11th day. A day of culture and consumerism

九份 is a must see.



And that was what every guide books rave about. Since the movie City of Sadness 悲情城市 by Hou Hsiao-hsien's film came out, 九份is hardly sad. What with bus loads of chattering Hong Kong and Singapore aunties flocking the place, one might just feel so sad that the place is becoming just another tourist trap. Thankfully the aged streets still retain some bit of charm and not a lot of development has taken place there to make it look like our own Chinatown, which even my Chinese friend commented "這裡還比中國中國"


One of the stalls with the man in action - shaving away rock sugar to be wrapped later

For all that, SL LLG and I took a train and then transferred by way of a bus to 九份. Dark clouds were looming and being the agrophobic of me, I murmured that it might as well have rained and chase away all the tourists. To which, SL LLG swerved to look at me, and with some dramatic actions of saying prayers, asked the Great God to forgive what I said.

Apparently not. Before long, it started drizzling and everyone, including us was getting rather wet. But not before we had our fair share of sampling the various 小吃 including 紅糟豬肉, yam balls, etc. Knowing that we need to leave some stomach space for yum cha, we chose a tea house with a picturesque view overlooking the sea and the hills.


We chose this tea house! Yeh!

茶道 is our way of 修身养性 in Taiwan, so after the lady showed us the proper way to do it, SL LLG and I got down to tea business of 沏茶、赏茶、and of course 饮茶. With the drizzle advancing into a downpour, we could only count our lucky stars that I had wished for rain to come not another day. With warm tea on our hands replete with tea cakes, and the chilling weather outside, it was all just so relaxing. C'est la vie.



We were mindful not to leave the place too late as most 土產痁 would be closed by then. So despite the rain, we had to get our 鳳梨酥 and the famed 太陽餅 before the shutters came down. Of course I ended up buying more than those and we had quite a bit of a bag to handle when we board the bus to 基隆 where the Miao Kou 夜市 is Taiwan's largest and most famous.


We passed by this department store where there was a sign that highlighted how two thieves made away. Keep a lookout for them!

Unfortunately, that it being a Monday and a rainy one at that meant most stalls are closed and we just had to content ourselves with oysters/big intestines mee sua, smelly bean curd (for which SL LLG steadfastly refused to eat), 蠔煎, 蟹羹 and culminating in a bowl of 豆花 that had many stuffs going into it.

With a heavy heart, we took the train back to Taipei where we had our last 泡泡drinks (quientessential of Taiwan) in a stall near ur hotel. I had coke with milk, quite an ingenuous mix before we returned to our room to sort out all our crazy barang barang.