, how you go up will be the way you have to come down later.

Since it was on a mountain, the weather was very much colder. So the first thing we did was to fill our tummies with something warm. Our first snack was the foo chow fishball soup.

Then we had some Taiwanese "escargots", which is called "Crystal Jade Snails" and some cuttlefish.

And while mommy was busy choosing souvenirs for the loved ones at home, the kiddos kept themselves busy with this toy. We thought of buying it for them to play at home, but on second thoughts, the adults at home will have to bear with the noise it makes, so we decided against the idea.

We came to this stall that sells peanut snacks and they were show-casing how to cut the table of sticky peanuts into pieces.

Interesting to see how they make coffee in Taiwan.

I remember I saw this uncle on TV. Quite a chatty guy. His pottery has six holes and he blows into it to make music like a flute.

And I had my first Taiwanese cold milk tea with black pearls at Jiufen.

And daddy also agree that it taste good.

And so, he became an ambassador of Taiwanese milk tea....LOL!

David wanted to have some yoghurt ice-cream which we did not accede to. Instead, we convinced him to buy this yam bun which tasted really good.

Just look at the thick yam filling inside the bun. You can never get this in Singapore!

The last thing that caught Daddy's eyes just before we left Jiufen was this fried prawn balls.

As we were waiting for the driver to pick us up, David sighted a strange vehicle with only 3 wheels, just on the left side of his head in the picture.

Our second stop for the day was Ye liu. I didn't plan to visit these places so we didn't really know what to expect. But it was good to have someone local to drive us around to these places.

As Jiu fen and Ye liu are located at the North-east of Taipei, we were travelling along the coast and could see the Pacific ocean throughout most of the journey.

When we arrived at Ye liu, we foresee that we might not have much time left for Dan shui and then for Taipei 101, so we decided not to enter the national park and instead, we went to catch the marine show at Yeh Liu Ocean World.

When we arrived, the show had already begun for 15 minutes. Still, it turned out to be very interesting and it was an enjoyable show.

After the show, our jaws dropped when we saw this looooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnng oarfish on display.

After the show, we walked out to the shore to enjoy the ocean breeze.

You can see from my hair that it was really windy.

Before we left, we walked through a row of stalls in tents. Daddy could not resist the temptation and so satisfied his craving for more Taiwanese sausage.

And of course, the kids too.

Then we journeyed to Danshui, which is north of Taipei. It was almost sunset soon, and mommy caught sight of this beautiful scenery from the cab while the kids were dozing off.

And the windmill from an electric company.

When we reached Danshui, the temperature was much lower. We were feeling cold and hungry. Then we realised the kids haven't had white rice for two days! So we went across the street and popped into Yoshinoya for a quick bowl of rice with beef to fill our stomachs.

After dinner, we took a leisure stroll and found some shops operating pasar malam games.

While walking across the Danshui MRT station, there were a few stall of such caricaturist. so we got one of them to draw Deborah and David. It took about an hour for her to complete both portraits.

So while waiting, we explored the nearby night market. We were feeling rather full from the dinner we had at Yoshinoya, so we were doing more shopping instead of eating. There are shops that sells sourvenirs, bags, socks, accessories in Danshui. The road is wide and easy to walk. We also noticed that people in Danshui seem to love dogs. The locals were bringing their dogs out and everywhere we went, we saw nice, cute and different breed of dogs along the streets.

We saw a stall selling "Tian Bu La" (translated to "sweet not spicy") and decided to try, cos mommy remember seeing this on TV. It is actually just yong tau foo in sweet non-spicy curry sauce.

Just before we exit the night market, we saw an ice-cream stall that mommy and daddy also couldn't resist. So in the cold autumn night, we were freezing and yes, eating ice-cream!