Josh in Jinmen


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April 12th 2010
Saved: June 6th 2013
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Xiamen to Jinmen


Kodak momentKodak momentKodak moment

Girl in front capturing that memorable moment of her soft toy making the voyage from Xiamen to Jinmen.
My boyfriend Josh's tale of his visit to Jinmen in Taiwan :-)

Jinmen/Kinmen/Quemoy

I'm writing this because of the difficulty I had finding information on travelling to
Jinmen from Xiamen on the Internet, in China. Either half the blogs were blocked (when viewed from within China) or information was generally ambiguous or scant. I enjoyed my time on Jinmen Island and so hope the following can make Jinmen easier and more attractive for people to visit.

I made my way to the Xiamen International Ferry Terminal (国际码头) on Dong Du Lu (东渡路). There is a highway overpass that turns onto the road that leads up to the terminal. There are toll gates on either side, that you will pass on your way up to the ferry terminal. It's quite a modern looking building, and the departure/ticket buying area signage is clear enough.
Upon entering, there are many booths with a long blue sign above them all saying (in Chinese) this is the place to buy tickets. Each booth in this row is identified as being Area 1, Area 2 and so on. This is where I first approached and I was called over by one of the sales
Terror on the high seasTerror on the high seasTerror on the high seas

My phone camera settings were slightly off for every photo of this trip.... This is one of the clearest photos unfortunately....
girls, asking if I wanted to buy a ticket to Jinmen. The booths at the very left end of the terminal have electronic writing above them. Try here first to maybe save a couple of dollars. I believe this is where you can also buy the ferry tickets, but without having to pay a commission....? I hadn't seen these booths with the electronic writing yet, so I talked to the salesgirl about when, where, how etc to get to Jinmen. After handing over my passport and exchanging Chinese Renminbi into Taiwan Dollars, the sales girl told me to have a seat a couple of metres away and that she would bring both my passport and ticket shortly. All communication was in Chinese, though she did ask for my passport in English. I would say she or someone else there speaks English, so communication should not be a problem for English speakers.
I waited about 40 minutes for my passport and ticket and at about the 30 minute mark I went to the booth to ask about these things. They just told me to wait a little...
To my fault, I had not asked for a receipt even after handing over
The BeastThe BeastThe Beast

My 150cc Beast next to a black flag and incense
the money for the ticket, although I don't know if they could have given me one. I had noticed several other people had also given the salesgirls their passports and the people sitting down were regularly approached by other salesgirls returning their passports and giving them their tickets. So I wasn't too concerned. Not long after I sat down, I saw the girl I had been dealing with leave and walk around the front of the counter down to the booth with electronic writing. She queued for over half an hour, but eventually came back with my passport and ticket.

The ticket to Shuitou(水头), Jinmen(金门) cost 160 Renminbi. I forget the exchange rate they gave me, but I think it was pretty good. In fact, I'm pretty sure they gave me 4.6 Taiwan dollars for every 1 Renminbi, which is the official exchange rate I believe...

Immigration was no problem and straight forward and I was soon aboard the New Golden Dragon. A quite modern, closed cabin and fairly fast ferry. We were asked to begin boarding at at 11.30am and departed at midday.

The cruise over, was anything but a cruise. It was an overcast day
Protecter Cat GodProtecter Cat GodProtecter Cat God

These guys are in every village. If you have evidence of sighting them all, and show this to the tourist info board, you can get a prize.
and there were many whitecaps on the water. As we moved out of the harbour into open sea, we began to crash up and down through the waves with sickening regularity. At about the 3/4 point of our trip to Jinmen, several people began to be sick into the plastic bags provided. I was feeling crook myself, but plugged one ear with my finger and focused on the horizon. I managed to ride out the nausea, but no doubt looked kinda funny with my finger in my ear.

Upon arrival, you must fill in arrival pieces of paper that will later be stapled into your passport for the duration of your stay. If you are not Chinese and either do not know how to or cannot be bothered to write Chinese, head straight to the window directly on the other side of the room from where you enter. They will give you a English version to fill in. I filled in the Chinese version arrival card in English, queued up but was then given an English arrival card/paper and politely told to go back and fill this one in, not the Chinese one...
After that, I went through customs
Roland's placeRoland's placeRoland's place

Lovely family. Thanks for letting me crash!
without a problem.

Directly outside, across from the Arrival zone is a shop selling food. I entered this and asked to buy a map of Jinmen, which they did not sell and asked about renting a motorbike. They told me I should go back across and down the road a little, and in the big square black building was an information counter.

There was an information desk with free maps. I grabbed a free map and eavesdropped on what was being said there between the Mainland Chinese tourists and people who worked at the information desk. In true Chinese style I butted in when something peaked my interest and soon took over the attention of the information attendant, dazzling all with my amazing Mandarin prowess... 😊 At least I got what I wanted to know quickly, and that was that I had to catch the number 7/7a bus to JinCheng (金城) for 12 Taiwan dollars. It took 10-15mins to get there.

Upon arrival at the JinCheng bus stop there are several nearby scooter rental shops. I rented a 150cc scooter for 400 dollars for 24 hours. I also paid for petrol which cost me 150 dollars for
Jinmen natureJinmen natureJinmen nature

Surprisingly Jinmen was covered in a lot of forest. Felt really clean and quite refreshing after the mainland.
a full tank. On hindsight I should have just filled it up myself when returning to JinCheng. Might have saved 50 dollars or so...?
The bike shop I went to is up on the main road MinShengLu(民生路) about 100 metres north of the bus stop. The owner spoke broken English and was friendly enough. He took a photocopy of my passport for insurance. He wanted me to leave my passport or drivers license (which I didn't have with me), but I wouldn't have a bar of that. All in all, the rental transaction went through smoothly. I did ask for a receipt but he said don't worry about it... I complied, perhaps foolishly, but in the end it made no difference. I returned the bike without any problems. I had used maybe 1/3 of the petrol in those 24hrs.

Points of interest for me after leaving JinCheng were Maestro Wu's knife shop/factory. No idea how I got here or if it's even the main factory, sorry... but when I went there though, there were no workers other than the salesgirls. Out the back you can see all the artillery shells, forge and other machinery used to make the knives
Good viewGood viewGood view

Crap camera
as well as posters demonstrating the whole process. I think there are some very nice knives sold here. There are many other Maestro Wu/equivalent shops about, but all knives are not what I would call cheap, though I am no expert.
I think the cheapest knife i saw made from the artillery shells was around 800 Tawainese dollars. They seem to be of a high quality however and their reputation precedes them.

ShanWai(山外) was a busy little town of several streets. On the outskirts they have a military museum that has a war simulation room. It's a round room with a door that shuts tight. The floor shakes slightly, the volume's turned up max and then distorted black and white war images are projected on the wall in front of you. It's really nothing to get too excited about, but fun and the rest of the small museum can provide some interesting information about Jinmen's war history.
The museum is called the August 23rd Artillery War Museum(八二三戰使馆/八二三战使馆). It is free to enter. I have to say though, I found it difficult to locate this place, driving around for a long time. The signs from a couple of kilometres away kinda leave you to guess the final kilometre. I asked for directions as well, but it's kinda tucked away. My best advice for finding this place, is once you are at the TaiHu Lake(太湖) follow it around until you see a brown sign pointing left towards 'Banyan Park' on the left side of the road. Turn up here and as the road bends left, you'll see some tanks and a plane over to the right. There is a car park just after the bend.

In ShanWai also, very close to the police station(first right after the police station, coming from the north) there was a yellow coloured sign restaurant/take away (203... something). The girls working there pointed me in the right direction to find the museum. They also had very cheap food, such as the Canadian Breakfast, which was a fried egg, two rashes of bacon, toast, deep fried corn patties (yum!) and some weird sweet sauce poured over everything, for about 50 or 60 dollars. I had a Japanese burger there (I hadn't had breakfast), which had a tomato (learn something from that Mainland Chinese!!!), lettuce and two patties of some delicious description (I think chicken) inside.
Maestro Wu'sMaestro Wu'sMaestro Wu's

Reckon I can get that through customs?

I couchsurfed the night at ShanHou(山后), here to be precise
http://home.pchome.com.tw/travel/rolandjoey/
Roland and his family were friendly and well travelled. They have two awesome little kids. Their traditional style house is really cool. It's a nice, quiet and beautiful neighbourhood. In the morning I awoke to many birds singing. Roland and his family would be welcome to visit me anytime.

DaDi(大地), provided a pretty good lookout to sea and access to some beaches. The beaches and rocks are still covered with both metal spikes and the beaches also have a fence of big concrete 'things' to hamper invading forces. It's quite interesting to look at.

Hiring a scooter and driving around at my own pace was quite a relaxing thing to do. In nearly ever village or bus stop, there is a map of the area as well as some historical information. I spent about 24 hours on Jinmen, but could easily have spent another day or two if I wanted to explore every nook and cranny and meet lots of locals. Basically I gave Jinmen a very superficial look, whilst still covering quite a bit of ground. There are so many little villages though! Jinmen is very relaxed and I saw very few tourists, either Chinese or Western. In the built up areas I was never harassed by shop merchants, merely only politely invited in to browse their goods or engaged in small talk.
The food as mentioned above was very cheap and tasty. The dried beef is excellent, especially the black pepper flavour! In the less developed areas there are many trees, fields and a lot of bird life. I saw Kingfishers, a big bird of prey, Heron type birds and some sea birds.
Jinmen is really clean, even in the towns, and seems to be a very ordered and civilized place. I imagine that if you were to spend more time there, you could discover some neat little spots tucked away from the main roads, that could provide good food and interesting tales from the locals. If I am to go back there, I would want to give myself a free schedule for two or three days for this purpose.

Hope this has been coherant enough and helps with your Jinmen experience. Any questions, feel free to contact me at

mrjdhmartin@gmail.com

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