Traveling to Hualien via Train

TUUHUUU… I exceeded my photobucket bandwidth and hence, all the pichas cannot be viewed. Am still working on upgrading it, but it doesn’t accept my paypal payment because it’s not linked with my credit card. So babi one! Anyway, just enjoy this post lah!

On our second day in Taiwan, we had to wake super early like 6.30am to get ready and have our breakfast. We had to leave the hotel by 7.45am to avoid the jam towards the railway station.

We had our breakfast at Holidays Inn Express’ cafe which is the smallest buffet space I’ve ever dined in. It is situated just at their lobby with many small tables and chairs. Very small space and we had to “squeeze” and “fight” for food (add in extra exaggeration).

Immediately after our breakfast, we got all our luggage into our traveling machine, the Coach, and left the hotel for the railway station which was approximately 20 minutes drive away.

This is how Taipei Railway Station looks like on the outside. Our coach went around it and dropped us of somewhere inside the station. We didn’t have to get our luggage as the driver will be going to Hualien as well, by driving, meanwhile, we get to Hualien by train.

Reason being, so we can experience a different mass of transportation in Taiwan. Actual fact, the road to Hualien is mountainous and very geli, so, not very suitable for those who easily get car sick. Anyway, we get to ride train!

This is how the station looks like on the inside. Very nice! I like their architecture design.

There are a few 7 Eleven inside the station. I wanted to go in to buy myself a cup of coffee because I didn’t get to have one during breakfast – SuperRushHourBreakfast.

We quickly walked past the first 7 Eleven because the tour guide was so anxious to show off Taipei Railway Station. Couldn’t believe I cussed because I couldn’t stop for 5 minutes to buy my coffee.

We stopped by one of the 7 Eleven because some tour member needs to use the toilet before we ride the train.

They have this City Cafe selling in 7 Eleven. The Americano is not bad, but the lattes are tasteless because they put too much milk in it.

This is the famous “lok lok” we always see in the Taiwan channels (to those who has parabolic, you’ll know what I mean). I managed to capture this before my camera kena halau (got shooed). Apparently, no photo taking allowed in 7 Eleven. I wonder why.

So, we end up camwhoring outside 7 Eleven instead.

And another shot with City Cafe leng lui.

I bought 2 packs of Hello Kitty playing cards. Nice kan?  Bought them so that we could play in the train in case it gets to bored. It was 3 hours ride worr…

We reached the basement of the station via escalator and this is how it subway rails look like. *sakai* We don’t have railway in Kuching (except in Peninsula Malaysia). Even though there’s a place called Jalan Keretapi (Train Road) but that does not mean that we have railway tracks there. =x

We have to check and double check the time of arrival of our train, in case there is any delay. Also, to ensure that we get on the right one.

These are our train tickets. It costs us NT$441 (approximately RM49)  for our train ride from Taipei to Hualien.

I am very nervous standing so near the tracks. I is scared someone who walks pass might push me down when the train comes. @.@!!! *Final Destination dilemma*

The station is similar to KL LRT/KMT stations; it is packed with humans. The only difference is that, Taiwanese are very organized. They wait till everyone gets off the train, then, they go in. Unlike Malaysians so kiasee the train will leave them behind, just squeeze through when people are trying to get of the train.

#Random picha:

The one thing you can never get to see in Malaysia’s public transportation is doggies! You get to see doggies riding public transportation in Taiwan. Saw this cute terrier with its owner patting on its head to keep it calm.

This is how our ride looks like. Chuu chuuu...

The train ride from Taipei to Hualien takes about 3 hours. As you can see from the map above, throughout the whole journey, all we see is mountain, villages, farms, rocks and etc on our right; the beach on our left along the coastline.

The seats are pretty comfortable with plenty of leg room plus, there’s a leg rest in front and you can adjust the height to your liking.

After the 3 hours of non stop sightseeing and picha taking (took few hundreds pichas just sitting in the train =____=) train ride, we finally arrived Hualien.  We didn’t get to play cards because we are so sakai with the sceneries. LOL

Hualien is unlike Taipei, where there are cars everywhere! This part of Hualien is more like the country side city. All you see from here are trucks, buses and very few cars = NO TRAFFIC JAM

We had lunch in this restaurant just opposite Hualien Railway Station. Don’t ask me what is the restaurant’s name because I don’t know (I can’t read Chinese,) but you can figure it out by looking at the restaurant’s name on top of the building.

They even sell fruits at the entrance of the restaurant. Everywhere also can berbusiness.

Now, into the food business…

Hualien is the largest county in Taiwan and is located on the mountainous eastern coastline of Taiwan. Hence, we get to taste the different side of Taiwan. According to the tour guide, the village taste, in other words, the kampung style cooking.

Everyone had a serving of the spicy sauce to go with the dishes. It’s pretty spicy and tasted like sambal minus the belacan.

We were served brown rice. It’s red in color and it is exactly the same as the ones we find locally. The shape of the rice is slightly different from ours. It’s short and rounder, whereas the local brown rice we have is long and thin.

We had wintermelon, red dates and wolfberries chicken soup. It is a clear and yummy soup.

The fish is very fresh and the gravy tasted real good with the rice.

The round thing sitting on the fish is some kind of fruit in Taiwan and according to the rest, it tasted sour like sour plum. hmm… mysterious mini ball.

Similar to our local veggies.

Okay.. So it is here I am in the meat dilemma. I can’t remember which is the venison or lamb or ostrich meat =x

wild guess, this should be the venison meat.

wild guess #2, this should be the lamb or ostrich meat with the fern leaf.

The fern leaf cooked with the meat is really that fern leaf we normally see sitting on trees leeching on the trees nutrients, that fern leaf! Its texture is slimy and similar to midin and ti wang miaw. Super slimy!

The “bud” or the baby leaf looks like the midin head. lol.. It is crispy! Looks like bird head. =x

Oh boy! This is like the nicest pork ribs I’ve ever tasted! It is hong something pai kut. The porkie is very tender and juicy. Slurps~

Crispy celery with seafood of fish fillet and squid. Also sedaps.

The glutinous rice with dried shrimps on top and mushrooms and porkie on the inside. Not bad not bad.

I had a spoonful of it. Don’t want to take too much rice because I….

….want to eat more prawns :3

I is ji lucky yi xia lo.. (I’m very lucky) Because bro and I sat with the senior citizens and most of them don’t eat prawns. High cholesterol bah..

Hogged the whole plate of prawns to myself :3 sibeh happy. For this, I classified lunch in Hualien as the best one. LOL!!

If you ask how’s the food in Taiwan? Will you get used to it and etc… Aiyo, their food is like ours lah. So, if you travel to Taiwan, you don’t have to worry about food as they tasted the same. Don’t need to pack Maggi Mee to Taiwan. There are plenty of food to taste and they are very sedaps one. Don’t need to worry about getting tummy upset due to the food and etc. JUST EAT!

Throughout the whole tour, we are served with oranges as dessert in almost all the restaurants we dine in. blerk..

Being the not-orange-for-dessert-again-please, Bro and I bought ice cream from the restaurant. Meiji ice cream wei!

Even the packing looks so nice. Recyclable some more.

Vanilla ice-cream coated with chocolate and nuts. Tasted far better than Magnum. =x

Chocolate ice cream coated with black chocolate. Super NAIS!!

Then, we sat by the roadside in the cold weather while waiting for the rest to get ready (toilet visit).

The other relatives who saw us enjoying our ice cream by the roadside, jumped back into the restaurant to get some too. LOL

If only Sugarbun can also come up with something like this! lol..

Real red bean ice cream! They said it’s very nice. So, it is very nice lorh..

We had to finish our ice cream before going into the coach. The tour guide doesn’t allow us eating ice cream inside, afraid that we are 3 years old that we might dirty the seats. bleh…

Done with our ice cream, we continued our tour to the Tarako Gorge . The scenery there are super nice! I shall share that in another post

#Random picha of the day:

Super slim and long Coca-Cola from Taiwan.