Read on to find out about a unique area of Taiwan known as Mao Kong! For tea drinking lovers, scenery lovers, and hiking lovers alike, I highly recommend an excursion to Mao Kong.
If you live in Taipei, this is an easy daytrip, requiring only a bus from Wanfang Community MRT station on the Muzha (Brown) line. This bus takes you right up to Mao Kong Cable Car station in about 20 minutes. Alternatively, you could just take the cable car right from Taipei Zoo station, or any of the cable car stations on that route.
I had found out about Mao Kong from some tourist map as a recommended day trip, and although it didn't say much about the area, the tea garden phrase caught my eye and I immediately decided that I wanted to see them. Even though really, I had seen tea gardens before when I had visited Ping Ling for a day, I was hoping for a better experience, since while in Ping Ling I had ended up being rather startled by the lack of tea houses (only one, in the museum, and it was closed....), not to mention the lack of accessibility from a tourist's point of view. Keep in mind Ping Ling is written up reasonably extensively in guide books, so you would expect at least something that would resemble a painless and enjoyable experience, rather than lots of meanderings, a closed tea house, very few restaurants, a bus that came only twice a day, and such like. (Although, to be fair, the tea fields were impressive and the shops were quite interesting.)
In contrast, Mao Kong, about which I could find very little information except for what one blogger on the "Taiwan is Beautiful" website had written up, turned out to be well worth going to and vastly superior to anything that I had seen in Ping Ling (well this at least is my opinion....). At any rate, based on what that blogger had written, at the very least I would find one place to have tea, as she had written about teahouses (plural), so hey, what was there to lose! This same blogger had also raved about the amazingingly refreshing local teas you could enjoy, and so even though that was probably not true at all, I wrote down the name of that tea, and the trip was planned!
Possibly, because of my typically low expectations when traveling to any place in Taiwan (this is my view only of course), I was too easily impressed, and the fact that there were signs, maps, regular buses, more than one restaurant, clearly marked trails, and even staff who spoke a bit of English was all it took for me to be pretty much blown away.....!
Well actually, it was good for quite a few other reasons as well. The trip there was straightforward, I only had to wander around a teeny bit to find the appropriate bus stop, the bus ride was only about 20 minutes, and the bus driver was very sensibly driving around corners up the mountain at a nice reasonable speed, not to mention the cliff-like drop offs here and there were actually quite well guarded by nice blindingly white (that is, easily visible!) concrete guardrails!
As well, when I got to Mao Kong, this was very easy to figure out, what with big signs and a HUGE cable car station with MAO KONG STATION written on it. That's the sort of obvious information that is a nice bonus when traveling to some new, unknown place!
Plus, once I had arrived at my destination, there were literally dozens of teahouses to choose from right in the immediate vicinity. Not to mention an exciting looking, clearly marked hiking trail right in my line of vision as well. There was also a big, clear, English sign pointing the way to the MaoKong Information Centre. It was very strange not having to spend any time at all trying to work out a map, or bus stop, or......etc!
Well, seeing as how it was lunchtime, I went straight to one of the bigger tea houses, right next to the station, and sat down on some rock-seats at a rock-table and proceeded to order the local variety of tea as had been recommended by that oh so useful internet as well as some lunch (which was of course rice and stuff to go with it....in this case, some very good vegetables and some not quite as good egg dish). The waiter serving me was very good at translating things for me and at understanding the kind of tea that I wanted to try, even though he kind of kept giggling whilst taking down my order.
The tea turned out to be really really nice and amazingly refreshing. I was very pleasantly surprised. The various tiny tea cups and miniscule teapot and lots of hot water made for a very enjoyable little tea party that could last for a long long time if one so felt inclined
