Miranda and my trip around Taiwan Proper Pt. 2

Welcome back!

We never intended to spend a lot of time in Taitung, but due to our cool and short-notice style of travelling, we ended up staying there for three nights. Since we had done so much driving and travelling already, we took our time the next morning. After lunch, we headed out for a drive up north, along the East Rift Valley Scenic Highway. Beautiful drive! We went to Luye, where we just hung out in a tea farm for a while. Nobody seemed to care and even though the spot is described as a tourist tea farm on the map, there was nobody there and nobody even talked to us. So we just enjoyed the beautiful view from the Luye platform.


Afterwards, we went in to a storage-facility looking building, where we tried various teas and dried fruit for about 2 hours. Of course we ended up buying a whole bunch of stuff. I got Pu-Erh tea and some special kind of Green Tea and a very sophisticated tea brewing pot. Quite handy, actually!
Here's some tea. Did you know that white tea, green tea and black tea are made all from the same plant?


Another cool thing about Taiwan is the tropical fruit you can buy here. Guavas are everywhere, so are pineapples and dragonfruit. In the south, Lichees are very abundant, too. And I had no idea how pineapples grew... I'm still surprised.


Originally, we had planned to drive through a mountain road down to the coastal highway and then back to Taitung, but we forgot to factor in the Taiphoon damage to the southern mountain regions. So just as we were the furthest from Taitung, this is what we saw. grmpf. All part of the experience, isn't it?


On Wednesday, we got up super early and took a ferry to Green Island.


Green Island is about an hour boat ride to the East of Taitung and had, up to the mid 1980's, been used as an island for prisoners. Taiwan's political opponents were imprisoned here, often tortured and estimates say that there had been in the order of 50,000 executions on this island during the time which has become known as "White Terror".
We rented a scooter together - yes, I totally and illegally drove a 125ccm scooter - and drove around the island.



It was scorching hot, my estimate is somewhere between 35 and 40 degrees with an almost cloudless sky above the island and the sun shining from close to 90 degrees above us (The Tropic of Cancer runs through Taiwan, and Taitung is still quite a bit south of that).

Mhh, yummy, I just ate a chocolate bar whose name is "GUTS". No wonder Taiwanese people eat animal organs all the time.

The following pictures show one of the above mentioned prisons. This one is located right next to the memorial site for democracy. We were very happy to find out that even though our travel guide indicated that the prison was off-limits to visitors, things have changed and you can actually walk around inside it. There's even some exhibits in Chinese. Mostly names in info on who had been kept there and why and so on.

Being in such a young democracy with such a vibrant (in the negative sense) past - considering relations with China and the one party KMT rule - is really very fascinating. And I think that dealing with the past will help Taiwan become stronger from within as they strive to define Taiwanese as distinctly different from mainland China. Maybe I will have a chance and visit Jinmen, some islands just 2km off of the Chinese coast, which belong to Taiwan. There's lots of historic stuff to see there as well.




Change of topic: Here, cool lizard!


And some more pictures from Green Island.



Since we hadn't planned to stay in Taitung for three nights, we had to find new accomodation for Wednesday night. The Rough Guide to Taiwan suggested the "Aboriginal Culture Hotel" as best value for money and yes, it is! It was the most charismatic hotel we stayed in during this trip, I think. And it had a really cool souvenir shop on the ground floor. Can't wait to show you guys my new linen wall decoration. It looks quite psychedelic, hehe...


Thursday, we drove up the coast line all the way to Hualian. This, I'd say, was the most beautiful part of the drive.


But apparently, I am not allowed to electrocute, bomb or poison the fishies in the dried out river. Now I'm sad.


We made a longer stop close to this really interesting looking bridge that I had sought out for us in a travel guide. But walking to the other side of it was a bad idea, because it was even
hotter there than it was before. ugh. hehe...


For nature lovers, here's another cool fruit, whose juice tastes like stinky tofu smells and which grows everywhere in southern Taiwan.


It seems like two white breads like us are of interest to the local population. Especially, when we pass their 6-wheeled-20km/h-going-improvised-pickup-truck about 6 times, because we constantly stop to take pictures.


I mentioned the Tropic of Cancer earlier. Here's the monument for it.


And then we came by this town which had a really shih-tie harbor.


After arriving in Hualian and having some excellent seafood dinner in a bar with hot chicks (right, Miranda?) who opened our 710ml Heineken bottles, we came by this internet cafe. Now you guys know, why there's always so many Asians in these MMOPG's. 10 NT$ for 30mins. 45 NT$ are 1 Euro.


On Friday, the two of us drove into Taroko National Park, also known as Taroko Gorge. It is a HUGE gorge created by erosion with some peaks in the 3,500m range - which, of course you cannot see from near sea level down in the gorge. But let beauty speak for itself.












And here's two happy campers.


Unfortunately, all hiking trails were closed. Stupid Typhoon! So we just drove around, stopped here and there, and still spent almost all day in there. At around 4pm, we left Taroko Gorge and drove north, because Miranda had to catch a flight the next day, at 11.55pm. For dinner, we pulled in a small town just south of Su-Ao. That place is essentially a fishing port and restaurants. Excellent food, though. And so, I had my weirdest food ever: Calamari. What's weird about Calamari? Three things. The teeth, the eyes which are so hard that you either have to swallow them or spit them out and: THE INK. First, you rip out the already broken sachet which usually contains the ink and then you put the whole thing in your mouth. Weird, eh? Once you get over the disgust-factor, though, it tastes really good! Wanna try? Ha, today, my lunch box featured tofu-sized balls of duck blood. How about that for a late breakfast?


Driving further north, Miranda and I were close to giving up and backtracking to the next bigger city when I said "Ah, I really wanna prove this stupid travel guide wrong and find a nice hotel in this place right here". So I stopped, asked for a hotel in a little tea shop and was redirected to next door. Super nice rooms, honeymoon style, actually. With a view of the ocean! How about that? Our wake-up call was at 4.30 am and by 5am we were sitting at the beach, watching the sun rise over the Pacific. Beautiful, even despite the cloudiness.


Of course, we went back to bed after that. Miranda's last day here in Taiwan was rather relaxed - not counting the drive to the aiport, which was me weaving through slow-ass crazy Taibei highway traffic. And then, at 11.30, I took the second last bus from TaoYuan airport to downtown Taibei.
Miranda is back in Canada now and I miss her a lot. We had an amazing time here and I am very glad that I got to show her the country - and of course see it myself. Thanks for visiting, Baby!

Sunday, September 2 was not overly productive. I had food and did laundry. Wow. This week, I had to go back to work and now it'll be a bit more stressful for me, I suppose. That doesn't stop me from taking Chinese lessons, though. From now on, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning in a group of three students with one teacher. Should give my Chinese quite a boost. And it's also something I want to keep up when I'm back in Germany.
Tonight, I'll also have to plan my trip for this weekend. Maybe I'll take a train down to Taichung. I hear it's really cool there. Taichung is Taiwan's third largest city with a population of just over a million and has lots of nightlife and tea. Should be interesting! I'd also like to do a day trip to Lugang from there. Let's see what I'll end up doing. Unfortunately, I am running out of money here. The scholarship for the internship is almost used up and I don't have any other income. But I don't think that I will let that get in my way here. While I'm here, I want to make the most of it.

That's all for now. Next time, I'll try to update sooner. This post took me about 2 hours. Phew!

I hope you're all doing well and I'm looking forward to your comments. Respect to everyone who actually read all of this.

Cheers!