Day 7 - 3rd June 2012 - Taipei

Today is a scheduled day-trip out to Shifen, Pingxi and Jintong to do sightseeing in this old mining town. As we only bought the train tickets from Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) located in Taipei Main Station to Ruifang station the day before, we couldn't get any more seats from the train company Zhi Qiang or Ying Kwang which works on an allocated seat basis.

So we ended with this train, which is exactly on the same concept as any mrt train in SG/TW/HK - Qu Jian Che. The train is very wide, so can squeeze in many passengers. It's literally sandwiching with each other on a Sunday morning train. Luckily everyone on the train is quite gracious, the minute they saw the boys, seats were being offered to them. Thankfully for this as the rest of the adults had to stand on the train for almost 1 hour.

The queue to get the Pingxi Branch line is so long..

The Pingxi Branch Rail line was established in 1921, was used to transport coal when coal mining was a flourishing activity. The line runs through 7 stations, including 3 major towns - Shifen, PingXi and Jintong. Now this rail line is used to transport visitors to the towns.

When we switch over to the Pingxi Branch Rail line, I finally got a seat and get to rest while we travel our way to Shifen.

At Shifen - it has been raining since morning and continued to remain wet.. There were a lot of shops selling mini sky lantern souvenirs.

This shop serves quite nice xiao long bao, but I am not used to the cleaniness of the place.

Jing An Suspension Bridge

We had to cross this suspension bridge to see the magnificent waterfall.

This 128m long bridge is one of Shifen's iconic symbols. Originally used to transport coal, it has now been converted to a pedestrian bridge. On the bridge, we can see the Keelung river.

I had to force myself to cross a suspension bridge (again!), the boys walked across happily

There were local graduates taking pictures with the bridge

We decided to skip the Shifen Waterfalls because it was raining and the locals advised us that it will take us about 30 minutes by foot. And we were also told that the way there requires us to walk uphill and downslope, so given the weather, we think it'll be not safe for the kids to travel there.

The frequency of the Pingxi line train is about half an hour per train, so most visitors will be early at the station in order not to miss one.

We next proceed to Pingxi town and started to search for a shop where we can release a sky lantern (actually we were exhausted with all the walking and wanted to do this so that we could return back to Taipei). It is common to find shops selling mini sky lanterns as souvenirs. It's a beautiful sight when all these mini lanterns are placed in this manner. The lanterns are painted with blessings for good luck.

We decided to share a 2 colored sky lantern with Brian's family (so each family gets to write on 2 sides). Ethan and Caden also helped to fill up the space on the lantern by drawing their pictures (free format for them).

This is what I have wished for on one of the sides

Ah lou can't manage with Chinese characters, so he wrote in English instead.

What we have wrote on the second side - this side, the boys drew more pictures.

The 2 fathers were tasked to release the sky lantern. The owner then helped to lit up the lantern after this picture was taken. It was still raining so I was half worried that the sky lantern couldn't fly up into the sky.. but eventually it did, so we considered our attempt successful!

Actually, the best place to put up the sky lantern is along Shifen old street, where it is held along the rail track. They use paintbrush so this will make you feel like doing a real chinses calligraphy on the lantern (we used markers!).

After the sky lantern, we had our tou hua with tang yuan along the main street - this is quite nice..

We decided to give Jintong a miss because we wanted to catch the 5pm Pingxi line train and will take about another hour to reach Taipei from Ruifang station. As we attempted to buy train tickets from ZhiQiang or YingKwang, we could not get any more seats from Ruifang station. So we ended with Qu Jian Che train back to Taipei. As the rain got heavier, the trains were delayed and we were stuck at the station (which is open-air concept) waiting for our train with the strong wind and rain for almost half an hour. By the time we got onto the train, myself and Winnie almost die of suffocation as the whole cabin was filled with mountain hikers who carried very bad body odour (and for full 1 hr).

When we reached back Taipei main station, we decided to have a quick dinner at Mos burger which is located in the international food court. Unlike the SG system which comes with a number tag each time we made payment, the Mos burger system in TW issues a gadget which will start to blink when your food is ready. Then we are supposed to collect the burger and fries from the counter.

Shua Gu me never seen this before.. I saw an ang moh equally as puzzled as me when we were issued with this gadget after we made our payment for the meals.

I was extremely tired after all the walking in the day (or perhaps past days) and Ah lou and myself decided to stay put in our Cosmo hotel to watch TV after dinner, at the same time babysit Aidan and Elliot as Brian and Winnie needed to go to CD shops to search for some albums.

The boys indulged in their beyblade battles