Taiwan Travel Diary #22: First Jiufen Trip

Honey Toast at Perfume Dance Cafe

Hey everyone~

Today, I have another blog post about Taiwan for all of you. (finally)

Hope you enjoy~

Todays topic will be a popular tourist destination, just a daytrip away from Taipei:

Jiufen  (  九份 )

How to get to Jiufen:

1. The easiest option, but also the most expensive as always, is taking a taxi.
If you want to save some money, but still have the comfort of a taxi taking you there directly:

Go to one of the bus stations that have buses to Jiufen.
There will always be some taxi drivers who will try to get customers, who offer rides to Jiufen in about 40 minutes for around 200NTD per person, which is possible because they wait for enough customers to completely fill the taxi before departing.

We chose that option when going back from Jiufen, as the queue for the bus was really long.

2. By Train.
Take the train from Taipei Main station to Ruifang station. From there take the bus to Jiufen.
I haven't done that myself , but apparantly it takes about an hour in total to get there and a bit more than 100NTD.

3. By Bus:
It's one of the easiest and cheapest options, but it's slightly slower than the other two methods.

Take Bus No. 1062 from Zhongxiao Fuxing Road (Exit 1) or Songshan station. There's a couple of other stops but those two are the ones most easy to find.

Costs 90NTD one way and takes around an hour.

However, only take the bus when you can get a seat. If it's too crowded, I'd recommend just taking the taxi as the bus ride is very bumpy and the roads are partially very bad. You do not want to do that bus ride for over an hour standing just to save around 100NTD. It's not worth it.
But if you get a seat, it's nice and there's lots of great scenery to see.

Jiufen is a beautiful small town, with lots of small shops and things to eat.

You can even buy clothes for your dog if you want to! 

On the day we went to Jiufen, it was pretty hot and humid (like almost every day here during summer), so we got something to drink.

Ice-cream peppermint tea:

Jiufen looks incredibly beautiful, and has an amazing view.

I could spend so much time there, if it wasn't always crowded with tourists.

There are also two very beautiful temples there that you can visit.

A lot of the tourists visiting Jiufen are Japanese.

One of the main reasons for Jiufen to draw in so many tourists is a japanese movie by  Studio Ghibli.

I'm sure most of you have watched it, if not, go watch it right now, it's a masterpiece.

Spirited Away

Do you see the resemblance?

Apparantly, Hayao Miyazaki himself visited Jiufen years ago, and this town inspired him to draw Spirited Away.

Many places in Jiufen resemble scenery from Spirited Away, and thus, it draws in a lot of tourists

As soon as it gets darker this place turns magical, with glowing lanterns everywhere.

If you visit Jiufen and plan to buy souvenirs and eat snacks, make sure you don't go too late.

We went in the afternoon, but most stalls started closing around 6PM already (still during daylight hours)

Strawberry Jelly~

Grape Jelly~

That's it for today~ 

Sorry for the long post and hope you enjoyed my photo spam~ ^-^

Have you ever been to Jiufen, or would you like to go?

Did all of you watch Spirited Away?

Please tell me in the comments below!

Love, Lydia