Wandering Fel

If you are looking for a farmstay experience in Taiwan, you should make your way to the Cingjing Farm. Cingjing Farm is a mountainous area located somewhere in Nantou. The air up here is pretty much fresh and it is home to a number of sheep ranches. We visited one of those sheep ranches during our last visit to Cingjing Farm. 

I never realise that there are so many ancient tribes in Taiwan. My Chinese teacher told us, the students, that there are twelve aboriginal tribes in Taiwan. The Amis, Atayal, Bunun, Kavalan, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saisiyat, Thao, Truku, Tsou and Yami. If I am not wrong, the tribe domiciles at Wulai is the Atayal tribe because they are the famous mountain tribe. If you visit Wulai, you can try dressing up as the Atayal tribe and they will help you to take picture. You will notice that the Atayal tribe has facial tattoo on their face. Those with facial tattoo means they have gone through the coming-of-age rituals. However, you cannot watch the tribal dance performance in Wulai because the area is not big enough to stage a dance performance.

If you would like to watch the Formosan dance performance, you can watch it at Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village in Nantou. There is a daily dance performance held at Naruwan theatre.  Thank goodness we managed to make it on time for the performance.

Once you have alighted from the cable car from Sun Moon Lake, you will arrive at a theme park called Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village. The last time I went here, I explored the area which is kinda similar to a Japanese themed park. It's because the whole park is decorated in One Piece style. You can read my adventure with the Straw hat crew here. So today, we are going to the more "cultural" part of Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village. Okay, let's see what kind of interesting attractions at  Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village in Nantou. 

Feeling 18 Degree Chocolate Factory (18度C巧克力工房)
 is a famous local ice cream maker in Taiwan. While I did not really see them in Taipei, the ice cream store has officially become one of the tourist spot in Nantou. Other than delicious ice cream, Feeling 18 Degree Chocolate Factory also sells pizza and chocolate. But today, I come specifically to try out the delicious ice cream from Feeling 18 Degree Chocolate Factory. 

If you think you will not be able to stay the night surrounded by nature in Taiwan, you will be surprised. You can actually experience this in Xitou Nature Recreation Area in Nantou. We stayed in a local wooden hut inside the recreation area. The hut looks quite decent from outside. 

We were so amazed when we came in to the entrance of Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village because it looks so European. But, when you step your feet in the next section of the park, you will feel like you are transported to the land of Japan. 

During my stay in Taiwan, my friend and I have taken the HSR to Taichung because we want to buy bus ticket to Nantou county to visit both Formosa Aboriginal Cultural Village and Sun Moon Lake. After much difficulties in explaining where we want to go, we managed to finally got a ticket in our hands.

If you want to go to Sun Moon Lake from the Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village, you do not have to take the bus again. You can reach Sun Moon Lake by taking a cable car called Sun Moon Lake Ropeway. Our village ticket is inclusive of the cable car fee so we were riding it even though my friend is...scared of heights. LOL.

The cable car is decorated with One Piece sticker.

Before I left to study Mandarin, my ex-colleague told me that she's definitely going to Taiwan to visit me. I asked her where does she want to visit. The first place that she wanted to go is Cingjing Farm (清境農場/ Qīng jìng nóngchǎng). And my first reaction to her is "Eh?? What? Where is that?".

I totally had not idea where and what to see in Cingjing Farm. So we google it and guess what, there's a website to promote the farm tourism (in English too!) -> http://www.cingjing.gov.tw/en/about/

Cingjing Farm is also widely known as the Alps of Taiwan. Really? Suddenly I feel so outdated. Hahaha.

First question popped to mind though -> How to go to Cingjing Farm? 

There are a number of ways to go to Cingjing Farm. But since we didn't want to fork out money for HSR, we decided to go by bus from Taipei. The bus is called E-go Bus and the bus trip will be started from Taipei Railway Station. One way ticket to Cingjing will cost you NTD 750 per pax. Hm? You don't know which building is the Taipei Railway Station? Okay to make it easier, the building looks like this.