7.1 日月潭骑脚踏车游记 Cycling Exprience around Sun Moon Lake

After settle everything on the home stay, we decided to have a short cycling trip around the lake. Sun Moon Lake is a very huge lake. Walk or cycle the whole lake will take hours.

The last bicycle that I ride myself was 16 years old. It has been years that I didn't ride a bicycle and I was having a hard time controlling it. I fell down several times and TS say I look dangerous cycling like that. But gradually I manage to control the bicycle as I won't fall that easily.

The weather wasn't that good. There is so much fog around and we couldn't have a clear picture of the lake.


Poor bride is taking her wedding photo is such a cold evening.

The water of the lake is clear and clean. No rubbish. I don't think we can see clean lake at Malaysia!


There is a temple around our path. Its a small slope up the hill. I was exhausted cycling up the hill, thus I just push the bicycle up.


Finally reach the temple - Dragon and Phoenix Temple (龙凤宫).


Next we saw the Sun Moon Lake Tourist Center. Travelling at Taiwan is kinda easy as there are a lot of these travel center around the tourist place, it's a great place to source for tourist information, transport and accommodation.


In front of the Tourist Center is a row of shops.


There is nothing special on food at Sun Moon Lake. The most famous food is the lake fish called president fish(中统鱼), but the price is costly.
We stop by 7-11, TS brought the lunch box from Fencihu, and I brought another lunch box and we have our dinner in 7-11. TS lunch box taste as good as in Fencihu, but mine taste so so.

7-11special design t-shirt from Sun Moon Lake


The day become dark, we walk to the Shueishe Wharf(水社码头) to take some night views.

Here are some hotels in front of the Shueishe Wharf. It is so beautiful with the colorful lights.




On the wharf, there are some musical fountain performance. The mixture of lights, water the music just makes everyone so smoothing.

Shueishe Wharf night scenery which is full with yachts.

7.0 Sun Moon Lake Homestay 日月潭民宿

We reach Sun Moon Lake around 4pm. The van stop us at our homestay: LOVE HOME 度假旅店

We took a promotion package(2天1夜 幸福之旅) for NT$1600, which includes
★2 free bicycle ride
★2 Sun Moon Lake Lake tour tickets
★2 free breakfast
Do refer here for more details. (Price now is slightly higher as they have increase the room rates)

Here is our room of the package(203 红色浪漫)
The room looks new, with morden design and beautiful, suitable for loving couples for a stay,. The only limitation to me is the open concept of the toilet bowl.

I booked 2 night at Sun Moon Lake, but the lady boss make a mistake and that lovely red room has been booked by others. We have to change to another room (Love木屋四人套房) which cost us NT$1300 for this huge room.
Overall the rooms are comfortable enough for a night stay. Disadvantages was they didn't provide only heater on the room. Both nights was as cold as 12 degrees. I wore the white jacket even I was in bed.

Preparation for Pipit Wonderful Market 4

Some sneak peek on items that I will be selling at the Pipit Wonderful Market 4. Been working hard on the events. Hope the people will love my items :)
Colorful kawaii handphone/ multipurpose pouch with matching swingable wrist strap
Drawstring pouches~ I love the lace!
Lots of tissue pouches in different design, fabric and colors
Some other sewings pouches, bags....
I am selling some craft materials too, such as these lovely buttons, paper flowers(below), jewelery finding, stamps ... etc.

Remember to drop by to Pipit Wonderful Market 4 at Central Market tomorrow from 12pm- 8pm to visit me and Chiwawa Family.

6.0 Jiji集集，Shuili水里，CheCheng车埕

Jiji(集集) Township is a small town at Nantou(南投).

It is one alternative way to reach the Sun Moon Lake (日月潭).

How to get to Sun Moon Lake(日月潭)from Alishan(阿里山)?
Here are some answer that I got online.
1． Take a railway train/high speed train from ChiaYi (嘉义)to Taichung(台中)，take a bus from Taichung railway station (台中火车站) to Puli(埔里)，and change bus from Puli(埔里)to Sun Moon Lake. (I did see a brochure mention that you can take a bus direct from Taichung railway station to the Sun Moon Lake)
2． Take a railway train from ChiaYi(嘉义) to Zhanghua Ershuei Station(彰化二水站), then change to Jiji Railway Line (集集线小火车）to Shuili(水里)， take a bus from Shuili to the Sun Moon Lake.
3． Take a cab/ car from Alishan to Sun Moon Lake。Price around NT$4500-NT$5500 per cab.

After some research from the internet, I deciede to take Choice 2. As I do not need to head up to Taichung and go down to SunMoonLake.


At 8am, we depart from Chiayi and took a train to Zhanghua Ershuei Station.

Remember to get down here and change another track to catch the train heading to Jiji.



The Jiji line, which runs from Ershuei, takes you right up to Taiwan’s oldest train station. It is a small train and it passed by rows of green trees.





The railway track is even at the back of their homes.


The train passed by an slanting electrical pole which is damage during the earthquake. Now it is one of the travel attractionof Nantou.


We reach Jiji at 10am.


We just hand over our luaggage to the railway station officer and they are kind enough to let us put our luaggage there. But becareful not to put valuable things on your bag. It is not a proper bag deposit counter.

This small train is the trade mark and a must take photograph place just when we step our legs out from the train station.

There is another large train beside the railway station.


The best way to travel along Jiji Township is by renting a bicycle. There are paths for cyclist.

We rent our bicycle at the nearby shop. NT$200 for 24hours. It is an electrical bicycle where you just press the button and it will run by itself without pedaling the bicycle pedal. I would recomend renting this as it is not that tiring if you cycle yourselve.
If the battery is out, we can call the boss and he will come and recharge it free for us.

The weather was cold. TS was freezing as he cycle. PS: I just sit and hide behind him :)

First we saw the Military Park (軍史公園). This is the first Military Park to display unuse army's weapons such as Flying jets, tanks, air missile in public open air.





Next we visited the Mingxin Library(明新書院). It is a heritage building and it is a school/library on the olden days.
Beside the Mingxin Library, there is a Eco - life Park (集集特有生物研究保育中心)，we skip that place as we are not really interested in visiting animals again.




Continue to cycle and we pass by a big piece of planted flowers. Entrance is NT$10. The flowers as so beautiful and its endless flower all around us. If you want to pick a Sun flower, just drop a $10 coin the box.






Next we reach Collapsed Wuchang Temple (武昌宮). The temple was damage during the 921 earthquake. The miracle part of this building was the God statue that they save out start to grow moustache. We really saw it with our eyes.


Next we reach this 700 year old tree called 大樟樹，locals has been praying the tree for quite sometime and call it 樟樹公. Tere is a temple 大眾爺祠 beside the tree.


We reach this place called 目仔窯， but no shops are open.



Lastly we visit the Green Lane (集集綠色隧道).
On our way back, TS stop by a famous ice-cream shop. He dare to eat the ice-cream in such a cold weather.


We headed back to the bicycle shop and the boss introduce us to have our lunch at this small old shop.


The shop is without any sign board, yet there are alot of people ordering their food.
We tried pig intestine (猪肠) -very delicious，YangChun Noodle(阳春面)，Dumplings (水饺)， and another unknown food。They taste good and didn't cost us alot.


After our lunch, we return our bicycle and took the train to CheCheng(车埕)。

CheCheng is the last station of Jiji Line。
The scenery is wonderful. With the big mountains, hills, abit haze and the old train makes everything perfect. It peace our mind when we are at there.







We didn't visit any place at CheCheng. We saw a group of people visiting CheCheng Old Street. But with all the lauggage we have, just forget it. There is also a wood museum (木业文化馆)，but is was close. So we took the next train and went back to Shuli(水里).

At Jiji Line, the route of the train is Jiji集集->Shuili水里->CheCheng车埕. We can only take bus from Shuili to Sun Moon Lake.

We reach Shuili. We wanted to take a bus, but the next bus is 1 hour later. We decided to take a cab which cost NT$400 per cab to Sun Moon Lake. It took us 30++ minutes to reach Sun Moon Lake