Thursday, May 26, 2016

Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall and Taipei 101 (Taipei Trip Day 3)

Our third day in Taipei. Coming back from Yehliu Geopark in Manli District, we got off the bus at Taipei Tourism Bureau bus stop. The whole trip from Yehliu Geopark back to Taipei City took us around 1 hour. We took a short break at Burger King and continued our way to Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall (or referred as National Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall). 

Sun Yat-Sen is a well-known Chinese revolutionist. He played the key role in overthrowing Qing Dynasty and founded the Republic of China. Died in 1925, he was respected by the people in China and Taiwan. Three memorial halls had been built to commemorate his contribution, one in Taipei, one in Guangzhou China, and one more in Singapore.

To go to the memorial hall from Taipei Tourism Bureau bus stop, walk along the main road towards Taipei 101 direction. The memorial is located around 300 meters away, on the same side with the tourism bureau. The entrance is free, and the opening hours are from 9 am to 6 pm. 

The biggest attraction of the memorial hall is the hourly guard exchange ceremony. During our visit, the ceremony started at 3:55 pm. The 10-minute ceremony was performed by the guards of honour. The best place to see the whole ceremony is at front of the statue. However, we need to make sure that we are standing behind the restriction line (the red line). What is the area that will be covered by the red line? We got the information from the staff stationed in the hall, and stood at the "hot spot"- in front of the statue, just behind the red line, some 15 minutes before the ceremony started. The ceremony was interesting but not impressive (we found that the ceremony at Zhongzhen Memorial was better).

The memorial hall is a big building, with a big center hall houses a gigantic bronze statue of Sun Yat-Sen. Flanking on both sides are two smaller exhibition halls, souvenir shops, and function rooms. The compound of the memorial hall itself is a beautiful garden in the city. It is a good location to see Taipei 101 from a distance. In our opinion, unless you are a big fan of Sun Yat-Sen, the memorial hall should be visited together with other place of interest, or else could be quite boring there. We stayed there for 40 minutes. Taipei 101 was our next destination.


Taipei 101 Tower can be seen on our way to Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall (upper left). Both landmarks are close to each other. Along the walkway, we saw rows of motorbikes (upper right) and bicycles (lower right). Some part of the walkway were covered and nicely decorated.

We entered Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall's compund through the side entrance (upper left). The compound is well decorated with stele (upper right), statues (lower right), and a lake.

We took a short stroll around the compound and reached the main entrance of the hall.

The statue of Sun Yat-Sen, guarded by two guards of honour from Taiwan Air Force. We over heard a tourist claimed that the guards must be wax-made statues.

A closer look on the guard. He didn't move a single muscle for one solid hour.

When the time came, the "wax statues" suddenly moved and marched around. All the visitors were required to stand behind the red line.

After the ceremony, we took a quick tour through the exhibition halls and went out to take photos of Taipei 101 Tower.


Another view of Taipei 101 from the memorial hall.

Then, we took a 10-minute walk to Taipei 101 Tower. Basically, we won't get lost in between as the tower is just nearby, and it is too tall to be hidden from our view.

At the top floor of the shopping mall, a long queue of visitors were waiting to go up to the observatory of Taipei 101 Tower. The entrance fee was NTD 500. We planned to go up initially, but didn't make it due to the hazy weather.

Taipei 101 is the tallest building in Taiwan, 438 meters tall, with sophisticated engineering work. For us, the mall is a nice place to chill down and take a break from the hot weather outside. There is a food court at the lowest level of the shopping mall serving various types of food, while the shopping area is basically resided by branded outlets. Unless you like branded products, or else it is not more than a tall buiding with a shopping mall in it like KLCC.

From Taipei 101 Station, we took MRT to Ximending and reached there at around 6 pm. We spend a few hours there and took a nice buffet dinner there. Follow us to Ximending now.

More about our experience in Taipei: 

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Friday, May 20, 2016

Yehliu Geopark (Taipei Trip Day 3)

Third day in Taipei, we visited Yehliu Geopark, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial, Taipei 101, and Ximending. You might be interested to read our experiences in Taipei Zoo, Maokong Mountain, and Raohe Night Market for our second day in Taipei.

Yehliu is located in Wanli District, around 40 km away from Taipei City. Going to Yehliu by bus is convenient. We reached ZhongXiao DunHua MRT Station at 9:15 am to catch the connecting bus (no 1815) to Yehliu.The bus stop is located a few steps away from exit 4. Well, with less than 5 minutes of waiting time plus 1 hour of road trip, we reached Yehliu bus stop. Pedestrian lane was prepared so it took us 10 minutes to get to the ticket counter of Yehliu Geopark.

Yehliu Geopark is well-known with strange-looking rocks formed by marine erosion. The special thing is, over millions of years, some of the rocks were actually shaped in the way that they resembled some objects, such as the queen rock, sandal rock (which is called as the fairy's shoe by locals), candle rock, ginger rock, dragon rock, and marine bird rock. Some of the rocks can be easily recognized by the distinct shapes, while others, strong imagination required.

The park entrance fee was NTD 80, opens from 8 am - 5 pm. Unlinke Yuntai Mountain Geopark in China with a lot of stairs to climb, it is easier to move around relatively flat Yehliu Geopark. The park is clean with clear signage, the wind was strong, and the view around the park is stunning. Restrooms and a food shack are available beside marine bird rock. 

Our advices, be early. The place can be very warm under blazing sun. There might be a long queue to take photo with the queen rock. Want to beat the queue? We can take photo at the other side of the rock, which looks about the same. Can't find the special rock? We can always ask the guard there (the guys with whistles with them), and they are more than happy to show us the location of the rock. The higher ground offers stunning view around the area, so do take some effort to climb up to the observatory platforms there. We strolled around the park from 11 am until 12:45 pm. We were lucky that day as the weather was not too warm.
Zhongxiao Dunhua Bus Stop is located a few steps away from gate 4 of the MRT station (upper left). The bus no. 1815 brought us from Taipei City (upper right) to sub-urban area (lower right). The bus was air-conditioned with LCD flatscreens providing entertainment to passengers.  The programme however was in Mandarin only.

Once get off the bus, what we need to do is to look for the signages and follow the pedestrian lane to Yehliu Geopark.

To return to Taipei City, we need to wait for the bus at the bus stop opposite of the road (upper left). The pedestrian walkway was painted in green (upper right). We passed by the harbor stuffed with fishing boats (lower right) before we reached the ticketing counter.

Souvenir shop, food corner, and restrooms are available in the visitor center (upper left). We can get a free copy of geopark map there. The walkway in front of the the visitor center leads to the park (upper right), and we can see the crowd moving around the cape (lower right). There is a stone garden on the right side of the entrance. All the stones exhibit are replicas. One of them is the replica of the panther rock, which was damaged by waves. Our advice, go straight to see the authentic stones first. Leave the replicas to the last as we are going to walk pass the garden on our way out of the park.

The mushroom stones from the observatory platform.

Most of the 1.7 km long cape of Yehliu is flat except a hill at the tip of the cape.

There were many visitors roaming around the area (upper left). The information about some special stones are provided in the park (upper right). Visitors are not supposed to go beyond the red line (lower left). Lifebuoy is prepared, just in case someone steps too far beyond the red line.

The layers of limestone can be clearly seen.

Candle rock (upper left), queen rock (upper right), ginger rock (lower right), and elephant rock are several famous rocks there.

Sandal rock or fairy's shoe rock (upper left), dragon rock (upper right), and bird rock (lower right) can be easily identified. Fossils are not difficult to be found on the ground.

The food shack marks the end of the flat land (upper left). Then, we need to climb stairs (upper and lower right) to the hill.

The tip of the cape can be clearly seen from the hill.

Town view from the hill. 

There is a hawker center beside the park (upper left and right). We bought some dried fish (lower right) and took our lunch at one of the eatery there. The price was reasonable.

After lunch with pork rice, unagi soup (eel), and fried oyster with egg, we went back to Taipei by bus. Again, we waited for 5 minutes only to get onto the right bus. Yehliu Geopark is a must visit place if you ever visit Taipei. You can find more information about Yeliu Geopark at the official website of the park. Next, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall and Taipei 101. 

More about our experience in Taipei: 



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Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Raohe Night Market (Taipei Trip Day 2)

After visiting Taipei Zoo and Maokong Mountain, we continued our trip to Raohe Night Market. Raohe Night Market (饶河夜市) is one of the oldest night market in Taipei. It is located at Raohe Street in Songshan District, spreading 600 meters along Keelung River. How to go to Rauhe Night Market? Take MRT to Songshan Station, exit through gate 5,  and you will see the entrance of the night market at your right, on the other side of the road. It is just beside a beautiful temple- Songshan Ciyou Temple.

Raohe Night Market opens from 5 pm till midnight. Easy to reach, organized, clean, and not too big to get lost. Recommended by our friend, the pork rib herbal soup and black pepper bun are the must-try-food there. He actually mentioned another one- the stinky tofu, which we dared not try. Of course, we tried many other food and drinks along the street, including the grilled scallops, meat roll with spring onion and tofu fa. We reached the market at around 7 pm and stayed there for almost 2 hours.

Raohe Night Market is different from Huaxi Night Market- more stalls selling IT gadgets, handphone accessories, branded attires, beautifully packed local delicacies to trap tourists, souvenirs like key chains and fridge magnets, and more variety of food and drinks. Most importantly, it consists of one single street only, with the hawker stalls line up at the middle of the street, very organized in the way that we can see everything in a round trip, and it is almost impossible for visitors to get lost there. It is indeed a must visit night market in Taipei!

From Songshan MRT Station (upper left) we need to cross the road to Raohe Night Market. The entrance of the night market is located beside Ciyou Temple (upper right). The entrance was full of visitors upon our arrival around 7 pm (lower right). The entrance near the MRT station is the eastern entrance. There is another entrance on the western side.

Raohe Night Market is really crowdy. We need to squeeze through some chocking points due to the queueing people in front of the stalls.

Limited by space, there were just a few tables and chairs prepared for the customers to sit down and enjoy their food.

Food- we tried grilled scallops (upper row) and pork with onion roll (lower row). The grilled scallops tasted good. The pork with onion roll was special and the portioin was big, but tasted average.

Winter melon drink with brown sugar (upper left) and "ai-yu" jelly or can be translated as vegetarian gelatin (upper right) tasted good. Tofu fa tasted a bit different from our country style (lower right), and we didn't really like it. But there were many people waiting in front of the tofu fa stall, awaiting to be served.

The famous stall selling pork rib herbal soup was jammed with queueing visitors, and same thing happened to the most famous stall selling black pepper bun. We decided to make our life easier by visiting the stalls with shorter queueing line. Shorter queue is not an indication that they are not good. The pork rib herbal soup (upper row) and the black pepper bun (lower row) served by them tasted good as well!

Statue of owls- Mascot of Raohe Night Market, is erected at the western entrance.

We left the market at 9 pm with some fruits and black pepper buns packed back for supper. An advice from our friend- Raohe Night Market is a very very crowdy market. It will be good if we and keep our belongs safe from pick pockets. Although he couldn't recall when was the last case reported (rarely happened), but it's always better to be careful than sorry.

For our second day, the weather was good- sunny in the morning, a bit hazzy in the afternoon, and cooling at night. We would visit Yehliu Geological Park in Wanli District, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, Taipei 101, and Ximen Ding on our third day in Taipei. Let us bring you to Yehliu Geopark now.

More about our experience in Taipei:

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