day 15! xinbeitou, gongguan

Suuuuuch a late start to the day! Our mom had some free time today (she's been getting checkups done, and visiting old friends), so she said she'd take us out to some far away night market. But then she found out that the procedure she's getting done tomorrow requires that she doesn't eat too much, so she took us to xingbeitou instead. It's all the way towards the northern end of the island (Taipei is already pretty far to the north, but this is alllll the way to the north). It's famous for its hot springs. :)

To get there you take the red line allll the way up to the last station, beitou, then you switch over to a special mini-line that only has one nearby stop: xingbeitou. Methinks they cater to tourists here, because the one platform that this one train leaves from has all sorts of cute touristy crap, like this display. :)

and so we did as tourists do. :) aghh ihatemyface.

and of course a cute touristy bus.

greeted by another cute installation at xingbeitou station.

mmm Taiwan is so green!! I always forget how tropical it is. :) It's really lush and beautiful.

Pretty. :)

Soooo we took way too long to get out of the apt this afternoon (ok ok fine, I took way too long :( :( got distracted), and by the time we got there most everything was closed. The museum, the hot springs valley place....an actual hot spring was open but it was PACKED with people and we just...just..no. Here is my mom and Michael standing outside of the museum though. :D It's almost just as good.

Tried out three flavors: taro, peanut, and champagne (mine). Mine was the best. :3

Climbed down to a little river running through xingbeitou, wanted to see if the water was hot. It wasn't hot at all...but not cold either. Lukewarm.

Big tree. I will take this time to mention that mosquitos were fucking EVERYWHERE cuz we're basically in a damp humid place nesting ground. -_- God I fucking hate mosquitos. Michael and I were being kinda bratty I think, and whining nonstop about how many there were. I'm terrified of being bitten though. T_T Managed to escape with only one battle scar to the calf.

They had cute drains. :)

Omg!! Found a stroopwafel at a 7-11! XD (loves to eat stroopkitty!) lol. :)

So it was a bit disappointing, but that was our trip to xingbeitou. :) My mom wanted to come back when things were open, but I think Michael and I are a bit unfairly unbiased against it now hehe. Anyway mom had to go home to take meds for her procedure, so me and Michael were on our own. Attempted to get off at Zhongshan station to search for the ningxia night market, but it didn't show on the map. We went home to shower, then headed out again for Gongguan night market -- we went there on like day 3 or 4 I think. 

I had reaaaallly really liked the guabao that we'd gotten there last time, so we found the stand again.

Omg. T_T mouthgasm.

We'd seen this chain a coupla times, thought we'd give it a try. The name is like Orange Cafe or something. All the pics they have look sooo good, all fruity drinks.

top 10 drinks. :) kinda exotic stuff you don't really get to have elsewhere. ahhh i love sweet drinks <3

I got their "5 kinds of fruit". The pic looked way better than the actual drink. And it tasted weird :( kind of sour.............ok, REALLY sour. Michael got the grape yakult drink and that one was nice. No more orange cafe for me.

Michael got a fried green onion pancake. So weird! Usually they cook it in a pan, like...pan fry it? But this was deep fried O_o I didn't try any cuz I saw the vat of oil they cooked it in and it looked ridiculously caloric but, Michael said it was good.

Shopped, I got some more shoes (I know that I'm a shoe hater, but that's WHY I'm buying so many shoes here. When I go home I never want to have to buy shoes again!), but not too much. I do like Gongguan a lot though. :) It's smaller, but lots of variety shopping wise. Also only 2 stops from home.

Anyway before leaving we got another oyster pancake.

And then home!