台北 Taipei - Day 03: 貓空 MaoKong

For day 03 of our stay in Taipei, we spent the whole day at 貓空 MaoKong... As we wanted to spend more time at 貓空 MaoKong, which was the only plan for today, we went to the MOS Burger cafe to have a quick breakfast.

Ah yes! Please bring insect repellent or lots of mosquito patches! No matter how cold the weather is...!

I had their Wagyu beef burger set.
The beef patty was juicy and chewy!
And their nuggets were flavourful!

Anyway, off we went to MaoKong!

貓空 MaoKong

The super cute panda signboard at Taipei Zoo station

We took the brown line to Taipei Zoo station and keep walking straight from Exit 2 for about 10mins, and there we saw the MaoKong Gondola from afar!

En route to the Maokong Gondola

Anyway the path you walked from Taipei Zoo station to the Maokong Gondola, there are many different animal paw prints with the name of the animals on the floor... And they are actually quite interesting! Like some paw prints just looked like flower shape. But I noticed everyone just walk very quickly to the Maokong Gondola! What a waste!

I didn't take any photo because it was so bright and sunny there till I can't even see what's on my phone screen, despite the fact that I turned on full brightness on my phone! So do slow down your pace (if you have the spare time) to take a look at the different beautiful paw prints on the ground!

So we went up to the topmost level of the gondola to take the cable car... Basically there are two types of cable cars - normal and crystal car. The only difference between the two cars is for the crystal car, you can see the bottom... Something like this...

Crystal cable car

We took the normal cable car up to Maokong, and took the crystal cable car back down... Reason being, the queue for crystal cable car is always very long! We were told that we have to wait for 45 minutes and above for the crystal cable car before we got up to Maokong... We don't want to waste any more time, so we chose to go up by the original cable car... Which has no queue at that point of time. LOL!

Us, inside one of the normal cable cars!

While we were on the cable car, we're very excited and focusing on taking photos of and enjoying the scenery. 

All photos seen below are without any filters!

There are a total of 3 turning points for the cable car ride up to Maokong... And at each of the turning point, the cable car will be quite shaky. So for those people with motion sickness (like my friend), good luck. #dontSayINeverTellYou

Saw this beautiful temple from above!

It was quite a long ride up to Maokong (about 30mins to 45mins maybe?)... And we finally reached Maokong!

As tea lovers, the first place we visited when we reached Maokong was the Tea Promotional Centre! We walked over to the centre despite it being quite a distance away from the cable car area as we wanted to enjoy the cooling weather and the beautiful scenery!

What a beautiful sight!
Too bad, I'm quite short... That's why the photo
shows more of the grass than the background...
I've tried my best okay! Haha! 

The Tea Promotional Centre mentioned about how the tea leaves were processed after they were harvested, and they focused mainly on 铁观音 Tieguanyin tea.  

Of course, there were other tea leaves on display, showing visitors the differences among each of the tea leaves in terms of the looks of the leaves, the taste, and the health benefits.

The different types of tea...
There's a long display of tea leaves
beside this big board

There's also an area where visitors can taste some of the popular Taiwan tea, so my friend and I went to take a look... And we met a Japanese lady there... The Taiwanese auntie promoting the tea can't speak English, so I helped them to bridge their communications. It was a fun and scary experience as I'm not even sure if I've translated correctly. Haha! 

Anyway as expected, we both bought some loose tea leaves! Haha!

A selfie before leaving this place!

After visiting the Tea Promotional Centre, we were hungry and thus, we headed over to 四哥的店 for lunch because I read about it having tea-related savoury food... And of course, we want the alluring view to go with our food! 😍

Our lunch for 2

Both my friend and I love the tea fried rice! It's super yummy! You can see small little tea leaves in the rice and can also taste this very fragrant tea scent in this fried rice. It's neither salty nor bitter. Everything is just nice. Highly recommend everyone to try this tea fried rice! Hahahaha!

As for the other, we had 铁观音 Tieguanyin chicken. We didn't know it's a soup (because the menu didn't state that) until it came. The chicken (except the breast meat) was tender and smooth... For the soup, it was quite a bland one... But the tea taste was quite strong, with a slight bitter taste at the end after you swallowed the soup.  

My friend loves this soup very much... For me, it tasted good  initially as I quite like the tea taste. However, I still prefer my soup to be slightly more on the salty side because it's still lunch after all! 

After our lunch, we went to walk around the other parts of Maokong for awhile more before heading back down. We wanted to catch the dancing water performance at Taipei Zoo station. I have a video of it but it's too large to be uploaded here... T_T

Basically, it's a short performance of small water fountains 'dancing' to the music. You should try to catch the performance if you're visiting Maokong! However do note that they have different time intervals for this performance. 

Dancing Water Performance Schedule
Click on image to go to the website

Before we ended the day, we went for a quick dinner at 鬍鬚張 Formosa Chang. Since Formosa Chang is famous for 魯肉飯, how can we not order that right?

Top right: Old-school Braised Pork Rice
Bottom left: Current Braised Pork Rice
Bottom right: A vegetable as our shared side-dish 

If you aren't always on your mobile devices, you should see lots of 鬍鬚張 shops around Taipei... And it's quite crowded, especially during the peak hours. 

My friend had the minced pork stew with rice (the typical 魯肉飯 you have in Singapore and elsewhere in Taiwan), while I tried the old-school braised pork rice (古早味魯肉飯)... The 古old-school braised pork rice was surprisingly good and it had alot more dishes in the bowl of rice as compared to the normal braised pork rice! Of course, it comes with slightly higher price. The normal braised pork rice costs about 30NT+ while the old-school braised pork rice costs about 90NT+. But trust me, go for the old-school version if you have the chance!

Yups! That's all for my day 03!