Day 9 : Hualien
After I decided to stay 2 nights in Hualien,, I actually was worried that it’ll be too long and there’s not enough to do to keep the kids occupied. I was afraid I’d be bored! But it actually turned out ok. The east coast of Taiwan was beautiful and well worth visiting. In fact I much prefer it to Taroko Gorge. I suppose having seen other gorges and mountains in various parts of the world, I have been spoilt. ?
Breakfast that morning was delicious. The prawn patty made freshly every morning by the owner’s elderly mother was yummy! But they provide little variety for the 2 days that we were there. Almost the same, accept for the change in the drink and fruits. But that’s fine for a 2 days stay and we get to eat the delicious prawn patty again!
We started our day at the well known Chishingtan, a pebbled beach. It was a cloudy morning, so the placed looked a little dull. We spent some time stacking stones and just fooling around.
After that, we went to Yun Shan Shui, a residential area which was beautiful with lakes and greenery. Actually we should have come directly to Yun Shan Shui which was south of where we stayed and visit Chishingtan the next day when we headed north. But Itinerary today was lighter and I wanted to leave more time the next day for Yilan.
Now about Yun Shan Shui : Apparently an entrepreneur bought the huge plot of vacant land many years back and started constructing a pond, growing trees, basically landscaping the whole area. Years passed and the trees grew and he split up the land into small parcels to sell for residential development. The land here was apparently fetching high price now. Saw many pretty minsus like the castle in my photo below.
We bought some peeled skin green chilli 剥皮辣椒, a pickled green chilli from one of the stalls we came across. It goes very well with rice porridge. Yum!
I found an interesting restaurant for lunch, Hong Wa Wu Traditional Amis restaurant. It served Amis aboriginal food. Servings were huge and food delicious. Restaurant was pretty too. The salad was unusual (some vegetables were not what we commonly have eaten), loved the deep fried sweet potato and pumpkin, the grilled pork was very good, grilled fish great too. Just go for the recommended/popular dishes, and you can’t go wrong. Just don’t order the chicken, it was so so tough.
After lunch we moved along the coast to see the beautiful Hualien coast line, imagine Great Ocean Road in Melbourne. Shihtiping was beautiful and it really interest my son who was studying geography for A levels and could relate to what he was seeing. The kids enjoyed just climbing among the rocks and boulders.
Since we missed the sunset at Gaomei Wetlands, and DH wanted to catch some nice sunset photos, we went to Hualien river mouth. Spent some time there just skipping stones into the water and generally fooling around. Sunset was beautiful.
Ziqiang night market was the most talked about night market in Hualien, but was unfortunately closed on 30 Nov 2015. We were told that some stalls had moved to Rainbow night market, so we headed there. The kids enjoyed their cheap steak at the night market. This night market was big and spacious and even had large sitting areas for you to enjoy your meal. They also had dances by aboriginal dance troupes etc. Very pleasant and not too crowed because place was big. It was a proper square dedicated to the night market and not just by the streets. The popular food like coffin bread from Ziqiang night market had moved here and the queue was very long. The food stalls were proper stalls and not just push carts.