Holy shiiiiiiit I've finally scored a 100% on that stupid SYDE348
quiz!! And it was the first time I've actually NOT read the book, too,
lol.
Anyhow, now that I've finished the quiz before I expected, I have a
little time to write up the stuff I have never finished writing about
in Taiwan :P
SO! About my trip to QingJing!
The pictures I've taken have been uploaded in a previous post, so
please do look at them! :)
We've heard that there's usually a lot of tourists at QingJing Farm
(清境農場), so we've decided to go on a sunday-monday. I think we went
partying the night before, so we didn't leave Taipei Gongguan until
around 10am. After a loooong commute by bus to Puli,then to QingJing,
we finally arrived at around 3pm (!). We were pretty much starving by
then.
We mistakenly took the bus too far, up to the mountain where they kept
the sheep, but of course by then we were pretty uninterested because
there was no food there. We then took the bus back down to the tourist
center (for 15$NT, which is only 50cents! lol), and grabbed a pack of
fruit at the fruit stand as that was the first food place we saw.
GIGANTIOUS PERSIMMONS AND PEARS YUMMMM!!
We then headed to the tourist info booth to ask for accommodations,
since we didn't book anything beforehand. It turns out the cheapest
accommodation there was 2100$NT! That was a little high... but I guess
QingJing IS a pretty touristy area after all. The owner of the house
came to pick us up, and it turns out our little house is situated next
to a giant cliff where you can see all the mountains on the back side!
Lovely!
We were actually planning to go to the hot springs at Lushan that
night, but it was around 30min away by car and there was no bus
directly to there... and taxi would be quite expensive. Being
cheapasses, we decided to not go to Lushan after all. :P Our house
owner offered to drive us around, and off we rushed to see the sunset!
The sunset was AB-SO-F-ING-LY-BEAUTIFUL. I was expecting to only see a
blob of bright light going down the horizon and wasn't THAT interested
in seeing the "sunset", but the owner seemed quite excited about
bringing us there and we had nothing else to do so we just tagged
along. And BOY IT WAS SOOOOO WORTH IT. Standing on top of the
mountain, looking out at a misty horizon of mountain peaks with an
orange-colored sun slowly sliding down... I'm sorry my English sucks
and I cannot describe it any better, but it was definitely one of the
most jaw-dropping sights I've ever seen in my life.
Our owner then drove us to a nice cozy restaurant, where we had dinner
(unfortunately it wasn't THAT good). It was a lovely restaurant next
to the edge of the mountains, and we ate as the sun turned from a
beautiful red to purple, then black. After dinner we rushed back to
watch Hi My Sweetheart :D The hotel room was really nice and clean,
with incredibly comfortable beds and all toiletries supplied. I had a
really bad migraine that night though, so I dug my head into the
pillows and blacked out pretty early.
The next day, we woke up to watch the sunrise on the balcony (which
was unfortunately hidden behind the mountains) and proceeded to take a
whole bunch of pictures, played with the house dog, ate Chinese-style
breakfast, then left for the sheep!
Thankfully, since it was a monday, there were much less people there
than the day before. We pretty much ran around the fields with a bunch
of sheep around us.... eer, I'm not making it sound too good, am I :P
Anyhow, the view was gorgeous, and just sitting there (beware of
landmines... aka sheep poo lol) felt really comfortable. There were
poneys for the kids to ride (100$NT!), and vending machines for goat
food. They also sold goat milk, goat milk popsicles and sheep
keychains/dolls/postcards, and I got a goat milk popsicle. EWWWW SO
GAMEY!! It tasted like a piece of extra-gamey lamb meat in cream form!
Definitely needed a mouth rinse afterwards!
The day was pretty much uneventful afterwards. We walked down the
road, had some ice cream dorayaki at a shop, walked some more, had
lunch (stir-fried LAMB MEAT!! mwahaha), walked around the tourist
centre, called the house owner to bring our luggage, then asked for
directions to go back. We got SUPER LUCKY though, as it turns out
there was a taxi driver going down by van who just happened to have 2
spots left! We got all the way to Taichung for only 140$NT (I think)
and 45min (compared to 2+hours by bus), which is really DIRT CHEAP and
SUPER FAST!
The rest of the night was spent in the bus, then studying at home. A
boring end to an amazing trip!
