Morning all!!! The year end school holidays has arrived and this year we are going to Taiwan together with the kids' grandparents and cousins!!!! LET's GO!!!!
Hubs' father booked a tour package from Super Travels early this year, about 6 months ago at a travel fair. It is a 7 day tour around Taiwan for families. Quick overview
Day 1: Morning flight via SQ to Taoyuan Taipei, drive up to Toucheng Farm for buffet dinner and DIY lantern.
Day 2: Visit one of Yilan's Scallion Farm for DIY scallion pancakes and how to pluck a scallion! Drive to Jiufen for some local snacks and souvenir shopping. Before dinner, dropby a flower market. Dinner at your own expense, at a local street food called Fengjia Night market.
Day 3: Visit Rainbow Village, dropby another flower market (not in the itinerary which I totally feel it is a waste of time), lunch provided and spend a lazy afternoon at Monster Village. Monster Village is not really worth a visit IMO, not unless you have time to visit the forest and stay overnight for some local experience of the Japanese village.
Day 4: Morning cruise to Sun Moon Lake, this I totally love it. Short drive to Wenwu Temple, a very oriental and old temple. Well maintain and truly a photo opp place. Lunch provided and after lunch, drive to Qingjing Farm. Walk down the Qingjing walk and down to Carton Place (totally a waste of time). Dinner provided, checked into hotel.
Day 5: Full day at Leofoo Resort, this I totally agree. Afterall, this trip is all about families and young right?
Day 6: Drive back to Taipei, visit the Martyr Shrine to view the change of guards. Quite spectacular but hats must be off when you enter the inner square. Lunch provided and it was xiaolongbao!!! YAY! Local cuisine. Totally my type. Straight after lunch, we were brought to Ximending but actually we weren't hungry at all, but no choice, so must try the bittergrourd honey drink and Xinfutang fresh boba brown sugar drink. We skipped Ah Zong mian xian because we tried before...quickly took some vidz and photo of rainbow crossing and popmart. OMG. Next drive to Shengkeng old street for more local snacks where they are famous for tofu!!! How to eat? alamak...really poor planning. Dinner on your own and they brought us to Taipei 101 to fulfil part of the itinerary and recommended us to eat at the foodcourt. Here I rushed to buy pineapple tarts from Chai Te and Sunny Hills.
Day 7: Free and Easy Day. I thought there was an optional tour, but there wasn't. So it was really leave you on your own and you do your own thing.
Other things which I didn't like about the tour package was them bringing us to - Lingzhi factory, pearl powder store, Fengshui place and some funny brand that sells pineapple tarts green bean cake.
As there are 11 of us travelling, there is only one family joining our tour group. A family of 6. So there are 17 of us! Lots of space on the coach which was really good because there was a day where we had to buy winter jackets which took up quite a bit of space and we just left our shopping bag on the nobody coach seats.
by the time we reached the farm, it was dark and time for dinner. Dinner was buffet style and suitable for asian palette. The dumpling soup was really delicious and it was my favourite. My in-laws like the braised pork belly buns.
I sat with my 2 boys and enjoyed my 2 cups of red while I was on the plane. Good job SQ!
Met up our tour leader - Hennie who claims that she has worked 30 years + in the tour industry. The drive to Toucheng Farm where we are residing for the night took 4 hours and it was long ride.
As we arrived so late, the people there made the lantern whilst we were having our dinner. Once after dinner, we just had to go to our lantern and write down our wishes.
It was quite a memorable experience in watching our lantern fly into the sky!!!
Stay tuned for more updates on my trip to Taiwan.
