Archive for the 'General' Category

Taroko and Chihpen

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 30, 2007 in Around Taiwan Trip, General, Taiwan and Video.   429 views 2 Comments

Ni Hao!

We haven’t had much luck finding reliable internet lately, so we’ve been quite behind in posting. Or rather, we have been having too much fun traveling that we are ignoring our blog.

Most buildings here are built with steel, concrete & plaster, so hotel wireless is often flakey. It takes us hours just to search for hostels & get directions to the next town so there’s usually no time left for blogging.

We have been on the road in Taiwan, on our around-island trip, for a week now. Although we’ve had the car A/C on all the time, we’ve only gone through 2 tanks of gas, and we have yet to roll over 1,000 km; Taiwan is a small island, and even though the distances between towns are not great, roads are often twisty, treacherous and slow. Also, Taiwan being an archipelago (volcanically-created island), has so many different climate zones and unique geographic areas, the scenery is so drastically different every 100 km, it has been an exciting and refreshing drive.

Here’s what we’ve been upto since our last blog post:

Thursday - Taroko - 太魯閣國家公園

The Taroko gorge is one of the most amazing sights either of us have ever seen in our entire lives. Cameras simply can’t capture the scale of the sheer marble and limestone cliffs that climb vertically from the gorge to the sky. 250 Million years of seismic activity combined with vicious soil erosion have formed a very narrow, vertical, twisting canyon through the mountains in Taroko. The highway through the heart of the gorge is carved into the marble like a 3-walled tunnel. With road below, jagged rocky faces to one side and directly overhead, it’s shaped like a giant “C” carved into the side of the canyon, with one side left open, facing the gorge. It’s epic.

(With sore necks) we arrived at the 5-star Hotel Grand Formosa (天祥晶華) in the heart of the Taroko National Park at 天祥 (pronounce - Tian Xiang). We had planned to use the spa, pool(s), sauna, steam room, bowling lanes, pool tables, bumper-cars and arcade but instead got distracted by a giant 2 liter bottle of sake. We ended up staying in our hotel room all night, heating up round after round of sake in a small plastic thermos bottle inside our electric kettle, ordering room service and catching up on our downloaded TV. It was SO fun.

Friday - Hot springs at Chihpen

Hung over, we crossed the tropic of cancer late afternoon on Friday- marked by a funky roadside monument. It was raining so we didn’t get out, but instead drove straight to our second 5 star resort, The Hotel Royal Chihpen- 知本老爺 - this time to go bathe in one of Taiwan’s most popular hotsprings. Yes, the water was soothing, but the highlight by far was the “fish spa“, where very small fish (some breed of Carp) nibble the dead skin and cuticles right off your hands and feet. Tickle 3000. We were pampered beyond our expectations. It was refreshing and relaxing.

Chat soon- but for now: here’s a video of us in Taroko, a few kilometers upstream from the deep cavernous gorge, on a rickety old suspension bridge above the river. Yikes!

Once again, pictures to come.

On Our Way to Taroko

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 25, 2007 in Around Taiwan Trip, General, Taiwan and Video.   467 views 0 Comments

Our trip around Taiwan started on Wednesday. We were fortunate enough to get our hands on a car from Cathy’s dad’s company. It’s a Corolla just like Cathy’s old car, but much cooler equipped with a GPS system. (and automatic side mirror closing device)

We started driving from Taipei down the number 5 highway (commonly known as the “Snow Mountain Express Highway” - 雪山隧道). We started our trip with couple LOOOOONG tunnels and a slightly confusing GPS-miscommunication-induced detour at PingLing (坪林). It took us about an hour to get from Taipei to Suao (蘇澳) where we stopped and shared a NT$ 75 (around two canadian dollars) bento box & bubble tea.

From there on, we switched to the number 9 highway (蘇花公路) which traitorously winds its way across the east coast on a sheer cliff overlooking the pacific ocean. This highway was full of people passing on TOTALLY blind corners and speeding through sharp turns in the heavy rain. Our average speed on the highway was about 30km/hr. The rain was pouring from the sky in a tropical rain shower and at several points, the highway was washed out by landslides. It was foggy and the visibility was horrible. (But we could still see the beautiful mountains scaling up the cliffs through the fog)

The GPS system guided us to HuaLian to our homestay (民宿 -translates into “people housing” or “civilian housing), it’s much like a B&B that’s run by locals. Some of them are fancier (& pricier) than 5-star hotels; some of them offer only bunk beds. Homestays offer a great alternative from hotels as lots of them are beautifully designed like mini boutique hotels and others are great in price for budget travelers. We were very lucky to find a good one called the Moonlight ocean (月光海洋). It’s very beautiful, clean and well priced (We paid $1800 NT for one night - less than $60 CDN). The hostess at the front desk is very helpful and friendly. We had a very wonderful stay here.

Tomorrow we wake up early to enjoy a complimentary breakfast and we’ll head into the Taroko Gorge. It’ll be a full day ahead.

Including videos of us on the highway.

Circumference

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 23, 2007 in Around Taiwan Trip, General, Taiwan and Video.   320 views 1 Comment

We leave tomorrow for our around-island trip of awesomeness. (you do know Taiwan is an island, right?)

We start by heading down the east coast towards Hualien. The next morning we drive through the Taroko gorge (pronounced tie-roo-guh) before staying at a five star resort in the heart of the gorge. The next couple nights we’ll spend in the southern part of the island visiting hot spring resorts and beaching, before visiting Cathy’s uncle in the South.

The rest of the trip, we’ll figure out as we go, but the most interesting part of the trip by far will be the rock-sissors-paper match between Kevin and Cathy to see who gets the to use the wide-angle lens in the gorge. (We’ll post the play-by-play)

We leave you with a clip of the trip semi-planning-session at Cathy’s aunt’s house, where everybody had more than enough to say about where to go and what to do.

“bla bla bla bla bla bla bla…. that would be where.”

(bla bla bla = Cathy trying to explain what sailing is, because she doesn’t know the actual word, and asking where to find sailing.)

GPS, online!

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 22, 2007 in General and Taiwan.   1,580 views 2 Comments

Well, we got our GPS logger figured out!

DG-100 Data Logger
Our Globalsat DG-100 Data Logger records our GPS position every 10 seconds as we walk around Taipei (or bus, or train).

After a few days, we can download the data, map it and link it with the photos we’ve taken so we know exactly where we took them.

Google Maps ScreenshotWe’re still getting the hang of it, but you can see a Google Maps Log of our travels over the past few days!

In other news, we’ve started planning our “Around-Taiwan” tour of the whole island. We’ve booked a few hotels, and figured out our first couple days. We’ll spend about a week starting down the east coast, to Taroko National Park and down to the south part of Taiwan, where we’ll be staying at a 5-star hotsprings resort. We’ll figure the rest of the trip out on the way, but we’ll visit with Cathy’s uncle for a few days in the south before returning up the west coast back to Taipei.

5 million scooters?

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 20, 2007 in General, Taiwan and Video.   301 views 0 Comments

Rumor has it that Taipei has 5 million scooters riding around every day. (By rumor, I mean, Cathy’s dad said that.)

This is the intersection right by the MRT station where we get off all the time. It’s on he ping east road. (和平東路)