Taiwan: Jiufen, Shifen & Raohe Night Market

May 14, 2017

Summary

Our day visit to the places of attraction in Taiwan which includes the Golden Waterfall, Ying Yang Sea, Jiufen & Shifen Old Street and Raohe night market.

Pictures like this show exactly why I love travelling. And very much especially with the besties and the right travelling mates. It’s not a masterpiece picture but the point is the mood I get from looking at it. How we can have a devil-may-care attitude, not needing to think of work or whatever bothers, disappoints us and just unwind and go with the flow. Do slightly crazier things we don’t normally do. Shoot the breeze enjoy everything from nature to architectures or even frivolous things. Not to sound mushy but this picture reminds me to appreciate the little moments and people in my life. I hope this would also bring peace and smiles to the friends who are having a bad time currently.

I recently read an article on why travelling is good for health and I cannot agree more with the content especially this point, “You’re Able to Get Moving“. Since I’m a freelance designer working from home, this applies very much to me. Which reminds me… my chiropractor advises me to get up and move every hour. I’ll have to admit that back home, laziness gets the best of me every freaking time so I have no one to blame. Which means I’ll need to preferably go on more vacations to get me moving? Hehe.

And here’s “8 Reasons Why Traveling Is Good for Your Health“.

Golden Waterfall

Our driver mentioned that the water is toxic because the water seeps from the defunct mining factory that used to produce copper and iron. So I went to look up with what’s the deal with the water and I found this, “The water may be beautiful but its toxicity makes it unsafe even for touching“. No shit people! DO NOT waste your clothes, wash your hands, wash your face nor try to sip the water! Like the quote in Lord of the Rings poem aptly describes this waterfall, “All that is gold does not glitter“.

So our driver, Andy made us do the tourist thing to pose in front of the beautiful but toxic waterfall. This reminds me of what Ant sent us a few days back. How every zodiac sign ruins their own life without even trying to article. Pisces ruins their life by choosing the wrong people… toxic people and habits. And so here we are Ant’s toxic friends posing behind a toxic waterfall. Your life is full of poison and it’s too late for you to turn back already. LOL

Loving all these hill stack houses.

Ying Yang Sea

This Ying Yang Sea is also believed to be the aftermath of the mining factory. Iron particles remain in the sea and therefore no swimming in the sea. Behind all these beautiful things always lies some sad truth. Tsk tsk.

Shifen Old Street (十分老街)

The rain that day almost spoil our plans to visit Shifen & Jiufen. We waited in the car for almost a good hour nearby. When the rain finally stopped, we made our way over and it was as if we booked the whole place out. We didn’t need to squeeze through crowds and wait for other tourist to get out of my camera frame. So we took our own sweet time. I’m sure you know how it feels like to be pressurized to get things done quickly when a place is crowded.

Shifen is famous for the sky lanterns so without a doubt, we wrote our wishes down and let it burn up to the sky. Ok that sounds wrong. PS: This is not a cult activity.

Jiufen Old Street (十分老街)

I was so engrossed in taking pictures of the stalls along the street that I forgot I was in the Spirited Away place in Jiufen and totally missed out the shot of the 3-storey treehouse with the red lanterns which was the bath house in the animation. Damn my goldfish memory! At least I managed to take a shot of the staircase with the lanterns that looked kinda familiar in some of the scenes in the animation.

And this is where the fun begins! For a mere 100TWD (less than 5SGD), we get to dress up as emperor, peasant, concubine and eunuch. They allowed us to have a couple of attire but we were feeling the heat of the conservative clothing and non-air condition space, we only tried on one outfit. I can imagine now how hard it is for the actor/actresses in historical period films. We were sweating like pigs. Not sexy man not sexy. As you can tell, we were really bad in acting our roles but we had a great time laughing at ourselves.

Jiufen Mi Mi Ji Di (九份秘密基地)
瑞芳區九份中山巷10號1樓, New Taipei City
visit site

We ended our day in Raohe Night market. But before that, we visited the rainbow bridge nearby which I had googled before the trip. The sad truth is that the bridge no longer lights up in rainbow colours so it looked kinda meh imo.