The most important thing you must do at Jiufen is to try the chewy taro balls at Ah Gan Yi. It's so good he didn't want to share a bowl with me. The place also offers a view overlooking the hills and the coast of Keelung. But the weather (it was drizzling) and the weekend crowd dampened my spirits and supposedly cosy ambience. Go on a weekday if possible so that you don't have to fight for the window seats. The narrow street was lined with lanterns (they remind me of Lijiang) and thronged with people it was difficult to stop and look around. So we left and hopped onto the slow mo train at Rui Fang to Shifen.
The waterfall was mild and fell short of my expectations. Worse still there was entrance fee (NT70). But if u haven't seen a real/natural waterfall before, it's quite alright for starters. We were caught in the heavy rain and our undies were soaked through. Lazy me left my umbrella in the luggage and got both of us so wet :x I moved the umbrella over a little to his side and he saw I was drenched so we ended up wrestling with the umbrella on the long way back lol.
His suggestion to light a lantern was a spontaneous decision. I don't even know Pingxi is well-known for sky lanterns, shame on me. The lantern had four sides and we were running out of wishes to write and started scribbling nonsense (such as "I don't want to work") with the calligraphy brush. Dripping wet, we stood on the railway track and released our blue lantern into the sky. It was a wonderful experience. I wish we could have done this in end February during Yuan Xiao.
I finally understood why there is Kongming lantern (孔明灯) in Chengdu. It's amazing piecing together traces of the past picked up from different countries.
Birthday present for birthday boy!
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