jiufen
AUGUST 19TH, 2026
FEELING: Dry (finally)
Hellooooo! I just woke up feeling dry and refreshed. I went to Jiufen yesterday and it was pretty neat, but I should probably recount my day chronologically so it isn’t confusing.
I went to class in the morning which was fun, I had another speaking test where I talked about the different regions of my country and it was an ezclap (ie. it was easy). After class I had 2 hours before I had to get on the bus to Jiufen and I had my first super frustrating experience in Taiwan. I really wanted to get my toenails repainted and so I went to I kid you not THREE different nail salons and they all told me they didn’t have any nail polish. what?? do???? you??? have??? then??????? Basically they told me they all only do gel nails and acrylic nail extensions. Man that annoyed me pretty bad. So then I was like “ok ill just go get food” and I was craving some braised meat over rice. I walked around for like 30 minutes and all I could find was noodle shops and curry rice places, which would normally be fine but I felt like my request wasn’t that crazy. I even walked past a shop multiple times while circling and the shopkeep yelled at me for not buying anything :( I finally found a place that did it and then they gave me the WRONG ORDER,,,,, they gave me curry instead and were like “sorry is this fine :(“ and I was like “…yeah” because I was just so tired of almost getting the thing I wanted. Anyway this part wasn’t like a serious issue it was just annoying. Then I got on the bus to Jiufen and sat next to some awesome people from London and we chatted the whole time.
So we got to Jiufen and it started pouring which would normally be tolerable, but in order to get into Jiufen you have to climb up like ten million stairs and the water was moving down the stairs like a tiny waterfall. At some points during the walk (not pictured) it was up to my ankles! The town did look so pretty though. We moved on to having traditional Taiwanese tea in a teahouse that was also gorgeous, then we just walked around. I bought some presents for people back home but the highlight of being in Jiufen was just seeing the scenery, it was such a beautiful place, no wonder there were so many touristy places haha. I had a pretty good day even if I got super wet in the rain, I think the rain and fog actually made the towns lights have this cool glow to them. In the pictures it’s probably just gonna look like my camera is smudged but I promise that’s what it looked like irl.
