A journey to celebrate 16 years of friendship @ Cing Jing

Day 2, before we set off for Cing Jing, located at Nantou county, about 2 hours drive away from Tai Chung, our driver brought us to Rainbow Village, another place of interest in Tai Chung.

1. Rainbow Village

Rainbow village is a small yet colourful village in Tai Chung where almost everything and all parts of the wall is painted in joyful colours by a Hong Kong elderly. A sense of wonder and peacefulness is felt when I stepped into the village. The bright lively colour calls out to your inner child as you find what appears to be an endless seam of creative whimsical imaginary. I would say this is a must see if you have the spare time.

Our wefie inside rainbow village

2. Gao Mei Wetland

Gao Mei Wetland, located at the south of Dajia River is a wonderful place to go for birds viewing and for the scenic view of windmills on the wetland. We even saw lots of tiny crabs crawling out from the wet soil. I would say this place is really nice for a leisure walk either in the morning or evening for sun-set viewing.

Our comfortable toyata sienna

3. To Cing Jing

Cing Jing is well known for its native forests, towering gorges, fresh air and scenic greenery of the Cing Jing veteran farm. We'll be staying for a night at Ren ai township before moving to Hua Lien.

4. Swiss Garden

Swiss Garden is just a miniature garden with a variety blooms of colourful flowers. The park is not very well maintained and you can see that it is aging with the passing of time.

If you are already at Cing Jing, you have to visit the swiss garden since this is one of the highlights in the area. Perhaps, a short visit will do.

5. To Carton King again

Just outside the entrance of Swiss Garden is the Carton King. However, this was slightly smaller as compared to the one we visited at Tai Chung.

Complimentary tasting of the different fruity honey

6. Dinner at Lu Ma Ma House

We had our dinner at "Lu Ma Ma's House", recommended by our driver. Indeed, the recommendation was a good one. The restaurant mainly served home-cook dishes and oh man, the food were really tasty and we totally enjoyed the sweetness of "Gao Li Cai", the flavorful fried eggs and the delicious chicken soup in such a cold weather. All I could say was "shiok". It was a great dinner and we even played a silly game to guess the total bill. The one whose guess was the furthest from the total bill amount would have to give the treat. And thanks to Michael for the suggestion, we couldn't be more thankful for his treat!

7. Check in @ Star Gaze Minsu

It was 8pm and everywhere was pitch black in this mountainous region. Street light was dim as compared to that of the city. It was getting cold at only 10 degree and the fog was getting thicker. I really feared for the driver who prove to be rather skillful and managed to drive us down the steep slope to get to our Minsu, located at a very secluded and isolated area by the hillside.

Our family room was a duplex and cost us around SGD106 for a night. I thought this price was rather cheap. Overall, the room looked clean and so was the toilet. The only downside was that the room was too cold and there wasn't any heater in the room. Also, the sound-proofing was rather poor and we could hear the conversations next door.

Anyway, I had a good sleep, maybe because I was too tired. The scenery from our minsu was paranormal. We had a great view of the entire mountain range as we were almost at the highest point of Cing Jing. The minus provides simple breakfast which I felt was good enough. We had a stroll outside of our minsu where the view was even better. I would certainly recommend this place to anyone travelling to Cing Jing.