Taiwan Holiday [Day 6]

Started the day early as we wanted to see the sunrise. Enjoyed a delicious breakfast of toast, ham and eggs and steamed sweet potato! Yummy! It was quite bright when we made our way to the pier, but apparently the sun was still out of sight. But slowly we saw the sun ascend out of the mountains like a little egg yolk.

We had to catch a 8:20am bus back to Taipei and I was quite reluctant to leave this place. The scenery was gorgeous, the whole atmosphere of the place was very peaceful and the homestay was so cosy! But it was time to say bye to Sun Moon Lake!

We reached Taipei around 12 plus and had lunch at the food court at Breeze Center Taipei Station. The food court has 50 stalls in total, with 5 different sections centred around a common theme per section, for example curry, international fare, Taiwanese food, even one solely on different kinds of beef noodles!

Then it was time to catch our train to Hualien. We didn't take the High Speed Rail as there weren't any that goes to Hualien. Nonetheless, the train we took to Hualien was very modern, clean and comfortable as well! Another 2.5 hrs free to nap and stone!

Once we reached Hualien we took a cab to our homestay, Rosestone Inn. I was quite excited about this homestay as I had read a lot about it online. When we entered by the front door, we could hear the voices of two young girls shouting out to us "Ni Hao! Ni Hao!". It turned out they were the granddaughters of the owner of the homestay, Chai Mama. After we settled down in our room, we went out to have a chat with Chai Mama and she was extremely friendly and chatty. She shared with us about her son-in-law who hails from Malaysia and thus her affinity for visitors from Malaysia and Singapore. Thankfully Joe's spoken Chinese is pretty good and did most of the talking! Chai Mama also brought us around her massive house filled with antiques! There were photos taken of Chai Mama's husband with the past 2 presidents who had paid the homestay a visit! We felt really privileged to be staying there!

When it was time for dinner, Chai Mama's husband drove us out to Nan Bin Night Market as it was quite a distance away. We ate very delicious chicken chop noodles. The chicken chop was very good as its skin was fried crisp! The noodles even came with free flow of corn soup and cold tea. We also tried fried cheese which was very special and tasty too! As the area around was very dark and quiet, we decided not to explore the streets and hailed a cab back.

We spent the rest of the day watching TV. One of the favourite shows we watched while in Taiwan was a Chinese version of "Don't forget the lyrics" hosted by Harlem Yu. One of the episodes we watched had Eason Chan as the contestant and he wasn't very good at remembering other singers' lyrics!!

You can read more about the rest of my holiday here~