JING QIN LEISURE FARM
Purely a guava plantation, it produces all year round four kinds: white guava which is crispy sweet; the crispy-sour purple guava, also called perfume guava, and lives up to its nickname because it does smell good; a cross between the white and purple guava, also smells good while being mildly sweet and crispy; and the golden guava which is soft and sweet-sour.

Our stop here may be one of our shortest, but after my delight in tasting the honey-dipped leaf in the indigo farm, and after considering that lunch there as the meal to beat, I thought it has set the bar too high, and that it's an act that would be too tough to follow – until I tasted the guavas of Jing Qin. Thing is, back in the Philippines, the guava has never been a personal favorite; it’s generally not a fruit to snack on and is instead used more for cooking. But in Taiwan, the guavas were a revelation. My most favorite of all was the sweet, crispy white guava. The farm owner, Cheng Jun Tat, peeled the guavas himself, slicing them into wedges, and handing us sticks so we can pin any piece we want and dip it in plum powder.

While I pinned a wedge of each kind to photograph, I picked with my bare hands pieces for dipping in the plum powder (which I even mistook as muscovado sugar). The wedges all the more tasted flavorful with the mild sourness of the plum powder. Perfectly paired with that was a cup of cold guava rice tea. Calem tells us that the guava rice tea, coupled with the farm's dried guava fruit packages, have been “honored in Taiwan as best gift selection,” making the combo widely in-demand during holidays. Jing Qin also prides itself with its guava jam which comes in little decorative jars. Calem even thought us extra ways of enjoying the jam: “Five minutes off freezer, you can eat [it] like ice cream. Add water, [it] becomes juice.”

LONG YUN LEISURE FARM
We reached this farm past dusk, but Calem assured us that we came at just the right time. Travelers seek this resort for viewing sunrise, which is why they prefer arriving a little late, just in time for dinner, enjoying the family-size accommodations, and waking up early the next day for the sunrise spectacle. As for dinner, the star of that night's feast would have to be their fresh and warm servings of bamboo (labong in the Philippines), the finest in Taiwan, delicious in its clear salty sauce, cut in tender bright yellow chunks.

And just as we thought we're done with eating for the day, the owner Jaden Ting Ya Yuan led us to the bar for late-night DIY: mochi-making. It was the popular thing to do here because the farm's main produce is its famously strong Ali-san tea, harvested from April to October, and the perfect drink to have with mochi balls. Each of us guests took turns pounding the pre-cooked sticky rice until it became of a certain consistency, after which we pulled off small portions, rolling them into balls over finely ground peanuts.

In the morning, we hiked all around the farm laid out on the slopes of the mountain. Mornings indeed provide the best view of the tea farm and the forest within its grounds. Calem shares with us that while the resort has stood for 20 years, it was only four years ago when tea-planting was introduced. Still, in just so short a time, the high-quality tea became famous among Taiwan locals. As we walked through the fields, Jaden occasionally tore off tea leaves and generously handed these to us, saying, “Keep your tea leaves,” then he ran his hands over the tea leaves still rooted on the ground, as if to caress them.

FOREST 18 LEISURE FARM
This farm in central Taiwan might be easily mistaken for a farm in Australia due to the dominating presence of eucalyptus trees. Fittingly, our DIY activity here was all about the farm's essential oils produce. We made mosquito repellant lotion of four essential oils: eucalyptus, mint, lemongrass and tea tree.

Resort owner Sue Chen Chew Ping gave us a brief lecture on each oil's surprising benefits. Eucalyptus can make clothes dust-repellant when mixed with washings. Mint releases pain from the body, which explains why it's used in massages. Lemongrass kills bacteria. Tea tree also has strong anti-bacterial properties, it can be used as mouthwash. And while our alternate mixing and adding of oils to our lotion mixture reminded me of high school experiments on emulsifiers through mayonnaise-making, hearing miss Sue speak about eucalyptus and mint made me appreciate these ingredients beyond their typical chewable candy incarnations.

Oh, of course Calem would not allow us to just make lotion and leave without eating – we had lunch at Forest 18 through a seafood (optional) and vegetable hot pot of squash, greens, mushrooms, shellfish and shrimps. Aside from serving Halal food, the vegetables used in the hotpot meals are grown organically in the farm, leaving Muslim and vegan travelers no room at all for worry.

TOUCHENG LEISURE FARM
We arrived at Toucheng just in time for dinner, and this was our Halal spread: spicy coated fried chicken cutlets, chicken in soy sauce, fried and coated fish tenders, sautéed green beans and red bell peppers, sweet cocktail shrimps and squid on a bed of onions in mildly sweet vinaigrette, garlic kangkong, and omelet with spicy onions. After the evening's DIY lantern-making, we rested to face yet another round of a multi-course meal for breakfast, which I enjoyed for its sweet veggie meats and the chicken curry.

That breakfast served us well as we proceeded to hike through the farm's forest. Our guide happened to be a Filipina, Violeta Lin, who was excellent at what she does. She gave nugget after nugget of information. Here, cicadas sing on the dot, at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. She pointed to the farm's tea trees, chestnut trees and fortune trees, which she told us is the tree that's used for making the United States dollar bills. She said the farm, owned by madame Sho, has three rivers running through it, and that it has been around for 30 years. She felt sorry we could not stay longer, thereby missing the pizza-making DIY. She pointed to a human-faced spider and some “pesky” apple snails. She said, “The plants, nature, don't need us. They will grow on their own. But we need them desperately. So we got to respect them.”

At the end of our hike, she pointed to four huge metal basins right outside the resort's restaurant, each containing fig jelly, mung beans, black tapioca balls and shaved ice. She pointed next to bowls and spoons we could use to make our own snack bowls from those ingredients. Then she said, “Eat!”

A ZONG FRUIT FARM
This farm is a mere 45 minute-ride from Toucheng. It's not as big as all the other farms we visited, standing at a humble 0.5 hectares. But this is the farm of around 100 pear trees, and the one responsible for my first expletives while eating within the trip.

Calem says of the pears, “Very high quality. One month after harvest, sold out!” Then he shows us details of the pears' box packaging, the glossy cover and the white foam-lined interior. “Very elegant boxes,” he explains, “because companies buy as presents.”

Farm owner Lin Yan Zhen is from the family's second generation, and he shares that the farm bears the name of his father. It's a relief that their family's younger generation is taking up the farm, notes Calem, as he further hands out other farm-made treats for us: canned pear in a 60-gram jar, pear vinegar in a chic little bottle, and popsicles made with plum and honey. It was right after I gobbled on the plum and honey popsicles that Calem urged us to try the pears, the unforgettable taste of which sends in a blur everything that happened immediately before and soon after.

TEA AND RICE RESORT
“Note, this is not a farm. It's a barn that has a restaurant and DIY activities,” explains Calem. Instead of being owned by just one farmer, the resort is under Tong San Farmers Association, composed of about 100 affiliated and member farms, which also holds the halal certificate looked for by its Muslim guests.

Still, the restaurant and surrounding area used to be a rice farm. Under the association, the farms serve their produce in the resort, and these are rice, tea, mushrooms and seasonal fruits. The harvests are highly bountiful and fresh, and which can be expected from a group of around 100 farms, making my hotpot dining experience here the richest. And since being non-Muslim allowed me to partake of the non-Halal hotpot, I was able to enjoy pork balls, king prawns and velvety pork strips along with the wide array of vegetables laid before me: five kinds of mushrooms, cabbage, squash, yam and an assortment of greens. But yet again, the star of the meal turned out to be the simplest and most unassuming – the rice. I may have had here the best and the sweetest sticky white rice ever. I could have eaten the rice on its own.

For DIY, we made cupcakes. We were handed packets of flour, corn flour, baking soda and sugar, plus dashes of red, violet or yellow food powders. After placing them in muffin cups, we had them steamed just like dimsum, and in just a few minutes, our cupcakes were good to go, just in time for the next meal, tea time.

SHANGRI-LA LEISURE FARM
I had high expectations on this one. Lux suites. The finest of fine dining. A sophisticated staff. I was confident that the resort would live up to the name, but I was just curious as to how – it's supposed to be a farm, after all. Calem gave us the background: 17 hectares, formerly just a fruits farm, until the owner Mr. Chang turned it into a leisure farm twenty years ago, starting out an industry from which Taiwan tourism is now benefitting. Thus, the visionary Mr. Chang, who also led the formation of TLFDA, came to be recognized as the father of leisure farms in the country.

And all that I listed up there ticked off excellently from my mental checklist, as soon as I was ushered in my room by the hip, youthful staff: immaculately white beds; spacious wood, tile and glass interiors, gleaming in mood lights; the compulsory giant flat-screen TV, and the bath tub. The works, duly delivered.

But one thing to remember about the leisure farm experience is – as much as every temptation exists to go into staycation mode and not leave the room – there are fields and mountains to hike, and fun DIYs to do. I for one am not there for a vacation, really, so off I went with the rest just a few minutes after I dropped my bag in the suite, for our sunset hike towards the dragon fruit and passion fruit farms of the resort. It was a stroll around another side of the mountain, overlooking valleys with other farms. From a good distance, we could see the buildings that house our rooms, crowned with bright red roofs, making them look like towering village houses right on the slopes.

You would think we really had to do all that hiking to get ourselves all worked up for dinner at every leg of this Taiwan journey, for on our last night, the resort presented us with a killer nine-course dinner: curried king prawns; squid salad; mushrooms and peppers in rich garlic sauce; fried sea bass on glass noodles; breaded chicken cutlets; beef in soy sauce with peppers and leeks; fried sweet potatoes paired with giant breaded squid balls; pork balls soup; and a colorful plate of mouthwatering pineapple, watermelon and guava. I had to take my time in tasting and taking down notes, which made me miss the DIY dumplings session at the activity field. So there, I had a nine-course dinner but missed eating the dumplings.

In the morning, we had to accomplish one last task: a shoot with one of the staff, Amy, who agreed to my request that we photograph her on the hanging bridge that ran through a portion of the farm, wearing her uniform hat, bearing fruits harvested from the farm or served in the resort. She showed up on time, ready with her green container of produce. I wanted to help her carry it but she assured us she can manage, as she walked to a spot on the bridge that my teammates asked her to go to. At one point, I wanted to appeal that we walk all the way to the other end, where the upward angle of the bridge is more picturesque. But seeing that young girl carry all that fruit, just because I asked her to, just tugged at something in me. So with the photographers on cue, I looked straight at her, slightly raising my hands as if holding an imaginary box of my golden pears, a gesture she mirrored by holding up her full basin of pineapple, guavas and oranges, until I uttered the final request: “Smile!” She generously gave.