Hello, welcome back on my channel!
I’m Charlotte and in today’s video I want to show you a place that I really really love in Taiwan.
The place name is Jiufen and the first time I heard about Jiufen was in an article, I read about it
Because it has a very high resemblance to the movie “Spirited Away”.
That movie is some kind of Japanese animation. I saw it as a child, and it had a very big impact on me.
I kept thinking about it, I even had nightmares about that movie.
When I heard there was a place that resembles to the movie setting, I just had to see it for myself.
If you’re starting from Taipei, it’s really easy to go to Jiufen.
I went two times. One time I took a subway up until very far, and then the last very small part upon the hill I took a bus.
The second time, I discovered there’s a direct bus that starts somewhere in central Taipei
and goes all the way to Jiufen Old Street, that’s where you want to be.
That’s even easier: you don’t need to transfer, it’s very cheap and the view from the bus was just amazing.
The nature, I could also see beautiful Buddhist temples, so I loved the bus trip to Jiufen.
Before you go to Jiufen, you should think about the time you want to go wisely
The first time I went to Jiufen it was really nice, not too many people. I could take a lot of nice pictures in the streets, no problem.
The second time, there were so so many people I couldn’t even walk normally in the street cause I had to go on the same pace as the crowd.
That’s probably because we chose a holiday or something.
Jiufen is very famous and popular and touristic so think about when you want to go to avoid big crowds.
Jiufen has so many cute little restaurants and stores. There are very much local delicacies you can try
like peanut ice-cream, there were some black eggs, there were so many things to try
and also very cute little stores from shoes to bags to souvenirs of Jiufen or Ghibli souvenirs
I’m not that much of a shopper but if you’re a shopping fan, you won’t be bored in Jiufen.
Jiufen is quite high in the mountain and has an amazing view over the sea. What we did (me and my friends) was
We went to a very old traditional tea house that had a beautiful view over the sea
And we ordered some traditional Jiufen tea. While we had our little tea ceremony, we just enjoyed and watched the sunset.
It was amazing
If you really want to live the atmosphere of “Spirited Away”, I recommend you to stay a little bit later than most people.
Maybe around 8.30 or 9pm. That’s when most big tourist busses have left
and it’s such a big contrast because you had all these people making noise, buying things, consuming, pushing
just such a busy atmosphere and then from one moment to the other this town is empty
It’s just so spooky and it’s really a ghost town at night
If you have the time or the opportunity, stay a little bit later and you won’t be disappointed.
Thank you so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed this video
If there’s any other place you recommend me to see in Taiwan, I’m always curious to hear in the comments
Don’t forget to like and subscribe and I hope to see you very soon in the next video. Bye!