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...