Archive for the 'Around Taiwan Trip' Category

Southern Sun

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 31, 2007 in Around Taiwan Trip, General, Taiwan and Video.   459 views 2 Comments

Saturday - Kenting - 墾丁

Kenting is small, sunny surfing town on the southern-most point of the island. White sandy beaches, beautiful rolling waves, high wind and SUN. Its the end of October and its hotter than it’s ever been in Vancouver in July. We stayed in a small, funky, down-to-earth hostel called a-wu的民宿 above a little restaurant on the south bay (南灣) strip, overlooking the ocean and the beach. We stayed in Kenting for two nights, giving us just enough time to relax and wind down. (Both of us have been kind of under the weather with a sore throat and runny nose) Kenting is a town that is just so easy to fall in love with. Everything and everyone just seems a bit more chilled than everywhere else in Taiwan, or any other major city.

We visited the national aquarium & marine center in Kenting where we saw penguins, walked through the national park on the eeny-weeny southern-most tip of Taiwan - Eluanbi - 鵝鑾鼻 - it means the duck egg nose.

Monday - Kaoshiong - 高雄

We left Kenting Monday morning, and started our trek up the west coast. The west coast of Taiwan is significantly more populated than the mountainous, tropical eastern coast. Our travels were fast, thanks to a busy freeway that runs all the way back up to Taipei. We met with Cathy’s uncle in a small town outside of Kaoshiong called GangShan (岡山). He still lives in the same Japanese-style house in the retired-army village (眷村) where his mother grew up in. He treated us to dinner in a community center/entertainment hall (新生社) that was once used by the army for soldiers & their families while they were off duty. It was the same exact spot where Cathy’s parents got married years ago. Also the exact spot where both of Cathy’s grandparents, danced at night, during the war time years ago. It’s such a small town that everyone who still lives there knows Cathy’s whole family on both sides, all the way back to the grandparents. (Both of Cathy’s grandfathers were war heroes, pilots, to be specific.)

Today

We are at the Kaoshiong airport (with free wireless!), where we’ll be flying to the small island cluster of Peng-hu (澎湖) off the western coast of Taiwan (no, not pingu. It’s pronounced Pong-huu.) Peng-hu is made up of several small islands arranged in a semi-circle, and will mark the Western-most point of our around-island trip. (Technically, there is another tiny island further west call JingMen (金門), but since it’s closer to China than to Taiwan, it’s pretty much just a military base)

Peng-hu gets blasted by the Northern monsoon winds from October-March, and combined with the calm waters thanks to it’s semi-circular shape, Peng-hu has recently become one of the most world-renown windsurfing destinations.

While we won’t be windsurfing, we will be renting scooters and driving around the islands- eating and drinking along the way. We plan on coming back the next day and visiting with Cathy’s uncle again before heading back up the Taiwan west coast on our way back to Taipei. We have been feeling a little under the weather lately, and may very well be getting sick so we’re resting up, and trying to stay healthy.

Taroko and Chihpen

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 30, 2007 in Around Taiwan Trip, General, Taiwan and Video.   330 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.   354 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.   259 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.)