I was in such a bad mood coming into chinese new year, much to Ben's dismay. Very fed up, not feeling well and wanting to go home. I cheered up however as we reached this little town, Shi-fan. After standing on a packed-full train and being pushed and shoved everywhere (it's every man for himself here...no courtesies apply), I wasn't really expecting much, but the lantern lined street with it's decorated rickety shops had a unique ambiance about it. It's character was far from a quaint French or English village. It might have been because there was a festival that day, which included a parade with lion dances and people letting off lanterns with fireworks dangling from them.
We had lunch at this little restaurant.
The mountainous back-drop.
We walked in the rain to see a waterfall. We came here with the Rowlands and Nicole's sister and brother in law, Greg and Charise. This is my friend, Nicole. Below is her daughter, Jadyn. She's such a lovely girl and never comlained all day. 
We travelled on to Ping-shi where we were expecting the big annual lantern festival. It turned out we were two weeks early but we wrote on, and let off a lantern in the rain anyway. We all wrote our wishes on it. Ping-shi was equally cute and we ate street food for tea (deep fried chicken, sausages, guava and some other treats) before getting the train back to Taipei.
