KY travels – Taipei Family Tour Day 3 – Wulai District (Old Street & Waterfall)

This is the travelog for our third day of Family tour to Taipei, you can check out Day 1 and Day 2 by clicking the links. The destination for the day was Wulai District, as suggested by one of my colleagues Christian who has made a similar trip just weeks prior, thanks Chris!

Wulai District, Taiwan

Wulai District is a mountainous area on the southeastern side of Taipei, while only about 30+ kilometers away from our hotel in New Taipei, it took a good 45 minutes to drive there thanks to the slower and narrower roads outside the city area. The journey itself is scenic, we enjoyed it.

Wulai Waterfall, about 80m high

Once arrived, we parked our rental car at the outdoor parking lot with one of those automatic car park lot installed. It’s a fancy way of preventing you to drive off without paying for parking at the machine first, haven’t seen this in Malaysia before.

Walking across the Wulai Bridge we arrived at the Wulai old street, it is not entirely too different from Jiufen & Shifen old streets to be honest, but with quite a hot spring resorts around the area. Since we’re traveling with Casey who’s only barely 16 months young, the hot spring was not in our itinerary.

lunch at Wulai District, what we ordered

We stopped by “Wulai Small Eatery” to have brunch before heading to the waterfall. It was another typical Taiwanese “tai chao” type of meal, with the local popular poached chicken dish, stir fry wild fern, tofu, bamboo shoots soup, and of course, rurou fan (braised pork rice).

The menu and ordering form has prices in NTD listed, convenient. It was a pretty decent meal as well in the taste department.

best view to the waterfall is cafe

After refueling, we headed to the attraction that is the Wulai waterfall. The waterfall is about 1.5 KM away from the old street, you can choose to walk, or take the rather cute scenic train to get there, we opted for the latter for 50 NTD per pax (check out the video above).

Address:
Wulai Three Cafe
No. 3, Pubu Rd, Wulai District,
New Taipei City, Taiwan 233
GPS: 24.848456, 121.551826

Standing at some 80 meters tall, the water fall was rather majestic. There’s a couple more restaurants  here as well, but if you want the best spot to enjoy the scene, the Wulai Three Cafe is the one to go. A quaint cafe with huge floor to ceiling glass overlooking at the river and waterfall with no obstruction. While prices of the drinks are a bit on the high side, at least the beverages were rather good, worth a visit.

Yun Hsien Resort

We then walked up a couple more flights of stairs and took the cable car up to Yun Hsien Resort. The cable car ride was only some 400 meters but provided a great view of the river and the waterfall from above. At the upper station, there’s still quite a climb to the resort area itself (probably equivalent to 5-8 stories), which features a beautiful lake and garden. It was around 22 Celsius, a nice stroll in the park and great exercise for our quads…

Wulai Old Street’s famous wild boar satay

After touring Yun Hsien resort area, we took the cable car back to the waterfall area, and decided to walk all the way to the old street instead of using the scenic train again, the weather was great, so why not?

the long queue was worth it, excellent wild boar meat

At the old street, we decided to go for the famous wild boar sausage as the queue is now substantially smaller than earlier in the morning. 20 minutes or so later we got to try the famous wild boar sausage and chicken skewer. The sausage has a slight gamey taste to it that was quite unique in a good way, the chicken skewer was juicy and actually tastes pretty good as well, the hype was worth it.

Address:
Wild Boar Sausage
No. 84?, Wulai St,
Wulai District,
New Taipei City, Taiwan 233
GPS: 24.862535, 121.551514

Bu Yi Yang lamb restaurant

Before heading back to hotel, we stopped by “Bu Y i Yang” lamb restaurant for dinner based solely by the catchy sign board and the fact that it was right along the main road to Wulai District. This is a specialty shop that sells dishes centered around lamb and hand made noodle (mee suah).

our order, with pricing clearly stated too

We ordered roast lamb ribs, lamb soup, lamb with bitter gourd, a plate of vegetable, and three portions of hand made noodle for the three of us. The noodle was silky smooth and soaked up the garlic oil really well, ribs and bitter gourd were our favorites, while the lamb soup itself was actually more like boiled water than actual soup, even if the meat tasted rather tender. All in all was a decent meal, if only they have a more competent soup.

Address:
Bu Yi Yang Restaurant
No. 196-1?, Section 1,
Beiyi Rd, Xindian District,
New Taipei City, Taiwan 231
GPS: 24.95292, 121.54308

excellent meal at Bi Yi Yang

One interesting thing about many restaurants in Taiwan, including this one, is that they don’t actually have any drinks in the menu. I guess you’re expected to bring your own drinks or have some bubble tea there after?

We headed back to hotel after the meal, concluding the third day of our trip to Taiwan.