Saturday, November 17, 2012

Visit to Yilan 蘭得好天氣: 宜蘭之旅 (17.11.12)

My friend got a brochure advertising for a trip to Yilan orgranized by a volunteer club and suddenly, we are off to Yilan today. The whole activity was quite nice except for the rain that accompanied us the whole day :( It was not nice taking pictures in the rain, getting myself slightly wet. I would have enjoyed the whole thing even more if it did not rain.

First destination:亞點菓子工廠 Cake factory.  We stopped here for about half an hour to try out the cakes :P You are encouraged to buy their products which I see people doing. I find the cakes a bit too sweet for my liking.

Brief explanation on cake making process, ingredients and other information

The cakes

車輪蛋糕 Car wheel cakes 

The empty box left after our tasting
Second destination: 望龍埤 Wang Long Pi. It is quite a scenic places with a lake and mountains around it. It is also apparently one of the places where 下一站幸福, a Taiwanese drama was filmed. However, other than a sign saying ‘花田村' the name of a place in the drama, I do not see any other signs of places where they filmed the show.

望龍埤

Stone with name

Beautiful :)

Walkway by the lake

The sign of the place in the drama

Photos of actors at the place

Cute dog pining for owner :P. Nah, he's just looking to his left.

Grassland
Third destination: 養蜂人家. Honey factory. Another round of see see look look. I tried this 蜂王乳 which has a super "special" taste, aka awful. It is as horrible as the 豆汁兒 that I tried in Beijing. I will not try it again even if it is super nutritious :(

Mr Bee :)

Real, live bees

Super huge beehive. Taller than me.

How to wear bees
Fourth destination: 國立傳統藝術中心。National traditional arts centre. The centre is quite huge with different sections, there's a fake old street which is copied from Sanxia old street. You can find shops selling traditional handicrafts, food and many more stuff. The place is pretty nice to explore. Here, I met a volunteer who is really passionate about what he is doing, was pretty nice talking to him. The centre has aborigines' performances which we didn't go for as there was insufficient time.

Kiln refurnished as souvenir shop

There is a pond next door

原住民部落

Cute cartoon 土地公

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"Sanxia old street"  :)

Fifth destination: 羅東夜市。Luo Dong Night market. Didn't take any pictures. The night market is quite big and nice, tried 包心粉圓 and 卜肉 :)

Monday, November 5, 2012

Alishan 阿裡山 (3.11.12 - 4.11.12)

We reached Alishan at about 2pm. After checking in to our accommodation, we explored Alishan. Alishan is actually not very big. We managed to explore most of it in 3 plus hour. There are 5 main wonders in Alishan namely sun rise, sun set, sea of clouds, forest and the train. In this trip, we did not get to see sun set because of the thick clouds but we managed to see a bit of sun rise. We also walked through the forest and tried the train.


Flowers blooming

Red maple tree. It is one of the few maple trees that I saw which has turned red.


Alishan train

Alishan train station

Tickets for sunrise tommorow

Train carriage

Train tickets

Zhaoping train station

Maple tree that partially turned red

Tall and straight cedar trees

Tree stump

姐妹潭 Sister pond

永結同心 Heart shaped branches

Walkway in the forest

Magnolia garden

One of the few blooming magnolia I saw 

Temple in the mist

Alishan in the mist

Old mysterious building

Highest primary school

Supposed to be able to see sunset but cannot see because clouds too thick :(

What we supposedly could see
We went back to our accommodation and slept earlier than usual so that we could wake up in time to watch sunrise tomorrow. We woke at round 3am and took the 4.30am train to Zhushan. We waited for about one hour plus for sunrise but we could not really see it :( I would like to go to Alishan again and see sunrise.

Long queues of people waiting to get on the train

Train platform

Train coming into the station

Inside the carriage

Finally reached our destination


Walking to the pavilion to see sun rise
Although we did not really manage to see the sunrise, the scenery was still quite beautiful. Clouds turned pinkish and yellowish, swirls of clouds like cotton candy, thick sea of clouds :)

At 5am or so.

Clouds 


Watching the sun rise together

View from the platform

Walkway

Yellowish clouds

Swirls of clouds

Sea of clouds








Viewing platform with a 360 degrees view

Mountain

The sun finally came out!


On our way back

Red maple leaf

Path back

Blooming flowers


Forest walkway

Maple tree