The special thing about our vacation this time is that we experienced an extreme weather change throughout our trip. The first two days was raining. It rained heavy making the Taipei wet, cold and freezing cold. Everyone was with umbrella. From what I heard from our taxi driver,it rains 6 months in a year and this year the winter prolonged. It was not supposed to rain anymore at the time when we had our trip but it still did. It was snowing at "Hehuan shan" and we were there after two days lucky for us that our car can make it up there because they had cleared the road and it stopped snowing. Snow is not melting yet so we stood a chance to see the mountain covered by snow and put our feet on them. There are cherry blossom too. We saw them on the way to " Hehuan Shan" within Taroko Gorge National Park and at "Yang Ming shan" at Taipei, both pink and white. After the 2nd day of rain, the sun came out. However it was misty at all the places we went due to the difference in temperature day and night. It was so cold at night and sunny in the day time. Most of us got really bad sun burn especially for my friend who were supposed to have their photography session the next day. Now both Weeliem and I are really tanned. You count, we see rain, sun, snow, mist, freezing cold and hot sun. Quite worth for a trip except that visiting places in heavy rain is really a torture. Obviously we did not bring jacket that is thick enough to sustain a 7 degree celcius (or lower) temperature because I thought the weather would be similar to Cameron Highland. Who the hell wear winter clothing to Cameron Highland? Luckily I packed 2 pairs of gloves and they kept our hands warm. Another thing that we never prepared for is on the humidity condition. We read from internet that the humidity is somewhat similar to Malaysia and none of use lotion or lip balm back in Malaysia because it's always so humid here. So we had really dried skin and broken lips during the trip until we bought sheep oil lotion and lip balm to save our poor skin and lips.
The food in Taiwan didn't really made an impression to me as I don't really fancy fried stuff. The roadside snacks all are not my favourite because they are fried food! except for grilled mushroom and wild boar chinese sausage. Weeliem and I don't like to eat while walking so we don't like to buy food at the night market. We ate 3 times of beef noodle (read : sit down on a chair in restaurant and eat in order), one of our all time favourite. 688 Beef noodle restaurant, a small restaurant in Shilin market and a restaurant at opposite of Shilin MRT station. The first was the most expensive beef noodle we had cost about RM30+ each bowl. They even sell RMB10000 beef noodle which translate to RM1050. The one at Shilin market was the best , cost about RM13 and the last one is nice as well cost about RM13 too. The thing I love on Taiwan food is their rice. It's very similar to Japanese rice, round and juicy, so yummy. I had beef rice when Weeliem ate beef noodle at the shop opposite Shilin MRT station. We also had rice at a shop operated by aborigines in Taroko Gorge, super yummy hot mexican beef with white rice. The beef in Taiwan are mostly imported from Australia so they taste really yummy. We also bought a packet of "buah pinang" to try. Our taxi driver kept asking us to test.
We tried the outdoor hot spring at Hualien. It was really relaxing to soak in HOT water facing the beautiful nature scenery(mountain). The water is at 41 degree celcius. We also had sauna and jacuzzi at the same place. The outdoor temperature is at around 16-18 degree celcius. Nice?
I am going to write more on the interesting and beautiful places that we had visited in next entry. I don't have any photos of those now. So now let me show you the clothes, shoes and bags that I purchased. I didn't buy any mask at all and not much food as well, there isn't enough time to do shopping because we were out on trip away from Taipei. Two of the bags and a top are for my sisters.
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