Taiwan - Spring break

With a three week holiday coming up, we had so many different places to choose where to travel. As Sarah only had one week, we decided to team up with a buddy from the Swiss School and visit Taiwan. Initially we were a little reluctant, as we hadn't really heard anything about Taiwan other than the "Made in Taiwan" stamped on virtually everything you have ever bought made out of plastic! But after looking around on the net we saw a little bit of a different side to Taiwan... So have a look! Maybe it will give you a fresh perspective of the "Big Kumara."

First day in Taipei, no wait, is that an Asian version of Times Square?

Of course, everyone who visits Taipei must ascend the third highest building in the world... (Taipei 101 is actually still the current world record holder for quite a few different statistics, one being the worlds fastest elevator, ascending at just over 1000 metres per minute...)

And of course, as with all high level tourist attractions, there was a multilingual "virtual tour guide."

You know that part of tourist attractions where they take a green screen picture of you, photo shop it so that you are "standing beside" the building (or hanging off it like King Kong!) ? Well, when you don't want to pay the $10 for the photo, just take a photo, of the photo! So it is really easy. All you do is: stand in the line and wait with your camera phone poised for about 5 minutes as the slideshow goes past the other hundred or so people in the line's previews until yours comes up, then "snap!" a high quality copy of a fake photo! Awesome!

But the view from over 400 metres above the ground is pretty amazing.

Even the West Coast got a mention!

Some homeless bums hanging out by the family mart drinking pineapple beer and entertaining a recently purchased squawking chicken...

A delicious foot massage, with complimentary cable TV

Tomb sweeping festival

We left Taipei for Taroko Gorge, in the Hualien district. The closer we got, the more intrigued we got about how similar the countryside was to the NZ countryside.

Beautiful green mountains, so different from Taipei.

They have a whole lot of Jade in the Taroko district. A lot of it has been mined, as China has a huge demand for it. It was uncanny how similar it was to Pounamu in NZ, how many ways could you use a huge chuck of greenstone like this!

This is what happens when you go through a 200m pitch black tunnel under a mountain and randomly take a flash photograph.... Ogres!

It was there for the climbing...

We had to stay in a hot springs resort. It was so good, refreshing to be in a quiet mountain resort. But it was also strange, the customs, the food, the Taiwanese tourists, and the room! In Taiwan you need to have your head covered to swim in the hot springs.

 Such a relaxed place to stay. Definitely not your typical resort. (And this pool was hot, can you see the 43 degree sensor?)

Climbing the insides of a temple

From the town of Yuli, we rented bikes and had a day cycling around the area. Beautiful.

Amazing suspension bridge at the start of the Walami trail.

Two hours up, five minutes down!

We rode through a storm of flies as we went past paddy fields on the way back.

Taking the bus up into the hills after Sarah had headed back to Taipei.

So after a week, Sarah had to leave us and head back to work. From where she left off, we decided to hunt down a hot spring called Losong, known by some people as perhaps the best natural hot spring in Taiwan. We took a once-a-day bus up into the hills in the centre of Taiwan to a small village of three hundred, called Lidao. We heard that there may have been somewhere to stay, but when we got there we found out that no one spoke English except for the town kids who could only say "whatsyaname whatsyaname!" So we decided to head to the police station to see if they had a couch. Turns out they had a police dormitory building out the back with eight empty rooms! Bingo!

The local kids teaching us how to play basketball like Jeremy Lin...

After a 5:30am alarm clock we managed to hear about a couple of engineers who had business up the mountain past the springs, so we were able to get a lift up.

From the road there was a one hour walk to the start of the track. It was relatively steep, and if it wasn't for the strands of rope the whole way down, it may have taken a lot longer!

At the top of the trail, a couple of very friendly young dogs - maybe 6 months old decided they liked our affection and joined in the hike the whole way down to the springs. If they enjoyed our company as much as we enjoyed theirs, they would have had the best day of the week! Great travel buddies:)

Very excited to get to the springs after an adventurous morning. And we were the only ones there!

Beautiful location, with the hot sulphurous water streaming out of cracks in the walls making great hot showers. Followed by a plunge into the icy cold river after, and a bit of construction building up the walls of the pools and rerouting some cold water in to take the burn off the pools. We easily spent 2 hours here.

And a pretty decent haul back up.

Early bird gets the worm! this was the second group of hot-poolers we found on the way up from the springs. A great morning overall, definitely a highlight of Taiwan for sure.

After a train ride we ended up in Kaohsiung - Taiwan's second most populated city with just under three million. Certainly didn't feel like it! Mostly a port town, we rented electric bikes (awesome fun) and buzzed around the city for a day.

While heading uphill, the small electric power booster gave enough energy to take the edge off the ride, making it an uphill cruise.

Beautiful city. Very different from Taipei, more cultured and well set up for tourists.

Boarding the ferry

Taiwanese pinball

Certainly a highlight of Kaohsiung - the mini-coffee-man. Took around 5 minutes to make a coffee, in Arabic style. But man, maybe it was the best coffee in Asia.. The actual coffee making goes on in the back, a sort of half mini/trailer with gas elements and multiple coffee brewing contraptions. Perfect way to retire I think!

After Kaohsiung we rented some scooters and headed to Kenting National Park for the beach. We stayed in an enormous commune/hostel place, made a long time ago to sleep 400 backpackers to support internal Taiwanese tourism. Finally time to do some washing! 

A beautiful traditional hostel, built in Fujinese style. So many rooms.

And with the spring scream music festival coming a day or two after, all 400 beds were sold out.

With the best back yard. A great 1 km walk around the coral shoreline. Stunning. Hence the sunburn!

In hindsight we should have taken scooters from Taipei and circumnavigated the country on them instead of trains and buses. Public transport is so good in Taiwan, but nowhere near as entertaining and independent as scooting. The roads are amazing, and the drivers are as good as we have ever seen in any country in the world.

Fun!

Yet another incredibly well set up national park. Heading up to the "windy lookout"

An amazing canyon to go through. Hardly room to lift my arms to take photos.

Excuse me... can we please have a photo with you?

After staying in the big commune place we were booted out for the 200,000 or so party goers to stay. We headed further around the coast to a great b'n'b which gave us all sorts of ideas about opening b'n'bs in our respective countries. Such a great coastline to follow around, and so so windy. Scooters being blown all around the road!

The B'n'B was right next to a fishing port. A few discarded old boats lying around.... would be an amazing place to live. Fish, surf, swim, b'n'b and enjoy seafood.

Also got kicked out of the b'n'b because it was so busy. The owners, Ken and Kenny, offered us a makeshift bed in the loft on all the spare duvets, but it was time to move on. A quick night stop in Kenting township to see what the music festival was like, only because we could get accommodation here. You rent a site, and a tent. Cool idea, except that we had a monster downpour at about 3am. Carnage, nearly everything in the tent was drenched..Good fun though!

and some stupid cafe owner decided it was a good idea to catch an eagle and tie it to a post in their cafe. Poor thing was jumping around and flapping full time the whole time we ate breakfast. Tempted to hack the ropes off!

After Kenting, a visit to the sun-moon lake. A nice place, very very touristy. Did a great boat tour and enjoyed relaxing for a day with good coffee and a few German lessons for me! Ours is the hotel on the right...

On the boat tour one stop included a hike up a mountain to a temple. On the way up we encountered some wildlife...

He is a strange guy... I guess that's one way to exploit a spa bath!

Every town in Taiwan has a basketball game, and every time we saw one we had to play. Here is the master breaking the record..

No photos of the west coast apart from sun moon lake. Its the industry side of the island and in places was pretty disgusting. Hundreds of huge factories. This was on the sidewalk in Taichung. Dead cockroaches!

And finally the bullet train back to Taipei. Seriously fast, and so quiet and stable. What would take about 5-6 hours on local transport took 45 minutes on this HSR train. cool!

So that's all for now folks, will put up another blog with the funny signs we saw, and one also of the food. Incredible food!

What a trip, completely blew our expectations away, and we had such an amazing time. The people, food and nature were all amazing, and we had such a variety of experiences. Half holiday, half adventure travel. Was great to travel as three at the start, then a boys trip for the second half, had a lot of great laughs and funny times with the locals. Sleeping in a police station, hotel, sodden tent and the floor of a university dorm all in 2 1/2 weeks, cool experience. Definitely highly recommended as a place to go, hardly any foreigners there meant the people were so friendly and honest. They treated us like visitors rather than some other tourist countries where you are just money bags. Hope to hear from anyone else who decides to travel there!