Taiwan: Day 7 Jingtong Railway Station 菁桐车站 & Shifen 十分

Day 7 ~ Uncle drove us from Yilan (宜兰) to Taipei outskirt area --> Shifen (十分), Jiufen (九份), etc... This is the day, that we visited a lot of tourist spots and really hop-on hop-off to take photos.

First stop of the day is Jingtong Railway Station (菁桐车站)

Jingtong (菁桐) is locale in Pingxi Distric (平溪县), in New Taipei City (新北市). Jingtong was originally a coal mining town and now famous for tourism. The Jingtong Railway Station (菁桐车站) was built by Japanese in the 1930s. It is ranked as one of the Top 100 Historic Century-old Buildings in Taiwan, and is one of the Taiwan's four remaining wooden stations. It is of simple, antique Japanese style and has been maintained as a tourist spot. ~~ Information from Wikipedia and Taiwan Government Website.

The railway station is still functioning and we have the chance to take a ride! Not to forget that Jingtong (菁桐) is also where "You Are the Apple of My Eye" (那些年我们一起追的女孩) was filmed. For a movie fan, like us, this is a must-visit tourist spot. =D

The wooden station! Very antique.

There are plenty of souvenir shops along the Jingtong Old Street (菁桐老街) and this is one of the cute one!

Everywhere along the Jingtong Old Street can be a good photoshoot spot. 

This is a romantic place, definitely.
You can see "bliss" (幸福) everywhere, from letter box to signages.

Group photo!
Looking at so many group photos after the trip, I really appreciate uncle's offer at anytime, anywhere. Awesome tour guide! 

This is where people write their wishes and hang it here.
Just like wishing tree, this is just another way to make a wish. However, due to time constraint, as our train is coming, we did not manage to write our wishes. =(

Favourite photo of the day, but there's a photoboom!
I love mosaic-ing photoboom away nowadays. XD

Ticket counter! At historical site, do it the traditional way. =)

The ticket!

Train came 15 minutes after we bought our ticket!
A little disappointment about the train --> WHY SO MODERN?

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2nd Stop: Shifen (十分)

We bought ticket to Shifen (十分), where we gonna play the sky lantern (放天灯).

This is the train we took! 

Very tourist! *peace*

Blissful Shifen (十分幸福) -- told ya, very romantic place. =)

And this is the Shifen Sky Lantern Square (十分天灯广场)

Spot the sky lanterns! This is the railway with lantern shops by the side.
HERE, we wrote wishes on our lanterns and let it fly up to the sky too!

You can stalk our wishes! =P

Different colour means different kind of wishes.
You can pick the lantern that suits you the most, either with combination of colour, or just one colour. 

So colourful!

This is the shop we went! Recommended by uncle driver.

Part of my wishes. Mine is on the right!
I shared my sky lantern with Jiemin and we had plenty of spaces to write. (The other 4 friends shared one and they had to squeeze. Hohoho....)

Yeah! They have cameraman to help us take photo before we fly the sky lantern.
Note, the sky lantern is already burning and ready to fly when we took this photo.

Change side!

Getting ready to fly off!

Bye Bye!! Please make sure our wishes come true okay!!!

Last shot of our sky lantern! 

Group photo!

After that, we went into the shop and picked some souvenirs to bring home. Small sky lanterns for decoration are really cute and meaningful. There are plenty of wishes to choose and it took us quite some time to make decision. 

And yes, there will be train passing this railway.
Still functioning. So make sure you don't fly your sky lantern when train is approaching.. If not.............

P/S: Many photos are taken from Jiemin's Facebook. Thank you darling!