Yang Ming Mountain Blossom Festival

We went to Zhu Zi Hu (Bamboo Lake) at Yang Ming Mountain today. It's the 3rd day of the 海芋 festival. I couldn't find the English name for this kind of flowers, but the Chinese name literaly means "ocean taro". The leaves do resemble those of regular taro, so I guess they belong to the same botanic family.

Local farms charges an entrance fee of NT$100 per person. Once in the farm, you could choose to redeem the NT$100 coupon for drinks, snacks or you can pick 10 flowers from the fields. Pretty good value. I was really surprised to see so many people on a Thursday afternoon.

All flowers in the fields are white/ivory color, however, you can find purple, pink, red and other colors of flowers sold in the street. Be careful, those are actually sprayed with vegetable dye. But some tourists like them. I personally prefer the original.

The weather was perfect too. However, only one mini-bus runs between Beitou MRT station to the Bamboo Lake (S 9) every 40 minutes and is really crowded. At the bus station, taxi would try to rip you off. they would refuse to take any group less than four people because they charge by headcount, so about NT$600 per trip. The festival will run until May. It's fun!