Taiwan Day 4 Part 1 | One Day at a Time

Breakfast, Taiwanese style with a side of sausage.

Our driver picked us up this morning to take us to the high speed rail station. We will be heading up Alishan via the narrow gauge train.

HSR station, it’s already hot. I’m wearing jeans because it’s colder up in the mountain and there could be more mosquitos there as well since it’s a forest.

PL and CL points. They are very impressed with the cup selection at the Taiwanese Starbucks.

Yeah..let’s give them a sugary drink right before we need them to sit on a train ride.

Cool, layers and layers of mountains. Taiwan is mostly a mountainous island, just doesn’t seem like it at times since the cities are mostly in the flatter regions.

Short 20 min ride to our stop.

Within about 5 minutes of us leaving the station, the car attendant came by and very nicely asked us to be quieter because the guy sitting in a seat in front of our row had complained….WTF. We weren’t even being loud. There are times we are super loud, or even semi loud, this was not one of those times. Don’t know what the guy’s problem was, but then he moved to the rear of the car to another seat. What a little bitch. Sorry dude, we are allowed to converse at a normal volume on a public train, asshole. Kind of flabbergasted since we were all confused that someone would complain at…nothing.

I’m angry, but kids didn’t notice or care.

In a short 20minutes or so, we are at our stop. Now we need to catch a transport to take us to the narrow gauge train station.

While we wait, I’ll help myself to another pudding.

I’m so proud that my kids also love eating the pudding.

After pudding, the sugar kicks in. It’s time to play Simon Says. Hop on one leg.

Now turn around while you hop.

Dance monkeys, dance.

Simon Says go hop around ah gong in circles. They think it’s a game, but it’s just to trick them into getting some energy out. So easy.

Ah gong has no idea what’s happening.

Our transport is here to take us to the next train station maybe about 15min away.

I think our driver mentioned that the peak ahead is the highest peak in Taiwan.

Sugar cane fields.

Ping pong and 7 Eleven. So Taiwan!

More 7 Elevens!

At the regular train station.

It’s really hot and humid out here.

Got a bit of time before we head into the station. The kids decided they wanted a photoshoot of them jumping. Sure, burn that energy while jumping around.

Lol. Goofy PL.

I could just eat everything at these Taiwanese convenience stores.

Hahaha, I love the arrow hats for this tour group. Speaking of tour groups, we had to get our train tickets up Alishan through a tour agency. The tickets are hot items and apparently are very hard to get, but made easier through travel agencies.

This is where the narrow gauge train starts.

Me explaining to the kids the narrow gauge tracks making this train more rare and special…they only halfway paid attention.

Gotta get some snacks for the train.

…a lot of snacks.

The train has pulled into the station by the time I got back from the snack run.

Run…but not really.

It’s so small and cute.

Only seats 3 across, so tiny. We all had assigned seats, let’s go!

Excited to be on a tiny train. Our transport driver warned us that the train goes slowly, but it sways quite a bit. We all took dramamine to battle potential motion sickness.