Let’s talk about a 5-day Taiwan Trip (Part 3 – Yehliu, Jiufen & Shifen) – Page 4

Third part: Jiufen

After a short trek up a winding road, we were treated to a wide view that made me think, hey, we’re up a mountainside. Good thing that the sun got blocked by a few more clouds, the temp soon got a bit more conducive.

Basic carpark.

Now, just a disclaimer: among all the itineraries, I researched Jiufen a bit more as I was more interested in what it had to offer. I looked at a lot of the Taiwan tour blogs and recommendations, and Jiufen was in a lot of them too. I knew it was at a mountainside, has lots of stairs, lots of stores, and lots of things to see in terms of tourist eye candy – just more material, not in the intangibles like “waterfalls” or “two-colored water in the coast”. So I came in prepared, legs and all.

I did manage to climb the famed Batu Caves’ stairs to the top in less than 20, so I assumed this might be a piece of cake. I have the legs. I’ve seen most pictures. How many could there be here?

First set.

Second set.

Third set.

After the third set, our group has noticeably dwindled down to just… five. I saw the elderly on our group were catching their breath near the steps before the third set, hoping to climb and catch up. But…

Fourth set.

We have more stairs to go up to before we even get to see one of the famed places to see in Jiufen. But I am also amazed at our tour guide Carol, who was also in elderly age but climbed the stairs like a pro. It was then I knew, she was as fit as an ox. She’s an active Asian granny. Midway those fourth set of stairs, I spotted a store selling apparel (t-shirts, jackets, bags, etc) with very cute animal prints. Later, baby. Got a view to catch.

Fifth set.

Near the top of the fifth set, our tour guide told us that this was the optimal place to get our shots of the famed Amei Tea House, one of the great places to see in Jiufen. It gets touted as an indirect “inspiration” used in the animated film “Spirited Away”, sure. I’m more in the crowd that loved the area more for the “A City of Sadness” film, though. I watched it a long time ago in an art film festival. Not sure if it’s “Amei” or “Ame”, as from what I saw, the hiragana on the flag outside the tea house said “ame ocha-ya“, and I knew “ocha-ya” is a tea house. I’d stick with the locals for now. That might be a tourist-y mistake on the hiragana used.

The teahouse building’s appeal is its picturesque design as well as location – it’s a teahouse on a mountainside facing the ocean. Inside, guests oohed and aahed at the view. It looked nice from the outside as well. It was hard to get selfies as more and more tourists came in (it was the middle of lunch hours), but single shots were easy, especially with the stick.

Thankfully the sun cooperated.

We then climbed ANOTHER set of stairs (six, but not as high as Batu’s) to what our tour guide noted was the “busy” part of Jiufen. Basically, the old street. By the steps at the end, she led us to a kind lady giving us taste cups filled with sweet iced teas of various nice flavors. I tasted every flavor she had there, but only one flavor stood out for me as “I want that”. Later, I thought. When I get back, I’ll buy one.

At the top, I got a good glimpse down of the sets of stairs we climbed to get up here. I knew the elderly tourmates will take their time to even get to here, as I saw they were struggling near the fourth. Man. I didn’t know if there’s an elevator or a tram/cable car present, or a better way to get to the old street, but I hoped there was one for them. Later, I found one (I’ll detail it later).

Tour waited for no one, and we’re on a short time leash despite lunchtime, so our guide Carol gathered us six who managed to keep up with her, and she told us two things: 1) we could split up from her group and tour the place at leisure, as long as we be back at the bus by 2pm, we’re good, or 2) she could give us a brief tour of some places and food recommendations to try out, maybe 30 minutes tops, and the rest we could tour for ourselves, and same with option 1, we should try to get on the bus by 2pm.

Well, I took option 2.

So she led us five to various stalls to look and try, talking all the while and recounting various things about Jiufen. Old mining town, I recall. I remember she led us to:

A restaurant selling local dishes and soups.
A tea store selling bricks of various teas – black teas, puer teas, chrysanthemum teas, oolong teas, flower-y teas. Funny, I counted two stores with the same name on the same street.
A store selling dried seafoods. You can smell the wares a block away.
A store for preserved fruits.
A store selling nougats with various ingredients mixed in, as well as nougat biscuits.
A store selling various sausages – one looked like a jumbo lap cheong, and some were pork sausages, beef sausages, and blood sausages
A store selling dumplings with noodles.

It helped that all her recommendations came with free tasting samples. It was a benchmark and an expectation. Also, they recognized me and two other tourmates as Filipinos. Sweet. They used attractive words, like “masarap” (delicious), “mura lang” (this is cheap), “pasalubong” (takehome gift), “salamat” (thank you) and “free taste”. They knew the magic words! I joked to Carol that I liked they recognized who the Filipinos are in the crowd due to the frequency of visitors from our country, but on the contrary, I got profiled a few times as Malay in Thailand. One vendor there even used “terimah kasih” on me after buying some souvenir items.

Near a certain point (I remember it was between that place with a mountainside vantage point that sold some noodle dishes), she gathered us up, answered more questions from the group (“where’s the peanut ice cream wrap”) and allowed us to go our merry ways to have our lunch.

For me, I settled right away on a nearby restaurant that sold a manageable portion of braised pork rice, coupled with a bowl of mixed handmade meatballs in soup. And a bottle of mineral water.

I added a half tablespoon of chili sauce.

Here’s the thing for me as well – I had to really, really watch what I ate, as much as I can restrain myself. I may be on vacation, but personally I did not intend to pig out. I left Singapore at 223lbs (my max at the end of April was 244+lbs), and I still have to be back in Philippines for later. God knows what my dad will cook for me. I know the hotel gym won’t allow me to fully “burn” any excesses I might excuse for myself here. I’m not much for “sin workouts” either. Imagine eating a big tub of ice cream thinking you’d do extra laps at the elliptical for it. Not enough, and likely not happening. So for my Taiwan meals, I had to be conscious of my intake, even if these foods might be of rarity. I did look around other restaurants nearby, and only this one advertised a portion size to my liking. Just a shallow wide bowl, thank you very much. The soup’s fine in another bowl. Plain cold mineral water will do.

It was delicious, mind you. The braised pork and fried tofu (it was tofu, yes, with a bit of preserved taste… might be the stinky tofu) was good, and it helped that a lot of vegetables and half a tea egg were there. The soup and meatballs helped with satiety. Springy, some had bite, some had a delicate taste, some were springy. Nice. I spent a good 30 minutes on the table. As I was a single customer and the place was packed for lunchtime, I had to share a table with a group. One was a group of three dudes, the other was a backpacker couple.

But for desserts – I thought “what” first. I like a good dessert but I don’t want it to be a complete calorie mega-bomb. I mentally limited myself to just two. Should be enough to maintain my blood sugar levels, methinks. After finishing up my meal at the restaurant, I walked the rest of the way to the end of the main street, looking for a good dessert (as well as pushing up the walking numbers on my watch by window shopping). There were lots of stores selling treats of which variety I might not see elsewhere, like some rice cakes, pastries, cookies, and stuff. To be honest, if I wasn’t restricting my diet, I’d graze. This street had a lot of food stalls.

I later reached the end of the street – a bus stop. So there’s means for old people to get here without all those pesky stairs. Honestly, I’m not sure why the tour used the long-ass route we went to. Bus parking lot, perhaps. This bus stop might not also be a good place to leisurely drop off loads of tourists to.

OK then. There’s also means to get here manually from Taipei, but no thanks. I’ll stick with the comfy tour bus.

So then I headed back, retracing my steps and things I saw. By the time I turned around and walked back to the old street, I already had ideas what to buy, and what to eat. I did see the “peanut ice cream wrap” thing my tourmate looked for earlier. So why not, that’ll be dessert #1. And its actual name was “peanut ice cream roll”, to be precise.

It looked like a cute lumpia from the outside, but inside were two scoops of thick ice cream (one pink and one green), peanut brittle shavings (she shaved a block of peanuts candied into a big block with dark caramel), and… some chopped parsley, wrapped in a soft wrapping skin that I think might be used in popiah. Mmmm. Nice and cold. It also helped to cool me off, as the walking made me sweat a bit. I stayed on a nondescript free corner to eat the cold treat.

I also observed the hustle and bustle.

With that done, I started thinking of souvenirs.

I remembered a lot of the stalls that I laid eyes on earlier while walking, and I immediately spotted the one I thought was a good souvenir shop earlier. They had these various cute keychains and magnets with various calendar dates, I thought will be good gifts to give. I bought some, as well as a few personal stuff:

Three fridge magnets, one had to be of the Juifen kind (it’s a picture of the tea house from the good angle), and the other two were generic Taiwan magnets.
One copper pencil sharpener, but in the shape of an old-school phone with a dial, and chained phone component. Small enough to be in my hand. Good office desk trinket.
One pen with nice designs around it
One notepad with a wooden cover, with designs
Some more keychains for gift souvenirs

Continuing on, I had to go back to that store, the one Carol recommended for nougats. I bought two bags of mixed basic nougat flavors for 500 NTD – plain vanilla, chocolate, simple matcha, and berry, all in a bag. There were more expensive ones like real matcha or more fancy nuts, and there’s one that almost looked like Turkish delights in nougat form, but I’d rather settle for the basic nougats. These are souvenirs after all. One’s for my niece. He’s not of the bourgeoisie palate that will appreciate the finer tastes like nougats mixed with pistachios and hazelnuts with powdered matcha coating. He’s more of a Toblerone kind of kid. Basic is hella good enough. I also bought nougat cookies for myself, one small pack, to snack on at the hotel in the coming days.

Then one more dessert before heading back – a bowl of iced taro balls from A Gan Yi Taro Balls. I saw this earlier while Carol was touring us around. While we didn’t stop at the place, I bookmarked it in my mind. I went back there and bought one bowl. It had a good helping of ice, sweet water (I think it’s water mixed with caramel syrup), and an assorted mix of taro, mung beans, red beans, and some yellow ones that tasted like sweet potato. Good enough for second dessert, I’m a bit exhausted. I did want to buy some of the balls, but I’m in a tour. It might get squished in the bag. I ate the bowl of taro balls near a ledge overlooking a side of the mountain town, with a great overhead view of some houses and the coast.

Nice view.

Fortunately, I do not have a sticker to contribute to this “classy” sign.

The souvenir store and window shopping got me a bit late on my estimates, and when I looked at my watch, it was 1.40pm. Time to head back. I had 20 minutes to do two other stuff.

First, I bought a pack of the red date longan tea cubes from the vendor that our tour guide showed us to earlier. It’s a big enough pack with like 30-40 small cubes in it. What you do is melt 2-3 cubes in hot water, maybe 200-250ml, depends to suit your taste for sweet or less sweet. Can chill it with ice or or drink it hot, both works. I only bought one pack for 250 NTD despite the vendor trying to upsell me to 600 NTD for three assorted packs. I politely declined it as I saw it as a bad deal that only applied for my specific situation and gifting views. Hey, I like good deals, and if you like teas like red dates or puer, by all means. The 500 NTD two-bag nougats earlier was a good deal. But not for me this time with this product.

See, these tea cubes tasted good, but they’re “exotic” for most people, unlike nougats or cookies. For me, no problem with tea tastes, but I knew these tea cubes, while authentic-tasting (I’ve had longan juice in Singapore frequently), had lots of sugar to help it stay good for longer. They were very sweet in their regular serving size amount. Me gifting it to other people is no good, IMO. As soon as you have “instructions” for food gifts, automatically it’s “exotic” for most. I’ve seen firsthand what happens to gifts that are deemed “exotic” by the receiver – they often end up in the back of food cupboards, until they expired, and end up in the trash. Waste of culture. I’d rather gift foods that the only instructions are either instinctive – open wrapper, put in mouth, eat – or very similar in use to what they fully know. No measurements, no fancy equipment needed. I liked the tea cubes, but it’s sweet, and likely I’m the only one drinking this stuff.

If I bought 3 just to take advantage of a 150 NTD discount, and I’d be stuck as the one to consume it, and as the expiry dates I saw in the pack was for more or less one year, I’d have to drink some regularly. My blood sugar levels will spike. I’d end up wasting the efficacy of my medication. Potentially wasting other monies because of a discounted “good deal”. And I have zero friends I know of that will like “red date longan”, “peach puer” or “pineapple birds’ nest” tea cubes. So I only bought just one pack. It’s big enough as it was, and 250 NTD a bag was no problem. I knew this bag of tea will comfortably last for a year. Should be enough to stretch for many, many months as occassional afternoon snacking tea.

Then I looked down right after buying the tea cube pack. Man, stairs. Thank God this time, it’s all going down.

One down, five more to go.

Second order to do was to buy from that clothing and apparel/cafe store I saw while going up. I think it was around the fourth set of stairs.

It helped that a mascot was outside.

The prices were a bit higher than I thought, so I decided on just one t-shirt. I initially went for a t-shirt with a cat design on the breast pocket, but the store lady found no XL or XXL size for it in the store. Oh yeah, I should mention – know how to eyeball your shirt size. When the store lady handed me a sample plain XL shirt when I requested, I immediately suspected it to be of Asian size XL instead of the international size XL based on eyeballing it. Like, I fold my shirts myself after laundry, I know what XL for me was. So I knew, I had to ask for XXL. I then asked instead for the second cutest design I liked – a Labrador puppy on a small motorbike. Thankfully, that one had XXL, so that was what I bought. Also, the store lady graciously let me put my iced taro paper bowl in their trash bin inside. I don’t know why the old street don’t have trash bins accessible a few blocks from the stairs. I looked earlier, couldn’t find one.

Once I put the t-shirt into my bag, I headed down to the parking lot where the tour bus was. Whew, made it. Cold aircon to soothe my body, I just sank into my seat. And to my lack of surprise, we’re more or less half complete, three minutes to 2pm. This place was a veritable tourist trap, so no surprise some people took their sweet-ass time going back down. And we also had elderly tourmates, they definitely deserve the extra time to go down the stairs, they’re steep. Had to be careful. I think Carol accounted for it, and very likely the 2pm deadline was more like 2.15pm, with the fifteen minutes as an allowance for them.

Once everyone made it back onboard the bus, Carol made a quick check, and the driver started to move out of the parking area to our next destination. I looked back up at Juifen from the bus window. Man, I wished I had more time, but for now, a couple of hours were enough. Maybe next time… but next time, I might see other places in Taiwan instead. Hey, maybe with someone else. Place was nice to come with a tour date.

More random shots: