Travel adventures: A visit to Alishan

So we went to visit the beautiful Alishan mountains with our kids.

Not having a car, we took the train. 

The mountain route was around $600 NT for adults. Kids under 120 cm do ride for free if they're on laps.

So on the train, car 12 is usually the kids' section but it's on a lottery basis when you buy the tickets online.

We stayed at the Orient luxury hotel in chiayi. We picked this place because there was a multi-floor kids play area right next to the hotel and you do get discounts for being hotel guests. 

Then the Shang Ming Show BnB high up in the mountains of Alishan. 

There's a promenade nearby that overlooks the beautiful tea farms in the mountains of the Alishan. 

All too soon our visit came to an end, but not before we visited the railway storage facility park near the station:

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Life in the Xindian New Taipei Area with Kids

We live close to Xindian Station. While we like living here, there are both pros and cons to our area.

Let's start with the downsides...

1. Limited food options

One of the biggest perks about living in Taiwan is all the great (and cheap!) food. But sorry... if you live in the Xindian area, you'll find a hard time finding good food. And the few places that are good will be expensive.

The closer you live to the Xindian/Wenshan border (that is, the further north you live), the less food troubles you'll experience. But if you live close to Xindian Station (or further south), expect to cook for yourself regularly. Delivery services like Food Panda even have limited options for our area.

2. It takes forever to go anywhere

If you live in the center of Taipei, you'll find that public transit can get you anywhere in the city within a matter of minutes. But if you live at the very end of the line (or, in our case, a 20 minute walk from the end of the line), plan on an hour or more if you want to visit all the fun attractions... such as the Children's Amusement Park, the zoo, the parent-child play centers, the toy bank, etc.

I feel like we would go out a lot more often if we lived closer to the center of the city.

So... if life in this area is so inconvenient... why do we still live here?

We like our area because there's still some significant perks to living in Xindian.

1. It's quiet and peaceful 

Here's a view of the bitan recreation area

You'll find us and our kids walking through this area often. 

2. We are close to nature with great kids friendly hiking and biking trails. 

This is the hei mei mountain trail just to the right of the bridge down below. Our kids at age 3 and 2 could go through this trail. 

There's also a bike rental place with kids bikes suitable for those 2 and up and also bikes with baby seat at the front and back for families wanting to bike up the trail. 

Further up the metro green line, there's other kids friendly mountain trails.

One stop up from the end of the line at Xindian to the the green line at Xindian district station you'll find the little lion head (shi tou) mountain trail that's kids friendly but before the age of 3 we haven't hiked this trail.

Then a few stops up, at Jingmei station you'll find the fairy prints (xian ji) mountain trail that we also have yet to hike up. 

3. Kids friendly shopping areas - Carrefour Xindian and IKEA Xindian

IKEA has awesome kids' rooms that my kids love to pretend they live in. I do the same thing with their show rooms.

Carrefour has these great carts that are cars on bottom and grocery rack on top that works well if you only have one child. But not so well if you have just one adult and two kids. Often on the weekends you'd have to go early to grab one of these carts as it gets quite crowded with families. 

Then there are the pre-schools options if you have infants to toddler.

If you copy and paste the words: 幼兒園 (youeryuan)

The ones that seem to be concentrated are near Xindian district office station on Zhongxing road. We saw at least half a dozen on that road just walking up and down on it. 

The one we wanted to go to is called cute mama kindergarten at No. 203 section 1 of zhongxing road. 

There's also a chain preschool by the name of Filex Kids that are around the area: https://www.filexkids.org/2017C1/

Kid castle also has a lot of branches all over the island:

http://www.kidcastle.com.tw/en/contact/contact.html

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Easy recipe: Instant pot eggplant and carrots curry

So I ran across this recipe and thought it would be great as eggplants are difficult for me to cook on the stove. I tend to either overcook or undercooked them when I do eggplant curry on the stove so figure out an easy way to cook them in the instant pot when I saw this recipe:

https://www.cookwithmanali.com/instant-pot-eggplant-carrot-curry/

Here's my easy version of it:

Ingredients:
1 whole onion - chopped
2 long eggplants or 1 if you have the bigger thicker ones - cubed
2 small carrots or a bag if they're the snack bags - cubed or thinly sliced
2 cans of coconut milk
2 cubes of the curry spices or you can make your own from the receipt linked above
4 cups of water (or 4 in the cans of the coconut milk)

Optional:
3 tomatoes
basil
tofu or any meat on hand

Instant pot
You can do the saute steps like in the recipe linked above or you can just put in all the ingredients and press the soup option like I do.

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