Day 14: Gold Ecology Park - Jiufen...

~ 27th March 2014 ~

We hailed a cab and have us dropped at the Gold Ecology Park. There were not many people there. It was quite a big place and we could not really decide where to go. You will need to pay for the underground gold mine experience if I'm not mistaken. We did not pay for that because we have been to the underground gold mine in Bendigo, Australia. 

We decided to go to the Four Joined Japanese-Style Residence. It was an old resident building left by the Japanese during the Japanese Occupation. It was a simple house but it must be a living luxury at that point of time compared to what the locals had.

Then we dragged our feet around and arrived at the Jinguanshi Crown Prince Chalet. No one was allowed to enter the chalet so we could only walk around. Nothing much to see.

We dragged our feet to the Gold Refining Building and Environment Building and we get ourselves lost. Whether the travel buddy could read in Chinese or not was totally useless. We dragged our feet on. We were really tired. I could still imagine how tired we were. 

We came across a group of mainland Chinese tourists at the public toilet. They were brushing their teeth and washing their feet. Oh, my! Whatever happened to their hotel rooms? No such facilities? Didn't take any of their photos just in case they went into rage and threw my camera down the hillslope. 

If you are planning to go to this place, just cross it out. It's one boring place and it's really difficult to get a cab to go back to wherever you want to go. We wanted to go back to our place at the Old Street. There were a few waiting cabs there but they have been booked by other tourists. The taxi drivers asked us to wait but warned us that not many empty cabs would make a trip here. We sat there and wait then I could wait no more.

I walked to one of the drivers and started begging him to take us out of this place. He could not as he did not know when his customers would walk out of the place. I managed to persuade him to leave his waiting post for a few minutes and he finally agreed. He called his other friends to check on their availability. Finally he found one for us and took us to the waiting spot. He even bought us drinks to quench our thirst. Thank you, uncle! He likes munching on betel leaves until his mouth was bloody red but he's one kind soul. Thank you again, uncle! This is the second taxi driver that I would give the Excellent Taxi Driver Award to. The first one would remain as the Taichung taxi driver.