Taipei Day 3 - Sky Lantern and fireworks in Shifen

Day 3 was a particularly exciting day. I've been to Taipei 5 times and never have I had the chance to release a sky lantern! Early in the morning the hubs and I went to Taipei Station to take a train to Ruifang.

Ta-dah! Here we are, with 10 minutes to spare, we hurriedly bought the tickets. 

Err...you are supposed to drop the ticket down the gantry at one end and retrieve it at the other. As there was about 2-3 minutes before the train left when we were at the gantry, we did not have time to understand how it worked. In the end there was quite a confusion when we reached Ruifang and the conductor asked for our ticket stubs. >_<

From Ruifang to Shifen (need to change train)

Honestly if you are in a big group (group of 4 for example), I would recommend you guys book a taxi for the entire day instead of taking public transport. You save a lot of time and can probably visit more places, including Ye Liu, Yin Yang Sea etc

After a long and boring train ride (thank God for Running Man!), we've finally reached!

Upon reaching Shifen, you can immediately see the sky lantern shops along the railway track. The railway track is actually still functioning, so when the train is approaching everyone needs to get off the track. When the train has passed, everyone goes back onto the track to release the sky lanterns. 

The hubs and I decided to head to the Shifen waterfall first as the sky lantern area was crowded with people. The Shifen waterfall also closes at 6pm whereas the sky lantern shops close at 10pm.

wheee we are here! Need to pay to go in, about 100 or 200 NT, can't remember.

It is really quite a beautiful waterfall! The hubs and I were glad we came!

On our way back to the train station area

This is our sky lantern!

We chose the one that has 8 different colours. Each colour is supposed to symbolise a different thing e.g. health, love, wealth, happiness etc so the person would hang your sky lantern on a clothes rack and you just use a calligraphy pen to write your wishes on the sky lantern! You can write in whatever language you want anyway it's not like it's really meant for any particular person to see!

I went to the shop where the staff were all wearing purple shirts! They are very friendly and very professional. When you are done, they will light the sky lantern for you and take photos for you before asking you to release it. The whole process was very fun and enjoyable. 

As the sky grew darker, the sky lanterns glowed like little stars.

We also bought fireworks there and released it into the sky. The hubs went a little crazy and bought 5 boxes for NT$3000, about SGD$130. The staff then brought us to this dark place behind the shops and let us play with the fireworks there. We took videos but didn't take photos. Anyway a word of advice: the bigger boxes are prettier and don't buy the jellyfish ones (nothing special), no matter what they say. :P