Taiwan Travel Diary #13: Hualian Day 3

 Hey everyone~ finally I'm getting around to writing about my last day in Hualian, which was already a month ago. I know, I'm slow.

So our first destination on that day was Yunshanshui, which consisted of a few very pretty lakes.

However, there wasn't much to do in this area, so we only walked around taking photos.

There was a single, small café in the area, which actually had Totoro pictures on its walls!

Of course, I had to take a photo with it.

My outfit that day was mostly dinosaur themed :D

Some more photos of the pretty area:

We ate lunch afterwards. My favourite was this salted fish, which was really delicious.

Although it had many bones, so we had to be careful while eating. 

Afterwards we watched a small performance by two Taiwanese women, who later on taught us how to make our own little toy owls.

Taiwanese people often believe that owls are protective animals, they especially protect pregnant women and people who lose their way.

Here's my owl:

While I think i did an alright job, and it looks cute from the front...

it turned out a bit derpy if you look at it from the side :D

Afterwards we went to another lake, but i completely forgot its name...oops.

The area seemed to be famous for its Papaya milk, so we first got something to drink.

This dog was shaved to look like a lion~

Then we rented one of those small boats to take around the lake.

 Ours wasn't a pretty swan or dragon though.

The lake was really beautiful, but since it was super warm and the sun was shining brightly, i didn't enjoy the boat ride as much as I could. 

Our last schedule in Hualian was the Jota food museum and factory.

There wasn't much of a museum to be seen. The biggest area was the factory, where you could try all of their different snacks and cakes (and buy them afterwards, of course).

It was the most interesting activity of the day for me, because we got to try all of those cakes, and snacks. We didn't have much time there, so all of us just powerwalked through there, trying to eat everything.

Through one glass window, one could actually see the people working on making the snacks.

As most of the snacks there were quite pricey, I only bough these two:

Sweet potato pies (200NTD/~6€..for 4 tiny pies ;-;)

and

Chocolate Mochi cakes (100NTD/~3€)

Both tasted really good though, it's great to be able to try such things before buying them!

So that's it for my last Hualian post ^-^

Which of these places looks the most interesting to you?

Tell me your thoughts in the comments below :D

Love, Lydia

Taiwan Travel Diary #12: Hualian Day 2

Hey everyone~I finally get around to write about day 2 of my trip to Hualian ^^

Day 2 wasn't as interesting as the first day, as we already visited Hualians most famous places on the first day. It was still a nice day though.

Our first stop was Lintian mountain forestry center, which was about an hour outside of Hualian city. It's famous for its special kind of wood, so there were a few street stalls selling wooden accessoiries and other various things made out of that wood.

We also bough some super sweet ananas there. 

This sign worried me a bit, but luckily we didn't encounter any snakes.

We spent over an hour in the forestry center, which was kind of boring to be honest...it was a beautiful place, but not much different from any normal forest back in Germany.

I really liked the abandoned railroad though, it looked so pretty!

There were lots~ of mosquitos though.

Afterwards we ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant again.

I tried yellow watermelons for the first time there. It looked really special, but the taste is just like normal red watermelon.

This was a lamp outside the restaurant, which looked interesting. I thought it was a bone first, but it's just wood.

fish outside the restaurant.

Our next stop was Hualian sugar factory. It's actually not a sugar factory anymore, right now it's mostly famous for selling many different kinds of frozen products and ice-cream.

Unfortunately we only had about 40 minutes to spend there, even though this place looked really interesting and was filled with people.

There were quite a few things to do there, apparantly.

The main reason we went there was...ice-cream.

They had so many flavours!

I got Papaya ice-cream, a friend had peanut ice-cream (which tasted amazing~) and we also ended up tryung Wasabi flavoured ice-cream.

Afterwards, we did some fishing. Very traditional fishing. apparantly.

Ami tribe traditional fishing! they basically build the fish “homes” and when you lift those quickly out of the water and shake them over a net, small fish will fall out. An all eco-friendly natural way of fishing. you barely catch any fish though.

They also showed us traditional hotpot. since the ami tribe were mostly hunters, they didn’t carry stone or earthen bowls with them. all was made out of wood. and since wood burns they can’t heat those bowls up on flames. so they used special stones , heated them up to 700 degrees celsius and then dropped them in the bowls that were filled with wster so that the water would boil and cook the ingredients. the fish that they cooked this way actually tasted quite nice.

Our day ended with dinner again. 

 Hope you enjoyed this post.

Have you ever been to Hualian? If yes which places did you visit?

If not, would you like to go?

Please tell me in the comments below.

Love, Lydia