There is a gondola in Taipei, part of its transit that goes up into the mountains. Unfortunately, the Mao Kong gondola has been broken since October of 2008 so when we decided to go to Mao Kong, we had to navigate through some local buses.

Mao Kong is slightly off the beaten path, probably because it’s in the mountains. It’s known for tea growing, tea promotion and having great views of Taipei. There are something like 100 tea houses where you can sit outside and enjoy some tea. But all aspects were a disappointment. Here are the tea fields:

Nothing to write home about (but writing on the blog is cheap). The weather was too hot (low 30s) and sunny to really enjoy tea outdoors, and even if we wanted to, we couldn’t because nothing was open that day (or we were too early at 11AM)! Even the Taipei Tea Promotion Center for Tieguanyin and Baozhong where you can pay for some classes about tea was closed (although on later research, we found out it was closed on Monday). The view wasn’t that great either because we never came across a good lookout point for Taipei.

Add to this that we got lost (i.e., didn’t know where to get off the bus) and couldn’t use our transit passes on the buses, and Mao Kong wasn’t a worthwhile visit.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: asia09, complaining, taiwan, tea, travelling