Day 2 - Flying Cow Ranch
Rise and Shine... except we were all awaken by the strong sunlight at 4am! Yes.. we didn't realise that the sun rise was so early and thus, we didn't drawn the curtain the night before. The children were up and about by 6am. We dilly-dallied for quite a while before we left our room for breakfast and farm activities.
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That's our accommodation at the back
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Crossing the bridge to the restaurant
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The size of the ranch
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breakfast buffet
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not our usual breakfast
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all vegetarian dishes
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Honestly speaking, I have never been to the ranch before and thus was rather taken aback at the size of the ranch, because we walked a good 10-15 minutes before we got to the dining area. Secondly, it took us a while to get used to chinese instructions everywhere. Thirdly, we didn't quite expect an all vegetarian chinese breakfast at the ranch. But we were good, the children behaved at the dining area, eating whatever we thought they might eat, eg. porridge with hard boiled egg, vegetables and mushrooms, fresh milk and bread spread with butter.
After a healthy wholesome breakfast, we walked further in the heat.. yes, the weather was hot! to do the farm activities. We fed the calves ( I was astonished to learn that the 2 "cows" were actually babies and not full grown ), fed the goats and rabbits. The gran and children did DIY painting of their own coin banks.
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Rabbit's House
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Rabbits everywhere
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Goats
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Calves, mind you
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feeding the calves
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| feeding the calves part 2 |
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feeding the goats
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duckies parade
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feeding the rabbits
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| painting DIY |
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| with their end products |
By the end of their DIY session, we had to return and check out. So it was the start of packing and unpacking. I brought along pencils and coloured pens and papers for the children to doodle and it turned out not so ideal. They threw everything everywhere and I had to spend some time to find it and packed all. By the time we checked out, the driver was waiting for us for the next stop.
Flying Cow Ranch to Fengjia
Along the way, we made a brief pitstop to know about their paddy fields and to a souvenir shop 三义丫箱宝. Taiwan Chinese is in "Fan Ti" while we learn simplified chinese. So there were a few occasions I couldn't make out what were the words.
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| rice grain |
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paddy field
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| souvenir shop |
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| souvenir shop |
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| everything woody ducky |
We bought 2 sets of wooden bookmarks made in shape of different duck strains and some knick knacks for the children. Thereafter, we headed for our lunch - 客家板面
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| 鲁豆甘 |
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| boiled brinjals |
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| inner parts |
I was expecting that the driver would bring us to some fanciful restaurants but turned out, he had in mind to bring us to try their local delights. Places that locals would go and definitely very friendly on the pocket. Okay, there was some mis-alignment of preference here but then, we were ready to embrace this new adventure. We had to share a small table with some locals who were very friendly. My mum picked a few side dishes which we all tried. Not exactly what we would eat but we still tried a bite.
After lunch, we made a quick pitstop for this 3D mural painting on the steps leading to this primary school. The boys didn't want to get down because of the hot weather so only my mum and myself went down for a few shots.
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| mural painting (3D effect |
It was straight to Fengjia minsu which held another surprise for us.
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| 米爾居 |
I was quite shocked at the minsu. Okay, the driver didn't make any mistake. This minsu was my 3rd choice and yes, it was big enough for 5 pax but rather cramp. By the time we reached this minsu, Matthew was too tired and had napped in the car. This minsu was very cheap, SGD $160 for one night. There was a DIY washing machine so we washed our clothes because I didn't expect the weather was so hot and I was afraid the children didn't have enough short sleeves clothing.
At 5pm, the driver texted us if we were ready to go watch sunset. We were late ( as expected) but driver made a special effort to rush through the traffic. But we were not really in time for sun set. The sun had already set by the time we reached 高美湿地.
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| group photo in front of the wind turbine |
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| twilight |
This was a place where they had wind turbines for electricity and it was very very windy, much to our delight. We left at around 7pm and it was already very dark. Driver dropped us off at Fenjia night market. We went to the 1st reasonable looking restaurant because Matthew needed to use the toilet. Problem travelling with kids is that they need to use toilet at the wrong timing. Luckily for us, they had table and we had a nice teppanyaki dinner, except the table was not very big and Matt couldn't sit still so I was rather annoyed with him.
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| entrance of the fengjia night market |
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| that's how it was... crowd crowded |
We bought bubble tea drinks, made name stamps and stickers for ourselves and that's about it. We didn't buy any of their night market snacks because we just had our dinner. The minsu wasn't too far from the night market so we walked back. I should be thankful the boys and the man were good with direction, because I totally lost my direction around.
Fengjia night market ended our 2nd day in Taiwan.
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