Good day to all from World Map Pin community, hope all of you are doing fine this lovely weekend. Been a little busy lately and did not have time to really continue with the series of my Taiwan travel due to work assignment and many late night overtime work. This is my 5th instalment of my travel to Taiwan which happened late last year in the month of December. In the previous post, I've covered the beautiful Beimen district in Tainan where we see the beautiful salt fields and the pristine looking Beimen Crystal Church. And for today, I will be starting my journey northwards towards the middle of Taiwan and visit the lovely city of Taichung. The cover photo is a picture taken at Taichung Railway Station which is really modern looking for a railway station.
Background
This Taiwan trip is a week long trip that I planned with my wife and we went to quite a number of less travelled locations. The trip include many places that most people going to Taiwan will not include in their itinerary and that is why I would want to share it with the community on these amazing places that my wife and I explored.
Join us as we explore the various less mainstream locations in Taiwan.
Here are the links to the previous post on this series of exploring Amazing Taiwan:
Part 1 Fort Zeelandia - @vaynard86/exploring-amazing-taiwan-part-1-fort-zeelandia-tainan
Part 2 Anping Treehouse and Da Dong Night Market - @vaynard86/exploring-amazing-taiwan-part-2-anping-tree-house-anping-old-street-and-da-dong-night-market-tainan
Part 3 Murals, Snail Alley and Hayashi Department Store - @vaynard86/exploring-amazing-taiwan-part-3-street-murals-snail-alley-and-hayashi-department-store
Part 4 Beimen District with Beimen Crystal Church and Jingzaijiao Salt Fields - @vaynard86/exploring-amazing-taiwan-part-4-exploring-beimen-district
Leaving Tainan Towards Taichung
To get to Taichung from Tainan, there are many options available, but in order to save time, the fastest route toward Taichung is via High Speed Rail which tickets are easy to buy. Tickets can be bought online or at the station itself. Online tickets are slightly cheaper but you need to buy slightly in advance as compared to heading down to the station. But due to the numerous number of trains, there will no trouble in getting a ticket.
It took approximately 35 minutes and we arrived at Taichung High Speed Rail Station. As the station is slightly away from the city itself, we will need to transit to the normal railway to reach into the heart of Taichung city. The connecting rail station is just a 5 minutes walk from the High Speed Rail Station called Xinwuri Station. From Xinwuri, we took the normal train toward Taichung Station.
Just 3 stations between Xinwuri and Taichung station, we have arrived. I recalled when I last came here for a work trip many years ago, many things centre around the railway station and it is interesting to see that they have renovated the railway station to the one I showed in the cover photo which is much more modern than the one I remembered. But little did I know that they did not demolish the old railway station but convert it into a heritage area for people to remember the place and have some nice and cute shops over there.
As it was early, I explore around the station and saw a Bugcat Capoo cafe and walked in to take a look.
Within the cafe, there were loads of merchandise on sale and wife bought a couple of cute ones as souvenirs for her friends.
The cafe itself is nice and cozy. While it is still not dinner time yet, I went to check out something that I missed eating and bring my wife to experience a souvenir shop that looks like Hogwarts in Harry Porter.
Miyahara
This is a unique place and I personally strongly recommend you to visit this place. Miyahara is an eye hospital that existed during Japanese occupation and has now converted into a souvenir shop and also a place that I always come for ice cream. First let's take a look at the souvenir area.
When you first enter this place, you would never have thought that this is a place that sells souvenirs. But here we are at Miyahara that is famous for their suncakes, pineapple tarts and many others. While there is no available samples in the shop for you to taste what you will be getting, there is an ice cream shop behind the souvenir area that serves amazing ice creams ranging from chocolates ranging from different percentage purity, fruity flavours and other more mainstream flavours and you can select the items that are sold in the souvenir shop as toppings for your ice cream.
I know it will be dinner time soon but I couldn't resist having this ice cream. Looks really good isn't it? I had this back when I was here for a work trip and came back again now with my wife to savour the goodness of the chocolate ice cream and the various toppings in a waffle cup. My wife love it as we both gobbled down this amazing piece bowl of goodness. If you are here in Taichung, make sure you do not miss out on this!
As we walked out of Miyahara, it was way darker than when we entered and it is dinner time, though we are full with bowl of ice cream we just ate. We were greeted also by the lighting up of the canals with Christmas decoration which is really beautiful.
Feng Chia Night Market
Because the ice cream is still in our stomach, we decided to just take bus down Taiwan Boulevard (the main road at the centre of Taichung) and then walked towards our next location to have our dinner - Feng Chia Night Market. It was a 20 minutes walk after we alight as we walked through the busyness of the Taiwan streets and finally arrived the night market as the smell of food came flowing towards our nostrils.
So many street food available and I wanted to try them all though it is not possible to do so. Many interesting food as well such as the barbecue crocodile meat. Food price is affordable with the only small problem is that most of the stalls only accept cash payment, so ensure you bring enough cash along when you visit this place. There is just so many nice food here that you would even consider coming back again for another dinner the next day. Similar to Da Dong Night Market in Tainan but of a much bigger scale.
Closing
While today is mainly a transition from Tainan back northwards to Taichung, we still manage to catch a glimpse of the many amazing things available in Taichung (with more to come in the next post). Nice places, nice food and experiencing the night market culture here. Be sure to stick around for my next post as I will sharing more activities and sights around Taichung as we explored the city and its surroundings.
Thank you for walking along with me to explore the places I shared today and see you around in the community. See you in my next post on Exploring Taiwan in World Map Pin!
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