Tai Chung and Chiufen, Taiwan

Let's turn back time and take it back to the start on Tai Chung.

We are lucky enough to have Eugene's cousin and his girlfriend, Olivia in Tai Chung. Olivia has been a superb host and I wish we could host better when she visits Singapore! 

(Anyway, Olivia showed us around Taichung in her car so we know nothing about the directions. This post is not intended to be helpful.)

Fourth Credit Union (第四信用合作社)

The facade of the building. Heck, I can't even read the name. Guess what's in store? (More)

How do you like the bank tour?

This place was once a bank but it has been restored into an ice cream parlour, although some of the accents still shows vestige of a bank from another era.

They serve great ice cream at reasonable prices. If you're feeling experimental you could do mooncakes or cheesecake for toppings, as shown above.

They are popular for pineapple tarts too, so if you fancy all dessert goody-goodies in a bowl, just take your pick!

Olivia and I

Miyahara Eye Clinic (宮原眼科)

According to Olivia, the first shop owned by the same owners is the ice cream parlor. However, business is brisk and the owners have expanded into another shop front which is known as Miyahara Eye Clinic. As the name suggested, the pastry shop has taken over a space that used to be an eye clinic. 

The following is a sight to behold. Doesn't it looks like a scene from Harry Potter?

My love for sky high ceiling knows no bounds.

Miyahara Eye Clinic carries much more pastry variety as supposed to Fourth Credit Union. In a way, they are same but diffierent. Perhaps one for chilling and ice cream, another for souvenirs?

The rest of Taichung was on the rush as we only had technically, half a day there. We proceeded to one of the cafe along the quaint private housing area, then went straight up to Feng Jia Night Market.

Having been to about 5 nights markets in the whole of Taiwan, Feng Jia beats the other night markets hands down in terms of scale and variety. We only covered 10% of the whole market due to time limitation.

It is also the place we had our first grass jelly and a carbo-overloaded noodle-in-bun which is worth every mouthful.

Oh oh. Have I forgotten about the shopping? It looks very promising and fantastic!! 

In retrospective, I am totally regretful for not allocating enough time for Feng Jia Night Market and the only thing spared from Feng Jia is probably my wallet.

I shall now present to you the night views of Chiufen:

If you want to see more of Chiufen in the day, please refer to this.

I hope you enjoyed these scraps of my Taiwan trip as much as I did for authentic Taiwanese grass jelly.

I would pull my lazy self together and do some serious Taiwanese masks reviews as well as the other bits and pieces of my trip in time to come.


Till then,
Mic