My only must do (besides eating) for Taiwan was a daytrip to Jiufen – a mountain village known for it’s similarity to the downtown scene from the Japanese movie “Spirited Away”.
It’s just a small village, 2 hours away by car from Taipei, but it was like a whole different world from the city feel of Taipei.. I loved just walking around and taking pictures of this place!
A photo log of all the random sights we saw around the city of Taipei..
The streets..
Restaurant with snake meat in their dishes…
The buildings..
Red House
More than any tourist attraction, my favorite places to look for in a country is towns/villages or streets that preserve their old way of life or local culture..
While searching the internet for any such places in the city, I saw mention of Dihua street. It was exactly what I was hoping to see with all the old style buildings, signs and shops.
Similar to a lot of Asian countries, Buddhism is a major religion in Taiwan. As such there is a lot of temples scattered all over the city.
Since both me and my cousin have seen a lot of temples already from other countries, we didn’t really have seeing temples in our must do list.
But since this is one of the main touristy things to do while here in Taiwan, I picked one temple to go to for our itinerary… Longshan temple..
Honestly, if you have seen temples before, this won’t be very much different.. But if you haven’t travelled much around Asia before, the color and architecture of Buddhist temples is a worthwhile sight to see..
(Sept 15, 2015)
Besides food, we also covered some of the typical tourist spots here in Taipei.
One of them is Chiang Kai Shek memorial, a national monument in former memory of the former president of China.
Here’s pictures of our visit here
Taiwan is best known for street food.. and the best place to get that is in night markets!
Here’s a quick peek into the night markets we got to go to and the sights along the way..
Shilin night market
you can’t skip out on drinking milk tea when in Taiwan..
fried milk! I wasn’t sure if I would like this but I ended up buying more after 😀 😀
(Sept 14, 2015)
Because we’re a fan of all things cute, we went to the National Taiwan Science Education Centre for their temporary Moomin exhibit!
It’s just a small exhibit and easily done in less than 2 hours, but fun for photo ops !
(Sept 14, 2015)
Last year I wanted to fit in a short travel trip to an Asian country while I was visiting relatives in the Philippines. Taiwan is a good option since the travel time from Phlippines isn’t long, it’s not an expensive place to travel to, and 4 days was enough time to go around.
This time around the itinerary we had planned was mainly focused on food (which Taiwan is known for), with sightseeing (and maybe some shopping) in between.
First food place we went to was a seafood market/food hall called Aquatic Addiction Development. When my cousin first suggested it and I heard it was a seafood market, I was expecting a wet market with smelly seafood all around..
So I was surprised to find the market looking like a posh food hall..
Now that I’ve finished my Japan fangirl travel series of posts, for those that want to see the itinerary I’ve shared in this page the link to my very obsessive research on our plans.
This itinerary focuses mainly on Tokyo with a few days in Osaka and Kyoto. And because me and my cousin have been to Japan before on separate occasions, our personalized itinerary was geared more towards the childish and sometimes geeky fascination we have on specific Japanese culture (meaning animes and mangas) and less on the more common tourist spots.
If you have more days to spend in Japan, you can easily add in more days in Osaka or Kyoto or maybe go to another area of Japan. You can check out another itinerary I’ve posted on the Japan page which is for 2 weeks and involves more areas of Japan.
Writing about my travel and looking back on my photos still brings a smile to my face remembering the people I’ve met in the trip and the experiences me and my cousin got to have. Japan has so many things to offer for photographers, nature lovers, city people, foodies, and kids or kids at heart.. I’ll definitely be planning another trip to Japan in the future to see a different facet of this country that I haven’t gotten to yet.
(Nov 30, 2014)
Although not a tourist spot, I found Tokyo Station another nice spot to go to for pictures. The interior design and architecture of the building was so different from the other train stations in Japan.
After some research, found out that this red brick building dates back to the Meiji period, surviving from the time when the station opened in 1914.
And the interior was beautiful from the floor, the roof and the walls!
Little Miss OZ Chinita and Blueclouds 