KY travels – Taipei Family Tour Day 2 – Jiufen Old Street, Shifen, and more awesome food

The second day at Taiwan is actually our first day of proper tour.

I started the day with an easy morning run of about 5k, weather was excellent at 20+ Celsius and New Taipei is an excellent place with wide walkways. There’s a semi-underground drain-turned-park kinda place that ran a few kilometers which was perfect for my routine.

Xiao Pang breakfast restaurant at New Taipei City

Breakfast was at Xiao Pang breakfast restaurant a few minutes away. Parking at Taiwan in the older part of town could be a bit challenging, but luckily the city seems to be a late sleeper so we managed to find a spot on outside some shop houses on the street.

The restaurant is a snapshot of the heritage of American culture in Taiwan, while everything is in Mandarin, the menu would make any American feels at home. There’s toasts, burgers, sandwich, “egg biscuits”, plus a few different Asian entries such as radish cakes, gyoza, and so on.

American style breakfast in Taiwan, plus fried radish cake

We had their egg & bacon toast, a pork burger, and fried radish cake. The Western style breakfast were decent, but we really liked the fried radish cake with the homemade chili sauce, it even had bits of yam within, pretty neat. We also gulped down some black soy drink there as well.

Address:
Xiao Pang Breakfast Restaurant
24246, Taiwan, New Taipei City,
Xinzhuang District, Zhonggang 3rd St, 83?1F
GPS: 25.046662, 121.450571

Jiufen, the old seaside mountain village

Our first touristy destination is Jiufen old street. It was about an hour’s drive from Taipei, with about half of the distance being fast highways, 40% slower country roads, and the last 10% super winding & narrow mountain road as we approached the old Ruifang district.

The place gets really busy especially on weekends, it is essentially house converted to shops along a steep, old street. Jiufen literally meant “9 portions” as apparently there used to be 9 families at the area and every shipment of goods had to be split into 9 portions.

“Zhang Ji Traditional Fishballs” restaurant

Like many touristy places, the shops offer a variety of things you can buy to keep at home, or to eat. We ended up getting some “pork paper” which is like a really thin version of bakwa (sweet dried pork), and some instant ginger tea cubes to bring home – they are both sweet and really really strong.

the menu at Zhang Ji

Lunch was at Zhang Ji traditional fishball within Jiufen old street itself. We ordered their set which came with braised pork rice, dried noodle, fishball soup, “oiled” chicken, and boiled vegetable. Additionally, we added a braised pork rice bowl for good measure, since the portion were actually pretty tiny.

the cold chicken was good, the “bento” & noodle too

The food actually tasted pretty good, my only gripe being the usage of disposable bowl & utensils which dampened the experience a bit. It was packed by the time we finished and thankfully the cold weather meant we didn’t have to sweat in that small shop.

Shifen is the natural next destination after Jiufen

Naturally, Shifen was our next stop, and as you might have guessed, the area originally had 10 different families.. so “ten portions” became the name of this place.

Shifen’s main attraction is this railroad track in which many people sets off sky lanterns after having their wish written on them with total disregard of safety and the big warning sign that says you’d be fined between 10,000 to 50,000 NTD encroaching the rail track.

We waited for the train and indeed, the train engineer did not slow down at all, a bit of a safety hazard for sure.. also, I wonder who picked up those sky lantern after they’ve burnt up their fuel and came back down a couple kilometers away..

We also stopped by a tea house and had some bubble tea (sans the bubble) before heading back to Taipei.

back to HonHui Plaza food court

After having spent almost 2 hours on the road thanks to the long journey, rush hour traffic in the city, plus Google map confusion due to the fact that GPS app often doesn’t know if you’re on top or bottom, inside/outside lane of the road, we ended up having to scrap our idea of having dinner somewhere in the city. Back to Honhui Plaza food court it was then.

ended the day with some Japanese style beef/fish + rice

For dinner, we opted for this very popular Japanese style set meals. Two portion with beef and one with saba fish served with rice, egg, salad, and miso soup. Thanks to the heavy influence of Japanese culture in Taiwan, their Japanese food too were of rather high standard, we were well satisfied after a full day of touristy activities.