Back in Taiwan

I only had less than a week back in Taiwan before my trip to Singapore. I landed in Taipei early on Monday morning. After paying a visit to Miguel before he left for Shanghai I met up with Sam for my favorite Taiwanese breakfast: dan bing. Next I made a surprise visit to Uncle Sam to see my former co-workers and the children I taught. This was pleasant. I didn't realize how much I missed the kids. Ya Chu came to Banqiao and we had lunch with Caleb and Dino at the rural park. Later I went back to Miguel's and read a little bit of The Girl Who Played With Fire before I fell asleep from the jet lag.

The next morning Claudia came up from Hsinchu and we made our way to the East coast. Along the way we went thru the Xueshan Tunnel. This is a long tunnel that goes thru the mountains and shortens the distance between Taipei and Yilan considerably. We stopped for lunch at a little restaurant near Yilan then continued down the coastal highway. The coastal highway is a windy road similar to the Columbia River Highway or the 101 on the Oregon coast. It rides along the cliffs of Eastern Taiwan and cuts thru countless tunnels on the way south toward Hualien. It is only 2 lanes wide but it is very busy as it is the only highway from North to South on the East. There are many trucks, buses and cars, and a few hours to get to Hualien. We finally made it to a hotel outside of Hualien near the entrance of Taroko Gorge.

Taroko Gorge is one of the most famous natural parks in Taiwan. It is a very deep cliff cut by a narrow river between the limestone and marble mountains. The road is literally carved into the cliffs and it presents many beautiful vistas. It is also a bit of a dangerous road as the rocks on the mountains above are unstable and can fall without warning. The government is doing constant work to protect the road from rock fall, but occasionally rocks the size of baseballs can come tumbling down. 

Fortunately we were safe as we rode in Claudia's air-conditioned Nissan. At one point there is a place where you can get out and hike along the cliffs. This is called the River of Nine Turns. It is a nice walk where you can breathe the fresh air and listen to the loud torrent of water as it courses thru the canyon.

The road is one of the few cross island highways that can reach the other side of Taiwan. However we wanted to spend a few days on the East coast, so we came back down to Hualien after spending the morning exploring the gorge.

This was the first time I visited Hualien and I then understood that it was a beautiful city on the ocean against the backdrop of the mountains. We went to the beach and walked around a little bit, but it was really hot, so we continued going south looking for a hotel. The highway we were on before was 8, but then we went on a side road that followed along the coast. This was more like the PCH as the 8 is like the 101. The side road, highway 11, had sparse traffic and it was easy to forget that we were in Taiwan. There were only very small towns and no 7-11s as we ventured further south. Claudia told me that the people in these towns were native aboriginals that were a different race and spoke their own languages. Most of the towns seemed to be Christian owing to the influence of missionaries.

Finally we found a sign for a hotel at the top of a narrow gravel road. We decided to check it out. The road went down steeply with sharp switchbacks to a flat area near the ocean. The hotel owner made a sort of village near the beach. There was a main building with a restaurant and about 5-6 little one room huts that were the hotel rooms. There was also a kind of open air building with several platforms where people could set up tents. I envied these tents as they were high enough to catch a cool ocean breeze in the summer heat. There was a little courtyard full of artwork and there was somebody playing saxophone in the shade. It was kind of bohemian, every where there was artwork made out of trees or the local nature.

Our hut didn't have a/c, but we had a fan and we kept the windows open. After the sunset (unfortunately we were on the east side so the sun set behind the mountains). We left the windows open and could hear the ocean waves on the beach. I woke up early the next morning and started reading from my next book, The Count of Monte Cristo. We drove back into town and checked out the university campus in Hualien. It seemed like a cool place. Very new and clean. There weren't many students there because it was summer. Then we headed back up the highway towards Yilan. It was almost time for me to go to Singapore and we were still a long ways from Taoyuan airport. We stayed near Yilan one night. I did some laundry in the bathroom sink and the next morning we headed back toward Taipei. We got back pretty early so we decided to see that new movie Inception. That was a good movie, I think it will be one of the best movies of the year. Claudia and I dropped me off at the airport and I waited a few hours for my flight to Singapore.

For the next post I'll talk about my experience in this new country and some new friends I made here.