Yesterday Diana and I went on a bike ride from Tai Po to Tai Mei Tuk together with some of our classmates. This is part of Tai Po River.
First we had to walk around for a bit to find some bikes to hire, the place where we were supposed to go were sold out since it was a public holiday and a very nice day for biking.
What I thought was a protest turned out to be the opening of a very poplar tea house.
Bowie on her bike. Bowie lives in Tai Po and was our guide for the day, she did a very good job.
Walking through Tai Po.
We stoped at Tai Po Waterfront Park to go to the look out and get a glimpse of our university.
These threes are very special Bowie told us. I dont rememember why, but they are nice anyway.
The park was full of people, having picnics and flying kites.
In the back to the left we could see the water tower of our university, and the 'big white ball' of United College where Diana and I live.
You can also hire a family bike.
We later noticed this was quite common.
Here is Tai Mei Tuk, where they have divided the sweet water the salt water into what is called the main dam of Plover Clove Reservoirand and it is popular to cycle across it. Tai Mei Tuk means "the very end" in Cantonese which apparently depicts the landscape.
The whole gruop; Diana, me, Chris, Bowie and Javier.
Also here, kite running seemed to be a very popular activity.
And there were a lot of bikers.
We took a rest, quite tired after the ride.
Then we watched the sunset.
Biking back in the dark was very nice, and it was much less crowded so the ride was much more smooth. We headed back to Tai Po for some dinner.
We stopped by a local market and bought some fruit called Durian.
After a delicious dinner with some more class mates of ours we tried the Darian fruit which is a malaysian fruit that smells very strange. I did not like the taste of it and we actually left most of it and went for a walk insted. It was a great afternoon and evening!
A few weeks ago I went on a trip to the other side of Hong Kong Island to visit Chai Wan, an old industrial district. Mostly I just have the need to see more of the city before I leave in less than a month. Here are some pictures from that day.
Even though this should be counted as a more suburbian part of Hong Kong, there were still a lot of tall buildings. They are almost everywhere.
Local fruit markets, with school children, old people and day drifters.
A fish market too.
Chai Wan Park.
I spent some time relaxing with the seniors.
And looking at the local shops.
Afterwards I took a trip to the beautiful Hong Kong Park in Causeway Bay. To enjoy the afternoon sun and visit the tea pot museum.
Here are some blurry but rather memorable moments from our first day in Taipei, when my camera had run out of batteries and I used my mobile phone instead.
We went to an art center that Claudia had read about in a blog and where we probably never would have ended up otherwise. It was perfect.
We ate not a plate, but a tray of noodles.
We also found the hip youth area 'by mistake' when we went of the MRT at the wrong station.
Wonderland?
Street food.
A few weeks ago I went to Taiwan with a new australian friend named Claudia and we both fell in love with the capital Taipei. There were so many places we wanted to visit, it was so welcoming and easy going. It's a place I definitely would like to come back to again. Here is Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world. We didn't wanna pay so we only went to the third floor I think. We would see the view of the city soon enough anyway.
The second morning we were just walking around in the the area around our hostel.
Locating some local markets.
Sneak peaking and taking photos of people we passed.
We visited Chiang Kai-Shek's memorial which for me looks exactly like I picture Taiwanese buildings.
The view of the courtyard was also very nice.
Then we walked off into the city and found some very nice streets and unexpected places.
We found a very nice traditional book shop where you could find old people sitting in the corners drinking tea. They most have been tired of turists like us though because no cameras were alowed...
The Longsang Temple was an oasis in the middle of the city.
We stayed for long, sitting on the stairs and doing nothing at all. One of many wonderful taiwanese people came up to us and started talking about the three big religons Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism and how they are all interconnected and equally worshiped in the temples.
Then we took the MRT and headed to another part of the city. We stayed for some dumplings on the way.
We went to the Museum of Fine Arts and tried to draw chinese characters, we also saw some really nice surrealism.
All the fruit... Amazing.
In the evening we headed for Raohe Night market to eat A LOT of street food. Next to it we saw this amazing temple.
Bubble tea.
Some of all the amazing steamed buns.
The next day we took the train to what we thought would be a village but turned out to be a small city. We got to see some old buildings anyway.
We saw a lot of pottery too.
If you have time it was possible to make your own.
Parts of the city was very touristic and reminded me of some beach promenade (but not close to the beach or ocean). We didn't stay long but headed to the next place on our list.
There we went to the most artistic temple in Taipwi (I think that I read this in the Lonely Planet).
For good luck.
The art work was amazing indeed.
Then we took a walk around the area and saw this fellow.
We ate some good warm noodles, thanks to some helpful people that helped us order. Then we walked up and down the street and tried all the samples, we had more pineapple cake than should be possible.
Walking around in the area.
Saw this sad fellow in a cage.
A pretty unusual church.
Then we had the great luck of finding a bus that took us to our next goal; the Li Family Garden and Mansion which is a number of old buildings remaining from a very weathly family. It was very beautiful but the coolest thing was to try to imagine that it used to be surrounded by farm land but today there was a whole city around it.
The garden was amazing.
After that we went to have some tea at a very special and cozy café around the corner. The night ws spent running around looking for live music just to find out that the venue we were looking for was closed. Then we ended up at a turkish wine bar (?!) just around the corner from our hostel where we stayed for a few to many hours. The owner was a great ponytailed guy serving us a lot of free chips. We came back the next night too.
The last day we took the cable cars up to see the tea fields Diana had told me about. It was the perfect day for this due to the nice weather, even though it was just a little bit crowded.
The view.
Taipei 101 in a distance.
At the top they were selling all sorts of things, but we just walked passed it to have a look around.
The reasturants were hidden all around the mountain and named things such as 'The Cat is Not Here'.
We went to have some nice food at one of the teahouses.
We found an off side table where we could talk about what ever we could think of. This was surely a journey of sharing, we talked and talked and talked.
And ate green tea flavored ice cream.
In the afternoon we separated for a few hours and I went to visit the National Palace Museum to see some of the treasures that Chiang Kai-Shek brought with him when he and the followers of the Kuomintang Party left China after the Civil War. This is something I remember reading about in elementary school so I was eager to see it. Claudia had already been so she went off on her own.
Then we wandered around for a bit before heading to the most famous night market called Shilin Market.
We found this nice book shop on the way.
We had more amazing street food and then finished the night at the bar with some people from our hostel. Overall it was one of the best trips I've ever had, both because of the city and the company. Taipei just feels so open and there are so many nice cafeas and little shops and a nice mixture of old culture and modern and hip venues. Also, people are in general great, I cant count the times strangers tried to help us, were friendly or just curious and nice. I would definitely come back again.
