Taiwan Day 32: Taichung, Sun Moon Lake, Fengchia Night Market

I missed blogging while I was away for the last three days but now that I have my computer back I can share about my trip!

3 Day West Taiwan Trip

Day 1

Taipei - Taichung - Sun Moon Lake - Taichung (Scroll down)

Day 2

Taichung - Tainan - Kaohsiung (Read here)

Day 3

Kaohsiung - Kenting - Kaohsiung - Taipei (Read here)

Note: Exchange rate used is CAD$1 to NT29.3
Learn more about the TR Pass in this post.

Trip Day 1

To build this itinerary we worked around the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) train schedule and the TR-Pass. I will write another post about my experience with the TR-Pass but in short we bought a 5 day student train pass which we first used at Hualien.

TRA train station

Hui Chee and I started our day very early by taking the 5:40am train from Taipei to Taichung. By 8:30am we reached Taichung and stored our bags at the train luggage storage. I really recommend using this service because it only cost NT17 (CAD$0.58) to store our bags for the entire day until their closing time at 7:00pm. The lockers next to the storage room cost NT20 (CAD$0.68) every three hours and you cannot pay for more than three hours at once!

Luggage storage vs. lockers

From the Taichung Train Station we went straight to look for the bus that would take us to Sun Moon Lake. In Taiwan there are bus companies that will take you to different tourist attractions that are too far to take the public transit or too expensive to take the taxi. 

Nantou bus

We used Nantou Bus which is around a 15 minute walk from the train station. The round trip bus tickets cost NT340 (CAD$11.60) and was a 2 hour ride each way. We finally arrived at Sun Moon Lake by 10:30am!

Sun Moon Lake

The lake was very large but was not as nice as the photos depicted it online. Actually, even my photos made the scenery look nicer than when I saw it in reality. There are a few ways to view the lake. One can either drive/cycle around it, take a ferry across it or take the cable car to view it from above. We opted for the latter option and bought a package for the cable car and Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village together at student price NT580 (CAD$19.78).

Cable Car and Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village ticket

The ride up the mountain offered the best view of the lake in my opinion because the mountains are as beautiful as the water. 

Unfortunately it started to rain as our cable car reached the village so the photos above were the last I saw of the blue sky that day. Contrary to the name, the village is actually a One Piece themed amusement park. There were some attempts at showcasing Taiwan's different aboriginal tribes but were vastly covered by the One Piece theme.

One Piece ship

Since it was raining, a few of the major rides were closed like the roller coaster and water ride. Out of the few rides that I was able to go on, the UFO drop tower was my favourite! It spun around 180 degrees as it went up so that you could look around. The amusement park is in the middle of the mountain so at the top of the drop tower you feel like you've been elevated even higher than the mountains! Dropping down from that elevated feeling of height was unlike any other drop tower ride I've been on.

UFO Ride (Drop tower)

We stayed at the park until 3:30pm and basically went on all the available rides and watched most of the shows. The park itself isn't very large but its secluded location and included cable car ride makes it quite fun. Below are a few more photos at the park.

3D One Piece Movie

Large garden

The 2 hour ride back to Taichung flew by quickly and we went back to the train station to collect our bags. The hotel we booked was only a 10 minute walk away from the station so we checked in to drop off our things.

Emoon Hotel

Around 6:30pm we went out to find the famous Fengchia Night Market which is apparently one of the biggest night markets in Taiwan. The bus ride took an entire hour to get there because it stopped frequently. I could not believe how inexpensive the bus ride was! For public buses in Taichung, we could use the Easy Card that we used in Taipei and using a swipe card allowed all passengers to travel for 8 kilometers for free. Our bus ride to Fengchia only cost NT5 (CAD$0.17)!

Fengchia Night Market

Fengchia has more food stalls than clothing ones and I really enjoyed my time here. The food was less expensive than in Taipei and there were ones that I haven't seen before like the "big weiner wrapped around small weiner."

Big weiner wrapped around small weiner

That was the end of our first day! Although it seemed very long and packed (early morning to evening) we were able to rest on the train and bus rides so when we got off we were ready to explore.

3 Day West Taiwan Trip

Day 2

Taichung - Tainan - Kaohsiung (Read here)

Day 3

Kaohsiung - Kenting - Kaohsiung - Taipei (Read here)

Take care,