Pingxi Branch Rail Line – Shifen

Shifen, the home of the annual Pinxi Lantern festival, is a quaint mountain village with a special connection with the railroad and Taiwan’s coal mining industry. To get there from Taipei, you can take the local train to Ruifang (in the direstion of Keelung), and then buy tickets and transfer to the 12km-long Pingxi Branch Line. An all-day return ticket only costs NT$52!

Originally built to transfer coal from the surrounding mines, the railway line winds its way through heavy bush, following the upper Keelung river as it turns into a gorge nearing its source. When we stepped off the train and wandered down Shifen Old Street, we were quite astounded, as it was the first place we had ever seen with shops straddling a railway line, not a road.

The train moves through relatively slowly, as they stop and take off at the nearby station, and the shop keepers are known to call out when the train is coming, but they didn’t while we were there so it’s best not to rely on that!

There are a variety of shops to buy traditional Taiwanese snacks from with most of the lantern shops being halfway down the strip. We chose to set a lantern off from Grandma’s Flying Lanterns, which is down the far end, because we had heard good reviews. The brightly-colored shop has a multitude of photos on the wall of entertainers and politicians, and “Grandma” and the others who helped us set up our lantern were very friendly.

There are two options for lanterns – single color ($100) or multicolor ($150). If you want to make a smorgasbord of wishes, you can choose a multicolored lantern but we just went for green, which represents health and growth (however each shop seems to have different representations for colors). We flew our lanterns during the day, but were recommended to come back another time in the evening as it is an even more spectacular sight.

As with many other activities in Taiwan, if you decide to make a trip to Shifen, it would probably be better not to go during the weekend or a public holiday. The train can get overly crowded and the peaceful nature of the village would disappear (although you would see more lanterns in the sky).

There is much more to the Pingxi Branch Rail Line than Shifen. The entire ride takes about 45 minutes, but and you could spend the whole day exploring the region around the four main stops, which includes other attractions such as waterfalls and a mining museum. Here is a good blog on this if you want to learn more.

Leofoo Resort, Guanshi (zoo hotel)

View from our balcony

As the only zoo resort in Asia, Leofoo Resort in Guanshi, Hsinchu County provides an out-of the-ordinary experience for guests. Sitting in the comfort of our room’s balcony watching exotic animals from Africa go about their business was quite mesmerizing. It was especially surreal waking up the next morning and drawing the curtains to such a sight. The main complex forms a u-shape with the hotel’s zoo grounds in the center. There are rhinoceroses, ring-tail lemurs, miniature zebras, giraffes, pink flamingos, and more.

Guests feeding the ringtail lemurs (NT$599 pp)

Our package for four adults and two children was NT$20,680 for a night. Our room had two toilets, a bathroom with two separate showers, a king-sized bed on the lower level, and a loft with two king-sized beds, and, as mentioned, an awesome balcony. You can see a video of the room here. The package included a nice buffet dinner and breakfast and a zoo tour.

Our room (downstairs)

Upstairs in the loft

The zoo tour would usually cost NT$950 per person and consists of a forty minute (although advertised as seventy minutes) safari style tour of the extended zoo grounds. Until this, we thought the zoo grounds were just the ones at the resort, but we subsequently found out that Leofoo Zoo has been around for more than thirty years and the resort is actually an extension of this. LeoFoo Zoo’s African Safari is  reportedly the only open-sky wild animal park in Taiwan with more than 70 species and over a thousand animals. We couldn’t see the 400 baboons because they would jump all over the van, but we drove through the American Black Bear, Bengal Tiger, and African Lion (with 40 lions!) enclosures, amongst others. We took this tour before checking out and it was a nice way to end our stay. Our guide said it was a good time to see the animals as they usually sleep later in the day. There is also a train tour through the zoo if you go from the adjacent Leofoo Amusement Park.

First lion…

Second lion…

Third lion!

The resort provides free pickup at The Westin Hotel, Nanjing Road, Taipei at 9:30am arriving at 11:00am. Although this sounds good, it’s not really ideal as check-in is at 4:00pm (although we were able to get in at 2:40pm) and it seemed like an eternity to wait to get settled in. Over this time, we had lunch at the deli-style restaurant: fried rice and bacon and cream pasta, which were both good.

The deli restaurant

The Pheonix restaurant (buffet dinner and breakfast)

The Lion King kids play hut

There’s a small wii/movie room (but the wii was not operational while we were there) and a hut 5 minutes walk away with for toys, books, and activities for kids. If the weather had been better, we probably would have rented some bikes to have a further look around.

Feeding the goats on the zoo tour

If you’re planning a stay, I recommend going in the off-season, not just because prices might be lower (not sure about this) but because there is not a lot of space in the lobby and children’s areas, and I couldn’t imagine how squashed it would be when its full.

Hsinchu on foot

If you’re planning a stay in Hsinchu, you can have all your transportation fees taken care of for the price of a train ticket (which is around $390 for the fast train return from Taipei).  It’s just over an hour to Hsinchu from Taipei so going as  a day trip is an option, but if you’re wanting to stay overnight with budget accommodation, I recommend the Golden Swallow Hotel. There’s plenty to do within walking distance of the main train station.

The Hsinchu City Glass Museum  and Hsinchu zoo are both located in Hsinchu Park. On the way there, you could check out the residence of Hsin Chih-Ping, who was Hsinchu Junior High School’s principal. It was built in the early 1920’s by the Japanese and has some interesting and quirky architectural features such as the closets for storing sliding porch doors and the heating system for the bath.

The East Gate stands in the center of a roundabout just down from the train station. Hsinchu city was first established in 1733, and a wall with four towers was erected around it in 1826. In the Japanese era the wall and three towers were torn down, leaving just the East Gate, which now stands as a symbol of the city.

The area around the station is bustling with activity at nighttime with bands often playing at the outdoor auditorium and a wide variety of shops to visit. You can check out the traditional snacks of Hsinchu, such as pork meatballs or  fried rice noodles, or if you want western-style cuisine you could walk down to Square’s, a small American-style diner at 38 Shengli Rd (on the cobblestone street bordering the “moat” just down from the East Gate). If you go there, I recommend the chicken fajita for $260.

For more info about Hsinchu in English, check out http://wikitravel.org/en/Hsinchu and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsinchu