Day 2 evening:Going to the vistor centre and walking around

After a brief rest, we wanted to go out for another walk and tried to find our way to the "Rui Tai Gu Dao" loosely translated as "The old path from Rui li to Tai he" but on the way there on foot, it started to have a slight drizzle and since we now that the path is partly destroyed by the typhoon last year, we decided to just keep walking to the visitor centre. But lo and behold, while we were on the road, the husband of the owner of out hostel passed by on his truck, he stopped and gave us a lift to the visitor centre and even told us they have a firefly exibit on the 2nd floor.

Tea ladies on the tea hills in the distance

The modern Rui li visitor centre(yes, it's air-conditioned)

Inside the vistor centre, you can get lots of information for both Rui li and the surround few villages.There are brochures to take and a lady there to assist you if you have any queries.On the second floor of the building is the firefly exibit. Rui Li is famous for it's fireflies . There say you can see a whole hill glowing with fireflies starting in March till around late June, Now how AWESOME  is that.That is also when our hostel (Ruo Lan Shan Zhuang) is the busiest. For the last 40 years the owners of the hostel who owns the hill that the hostel is on protects the envirnment there such that fireflies thrive on their property during the firefly season. Before March , the owners will go out and start to catch spiders in their fields so that the spiders do not eat up the larve of the fireflies, they do not use any insecticides on their hill and do everything from planting to weeding mostly by manpower. That is why you can find an abundance of wildlife around the hostel

Firefly exhibit on the 2nd floor with English translations 

On the 3rd floor deck of the visitor centre 

There is a video room on the 2nd floor of the visitor centre for videos of the surrounding areas in different languages

After the visit to the visitor centre and getting a tour map of the area, we went for a stroll along the "Ginger Lily River Trail" The Ginger flower in this region is white and it is in bloom now in summer(August). The smell is light and sweet. The locals pick the flowers and mixed the chopped flowers with eggs to make a special local ginger flower omelette which tastes EXQUISITE. 

                                         

                                                           White Ginger flowers

                              Signs along the trail.(Most of the tourist trails are clearly marked,and in English too )

By now you would have noticed that most of the places in the hills can be reached by foot .But if you want to go somewhere further afield, you can always approach the hostel reception and they can help you with the transportation.

                        More tea hills seen on our way back.Check out the elevation, picking tea is no easy task

It is getting late , so we headed back to the hostel and our 5 dishes, 1 soup + rice dinner.

To attest the fact that this place is all natural. Check out with we found the last two nights.These bugs just kind of ermmm.. were around.....

Day 2 morning: It's about the nature

So up early on Day 2 of our Ruili trip.We get a full day today. I got to know a guy called Leo(http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/dai117) who is a native in Ruili through the internet and he advised on what we could do in the hills while we were there,

First things first of course, look out at the view

Good weather for the morning:It's trekking time

but before that, the all important breakfast which is part of our stay package

Half eaten awesome breakfast

Now we are full of energy to go and walk along the Green colored path( 綠色隧道) .We walked through a small bamboo forest that runs through the back of our hostel

Short path through some bamboo

And then we got onto the main road. You can see the devastation caused by typhoon Marokot from this building which was the only one that was damaged by the landslide in the area. The rains due to Marokot poured a lot of rains onto the Alishan mountain region caused a lot of mud/landslides but in Ruili, No human lives where taken.

Landslide affected building

More walking to be done before we hit the green colored path . It was a nice stroll through tea gardens and we saw many local huts and even caught sight of a cat sitting on a red brick wall.

Local hut .. probably they still make tea here

Nicely terraced tea gardens

The classic tea picking pose

The cat watching my every move

Finally we reached the entrance to the Green Colored Path.

It's an easy walk through some very nice scenery

Okay after the last flight of stairs where you see me posing in the Tai chi post posture, we got back to the main road and went back to the hostel for lunch . When in Taiwan, do what the Taiwanese do. So we chose to eat "bian tang" kind of like chinese take-away.

Day 1: It's all about travelling

So we got ourselves tickets on a Jetstar flight at guess what 7.05am in the morning . That means waking up at 530am and carrying our hand  luggages , catching a cab and getting to the airport real early ..Peng San...

By the time we got there, most people already checked in and we did not get to sit next to one another (awwww...) but one in front and one behind .Still not too bad...

Anyways, that's when I regretted not bringing my book along. Oh well , I was content to read the jetstar magazine. But in the end I got through that just slightly after the plane took off. Then it was pretty boring all the way to Taoyuan airport and to the THSR(Taiwan High Speed Rail). We got 2 tickets for Taoyuan-Chiayi which is the closest to Ruili. Since the high speed rail station is normally not near the city centre, we got onto a FREE shuttle they call the BRT(Bus Rapid transit) from the Chiayi HSR(嘉义快铁） to the Chiayi normal train station（嘉义台铁） where we arranged a pick up with our hostel (Ruo Lan Shan Zhuang:http://www.ruohlan.com.tw/) for NT$1500 to head up the hills

NT$920= SGD$40 for the high speed rail and it travels at 270km/h nice..... 

The Chiayi tai tie(嘉义台铁) which is part of the national rail system(http://www.railway.gov.tw/en/index/index.aspx)

So up the mountain we go, because the normal road up the mountain is being repaired due to the heavy rains from Typhoon Morakot last year, we had to take the more scenic but bendy road up the mountain. The wife got a bit carsick along the way.The driver said that's normal 90% of passengers feel carsick when he drives this road.The normal tourist road will be open soon and that one is much much better which we can attest to when we go down the mountain. Here are some pics along the way up.

Betel nut trees

So after a long day from Singapore, we finally arrived at our hostel. Ruo lan Shan Zhuang which is the oldest hostel in operation (>40yrs) in this hilly area of the Alishan mountains. So how does the view look like from the balcony of the hotel room .Well see for yourself.

We stayed in the cheaper accomodations provided by the hostels which are clean and nice. But it does not come with air-con and TV. A fan was provided but since it's pretty cold even in summer during the nights , it is not really necessary for the aircon. This hostels does provide a more upmarket( wooden house area,木屋区）which is a little bit more expensive but have air-condition, TV and a nice spilt ensuite bathroom and toilet.

Entrance to room

Corridor

So that is not the end of our day . We had dinner at a local place for SGD$8.50/pax include 5 dishes + 1 soup.

After dinner comes the best part, drinking tea with the owner's husband. This guy makes his own tea and sells it boutique style. That's why he can guarantee what you taste at the tea drinking is the same tea he is going to sell you. Without a reason of a doubt and it's not expensive .But the service is incredible, we drank tea and self made plum wine every night we are there .

So you would have thought that was the end of the day but alas it was not to be so .... We were brought to do some activity with some other guest to make a particular kind of rice cake called Zhuang Yuan Gao (状元糕）at the activity centre that was housed behind the main hostel building

My Taiwan Trip

Well, it all started with the fact that I have always wanted to go to Taiwan to visit an aunt of mine who married over to Tainan some 15 or so years ago but I never really got the time to get off work or studies until recently .

Since I am going to fly my self on Jetstar for 4.5 hours to get there, I might as well do some holidaying as well. Great chance to get some relaxation and connect back to the land blah blah blah... So we(me and the wife) decided to go to a town called Ruili, a small tea producing town we got to know about from lonely planet.

Our iternary was to go off from Singapore, stay a few days in Ruili then move down south to visit my aunt in Tainan and ultimately end our trip back to Singapore at Taipei.