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We woke up early in the morning to grab a bite at a nearby restaurant in Taoyuan 桃园 before catching the train to Hsinchu 新竹.

Hsinchu is the oldest city in northern Taiwan, and long a base for traditional industries such as glass making and noodles. Hsinchu sprang into the modern era in 1980 with the establishment of the science park. The park has often been described as the Silicon Valley of Taiwan and is the center of the semiconductor industry. Though it’s the most famous landmark of the city, the park does not offer much to the average visitor. Nor, to be honest, does Hsinchu itself.

Lonely Planet.

Little did we know we were going to eat the same breakfast for almost every single day. It is as if like the Taiwanese has only one set of breakfast menu and everywhere and any store you go to, they have the same breakfast menu.

Pepper biscuit 胡椒饼. There are two types of pepper biscuits, the salty type and the sweet type. The sweet type is filled with yam paste while the salty type is filled with meat fillings and some vegetables.

Milk tea 奶茶.

Egg pancake 蛋饼. You can have it plain, with bacon, ham, salmon, eggs and etc.

Economy fried noodles.

We walked to Taoyuan’s 桃园 train station and bought the next available train to Hsinchu. With the “Youth Travel in Taiwan” tag and / or a student card, you are entitled to a 20% discount on all train tickets.

Upon arriving Hsinchu, we started walking around the town looking for the road leading to Cheng Huang Miao 城隍庙 (City God Temple).

While walking, there were just so many things to see and worth capturing down with our cameras.

City God Temple was built in 1748, it has the highest rank of all the city god temples in Taiwan. It also has a lot of very finely carved statues and wall reliefs, whose quality doesn’t take an expert to recognize. The temple is most lively during the seventh lunar month and on the 29th day of the 11th month, when the birthday of the temple god is celebrated.

Lonely Planet.

As it was a Sunday, it was packed with people who came to pray and visit. On top of that, it was really stuffy inside, caused by the smokes emitted from the incenses. We did a quick tour and snapped a few shots before heading out to the open air for some fresh air.

We had a drink at a nearby stall before going back inside the “market” for food.

Surrounding the temple are food stalls selling mostly traditional foods. It is like a huge food court with a big temple smacked right in the middle. We found a shop selling rou geng 肉羹 which was recommended by another travel guide book.

We put our bags at one corner and only then we realized how we defied the basic rule of traveling, travel light.

We ordered their meat dumplings 肉圆 and rou geng 肉羹. The dumplings skins were thick and chewy, while the fillings were yam paste with minced meat. The red coloured gravy tasted like sour plum sauce but at the same time, it also had sweet and salty tastes.

The rou geng 肉羹 is a mixture of three different types of meat, mainly lean meat, fatty meat and fish paste mixed together to form another kind of meat with whole new texture and flavour. It would be easy if you know how to read Mandarin and get a better idea from Wikipedia.

We left the place for our next destination, passing by the Hsinchu Municipal City Hall 新竹市政府.

It was then one of us spotted the banner, saying Hokkaido Milk Cake, voted as #1 on the internet.

Moo bakery.

We entered the bakery, only to find out that the varieties of breads, sandwiches, cakes and etc. being sold in this particular bakery was enough to put at least half of the bakeries in Malaysia in shame. Not only they were fresh from the oven, they were very generous with the amount of toppings. Meat floss, half hard boiled egg, cabbage, ham, bacon and etc..

It was the last box before the new stocks would come in later in the evening.

It sure looked like sponge cake from the outside, with castor sugar on top with a “pinch” of cream in the middle. The tasty part lied in its really soft and fluffy texture and smooth, creamy and sinfully delicious milk cream in the middle of the cake.

Hsinchu Image Museum 新竹影像博物馆 was our next stop but unfortunately, it was closed. We then spent some time there taking photos while resting our legs.

The image museum occupies a stylish old building that was once the first air conditioned movie theater in Hsinchu that now serves as a movie relics museum, educational center and public movie theater.

Lonely Planet.

Me, in action.

That pretty much ended our sight seeing in Hsinchu before heading to our next pit stop where we would spend a night.

Related posts:

1. Taiwan – 1.1 Taoyuan 桃园
2. Taiwan – 2.2.1 Taichung 台中
3. Taiwan – 5.1 Alishan National Scenic Area 阿里山国家风景区, Chiayi 嘉義 And Kaohsiung 高雄
4. Taiwan – 6.1 Kaohsiung 高雄
5. Taiwan – 11.1 Hualien 花莲, Jiufen 九份 And Keelung 基隆

Tags: Cheng Huang Miao, City God Temple, 火车站, 牛奶蛋糕, 肉羹, 肉圆, Hokkaido, Hsinchu, Image Museum, Milk Cake, Moo Bakery, Municipal City Hall, Taiwan, Train Station, 北海道, 台湾, 城隍庙, 新竹, 新竹牧场食品, 新竹市政府, 新竹影像博物馆