Taiwan 2014: Day 3 - Small Swiss Garden (Day view)

Walking back to our minsu from The Green Green Grassland, we spend our remaining time at Cingjing by visiting Small Swiss Garden again. But this time, under the misty weather during the day. (if you want to know how it looks like during the night, read about our exploration of the area last night we were there).

As we entered the Small Swiss Garden last night, we were given free entry into the garden the next day to enable visitors to see the beauty of the farm during the day. Thus, do enter the farm at night and get the complimentary day past for the next day. With this, you can see the difference of Small Swiss Garden during the day and at night.

Our visit to Small Swiss Garden was welcomed by a flock of pigeons looking for food near the entrance. Along the walkways were the lilac fence which makes the environment looks as if we were in a lavender farm kind of feel. 

Pigeons looking for food.

Here's the canvas pumpkin carriage which disappear at night.  

A garden is not complete without flowers blooming everywhere; not forgetting it's spring there.

An Effie tower about my height.

And lots of wild berries plant around.

Now, you can see the mandarin ducks clearly.

And we found some lavender plants there. Love the smell!

Now, you can see the L-O-V-E letters and take selfies with it!

This is how the are looks like in the morning. At night, they were all lighted up with neon lights.

You can't miss these pale pink flowers in spring.

We stopped by for some light lunch at this mini cottage cafe inside Small Swiss Garden. Your entrance ticket comes with some cash voucher for you to redeem at the cafe located inside the garden.

Cafe entrance with its menu in lilac colour too.

Here's our lunch. Porki burger with mushroom soup and juices. Love the pork sausage burger where there's fresh pickle and vegetables in it. The mushroom soup is not bad though. It's very creamy. Forgot how much does it cost but it's kinda affordable.

Dessert was this pudding which we bought from the plaza earlier.

Take a scope and there's strawberry puree oozing out from the middle.

Lunch was simple and delicious plus we can enjoy the view surrounded by beautiful flowers.

Taiwan 2014: Day 3 - The Green Green Grassland Cingjing (青青草原)

After the light and healthy breakfast provided by Misty Villa, we hop on to the shuttle provided by Misty Villa for a one-way free ride to The Green Green Grassland or better known as 青青草原. How about going back? We will need to walk back to the minsu from the farm. It takes about 30 minutes walk but you'll manage to enjoy beautiful surrounding along the way.

From Misty Villa, it's about a 5 minutes ride to the farm. Here's the farm map: 

The red part is the Green Green Grassland area where you see all the sheep roaming freely.

The green and white part is located downhill and you can see some horse, donkeys, etc.

Our shuttle stops at the entrance which is located in the red colour area on the map. This entrance is located in the upper hill area where we just need to walk downhill from there to explore the farm. The path to walk back to our minsu is also located downhill from this area, thus it saves energy from climbing up the stairs later.

It was very misty when we reach there that morning. Our minsu owner even borrow us umbrella afraid is might drizzle later. She's so kind :)

It's that misty behind me

The entrance ticket to The Green Green Grassland is NT160 per person on a weekday and click here to see more details about the entrance fee. Once you enter the farm, do chop the stamp provided on your hand so that you can enter the farm again if you want to. The entrance ticket includes unlimited entry to the farm for the day (till before the farm close that day, of course).

Remember to put this stamp on your hand

It was so misty that we can't see a single thing. Where's the sheep? :(

The mist was so thick that it covered the beautiful scenery :(

Fine, at least we saw the squirrel statue :)

Walked to the little cottage and saw these little lambs. When they grow up, they'll be roaming outside freely.

Marry had a little lamb, little lamb ...

In front of this cottage, there's a lamb sticking out its head for food. Yes, you can feed them. There's a coin-operated machine where you can buy them food pellet. Do remember that you must only feed them food bought from the coin-operated machine and not any other animal food or human food that you might have brought along to the farm.

Food please, anyone?

Here's the area where you can watch the 綿羊脫衣秀 (Sheep shearing show). We didn't wait for the show and just explore the surrounding admiring its scenery.

Still a bit misty.

Some clouds floating above the mountains :)

The mist started to clear a little due to the strong wind and we can see the surrounding area :) Yes!

Soon, the mist is gone (not completely gone but it's okay) and we can now see its surrounding area very clearly. Enjoy the scenery:

There's the sheep.

Sea of clouds behind me and ignore my messy hair.

And we can see all the sheep walking around us. If you have some food pellets with you, they'll follow you around :)

Touching sheep's face :)

Lonely sheep walking.

More sheep.

This sheep castle (near the entrance) is still under construction. Probably they will have exhibits, souvenir store, etc soon.

Sheep castle?

Inside that castle/cottage, it's the place where baby lambs is housed. There's a souvenir shop and washroom there too.

The scenery is magnificent :)

My moment with the sheep. Okay, I don't like the sheep licking my hand thus it's best to stand far far away. But pig feed the sheep though, your hand will be covered with sheep saliva after that.

Stop by one of the souvenir shop near the stage show area and bought some local produce. There's sheep milk candy, biscuits, ice-cream, etccc. And they taste good. I love the sheep milk candy the most. Besides sheep's milk, there's a lot of products made from cow's milk too. But I bought all sheep milk's products (cow's milk is used in most commercial products) since you can't get it outside. Sheep milk's ice-cream is creamy and nice to enjoy it under the cold weather. I choose the original flavor to try the fresh sheep milk's taste.

Sheep milk ice-cream.

Walking straight from the stage show area, you'll reach another entrance. You can enter the farm via this entrance too. I saw some tourist bus and car stops here. At this area, there's some shops selling food. Didn't stop by to eat though but they looks good.

Sausages.

Some local produce.

Looks like Tong Po meat to me.

From the food store, we walk further and we enters the downhill side of Cingjing farm. And we saw rows of cherry blossoms trees with their flowers still clinging to the tree branches. However, weather is getting misty again. Thus, we took a few snapshots and continue our journey.

Row of cherry blossom trees.

It's misty again

Some fairy pink powder along the road?

It's cherry blossoms :)

Walk further and you can see the iconic windmill in the farm where most tourist will take pictures with. But it was so misty that we can hardly see the windmill :(

Iconic windmill under a misty weather.

At least we can see a cow structure with flash on the camera.

Without further delay, we walked further and we saw more sheep, cows, emu, etc. There's a cafe nearby this area too. Save for next visit.

Looking for food under the cold weather.

Wotcha looking at?

From the farm, we walk straight and downhill following the stairs to go back to our minsu. Along the way, you'll see some beautiful scenery and some plants too. We found some red maple leaves along the way :)

Maple leaves still in red.

The journey took about 30 minutes walking downhill and from the farm, you'll reach a plaza where there's steamboat restaurant, cafes, souvenir shops, and so on. This is a different area from the Carton King area which we went last night. Bought some pudding for lunch there. If we have time, we will dine in at the steamboat restaurant, till next time then.

The Porki Society, Seapark

Love the small tiny bowl of noodles which you can finish in one bite and then taking selfie with the colorful bowls stacking on top of each other after you're done? There's a new place for you to satisfy your one bite noodle craving here in Seapark, Petaling Jaya.

The Porki Society is situated in Seapark, few doors away from the corner KFC shop. It's the same area as the Seapark Myburgerlab, Flying Wan Tan Mee and Nasi Lemak Bumbung. Thanks to my friend from Big Boys Oven, I've got the invites to the soft launch The Porki Society. From the name itself, you will not expect that they are also selling boat noodles, a thai street food which had made us queue for hours to dine in Empire Damansara few months back.

Went to The Porki Society in the late evening around 8.30pm with my colleague. Finding a parking in Seapark in the late evening was easy. There were many people dining at their soft launch and we waited at their counter after we walked in with the above vouchers on our hand. Probably they were too busy but we stand there like 5 minutes feeling awkward when no one came to the counter :( 

Luckily, someone came over after that and we got our table. And we spend the next few minutes snapping pictures of the interior decorations of the shop.

The entire shop has this old school stool and tables which we used to sit on when we were in primary school. They are repainted with some basic colours giving them a fresh new look. If you look at the floor, it has almost the same design and colours as its stools. The same goes for its tables too and the main colours are red, blue, white, yellow and green. 

From the entrance, the colourful stools are on your right.

 Some inspiration in painting your stools?

Colourful old school stools

 Old school classroom tables and stools reminds me of having the year end or festive party in the class. It probably looks like a canteen setting due to the buckets of dining utensils on top of the table but to me it looks more like a classroom. Haha. My old school canteen has more modern tables and chairs :P

Dining in the classroom?

 I've also noticed that there's some Coca-cola bottles decorations on the wall. If you've not noticed, there's a Coke bottle painting hanging above the colourful row of stools on one of the picture above. 

Have a coke today!

Soon, we were served a mini glass bottle of Sprite each. It comes with a mug filled with ice for you to pour the Sprite in. I'm amazed to see the small glass bottle of beverage as most cafes and restaurant sells them in can form. Probably they should also input the Sprite bottle into their Coke bottles decorations :P

Just like the other boat noodle cafe, some condiments and sauces are provided to satisfy your spicy craving tongue. Hands up for garlic chili !

Their menu consist of only one page list with everything you need to satisfy your boat noodle craving. The main hero in the menu is of course the noodle which comes in soup or dry with a choice of meehoon or rice noodles to choose from. Selling at RM1.90 per bowl, the portion is just enough for one mouthful bite or probably two if your mouth is small :P

Besides the noodles, you can also order some snack or side dishes to complement your noodles. From the menu, there's 6 types of PORK side dishes to choose from. From braised pork, pork ball, BBQ pork, fried pork and etc; I'm sure you can satisfy your pork craving of the day too. If meat is not your cup of tea, you can opt to add bean sprout (tauge) or water spinach to your noodle at RM1.90 per portion. As for dessert, there's only one choice available on the menu which is Takoh kuih at RM2.50/2pcs.  

Should it be call The Thai Porky Society?  :)

 Soon, a waiter brought us a bowl of braised pork for sharing and this taste just like the home cooked braised pork which we had at home. Homesick :)   This is the Moo Tun Signature Marinated Pork, RM4.90 and it taste exactly like the braised pork that we had at home. Yum. Strong herb smell with soya sauce cooked with pork and complete with coriander as topping. Love the taste but too bad that the food is not hot. I would like it to be hot or least warm though.

Moo Tun Signature Marinated Pork, RM4.90

And they have this nice-to-hold chopsticks :)

And here comes the signature boat noodle. This is the soup version with rice noodle at RM1.90/portion. There's plenty of tauge, kangkung, small chopped pieces of pork, some pork liver and also 2pcs of pork balls. And the "soup" seems to be reduction of pork bone soup and it's quite flavorful. There's some traces of nuts too and I just love the coriander which complements the noodles. If the soup is a bit hot, then it would be complete.  

Soup noodles in rice noodle, RM1.90

We were also served a bowl of pork balls with some pork bone soup. You can see the traces of pork in the soup ;) The pork balls taste normal just like the normal pork balls you've eaten. But the soup complement the pork balls was good; unlike the shops outside which will use clear soup with it. 

Luk Chin Moo Pork Ball with soup, RM3.90

Yum Yum.

 Here's the dry version of the noodle. The presence of gravy in this bowl of noodle is very minimal that is just enough to wet the noodle. It has the same ingredient as the soup version except that it's dry. I still prefer the soup or wet version of noodles because it's more flavorful and the dry one taste bland to me.

Dry version with rice noodle, RM1.90

Here's another side dishes, the BBQ pork at RM4.90/2 sticks. I love this side dishes too. The BBQ pork meat has the same taste as the bakwa (dried pork meat or yuk gon) which we usually eat during CNY. Bakwa consist of thin layers of dried pork meat but this BBQ pork is thicker than bakwa and there's freshly cooked/BBQ pork meat inside the crunchy and brown outer part. Yum. Love this a lot! A must-order food when you dine here.

Moo Ping Porki BBQ, RM4.90/2 sticks

Food was good and it's a good try to come out with such a concept. However, the noodles are not warm or hot and it will be good if they are at least hot. Probably they need to hire more staff in cooking and serving the noodles as most boat noodles I've eaten before are at least warm. Didn't managed to try all the items mentioned in the voucher as it seems they were already closing shop or run out of food after that :(  In terms of service, probably they will have more staff when it's officially open as it's not ok to have customers waiting at the counter and also waiting more than 10 minutes unentertained or having no food to serve them.

The Porki Society
10, Jalan 21/19,
Seapark Seksyen 21
46300, Petaling Jaya,
Selangor.