hazygrains

Day 2
March 15, Saturday

We left Ju Jiu House around 8am, heading back to Taipei under light rain and fog. Jiufen was still asleep, with shops closed and streets quiet, only a few locals moving about. A short 10-minute bus ride took us to Ruifang Station, where we stopped at 新北阿勝大腸麵線 for breakfast. We ordered Taiwanese vermicelli. It was so good, especially with their sauces.

We also passed through a busy market full of locals doing errands despite the drizzle. Asis and I, as usual, couldn’t resist trying food stalls. Everything was delicious. We ate our finds on the platform while waiting for the train. We weren’t even sure which train to ride, but the locals we asked were very helpful despite the language barrier.

We reached Taipei around 10:45am. It was still raining so we decided to walk to a cafe I had seen from a former colleague’s post. Good thing we had umbrellas from Ruifang. We stayed at Coffee Club for about an hour. I was also busy trying to secure SB19’s Simula at Wakas concert tickets. Another struggle! It was so hard since I had to use my local bank and needed an OTP code. My queue number was so high that it took me an hour just to get into the ticket page. I was aiming for 5 or 6 adjacent seats and almost got them, but the card bounced. After that, I just decided to get my own ticket in my desired tier. By then, it was nearly impossible to find seats together anyway. At least I got a center seat. Thank you, Wise.

Our next stop after the cafe was our place for the next two nights, Funstay Inn Ximen. We dropped off our bags, freshened up, and headed out again. The inn was close to Ximending so we roamed around for a bit. It was cold. Thankfully there was no rain, but the weather still felt sombre. I ended up buying a jacket because the sweater I brought was too thin. I really wasn’t prepared for this trip and thought I could handle the cold.

Despite the cold, Ximen was bustling. Street performers were out, and there were even a few illegal vendors constantly shifting spots and packing up whenever roaming police came by. Ximending was so alive, with shops, food stalls, and people everywhere. We got back to the inn around 7, completely wiped from the day. Thankfully, they had a laundry station, so we did a quick load before calling it a night.