After our short tour at Jiufen Market, our hired cab driver for the day drove us to Pingxi. Both Sister and I managed to catch some sleep in the car on our journey to Pingxi. By the time we woke up, we were at the foot of Pingxi.
Pingxi is one of the famous tourist attractions in Taipei. So, it is no surprise that you will witness a huge crowd in the area. Pingxi is famous for sky lantern experience. I for one purposely included Pingxi in our itinerary just for the sky lantern experience. We did not stay at Pingxi long, only for about an hour before we leave for our next destination.
But anyways, let me show you some of the pictures that we had taken while at Pingxi. There are lots of vendors selling the same thing in the area, which is the sky lantern. The pricing are about the same and they provide photography service too!
It did not take us long to decide which vendor that we wanna use. We decided on 胡家天灯 as they are more enthusiastic as compared to the others. The owners even allowed us to use their washrooms. I am not sure whether you guys know this, but it is hard to find public washrooms around Taipei.
When we walked further into the shop of 胡家天灯 for the washroom, we came across this puppy who danced to any music with beats! He was dancing Gangnam Style when we saw him. LOL! Sister did captured a video of it dancing but I did not have the video with me at the moment. Shall post it in the near future.
You could choose to have single color on your sky lantern or multiple colors. We chose multiple colors of four for our sky lantern. Different colors represent different meanings/wishes.
If you have a hard time deciding what you want to wish for, 胡家天灯 provides a guideline for tourists as references. For example. one could wish for health on red colored paper, yellow for wealth, blue for career, purple for education and so on.
That was me working on my masterpiece for the health section. Most importantly, do make sure that the ink doesn’t get on your garment or bag as it will leave a permanent stain.
Sister working on hers. I had seen pictures on other blogs that some vendors use permanent marker pens rather than the traditional calligraphy brushes. To be honest, it will be way easier to write with a permanent marker pen than a brush. And the chance of getting stained is lower.
We were trying to take a selfie with the approaching train and one of the staffs was kind enough to take a couple of shots for us.
Our grand masterpiece on the wealth section, which caught the attention of a few passerby. LOL! What’s the best way to express your wish for wealth? Dollar sign seems to be the best way for me. Hahaha … xD
Pingxi is common for tourists from Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Korea and China. So, it is not surprising that the staffs were able to converse in basic Korean or Japanese. I myself heard one of them spoke in Korean but those were the basic instructions for the tourists on how to handle the sky lantern or when to turn them around for pictures. xD
That basically sums up our sky lantern experience in Pingxi. If you are curious of how much we paid for the sky lantern, I think it was NT$150 as we bought one with four colors rather than single or double colors.
Coming up next – Keelung Miaokou Night Market.
DAILY SNIPPETS OF LIFE 