Itinerary: Family lunch, visit cousin’s house, Marukame Udon 丸龜製麵
It’s hard to keep up the one blog a day habit when you’re out at 8:45am and back at 10:30pm!
We had a family lunch with my mom’s large family yesterday at Fleur Lis in Hsin Chu. To make it to our 11:30am lunch, we left the house at 8:45am because we had a 10am train to catch. But, next time I know I don’t need to leave so early!
First, we got to the bus stop a bit early and had to wait. Then we go to the Taipei Train Station 30 minutes early and had to wait. I did not know how convenient it is to transfer to Taiwan Rail (TRA) 台鐵 from the green MRT line. We basically got out of the MRT ticket gate, walked right across to the TRA ticket gate, and then upstairs to the platform.
Took us all of 5 minutes.
Lunch was at a hotel buffet called Fleur Lis, 10 minutes walk from the train station. The set up was beautiful, and there were some Halloween themed decoration, which is nice considering we may not end up doing any Halloween activity this year. The kids of course, went for the sashimi and Astroboy particularly, all the chocolate desserts. They also had 豆花 and cotton candy from a vendor-like cart. The most memorable dish for me was the clam with ginger soup 薑煮蛤蜊湯。
The best part of the lunch is of course my relatives. Sadly the children all sat on one long table so I didn’t get to listen to my uncles and aunts talk. I love listening to them talk about the economy in China or the economy in Taiwan. There were 2 other kids around Thumper and Astroboy’s age. They eventually warmed up to each other when I pulled out the iPad and had them play tic-tac-toe and 五子棋.
After lunch, my 3rd aunt took us to my cousin’s new apartment in 內壢. It’s a city very close to Tao Yuan 桃園. I learned all about the real estate market in that area and how home purchases work. His apartment is basically brand new and everything is customized. The children loved the bench seating by the window.
Let’s see, some of the things I learned.
- 內壢 is a factory town. It’s not the chemical polluting kind, but like yogurt factory. There is an electronics packaging company there, 日月光.
- There are lots of Southeast Asians working at these factories according to my cousin. I had thought they only worked for families taking care of old people. But apparently because noone wants to do factory jobs and there is a higher turnover, they import people since they contractually have to stay at one company for 2-3 years.
- I loved my cousins’ kitchen. There are shelves for holding rice cooker and water hotpot. But the rice cooker shelve has a door with vent holes and you can slide the water hotpot out to boil it. This allows you to hide your appliances when you’re not using them.
- When you buy a new apartment, nothing comes with it, as in, no closet. But the contractor often include them as gifts, like your kitchen cabinetry, closet, and clothes hanging rod (they’re screwed into the tile wall).
- The contractor also includes a set $$ amount for interior design, since your apartment has nothing we would normally expect in the US. Of course this is just another way for the contractor to make money. However, it’s nice that you basically always get an interior designer.
We finally left the apartment at 7:30 and walked over to Carrefour mall to eat dinner at Marukame Udon. OMG. I have to find it again in Taipei. They make the udon fresh on the spot. You specify base soup which is various combos of soup base and meat. Then there are side dishes like croquette and tempura. A medium bowl is more than enough for me when you add the side dishes.
My spicy udon was super delicious because it’s not your typical spice but a soy based one. It adds another layer of flavor to the soup. The children got regular tonkotsu broth. Astroboy and I loved loved the vegetable croquette. It’s better than all the croquettes we had in Japan! (Granted, we didn’t make any croquette pilgrimage there….)
It took us over 1.5 hour to get home and poor Astroboy was tired. But my cousins and aunt were very nice and played 五子棋 (gomoku) with him on the train. My cousin is apparently an expert on all types of traditional board games. I’m hoping they learn how to play Chinese Chess and gomoku finally on this trip.
I guess I should document what Thumper did every chance she got today (on trains, at lunch, at cousin’s house) for future reference. After finishing Harry Potter Chinese edition up to #3 and watching all the movies in English, she’s now attempting Harry Potter English. It’s really over her reading level but just like Magic Treehouse, because she’d heard the audiobook, it’s just fine.
The best part about getting home at 10:30pm is that for once the kids are all sleeping in!
Figuring out the Train system
I asked a fellow passenger and also asked my cousin on how the trains and ticketing work and now have it figured out. There are 4 class of trains, 自強，莒光, 復興, 區間, those I grew up with. They’re kind of equivalent to the Japanese Rapid Express, Rapid, and Local. Then there’s a new one called 普悠瑪自強 (Puyouma), which is even faster and also makes fewer stops.
We took the 自強 to Hsin Chu, which took us an hour. Compared with HSR (High Speed Rail), which will take you 30 minutes but drop you off at 竹北, which is north of Hsin Chu proper. You would then have to take a local train to transfer to Hsin Chu, making the total time about the same. That’s the problem with HSR, they obviously had to locate them a bit further than the old train stations which are always at city center.
I don’t know about the 莒光, but 自強 is all reserved seat or standing seat. The online ticketing system was LAME and gave us 3 seats that were not together. One was in car 1 and the other two car 10! I ended up with Astroboy on my lap for an hour. But! You can now also reserve a bento box when you reserve online!
So moral of the story? Reserve early and maybe from a station agent (until I figure out why online ticketing is lame).
We took the local train to my cousin’s house and then back to Taipei. Both took a long time. But it’s the only way you can get to the little stations. The train cars look quite different from the long bench seats we took 3 years ago. My aunt says that they’ve been converted because these trains are being treated as long distance MRT.
These local trains are always full of people because the price is right. It’s $114 to Taipei but would cost you $177 if you took 自強. Kind of negligible if you convert it to dollars ($2 USD) and take into account additional time. But for local commute it makes sense.
Plus, when you use the Easy Card, which we did, it’s 10% off. SUPER convenient and the way to go because there is no reserved seats on the local train. (and why you can treat it as a long distance MRT). The 10% off applies to other classes of trains as well but you can’t use it on the Puyouma 普悠瑪 and on the 自強號 it’s only the first 70km.
With non-local trains you don’t get reserved seats when you use the Easy Card. Not ideal for long distance travel. All of these restrictions means that you use the Easy Card on any train because it’s your commute (hence you stand).
