After these 2 nights in Kenting, I made my way up the east coast to a town called Hualien, meeting along the way some interesting tea enthousiast graphic designers from Czech Republic. My plan was to bus up into the mountains in Taroko National Park, apparently one of the most scenic places in Taiwan, but upon arriving there found out that the road would be closed for a marathon the next day, and the last bus already left. It was taxi or nothing, so i forked over the cash (some taiwanese guys helped me find the best deal) and after a long and pricy taxy ride, checked into a hostel up in the moutains, where I shared a room with a French guy doing almost the exact same trip as me but in reverse, so we exchanged advice on where to go. I realized that to make it to Taipei when I wanted to, I would have to get up super early the next day and hike back down to the park entrance with the marathoners.
I slept through my alarm. Good start. Did a 2 hour waterfall trail first that takes you through tunnels actually carved into the moutains under some of the waterfalls, and releases you to spectacular Jurassic Park style views. Absolutely beautiful. I then collected my full pack and started the walk down, with a few thumbs up and words of encouragement from the runners and volunteers. Made me wonder what I was getting myself into. Turned out to not be a 3 hour hike like I was told, but rather a 5 - 6 hour hike, at a fast pace, in the rain no less, and with cheap chinese shoes that fell apart half way down, but not before doing a number on my footsies. But the entire thing is along a very steep V shaped gorge, and the whole thing is like one long scenic lookout. Also, lots of suspension bridges, and I really dig suspension bridges. Finally made it down, after a few spider run ins (signs warn you about venoumous spiders, poisonous snakes, and killer bees), and made it to Tapei eventually by train.
Now, I had been dying to try out this Couchsurfing thing, which for those of you that don't know it, is an online network of people that offer up their couch or a spare room for travellers to crash on for free. They either love showing off their city, love having company, or just love supporting travellers because they were or will be travelling themselves. I had finally gotten someone to accept me, a bearded scraggly looking bloke by this point, who had no prior references to ensure them he wasn't a psycho. Daphnee was willing to take me in. So we arranged a meeting spot at Taipei 101, currently the tallest building in the world. She picked me up and wisked me away on her scooter to another building. Turns out, I happened to arrive on a night of a Taipei couchsurfers party, and it happened to be on the rooftop of a luxury apartment building where a wealthy couchsurfer was renting an apartment for a month, and the roof happened to have an incredible view of Taipei 101 with it's own little cloud hovering over it amidst an otherless cloudless sky. Wish my camera battery hadn't died, cause it would have probably made for one of the greatest pictures ever taken, EVER. So I met pretty much all the couchsurfing hosts, and decided right then to stay in Taipei for 5 days. When we got back to her place, she had a japanese style guestroom for me, gave me a key to her place, had printed directions for me to get back there, and even left me breakfast every morning before she left for work! I got to try all sorts of traditional Taiwanese foods with her, like vinegar style tea. She grew up in Taiwan but had done much travelling and studying abroad, so she spoke very good english, and french as well. So the next day she took me sightseeing, and when she wasn't available to take me around, she arranged for her friends to take over! Saw temples and shrines, one at the top of a moutain, participated in the worshipping at a doist temple, went to many great restaurants, raced swan boats on the river with the whole group of couchsurfers again, went to "snake alley" where I tried snake soup and a shot of alcohol/snake blood with my taiwanese guide, with whom I struck a deal that I'd only try it if she tried it with me.
The coolest thing for me was when the girls brought me to a hidden hot spring a little outside of Taipei. down a small trail, by a river, surrounded by huge mountains, with a cool moonglow to it because this was 11 pm. Sat in the different temperatures of the most legit hot springs I've ever been to, being the only foreigner for miles and miles, it felt like. I realized that people actually use some of the pools as a communal bath when they don't have their own shower/bath facilities at home.
One of Daphnees friends, Samantha, offered to let me stay at her place that night, which was my last night in Taipei, so that she could drive me to the airport the next morning for my 6am flight! Unbelievable hospitality. Her husband is an IronMan competitor and told me of a route where you can bike in a circle around the whole country of Taiwan in only 11 days. Might look into that later on.
The main thing I retained from my time in Taipei though was that after couchsurfing, you end up being real friends with these people and often with their friends as well, and I realized how awesome of a concept couchsurfing was. I was addicted. Anyhoo, the next morning I was off to Japan...
Mike
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
Taiwan Part 1
Hi everyone,
Where to begin. I think I'll break this into several segments so its not too long. I can see this getting pretty long if I don't keep myself in check. I'll start with Taiwan, and this will go with the pictures that are now up on the facebook part of the blog.
So in the last blog, Kyle and I were just arriving in Tainan, Taiwan. We were newbies with no contacts so the first thing we did was check into a hotel. The second thing was head to the bar. The Armory is a well known place amongst the foreigners (even featured in the Lonely Planet on Taiwan I believe) and we had heard that from meeting people there, including the owner, everything else would fall into place. It did. Took no time to meet a ton of people and get involved in the sports and game nights that are pretty plentiful around here. After 4 or 5 days, Kyle and I found a 3 bedroom apartment for about 7000 New Taiwan Dollars, which is roughly 300 Canadian dollars a month! Pretty sweet location too. So we moved in started to settle. We rented scooters and checked out the area, including a beach nearby, and just kinda hung out for a while.
We knew if we wanted to stay longer than 30 days we would have to leave the country to pick up a visa eventually. With this in mind, and since I already wanted to check out these countries, I decided one night that I would make a 'side trip' to Japan and South Korea before coming back to teach for a while. There was a really big soccer tournament coming up that Kyle wanted to stay for (I'll let him tell about that), so it would be the first time I break off to travel alone. I also decided that before I flew out of Taiwan it would be fun to do a quick weeklong tour of the perimeter of the country. I met a Taiwanese family who helped me plan out my itinerary, and the next day I left.
I caught a train up north a little and hired a van to take me up to a small town in the moutains called Alishan that is famous for it's sunsets. Met a budhist munk (or nun?) along the way who gave me a bagged lunch for having helped her load her boxes into the van, which I thought was very cool. Did some hiking there amongst the ancient temples and massive 1000 - 2000 year old trees for a few days, amazing mountain views all around, and got up at 4:30am to catch the train to the summit for the sunrise, that is supposedly the fastest in the world (only a few seconds to clear the horizon). There's also often a sea of clouds covering the valley, making it even more picturesque. Some of my favorite shots from this trip were taken up there.
I headed back and bused, trained, taxied all the way back to the southern tip of Taiwan, to a beach city called Kenting (took the wrong train and ended up on a subway type run that lasted 3 hours longer than expected). Arrived at 9:30pm with no hotel, and to my surprise, thousands of school kids flooded the streets, celebrating a holiday that I happened to arrive on. Found a cheap place and crashed for the night. Next day, rented a scooter, rode around on mountain trails (have to go back to try a hiking trail where you can mingle with wild monkeys), and settled on a beach for a while.
I met a Taiwanese woman who studied abroad (actually now lived in Spain) and she treated me to a beer on the beach, as well as invited me to use some of her umbrella shade that you normally have to pay for. Side note...before this, my bag was sitting in the sun, the sun moved, the shade cast by the umbrella touched my bag, and the woman in charge of renting out the parasols instantely came running to collect money from me. Anyway, 2 beers on the beach and a meal later, she decided I was going to be the lucky person to whom she would pay forward all the hospitality she had received throughout her travels in her younger years (not the last time this would happen to me throughout this side-trip either). So she told me to make it back to that same spot for 5pm and she'd drive me to a great hot spring.
I hoped on my scooter and cruised to the south so I could say I walked along the most southern point of Taiwan, and continued on a highway along the other coast that cuts back across to where I was before. A quick dip, and a shirtless bike ride to dry off, and I made it there for 4:59. She drove me to the hotsprings resort about 30 minutes away, complete with every type of water massage you could think of, and the view of the silhouetted mountains in the darkness wasn't so bad either. She covered the quite expensive bill, I realized she was wealthy hehe, and she dropped me back off at my bike. Don't think I even got her name throughout that whole thing. Anyway, I satisfied a craving for western food with pizza at Smokie Joe's (with a big sign on the door that says 'no smoking'), learnt a bit about Taiwan from the bored waitresses since I was the only person there, caught some live music and called it a night.
Mike
PS. Taiwan Part 2 coming soon...
Where to begin. I think I'll break this into several segments so its not too long. I can see this getting pretty long if I don't keep myself in check. I'll start with Taiwan, and this will go with the pictures that are now up on the facebook part of the blog.
So in the last blog, Kyle and I were just arriving in Tainan, Taiwan. We were newbies with no contacts so the first thing we did was check into a hotel. The second thing was head to the bar. The Armory is a well known place amongst the foreigners (even featured in the Lonely Planet on Taiwan I believe) and we had heard that from meeting people there, including the owner, everything else would fall into place. It did. Took no time to meet a ton of people and get involved in the sports and game nights that are pretty plentiful around here. After 4 or 5 days, Kyle and I found a 3 bedroom apartment for about 7000 New Taiwan Dollars, which is roughly 300 Canadian dollars a month! Pretty sweet location too. So we moved in started to settle. We rented scooters and checked out the area, including a beach nearby, and just kinda hung out for a while.
We knew if we wanted to stay longer than 30 days we would have to leave the country to pick up a visa eventually. With this in mind, and since I already wanted to check out these countries, I decided one night that I would make a 'side trip' to Japan and South Korea before coming back to teach for a while. There was a really big soccer tournament coming up that Kyle wanted to stay for (I'll let him tell about that), so it would be the first time I break off to travel alone. I also decided that before I flew out of Taiwan it would be fun to do a quick weeklong tour of the perimeter of the country. I met a Taiwanese family who helped me plan out my itinerary, and the next day I left.
I caught a train up north a little and hired a van to take me up to a small town in the moutains called Alishan that is famous for it's sunsets. Met a budhist munk (or nun?) along the way who gave me a bagged lunch for having helped her load her boxes into the van, which I thought was very cool. Did some hiking there amongst the ancient temples and massive 1000 - 2000 year old trees for a few days, amazing mountain views all around, and got up at 4:30am to catch the train to the summit for the sunrise, that is supposedly the fastest in the world (only a few seconds to clear the horizon). There's also often a sea of clouds covering the valley, making it even more picturesque. Some of my favorite shots from this trip were taken up there.
I headed back and bused, trained, taxied all the way back to the southern tip of Taiwan, to a beach city called Kenting (took the wrong train and ended up on a subway type run that lasted 3 hours longer than expected). Arrived at 9:30pm with no hotel, and to my surprise, thousands of school kids flooded the streets, celebrating a holiday that I happened to arrive on. Found a cheap place and crashed for the night. Next day, rented a scooter, rode around on mountain trails (have to go back to try a hiking trail where you can mingle with wild monkeys), and settled on a beach for a while.
I met a Taiwanese woman who studied abroad (actually now lived in Spain) and she treated me to a beer on the beach, as well as invited me to use some of her umbrella shade that you normally have to pay for. Side note...before this, my bag was sitting in the sun, the sun moved, the shade cast by the umbrella touched my bag, and the woman in charge of renting out the parasols instantely came running to collect money from me. Anyway, 2 beers on the beach and a meal later, she decided I was going to be the lucky person to whom she would pay forward all the hospitality she had received throughout her travels in her younger years (not the last time this would happen to me throughout this side-trip either). So she told me to make it back to that same spot for 5pm and she'd drive me to a great hot spring.
I hoped on my scooter and cruised to the south so I could say I walked along the most southern point of Taiwan, and continued on a highway along the other coast that cuts back across to where I was before. A quick dip, and a shirtless bike ride to dry off, and I made it there for 4:59. She drove me to the hotsprings resort about 30 minutes away, complete with every type of water massage you could think of, and the view of the silhouetted mountains in the darkness wasn't so bad either. She covered the quite expensive bill, I realized she was wealthy hehe, and she dropped me back off at my bike. Don't think I even got her name throughout that whole thing. Anyway, I satisfied a craving for western food with pizza at Smokie Joe's (with a big sign on the door that says 'no smoking'), learnt a bit about Taiwan from the bored waitresses since I was the only person there, caught some live music and called it a night.
Mike
PS. Taiwan Part 2 coming soon...
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