nadine: Taiwan- Alishan Forest + Wufenpu

Going to Alishan forest was actually one of my favourite days in Taiwan. The scenery in that area is breath taking! They had a Giant Trees Forest Walk which i fell in love with. I love nature so such things would capture my heart immediately. Alishan is said to have cherry blossoms everywhere. The timing we arrived was slightly earlier thus the cherry blossoms had only js started blooming & was not in it's full glory yet. Well, at least we managed to see some of it in it's true splendour.

ALISHAN FOREST

Directions:

Travel from Taipei to Chiayi by High Speed Rail (HSR): NT$860, 1.5 hour
OR
By normal train (TRA): NT$500, 3.5 hours.
If you took the HSR, you'll need to get to the Chiayi TRA Station, which is located in downtown Chiayi. You can either take a taxi or a shuttle bus.
From the Chiayi Bus Station (next to the train station), you can take a bus (NT$220; 2.5 hours) all the way to Alishan.

Louis & i took the taxi as there are several taxi drivers waiting at the bus stop to get customers. So they will offer you a price to bring you up to Alishan & back down. Some of them are crazy. They would charge you SGD200 for a round trip. It's way too expensive so don't take it! Louis & i paid about SGD50 each! We shared cab with another lovely couple.

If you do take the bus it is definitely way cheaper. But do note that it takes approximately 1hour+ to reach Alishan from Chiayi station. If you happen to be really early then by all means take the bus. But if you are already quite late & it's about to get dark, id suggest taking a cab. It's faster that way.

I was kinda disappointed that we did not see many cherry blossoms in Alishan. Thankfully, our driver brought us to a garden full of cherry blossoms on our way back down to the train station! So, i could check off "Taking photos with the cherry blossoms"! I even did my hair flip like i always do. Lol.

By the time we got down from Alishan it was evening. So we headed to Wu Fen Pu (五分埔). It was raining quite heavily at night. My fever actually subsided in the morning, but it came back in full force towards the end of the day. It went on like this for several days.

Anyway, Wu Fen Pu (五分埔) was filled with stores selling all types of clothes. It's mostly ladies clothing's, shoes & bag. I did not purchase anything as i felt that the pricing wasn't of much difference from SG. It felt like i was shopping in Bugis street & a mix of Far East Plaza. The clothes aren't exactly cheap either. Most of the stores had large White plastic bags on the floor where you will have to dig for clothes which i was too lazy to do so. & Most of the store owners seemed to be busy counting stocks so naturally, they'd ignore me when i walk into their shop. Lol. I was expecting to buy clothes from Wu Fen Pu but felt very disappointed by the price tag on every clothing. Even the clothes in BKK is so much cheaper.