I would advise you against travelling to Taipei in May. It rained without fail every single day of our trip! The hubs wanted to have breakfast at Yong He Dou Jiang Da Wang (永和豆漿大王) so we took the metro and alighted at Da’an Station. Had to walk quite a fair bit but thank goodness we had an umbrella with us and misterchewy’s navigating skills are good if not I would have whacked him with the umbrella 😛

Eating dou jiang (豆浆) and you tiao (油条) in Taipei has never once crossed my mind but I just went along with misterchewy’s suggestion.

Obviously, we over ordered! I was already quite full when I was done with just the dou jiang and you tiao lor. Haha!

We made a trip to Long Shan Temple to give thanks for the smooth delivery of our baby. My parents visited this temple last year and prayed for the safety of both mother and child 🙂

Our highlight of the day was releasing sky lantern (天灯) at Shifen (十分)! As with Jiufen, we had to take a train to Ruifang in order to reach Shifen. We didn’t get to board the express train this time so the journey was excruciatingly long because the train stopped at every single station! By the time we reached Shifen, I low batt liao. Old already. HAHA.

The name Shifen came about because there used to be 10 families living in the town. It has this rustic old charm just like Jiufen.

If you had watched the romantic flick “You Are The Apple of My Eye” (那些年，我們一起追的女孩), you would know that Ko Ching-teng (played by Ko Chen-tung) and Shen Chia-yi (played by Michelle Chen) released a sky lantern in Shifen in one of the scenes. The hubs and I loved the movie and naturally, we were excited to be able to do the same right here in Shifen, along the railway track! 🙂

Apparently, the act of releasing sky lanterns had been made even more popular by the movie and of course, it’s not surprising that others would want to capitalize on this as a source of income.

There were so many shops selling souvenirs and sky lanterns of various colors! We randomly said ok to one of the sellers who approached us because we were too lazy to compare prices. By and large, the prices should be similar.

We paid NT$200 for a particular multi-colored sky lantern, meaning all four sides are of a different color and each color represents a different aspect of life. There are various color combinations available for you to choose from. We chose Health (red), Wealth (yellow), Education/Work (blue) and Love (orange). Simply unleash your creativity and write/draw your wishes on the paper lantern. Once you are done, the shop assistants will help to light up your lantern so that you can release it into the sky and your wishes will be carried to heaven.

We were given a calligraphy brush to write with which can get pretty messy if you are not careful. Some of what I wrote was contributed by misterchewy! HAHAHA.

It was pouring intermittently and once it slowed down to a slight drizzle, the both of us rushed out and told the guys that we wanted to release our sky lantern NOW!

It was fascinating to be able to see our lantern drift off into the sky.

I know that our prayers will be heard and our wishes will come true! 🙂

Next blog post will mark the end of our Taiwan travelogue for this year! We ate so much on the last day of our trip! Stay connected with us on Facebook www.facebook.com/missuschewy and on Instagram @missuschewy and @misterchewy 🙂