Mom had a strong hint for me before i left for Taiwan close to three weeks ago: "Taiwan has any honey? Can help to buy?" I didn't answer but i suspected it would not be difficult to find apiaries in Taiwan, especially in the mountainous areas.
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My hesitation was because i knew it would be heavy for me to haul back honey and i have always maintained a principle that no matter how cheap an item is, it should never be at the expense of breaking my back!
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Well, that principle didn't stop me from performing my filial duty to check as i stepped into the above honey shop at Cingjing Farm for a closer look.
An expected sales pitch was given where he asked whether we knew the differences between real and fake honey (i answered it correctly; the consistency for the former is cloudy) and showcase a machine that can extract honey easily from the farmed honeycombs.
All these while, i thought honey was extracted by compressing the honeycombs using a machine! A manual method is available that involves placing the honey combs in a big tin (like the one above) and spin them using a handle; before long, honey would flow out via a pipe at the bottom of the tin!
I studied marketing in my polytechnic days and such sales talk would hardly entice me to make any purchase. It was when the uncle brought out these dead bees with pollen attached to their legs that i was more intrigued.
On its own, pollen was quite unpalatable and despite its supposedly health benefits, my family balked to buy any after taking a long time to finish one small bottle of pollen!
There's one way to improve the taste; add pollen to honey and mix with water! Look like orange juice right?! But i can tell you, it was a freaking delicious drink and i could no longer resist myself at this point...
2.4 kilograms of raw honey (picture above is just an illustration) and a bottle of pollen were soon packed into a bag for me to carry back to misty villa. The price was another factor for this hefty purchase; the honey cost only NT$900 (roughly S$40) and the pollen was merely NT$700!
You know me; i could not bear missing out on good deals. Plus, the kind uncle generously gave us two bottles of the honey pollen drink so that we can quench our thirst along our walk!
*happy*
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Location
At Market Place of Cingjing Farm (in between Green Green Grasslands and Mountain View Pastoral Areas)
Map
As above (look out for the words" the honey shop".
For an overview of my 9 Days, 8 Nights Taiwan Trip [Cingjing (清境) - Sun Moon Lake (日月潭) - Taichung (臺中) - Taipei (臺 北)], click HERE.