Travel with Tales: My Taiwan Trip 2016

Cijin Island, Rainbow church, Takao Railway Museum, Hamasen Railway Cultural Park, The Pier-2 Art Center, Love river, Ruifeng night market

Woke up at 7am to start day 2 of my Taiwan adventure, as our hostel do not provide breakfast, I went out walking out the neighborhood to find any nice place to have our breakfast. There is a lot of shop selling breakfast around Taiwan, so don’t worry about not having anything to eat.

Just around the corner of our hostel there is a shop that was selling breakfast, there were a lot of local eating there, so at least I know the food there should be nice.

Around 8am, we left our hostel and went to the shop to have our breakfast. The shop has plenty of food to choose, and it’s self-service. The food was quite nice and reasonable price.

Bacon egg pancake

Soy bean milk with a few dish

bun fill with a lot of vegetable

After breakfast, we head out to Formosa Boulevard station to take the rapid transit through the orange line to O1 Sizihwan Station.

Creative rapid transit guide

Kaohsiung rapid transit map

After reaching Sizihwan station, you will find a small booth that is selling ticket for bicycle rental before exiting the station. There are plenty of other shop that you can rent bicycle when exiting the station that might offer cheaper price, but we decided to buy the ticket for bicycle rental from the booth since the shop to get the bike from is the closest to the station. Also it only cost NTD100 (RM12.50) for the whole day which is very CHEAP!!! They were having some promotion that day that we bought the ticket only for NTD 90 (RM11.25).

Bike rental ticket

After exiting the station, we walk over to the shop to get our bike. The one we rent was the single person bicycle that come with a basket. They do have other type of bicycle such as sport bike, couple bike, and electrical bike if don’t feel like paddling. Each bicycle come with a lock to lock your bike for safety.

single person bicycle with basket

Price of different bike rental

After picking out our bike, we start cycling to the Gushan Ferry Pier where we will be taking the ferry across the river to Cijin Island. Upon reaching the pier, we use our Easy Card to pay the fare then we cycle our bike up to the ferry.

Ferry Fare and schedule

The ferry ride took about 10 -15 minutes before we reach Cijin island ferry pier.

Cijin Island ferry pier

After reaching Cijin Island, we use the map gotten from our bike rental shop to decide where we want visit first. We decide to cycle around the left side of the island before heading the right side of the island where we will be having our lunch. Since it was a sunny, do remember to put on your sunscreen to prevent sunburn.

Cijin Island map guide

While we were cycling, we stop at one of the temple on the island to visit. There are quite a lot of temple to visit on Cijin Island, we pass by at least 10 temple while riding around. Since it was summer, the heat was no joke especially in the morning, luckily there were shaded area where we were riding to visit places.

After visiting the temple, we went to Cijin Coast Park where a few attraction were located. The one attraction I wanted to see was the Rainbow Church which was quite colorful and beautiful especially on a sunny day. Next to the rainbow church is the Rainbow Arc which was also quite unique. If you were visiting Cijin Island, I would highly recommend to visit the Rainbow Church.

Rainbow Church and Rainbow Arch

Locate not far from rainbow church is a statue of two shell facing the ocean. And of course we stop to take a picture before going to our next destination.

Our next destination was Cijin Windmill Park. The distance between Cijin Coast Park and Cijin Windmill Park has quite a distance. Once you see 7 pillar with windmill of top of it, you know you have reach your destination. Luckily it was a windy day, so it was quite cooling.

Cijin Windmill Park

We walk around the park and took some picture before leaving to have our lunch near the Cijin island ferry pier. There were quite a lot of seafood restaurant but we decided to have some simple lunch at a nearby shop. The food was quite good and cheap, drinking a coke after riding the whole morning in the sun was a good way to cool down.

After lunch, we decided to head back across the river to Gushan Ferry Pier. Before heading back, we stop by the Cijin island ferry pier to take our last picture on Cijin Island.

Cijin Island ferry pier

After crossing the river, we head to Takao Railway Museum which is locate next the Sizihwan station. At the museum you can see some old train and historic item that were used in past at the train station when it was still operating.

Our next destination was The Pier-2 Art Center, at first I thought of giving back our bike to the shop and take the rapid transit to O2 orange line Yanchengpu station where it was closer to The Pier-2 Art Center if you were to look at google map. But since we have rented the bike the whole, we decided to ride to The Pier-2 Art Center.

Luckily we have made that decision because while on the way there, we pass by Hamasen Railway Cultural Park which has a lot creative art. Locate at Hamasen Railway Cultural Park is the upside-down house and you need to pay entrance to fee to enter the house. There were lots of statue made of metal throughout the grass field.

Upside-down house

Lugage bag made out of metal

After taking enough picture, we continue riding to The Pier-2 Art Center. After riding for about 5 minutes we have reach one section of The Pier-2 Art Center. It was in a building and there were quite a few statue in it. Across the street was other sections of The Pier-2 Art Center.

After visiting The Pier-2 Art Center, we headed to love river. Take note that if you check out love river on google map, you be confuse which part of the river you should visit. From The Pier-2 Art Center you can ride your bike to Wufu 4th Road, Yancheng District Bridge and start riding from there along the river to Hexi Road, Yancheng District Bridge. You can check out the google map below for the direction.

Love River bike riding guide

After riding along the love river, we head back to shop we rent our bike from and return our bike. Then we took the rapid transit back to our hostel to rest and freshen up. After resting for a few hour, we head out to Ruifeng Night Market by taking the rapid transit to R14 redline Kaohsiung Arena station. We took exit 1 and keep walking straight until we reach Ruifeng Night Market.

If you have only one day in Kaohsiung, I would recommend to come to Ruifeng Night Market as there variety of food for you to try. Even on weekday, it was pack with people and we have to squish around to get by. Even though we would like to try all the food there, our stomach just could not handle it.