Jiu Fen + Ping Xi

From Yeh Liu, we had to change several buses to get the Jiu Fen!

While waiting for buses, taxi drivers tried to cheat us into using their service by telling us that the roads are really jammed up and that it would be way faster to use a taxi. But because their charges were ridiculously high, we didn't take up their offer. 

Luckily we didn't because the roads weren't that jammed and it definitely saved us a lot of money to take the public bus!

First thing I did was to try this traditional ice cream and peanut snack. 

Interesting~ I've never seen cold brew coffee before

A snack stall with a super long line!

This stones here are pretty interesting. If I'm not mistaken which I hope I'm not.....due to my limited mandarin skills. According to the stall owner, these stones are found where gold could be found and they could be used to test if the gold is real or not. Apparently they could scratch the gold or something?

But they shaped these stones really nicely. You can pick one and for just NT50, the old uncle there will engrave whatever words you want on both sides of the stone and turn it into a necklace or key chain for you.

Loving the view from up here too~

Further in, I spotted another stall with a long queue and guess what were they selling?

Choux pastry stuffed with ice cream!

 

Look at how big it is!!! I'm sooo happy because the choux pastry was super flaky and the ice cream went well with it.

After that Jiu Fen. we went to Ping Xi. Not an easy journey, we had to travel by both bus and train to get there!

Of course, a must do thing there is to light up a sky lantern aka kongming lantern.

It seems that the colour of the lanterns are not just for decorations. they each  carry different meanings. Here's a chart from one of the stalls there:

Fret not, if you are like us and have a lot of different wishes to make, they have lanterns that in 4 different colours, 1 for each side! kekeke......Now we can make many different wishes!!! :D

hmm..it seems that red the most common colour and most people choose the single coloured ones. Guess we must've been really greedy to go for the multi-coloured ones! Lol~

Spying to see how others do it!

Ok, all set for our own!

Fly high my dear lantern~

Met an uncle there who was the owner of another stall and he was super friendly! 

He's the one who helped us snap all these shots even though we didn't buy anything from his stall.

So pretty!!

Here's a pic of us with him! I guess he was talking too much so his face became blurred! But do visit his stall if you are visiting Ping Xi as he is super friendly and helpful!

While waiting for the train back, we explored around~

heehee....can't read mandarin, so I have no idea what's this!

Reached a back alley with stalls on the other side of this super long wall.

Such cute paintings on the wall~

As the next train doesn't arrive till 30 mins later, we had dinner at a little stall there. 

After that, we took the train, then changed to bus to get back to the city and lastly, mrt! 

I was tired and hungry by the time I arrived at my station, so I stopped by the family mart before heading home to get an onigiri, a cup noodle, a tea and some snacks!

I seriously have no idea what's wrong with me but I forgot to bring the onigiri that I paid for back home. So I had no choice but to snack on my cup noodle! Then it took me more than an hour to figure out how to use the coffee machine to boil water because for the first 1 hour, all that came out was just steam!!! Then after 90mins, when I finally had hot water, I realised that I forgot to grab a pair of chopsticks from family mart! But luckily, I remembered that I had a mini fork from my cream puff the other, so I used that! It was only after the meal did I realise that there's actually a pair od chopsticks in the cupboard of my rented room!!!!! Arrghhh~

What a day~!!!