Second half of this day's travels! After touring Shifen, we headed towards Taipei city area! Went to store our baggage in lockers before starting touring in the afternoon. Bumped into this cab driver who offered to bring us around some of the attractions around the area that is not very accessible by bus! So yeap, we booked the private cab to travel around for the day :) Actually I think it's quite worth it, cause the drivers will bring you to quite a number of places based on which package you chose!

And I think it's cheaper than getting a car to drive around (if you don't know what are the attractions around)

So the first stop is at 南雅奇石 (Nanya Rock Formations) - it's a place famous for its rock formations and sea-eroded coral shores. The driver/guide was friendly though, she really introduced the places to us and even told us how to take the photos :)

Walked down some rocky steps to explore the place!

Headed back up and just.. took more photos. Hahaha I'm pretty sure we took a lot of photos here, but it's quite pretty. Always liked to travel to visit scenic places~ But before that.. more group photos!

This time, we tried taking a few photos of the eroded rocks and said it looked like some desert overview! (Hahaha but actually when I was screening for the photos I thought the photo kinda showed some face instead)

Took photos with the rocks as well!

Our next stop was towards 十三層遺址 and 陰陽海 (Ying Yang Sea)!! We can see the sea from 十三層遺址! (Oops I cannot find English translation for this)

Pretty view when we got off the cab

The guide was asking us to take a 千手觀音 photo with the backgound...

And also more photos with this insta-worthy background in some abandoned house between the two scenic areas! As you can see.. Le roomie and I are not cut out to be models. Damn unnatural and I never took such photos before HAHA. #camerashydebs


Last group photo before we moved on! And I realised our outfits kinda matched the background.... and we are colour-coordinated!! Blue x red ftw~

This place got the feel right!

Followed the tour guide and we managed to see the sea!! Like the name suggests, it looks like the 八卦 sign cause of the different colours. But the sandy-like colour is caused by gold that seeped into the sea!


Super pretty mountain views from where we were :D Everywhere is just so pretty, like honestly how often do we get to see these!!




Rare photo with le housemate cause my hand was too short to snap a photo with the background! And I kinda realised we didn't take many photos together - like it's always either the 4 of us or wsck and separate photos of us or I'm taking selfies with Weishan (cause I was most comfortable with her at the start)


So pretty <3


We never forget to take our we-fies :)


Another we-fie, with an epic comment from roomie when I did that pose HAHA - she just finds it funny when people want to take picture under the sun but still do that "I don't want to face the sun" pose and block their own faces. But I wanted to avoid having Asian eyes!!

Hehehe I'm not the shortest in this photo :)

Last stop around this area - 黃金瀑布 (Golden Waterfall)! The guide helped us take a group photo first before heading off with my phone to snap more pictures of the waterfall!

We went to touch the waters too, cause according to the guide the water will have a mercury smell, which was true!! Quite interesting heh, and yes the water is not drinkable :P 

Last photo with a nice background at the northern most tourist site before heading towards Jiufen! :)

The guide drove all the way up to Jiufen; I think it was a mountainous road cause I had motion sickness (just didn't vomit hehe). And told us to contact her when we are almost done (I think we roughly set a time to meet as well).

She dropped us off from a distance to Jiufen cause it was quite packed, and also did tell us the places to visit and eat! So after a long day of travelling and being touristy with all those photos, it's time to EAT! :D

We just tried a few different dishes around the area; mainly because it was so crowded and we wanted to find the place to catch the sunset :)

Some of the food we tried included meatballs and this dessert that is simiar to blackball with all the Q-balls minus the grass jelly! Such desserts are common in Taiwan and they come in a greater variety! The one we tried had green tea / taro / sweet potato?

We also tried this Pineapple Vinegar when we passed by a shop selling that - apparently it is good for detox! But mean housemate had this huge grin for wsck tskkkk. And after trying I think I still don't like vinegar in general. 我真的不吃醋! 

Weishan and I got 海燕窩! Preferred the warm to the iced version. And I love the taste, quite similar to the longan dessert that we have every CNY!! Sweet sweet one, I like!! And when you cool the hot mxture it'll become jelly-like :D 

Unfortunately we didn't manage to catch the sunset, Not sure if we missed it; like we reached some high area before sun set timing and waited like forever but didn't see the sun setting :(

Headed back to the station where we left our baggage and headed for our accoms at Space Inn!! It was quite funny though, we didn't know how it looked like, and based on how much we paid we didn't expect too much. Even Bryan was joking that it may be as atas as the shopping mall we saw along the way.... And true enough it was INSIDE the shopping mall, at the basement!! 

The place is quite cool though, even the entrance looks like those where you'll enter the spaceship!! And the interior looks super pretty (Weishan took photos of it in the later days; will post then!) Like it totally suit the name and it's space-like theme. And since we had 4 people, we were assigned to a room instead of sharing with the others. Privacy and I probably feel safe that nobody else have access to our stuff when we're out! 

Our room and bunk beds at C-08! :)

Weishan and I went to explore the toilet before heading out and it's soooo pretty omg. Like some 5-star hotel kind!!!

Area to wash hands!

This is the common area to use the hair dryer; we can leave our stuff in those compartments in the meantime! There's even a dryer!!

They also separated the toilets from the bathing area ~


Headed out to meet Ben for dinner cause he was studying in NTU (National Taipei University) then!! Went to tour around the streets of 西門町(Ximending) while looking for food. Decided on Coco Ichibanya in the end~ Japanese curry and chicken cutlet omgggg :D