Taiwan 2019 - Part 2.1

Day 1 - Friday, October 18, 2019

Refreshed and recharged, we woke up the next day ready to officially start our Taiwan adventure. We only had two items in the itinerary that day: (1) The Yehliu, Jiufen, and Shifen Day Tour with Taiwanese Pastry Making tour we booked from Klook and (2) Dinner at Ningxia Night Market.

We woke up early and headed straight towards the specified meeting place. As instructed in the voucher "Please wait at east gate 3 at Taipei main station on 08:45 and find the guide who wear blue 'ezfly' vest . If you have any problems, please dial 0965-162-200. Please keep you mobile reachable, in case of any emergency. Thank you."

Mirror groufie to check OOTD 📸

Even though the meeting place was close to our accommodation, we still went there early to make sure we'd be able to find our tour group and won't be left behind. We also grabbed some breakfast from the convenient stall inside the train station. While waiting for the tour to start, we snapped some photos (of course!).

Tourist mode on!

Found our group!

¡Adelante!

Our local tour guide.

First stop: Shifen where we selected and designed our own sky lantern and released it in the air for good luck.

Pwede na bang pumasa as a local? 🤣

The lantern that we bought has four sides (we just bought one and shared). We decided to write our own wishes on each side, and on the fourth side, we wrote a group message.

Steve's side of the lantern.

Grace's side (nobela ata 😂).

My side of the lantern (ang chaka ng sulat!).

Group message.

SLU CEA #BiboCEA

✊

💖

😁

Kung anu-anong pose ang pina-choreograph sa amin ni koya 😹

Watching the video above of releasing the sky lantern still gives me a small good amount of stress because we've witnessed a lantern by other group of tourists getting burned upon release (hay buti na lang talaga may pa-alog si koya).

Fly a sky lantern... Mission accomplished!

Ayan na ang tren! (char lang 😁)

Upo muna sa kalsada 😎

Groufie ulit while waiting for the tour bus.

Next stop: Explored the once prosperous town of Jiufen known for its narrow alleyways, teahouses, and variety of street food.

Jampacked entrance.

Paging the mother of a lost boy... 😂

Baguio City has prepared us well for the journey of a thousand steps and stairs 💪

Sabi ito raw yung inspiration for Studio Ghibli's movie "Spirited Away"

Turista shot 1 📸

Turista shot 2 📸

Water break! 💧

Of course, when in Taiwan... eat!!!

Street foodz.

Pak! Longganisa! 😅

"May cute dun oh..." 😜

Documentation purposes...

😝

Ang sarp nito 😋

We also tried the stinky tofu! It had a strong piercing smell and we could already smell it before we entered the alleyways but it wasn't that bad, it actually tasted good.

Pabili nga po ng paa.. este tokwa 😆

Inaabsorb talaga ni Grace yung amoy, balak nyang gawin perfume.

We also bought this "lumpia ice cream with shredded sweet nuts" for dessert

But what I really miss the most is this soy sauced soaked egg (I'm salivating as I type this). We only bought one each just to try, and we ate it as we went back up the lot where the bus was parked. We should've bought more. But I'll definitely eat this again when I go back.

Sobrang sarap nito!!! 🤤🤤🤤

I'll just put the second part of our day 1 tour on a separate post so this won't get super lengthy...