Besides famous for watching whales and dolphins, Hualian has quite a few other sightseeing places. We also tasted alotsa foods along our journey from Hualian to Tapei. Will show them to you afterwards. We did pass by YinLan (宜兰) but not staying long due to time constraint. I felt grateful to have Jacky as our driver because he brought us to many places in a county which sometimes u'll never expected!
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Located near ChihSinTan Beach (七星海滩), ChihSinTan Katsuo Museum or called ChihSin Dry Bonito Fish Museum (七星柴鱼博物馆) is built to show people how Katsuo (Dry Bonito Fish) is made.
There are few floors in the building. Each floor has its own attractions and activities going on.
There is also a part fully filled-up with aquarium tanks keeping few kinda sea creatures. This is the one which attracted me the most. They names it 'Pen Knife Fish' or 刀片鱼 in Mandarin. They swim vertically in the water!
The board showing how Katsuo is made. The process was actually learned from Japan.
The main material to produce Katsuo is Mackerel. The process can be tedious and time consuming. The fish must be carefully selected and fish which is not fresh and contains too much fat will produce unbearable odor during the process.
Katsuo is usually used as topping for many Japanese foods. One of them is Tako. Managed to try the freshly hot produced Katsuo from here topped on Tako and I can tell u that the taste is superb!
Jakcy drove us to Justice Street (公正街) for lunch before proceed our long journey to Taipei (台北).
Foods that u must NOT miss out here are all selling in this Justice Small Buns Shop (公正包子店). It is well known in Internet, TV programs and like a celebrity of Hualian. Look at the queue and u'll know how famous it is.
The nice one is Justice Small Buns (公正包). The skin is very thin and soft and it is stuffed with chopped pork soaked in light soup. They are also selling various Taiwan small snacks included dumplings and the thick gravy soups.
We have to drive though Suhua Highway (蘇花公路) again in order to go to Taipei (台北). Before this, we passed by Chingshui Cliff (清水断崖) that connects counties of Hualian (花莲) and Yilan (宜兰). It is the highest coastal cliff in Taiwan and a very scenic area.
Chingshui Cliff gave us a very breathtaking view of Pacific Ocean (太平洋). It is about 21km in length with averaging 800m above sea level in height. I'll show u as many pictures as I can for the views.
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They are actually 2 spots for u to look at the cliffs from different angles on the highway. The 2nd one is located just about few km from the 1st spot.
The pix above shows the opposite angle of the cliff. How I wish I can build a house and stay here forever. ;)
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I was really impressed by the blue colour toning of the ocean and sky.
Snapped a pix of our lovely driver and his 'Yellow Fly Wish' under the Sun shines.
The snowflake desserts which we finally can taste after long waited for 3 hours journey. The shop named JianHuaBingDian or 建华冰店. It is visited by many tourists who on their way to Taipei and well recommend by our driver, Jacky.
The famous series actor, Ming Dao was also here before.
They are like those Ice-Kacang in Malaysia but they are with Green Kacang as well as ice-cream toppings. The special one is the passion fruit ice with raw egg which taste weird but not really bad though.
Chilled.
Not forget for group photo again. :)
Another awesome scenes near the shop before we further moved on.
Next stop is Yilan county. Due to rushing of time, we were not long there. Just dropped by the famous bakery shop called Yilan Bing (宜兰饼) to buy some local bakery products as souvenirs.
Tadaa....the must but product is bull's tongue cookie. It really looks like a bull's tongue and taste good.
They even make packed them in a smaller way to make us easier to take away.
We bought a lot as they are cheap and good as souvenirs.
