Fish market ,Gold Ecological Park and Jiofen

As you might have noticed, I have not told you about the day before yesterday yet. At that day I had very little time so I just uploaded some pictures of the ghost festival. Now I found some time to work on my blog while going by car to Sun-Moon-Lake. Now I am in the hotel room for a little break. It is also raining a bit. This evening I will probably write a blog entry about today 🙂

14. August 2011 – Fish market in Keelung,Gold Ecological Park (Ruifan Dist.), Jiofen

On that day we had another wonderful lunch: Seafood from the Keelung Fish Market that I already mentioned. This time we bought living fish at the fish market and took it to one of the many restaurants nearby. These restaurants prepare the seafood you buy at the market for you. This way you can be sure that you get very fresh fish. On the pictures below you can see the clams still in the market and then in the restaurant.

After lunch we took the car to New Taipei City (Ruifan Dist.) to get to the Gold Ecological Park. On our way we stopped at Gold Waterfall. In this area gold was found in the past. Also this waterfall contains some minerals that turn the water and the ground near the waterfall a bit yellow. In the Gold Ecological Park one can see the mining history of this area. They also show some old Japanese-style buildings, one of them a house for a crown prince. Close to this house we found a nice spot in the shadow of a tree to relax a bit. Because the park is on a mountain there was a nice cooling breeze. Vivian and I went into an old tunnel which is left from the time of mining. I can imagine that it was a very hard (and dangerous) job to work in such mines in the past. There was even a period where war prisoners had to work in the most dangerous parts of the mines under very bad conditions.

Our last stop for the day was Jiofen, this is further up in the mountains and there is a famous market with lots of little stores. It is rather touristic I think, many stores sell typical souvenirs. In the small street going through the market, residents and shop owners were burning paper money in small metal bins. This is because we currently have the ghost month in the lunar calendar and this is done to show regard to the ghosts and the gods.