taiwan day 6: alishan 2: electric boogaloo
this post has everything: more taiwanese breakfast, more alishan, bus riding, big tree, i guess you'll just have to read to the end to see it all.
and a (so fun super secret just for you) bonus is down there somewhere
my original plan for this trip was to visit alisan for one night via the special train with my friend on this day, but we learned the hard way that train tickets are difficult to get. SO when i got lucky and got a single train ticket for this day, i decided to take what i could get, do a day trip on the train, and then bus in and out with my friend later in the trip. so here we are, friend in taiwan, and we are taking the bus to alishan today.
we woke up early for our bus ride and grabbed a quick breakfast at a different spot than the last time i was in chiayi. my friend wanted the dumplings and i was like sure whatever (at the moment i was just not super excited for dumpling, also big mistake), but maaaaan they were so good lol
then, we grabbed our stuff, headed to the train station, and hopped on the bus. LUCKILY i reserved bus tickets earlier in the trip at family mart (the machine was mandarin only i feel very proud of myself) because there was a LINE of people for the bus. reserved seats got to board first (us 😇), and then the rest of the people crowded on. a lot of people stood for the 2-3 hour ride!
the weather was much better than when i took the train so we could see some beautiful views! but honestly it was very difficult to grab pictures out of the bus window.
our plan for the day was to actually walk around and see all the sights in the national scenic area!
we were staying at the fancy alishan hotel (it was really expensive and it was the only reasonably nice hotel that was left to book in the area), AND honestly,,,,,,,,,,, it was not so nice. we definitely missed the cute hotel with the two hosts in chiayi, and we DEFINITELY paid for convenience (worth it?)
after dropping our bags at the hotel, we went back to the main town area to grab lunch before sightseeing.
lunch dog:
we ALSO got to see the special alishan train (that we didn't ride) roll into the station:
BUT it is really easy to get tickets to ride the trains around the scenic area! just not to and from chiayi. so we hopped on the train to zhaoping station to start our hike (walk)
first we saw zhaoping park, a bird, and a pond:
next we saw the magnolia garden (no magnolias), shouzhen temple, and the alishan suspension bridge:
this is the part where we saw the really big tree:
it was really big.
last we saw another temple, a big bell, and the "three generation tree," a tree that is growing on the remains of an older tree which is growing on the remains of an older tree etc.
at that point, we had seen almost everything and were hungry so we went back into town. luckily, everything is pretty walkable! from one side of the scenic area to the other is probably 60-90 minute walk?? so it was easy to cover in a long afternoon. here is the little town square and also mochi:
then we retired to the hotel and ate free (with the expensive hotel) buffet dinner. food was ok, but it was a ZOO in there lmao
we needed to go to bed early so we could get up for the infamous alishan sunrise (more on this in the next one, just you wait).
it was super fun being able to actually walk around and see all the stuff! when i took the train into the mountains on day 2, i didn't have any time to really look around, so it was fun to come back and actually do the tourism. anyways...
BONUS!!!
spotted at the night market in chiayi
