Our one day self planned tour from 1030am included Shenkeng 深坑 old street, Pingxi line 平溪线 and now to Jiufen 九份 our last stop. As there is much to show on the way from Shifen, and at the jiufen old street, the post will be posted in 2 parts.

Enroute from Shifen (our last point on the Pingxi line), we drove past a picturesque area. Photos in order – abandoned Japanese mining facility, Gold Coast (黄金海岸) to see the black King Kong (黑金刚) mountain and part of the sea where there’s a ‘gold’ section due to the minerals flowing in, black tunnels along the mountain to transport coal & minerals and the gold waterfall (黄金瀑布) golden rocks due to the mineral coatings.

    
    
    
    
    
    
    
   
The next destination was jiufen old street (九份老街). Full of yummy goodness, teahouses and LOTS of people!!! 

Below we have fishball stall, dessert puffs, ice cream crushed peanut spring rolls laid out before adding other ingredients, vegetarian meat balls, grilled mushrooms, bbq sausages, 5 spiced tea eggs, red meat balls

    
    
    
    
   
We loved these 草仔糕 (pronounced as cao ah kueh) from 阿蘭 (ah Lan). Tried the ones wrapped with savory radish, taro/ yam and salted bean paste. 

    
   
Then more food! Steamed buns in many flavors – braised mean, cabbage, preserved vegetable, plain, black sugar. We tried the cabbage bun, there was meat and quite delicious. Then there were also vacuum packed mullet roe, the infamous lai ah po mixed yam balls (available cold or hot), pails of jelly fish, soy chicken braised meat stall.

More interesting sights and teahouses in the next post…..