We headed to Alishan on day 2. That was also the reason why we were in Chaiyi and stayed a night. The train embarkation point was at the Chaiyi Train Station. Buying the Alisan Forest Railway ticket is an art. There are so many blog posts about it. The tickets are up for sales 14 days before, from 6am onwards until midnight. I was standing by at 6am 14 days ago but the website kept crashing. Fortunately I still got them. I think bcos it is off peak. No more Sakura to see and no school holidays.
We had exchanged for the railway tickets the day before, when we arrived at Chaiyi Train Station. One less stress point.
I was up at 6am and did a HiiT in the room. I hope I wasn’t too noisy. We got ready, packed up and checked out at 7.30am, intending to have bfast at one of the 早餐店. We found one, were hungry and forgotten the pictures.
The train station was about 7 mins walk away. The last of Chaiyi.
We stopped by the 7-11 and got snacks for the train ride. The train leaves the station at 9am.
The train was on time and super slow. Now I know why the train takes 5 hours to go up to Alishan. Can you see the train? Haha.
Here, here.
Nicely seated. The train was almost full. In our carriage, there were only 3 empty seats and most of the passengers were grey hair.
Even before the train left the station, we started munching. The 茶叶蛋 from 7-11 were so good.
We didn’t take the train all the way to Alishan but dropped at Fenqihu. Just last year, all the trains stopped at this station and passengers had to switch to a bus to go up Alishan bcos the railway after that town was damaged. The repair was only completed in July 2025 and so many people were raving about the complete train ride. I cannot. I chose to drop at Fenqihu, which is already a 2 over hours ride from Chaiyi.
There were multiple stops along the way but most of the stops, nobody board or alight. Some of the stations were nothing more than a hut. I only saw one couple board at one of the later stations, they looked like they had hiked somewhere.
The ride was scenic.
The train was also rocking very much and we all somehow got rocked to sleep at some point.
We finally reached Fenqihu. At least the train seats were quite comfortable.
What is there to do at Fenqihu? There is the 老街 but 1st of all, we had to figure out where to take the bus to Alishan. There are 3 buses and the latest will depart at 2pm. It is a 1st come 1st serve system.
There are thankfully lockers at the station. After much help from the station staff, we managed to keep our big backpacks in the lockers. Otherwise, we probably lose our backs.
To the 老街! The weather was cool and nice, at about 20ish degrees. There was fog at times.
The 1st thing was to fill the tummies. Fenqihu is famous for their Bento. Of course we had to try but it was meh. The 火鸡饭 at Chaiyi was better.
At least we were better than some of the doggos. Their owner put a tag on them, telling people not to feed them.
We bought things, but only things that we can store in our tummies.
Daddy Lim likes this century egg so much that he was tempted to buy an entire tray. No!
The pineapples were so sweet!
The donut was crispy, warm and sweet.
Then, it was a lot of roaming. There were several trails at Fenqihu but Daddy Lim was trying his best to discourage me from attempting. Haha. We tried at least one, even if it was only barely into the trail.
Along the way, we stumbled across a church. This was the back gate and looked like some horror movie setting. Lol.
A funky house.
Some trees that looked like Zaky’s hair when he slept wrong. Haha. There are quite a few of them with bad hair day. Lol.
We decided to head back at about 1pm and grabbed a coffee.
Then, collecting our bags and making our way to the bus stop, stopping every now and then to ask for direction. We found it! I panic a bit when Google map pointed us to some ulu spot.
There were already a group waiting for the bus. I think we were at the right spot.
Mummy Lim
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