Beipu - old Hakka village

We headed out to Beipu (北埔) today, an old Hakka village really close to here, just to walk around and to drink some lei-cha. 

The village is filled with old-school three-sided Chinese-style houses, super narrow alley ways, and various eats and drink shops/restaurants, as well as roadside stands, all filled with traditional Hakka food and drink (lei-cha), as it is a major tourist (Taiwanese mostly) destination. 

We chose today, Monday, to avoid the crowds. The price we paid was a lot of places were closed, but since our goal wasn't shopping it suited us just fine.

In a newer restaurant, filled with wooden and other old and artistic things there was also this:

[Seriously coolest phone I have ever seen in my life]

We stopped by the temple, of course, where my dad took a ton of pictures, and I took this (notice no steel fencing around the entrance serpents! Pretty much only place I've seen this left out):

Then there was the lei-cha drinking. We ordered two cold ones, one hot one, and one slushy one, all of which are delicious, as well as a portion of mochi (Hakka style).

The tables here are also awesome - the bottoms are old pedal-run sewing machine bottoms. They had lots of different brands, Brother being the only one I've heard of before (the others were Hotaru, Seiki, Newnew and Kangaru).

And as we were walking through some of the back roads/alleys I came across this one that looks like it's still in use.

An example of an old-school house, with huge rock boulders in front (most likely found along some river by the house owner and manouvered back home...somehow), along with a more old-school scooter:

[A stripped scooter...most likely being rebuilt of course]

I really should have taken more pictures of the houses and alley ways (because they are awesome!), but was busy just enjoying the stroll. However, I couldn't help myself with this one, as it is also so super typical here:

[Not traditional at all, but perfect example of mish-mash of different styles in one building. The second story is super typical architecture/exterior of buildings that are not old-school.]

I am sure we will go there again, and I can use my then-newly bought camera phone for better quality pictures (I currently have an iPhone 4...oh, and a Canon Kiss X3, but it is so much trouble to take it with me and actually take pictures with it when out and about with the girls...hence wanting a better camera phone to shoot daily life stuff).

Still haven't decided on what kind of phone I'm going to buy though. Wanting to stay away from Samsung phones as I don't like their business practices. I know Nokia Lumia 1020 has a kick ass camera, but not quite stellar for taking pictures of fleeting moments with the kids (I have read/seen on youtube). So maybe iPhone again...but I will head over to a store and try out the different ones to find one that suits my current 'daily life' needs best.

Do any of you have any advice?


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