I've Had the Time of My Life

Hey guys! This will be the last post about my travels through Taiwan. What a ride it's been, right?

Before I boarded my plane to Nepal, I had two days left to spend in Taipei. On the first day I decided to take the Maokong 猫空 gondola up a mountain which has a lot of tea plantations. The ride up there takes about 30 minutes and it's really beautiful. You can see a lot of Taipei and its surrounding mountains from the gondola. Also, every gondola has a picture of Hello Kitty on it, making my inner child very happy. Once I arrived at the top, I spent some time exploring the area and enjoying the view. Afterwards I walked for about an hour to arrive at the Zhinan 指南 Temple just in time to see the sun setting over Taipei.

One of the small tea plantations.

The path to the temple.

The last sunset picture, I promise.

Proof of the whole Hello Kitty thing.

On the next day me and Caro (the friend I was visiting there) took the bus to Yehliu 野柳 Geopark, a stretch of the shore that has been eroded to form bizarre rock formations. It was a lot of fun walking around the park trying to find formations such as Cute Princess or Queen's Head. Afterwards we boarded another bus to the small village Jiufen 九份. In the early 20th century, there were busy gold mines close to the village. Nowadays, its narrow alleys are filled with uncountable teahouses and restaurants. It also has a great view of the ocean. We walked around for about 2 hours and then waited for the bus back to Taipei for another hour. Over the course of the day we read almost half a book on my friend's Kindle. Well, mostly I read and she listened :)

Cute Princess.

Two cute princesses.

The cutest princess.

I don't know if this one even has a name.

Queen's Head.

The view from Jiufen.

Alley filled with teahouses.

And that was it, the next day had me saying bye-bye to Taiwan and hello again to mainland China. In closing I'd like to say that Taiwan has been one of my favourite places to travel in. The people there were always helpful, public transport works really well and there's cheap and good food everywhere. If you want to travel to the Chinese speaking world, Taiwan is probably a good place to start. You get the language with less chaos.

So thank you Taiwan and thank you Caro! I had a great time with you! This has probably been the best January of my life so far.

Chinese Word of the Day: 开学 kaixue, start of the semester. :'(