8 Days Taiwan Trip [Day 3]: Exploring Taichung

Click here to see Day 1 – 2 of Taichung + Sun Moon Lake
8 Days Itinerary in Taiwan:
Day 1 – 3: Taichung + Sun Moon Lake
Day 4 – 5: Taipei
Day 6 – 7: Hualien
Day 8: Taipei

Brief Summary of the whole trip:

Day 1 – Reached Taoyuan International Airport

Day 2 – King’s Garden, Sun Moon Lake, Formosa Cultural Village, Xuanzang Temple, Fengjia Night Market

Day 3 – Rainbow Village, Carton King, Mushrooom Farm, Zhongshi Flower Farm

Day 4 – Yeliu, Golden Waterfall @ Jinguashi, Jiufen old Street, Shifen Sky Latern, Keelung/Raohe Night Market

Day 5 – Free and Easy around Zhongshan district, Ximending district, Ningxia Night Market

Day 6 – Train to Hualien, Free and easy around minsu, Night Market

Day 7 – Taroko National Park – Qingshui Cliff, Changchun Shrine (blocked), Shakadong Trail, Swallow Grotto Trail, Jinheng Bridge, Xiangde Temple @ Central Cross-Island Highway, Seven Star Lake

Day 8 – Back to Singapore

–  Day 3 @ Taichung –

Day 3

This time, another driver who is a Taiwanese local, Xiao Fang, to bring us around. As we were heading to Taipei after the Taichung tour, we had to bring our luggages along and our previous driver, Kenneth, was not able to accommodate as his car was too small. Hence, he arranged for Xiao Fang to drive us around Taichung before driving us to Taipei. He is a pretty quiet and nice guy, but he does not speak English and I am pretty bad in mandarin so I did not talk to him much. But my family was able to converse with him in Chinese fluently so there is no communication barrier and so far, the journey with him is quite pleasant. Here’s his contact if you wish to engage a local Taiwanese driver: www.ziluyoyo.com (WhatsApp: +886-981206253).

Our first stop is the Rainbow Village, located at Nantun District, which is freely accessible. It is one of the main attractions in Taichung as the Rainbow Village is filled with colourful and vibrant “surrealism” drawings which was painted by a very talented old veteran soldier, Huang Yung-fu, aka Rainbow Grandpa. Apparently, because of the artworks which attracts people to it, the ‘dying’ village was saved from demolition by the government as they were looking to give the land to building companies.

I heard that Rainbow Grandpa lives there but we did not have the chance to catch a glimpse of him. There is also a small gift shop which is ran by Mr Huang’s grandson (so as I read from somewhere), which sells beautiful handmade artworks by Rainbow Grandpa.

 

Off we went for our second destination, Carton King. I was actually looking forward to visiting Carton King since I am a paper crafter myself. Even if you are not a paper enthusiast, I think it should be interesting enough to keep you entertained! But bear in mind that you have to pay entrance fee, so maybe you should think twice if you are totally not into paper at all! For me, I am pretty amazed by the “miniature” world of paper as I entered Carton King. It was quite interesting enough for us to linger around, and if you get bored after a while, you can also visit the gift shop as well as their cafe to sit for a drink.

Horse made of wire 💕#bellaelysium

A post shared by Bellaelysium (@bellaelysium) on Mar 30, 2017 at 8:25pm PDT

 

 

 

 

They also have a squirrel “tunnel” cages onto the trees, but I was quite upset that they forgotten about their water supply. Seeing that the squirrel was busy trying to suck the empty water bottle, we pour some of our water into its bottle before we headed off for the next destination.

Our next stop is the mushroom farm, Mushroom Garden, which I am also looking forward to since I LOVE mushrooms! It is located at Xinshe District in Taichung, which is known to be the “Kingdom of Mushrooms” because of its climate and location which is ideal for mushroom cultivation.

Honestly, despite for my love of mushroom, I find this part of tour boring, probably because I was not very interested in the mushroom farming as it was dark (not a person who like dark places). You can also pluck your own mushrooms there and eat the mushroom dishes at their cafe. We didn’t do that but rather, we shopped at their retail store as I am particularly more interested in their mushroom snacks. It tastes really addictive! I got my sister to buy few more packets as she is also going Taiwan after me.

We were quite famished by the time we finished the farm tour, so Xiao Fang drove us to a nearby mushroom restaurant, Jenhua, for lunch. You can click on the picture below to head to their website to view their menu:

It was nice eating healthy lunch for a change after eating street food from the night markets the night before! We ordered set lunch for 4 to 6 people which comes in a steamboat style where we can throw our food in as wait for it to be cooked.

So once we filled up our empty stomachs, we set off to our final destination which is the Zhongshi Flower Farm before we began our long journey to Taipei for our next accommodation. However, we did not manage to go into the flower farm as the weather was extremely cold due to the cold wind and there was an entrance fee as well, so my family was not keen. Hence, we just mingled around their retail shop and tried their honey which was made by their own bees. But according to my sister who went there, she did show me pictures of the flower farm which I strongly recommended you to visit! They have different props for you to do beautiful photoshoots, so I really regretted not going in.

The machine will spin and the honey will be forced out, hit the side of the machine and dripped downwards where it will be collected through the tap afterwards.

So we paid for the honey and filled our bottle from the tap, and the man kept it in a nice box for us to bring home. The honey is pretty good!

Off we went to Taipei, which will be updated in the next post!

Favorite photo of the day: