Taiwan Travel Diary #20: Houtong Cat Village

Hey everyone~

finally i get the chance to write  another blog post. The past two weeks have been quite busy as my best friend had been coming over from Korea to Taiwan and i was showing her around almost every day.
But here's a blog post about Taiwans local cat village, and in case you'd rather see a video instead of a blog post, here's a vlog (in which i don't talk at all because i'm very awkward):

How to get to Houtong Cat village ( 猴硐貓村 ):

The cheapest method is to take a local train from Taipei main station.

I haven't figured out yet how to check the times online so i'd recommend you to just directly ask at Taipei main station, where you also can buy the train ticket. A one-way ticket to Houtong costs you less than 100NTD, and the train ride should take around 45 minutes only.

The cat village is directly at the train station so it's really super easy to get there.

Or you can take a taxi, but that's going to be more expensive.

The whole area is decorated with cats, even the train station.

One thing that Houtong hass a lot of, except for cats, are cat themed souvenir stores.

So if you love anything cat related, you're in shopping heaven.

The saleswomen at this store were wearing super adorable cat ears so I had to ask for a picture.

Luckily this lady was super nice and allowed me to take one.

They sold cat, and cat paw shaped pineapple cakes.

Wouldn't that be a perfect souvenir for your cat loving friends outside of Taiwan?

They sell so much adorable cat stuff, and most of it is reasonably priced too.

I didn't buy much, except for a pineapple cake, but if you like cats a lot make sure to bring enough cash! :P

Before we go on to lots and lot of cat photos, here's some history of Houtong for you:

Houtong was a small village mostly inhabited by coal miners, but when the mining industry declined most people moved away into the bigger cities, often leaving their pets behind.

Starting from 2008 cat lovers began organizing volunteer work to give the abandoned cats a better life and posting their photos online, and that was the start of todays famous cat village.

Now onto the cat photos:

This cat was super cuddly and adorable.

Oh and there's also a dog there, who looks a lot less well-groomed than the cats. Please show the dog some love too when you're there.

There's also a station cat statue which is the number one  spot to take your photo at.

To go to the bigger part of the cat village, you have to walk through this big tunnel, where you might also spot some cats.

I'll just let the photos speak for themselves. All i can say is:

Enjoy the cat photo spam.

There were lots of cute drawings of cats on the walls as well.

They even had a small cat shrine.

We also met Taiwans own Grumpy Cat:

Before we left to go to Shifen we visited this cute cupcake café to get some delicious cupcakes.

I got the chocolate and vanilla cupcake. Both were super soft and delicious.

So to end this very long photospam, here's a last picture of my box of super adorable cat pineapple cake.

Also I am in Korea right now so if there are any interesting places you want me to go and blog about, please tell me~ ^^

Did you ever go to Houtong and if not, would you ever plan to go?
Please tell me in the comments below.

Thanks for reading.

Love, Lydia