Hualien on January 15th
I have had the most amazing vacations in Taiwan. The first was on January 14th-17th. The reason I took those days off was because my best friend, Colleen, had a brother, Rory, come in to Taipei to visit. We planned a trip to Hualien in order to visit Taroko Gorge, which is basically the highlight sightseeing tourist spot in Taiwan. If you do a quick google search, you will see lush green mountains surrounded by numerous waterfalls and temples. A must see for any visitor.
So, I will start from the beginning of the 14th, which was a Monday. We tried to leave on Sunday, but were too late getting to the train station because SOMEONE can never be on time… (eh heeem). But it worked out for the best anyway, as everything does. I decided to buy the tickets ahead of time for the next morning at 8:30am, so that we would be forced to show up on time. I also suggested that we all sleep at my apartment in order to avoid being late again. So we went forth with the plan. Well, Colleen kept me and Rory up until 3am doing her impression of someone we always make fun of (no name inserted here…I will be nice about it). We were laughing so hard I almost had an accident. Finally, we got her to shut up and went to sleep. I set my alarm for 6:30am or so to make up for any mishaps. We almost overslept too, but we pushed ourselves to get up. We had a good breakfast of toast and eggs with ketchup. We headed off in a taxi to the train station and Melvin helped us around. Of course, I had to leave my phone inside of the taxi and then Melvin had to call it and have him come back. But, off we went into the platform where our train was leaving. We found a funny sign that was translated into English and took a few pictures in front of it. That is really a constant mishap over here, and rather amusing to see all of the time. They just can’t seem to get the words arranged correctly for some reason. Oh well, I guess the message gets across.
We hopped onto the train once it came and had spacious seats with plenty of foot room. That was my first time on a train, and a wonderful experience too. The view was beautiful, and we had a long discussion the entire ride there. A friend of mine recommended that I call this hostel he stayed at previously and stay there. I called about an hour before we arrived, and she said that she would pick us up at the train station, I was very impressed. The thing about this trip is that we didn’t really have any plans, we just went with the flow, which is something that I rarely do, but it worked out perfectly. When we got to the train station, the woman was waiting for us and walked us to her SUV, where the sounds of Bob Marley echoed through the speakers. Colleen’s excitement showed as she repeated, “I feel like we are in a movie, this vacation is going to be great!” That was just a hint of things to come. Once we arrived at the hostel right down the road, she gave us maps and showed us to our room. There were a few bunk beds and it only costs 400 nt a night per person, which is about $12 U.S. You can’t beat that. It was an interesting hostel, very home-like with couches and a t.v. Each person that had stayed before signed the wall and wrote a little something about their experience there. It was a unique type of place; I suppose you could compare it to a bed and breakfast, but a sort of surfer/explorer/college feel to it. We only stayed for about 10 minutes to put our stuff away. She suggested that we head back toward the train station to rent scooters for only 500 nt per day, that is about $15 U.S. By that time it was around noon, and she said we should just drive down the east coast, then head to Taroko the next day and get an earlier start. So off we went with our maps. We were looking for “Pony” scooter rental. We must have waked around for about 30 minutes or more just randomly taking pictures with statues and being goofy. First, we found a piano bench on which we played random tunes and hummed jingles bells, etc. We weren’t thinking about the fact that we were hopping on life-sized keys while strangers were walking by…no, why worry about that when you are having so much fun? Next, we found a huge statue of Dr. Sun Yat Sen. We tickled his feet and then I attempted to lift Colleen onto the top, which was unsuccessful. Why? Well, once I lifted her up, she made me laugh way to hard, then I dropped her and she peed her pants. No lie, literally, peed. Then I laughed even harder, which led to my pants nearly becoming drenched….but I held it in as difficult as it was.
After this incident, we realized that the Pony store was right in front of our faces the entire time. When we walked up, we got two scooters and had to pretend like Rory had driven one before so that we could rent it. The problem was that he didn’t even know how to start it. So here’s Colleen yelling, “ROOOORRRYYY- maybe you need Ashley to give you a lesson before we ride off….you don’t know how to ride one!” Now, I know they didn’t speak much English, but I think they may have understood at least some of that. The man from the store walked over and noticed that he was clueless when I was trying to tell him how to start it, where the gas and breaks were, etc. I was so nervous that they wouldn’t let him drive off, that I just said, “”Hurry up and here’s the gas, here’s the breaks….drive up the road and then I’ll give you a lesson!”
He made it up the road and I gave him a crash course, then we stopped for gas. I had to pee, and of course there was no toilet paper, (which is typical in Taiwan). I had to chase down the lady that worked there and try to communicate in sign language that I needed toilet paper. I’m curious though…do they usually have their own, or do they just pee with no wiping off? Yuck, just the thought is gross! Anyway, I looked over the map and planned the course along the east coast. We drove for a while and made a few stops for photo ops. It was breathtaking…I hadn’t seen scenery like that for a long time. We entered this private property and had a blast sneaking around. Colleen found a cinder-block cemetery and a noodle river. Haha. Anyway, it was dangerous to get into it, but once we did, this dog started barking at us and we had to haul out of there…it was pretty exhilarating. We drove down further for a while until I stopped in shear amazement at a temple along the shore. It was huge, with beautiful architecture and positioned in the mountains, yet right across from the shore. There wasn’t a soul around, so we assumed that we weren’t supposed to be there…but we dared to walk up the stairs and see for ourselves. Colleen said, “Better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.” So up we went. When we got up there, there were all women covered up resembling monks. They were very friendly and showed us around the temple. One of them spoke very good English, which surprised us, but we were thankful. We must have stayed there for about and hour or two just looking around and buying up the shop. We bought a lot of jewelry with the Bodhisattva lady on them. She is similar to Mary, the story is almost identical. It was a surreal experience. They were so kind and gave us cake, tea, and many free gifts. As I was talking to the monkette (Daoyuan), I asked her if journalists ever come to her temple and stay. She said, oh yes, people stay here sometimes. To make that clear, I asked her if we would be able to stay and she said yes. My jaw dropped. What would the people back home think if I actually got the opportunity to stay in a temple with monkettes? I thought it must be expensive, then she told me it was free. Right then, I knew that I had to come back. We exchanged email addresses and she gave us her card. It was funny to see that someone so secluded still kept up with technology and had email, a cell phone, and a business card. After we did all of this, we walked to the top where Buddha was and got some great photos of the amazing view. While on our way up, this young monkette drove up in a truck, and we all just laughed. It is just that when you think of a monk, you never picture them driving a truck! I got 2 great photos of that too.
Then we headed back into town where we stopped at this steakhouse. The thing about Hualien is that no one speaks English. It is a lot more difficult to get by, but it makes for a more interesting time because of that. When we go into the front, we tried to look at the menu that was all in Chinese, so we pointed to the pictures. For some reason they didn’t have any of the food from the pictures. No help. 15 minutes later the entire staff was in front with us trying to figure out what we wanted to eat. We ended up 1)flapping our arms to communicate chicken 2)drawing pictures of soup and potatoes and 3) walking up to a plant and trying to eat the leaves (this means salad). It was hilarious. We finally just sat down and hoped for the best. Well, we got it too. We were served a perfect 6 course meal with steak for about $10 U.S. It was the best meal we had in a long time. First, was this mouth watering rosemary garlic bread that was toasted to perfection. Second was a tasty Caesar salad with buttery croutons. Third was some sort of meat wrapped in bacon slices with some sort of white creamy sauce on top. Fourth was a big cup of creamy mushroom soup topped with a flaky bread cover that was out of this world. Fifth was a delicious steak served with pepper sauce, vegetables and spaghetti. And last, a nice scoop of chocolate chip ice cream. Now, are you hungry? J And by the way, the tea was some of the best I’ve ever tasted, a sweet fruity taste that we had constant refills of. After the meal, we were stuffed and headed back to the hostel for a while. I was so hyper though and we had such a wonderful day, I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to. Colleen ran to the store to get some new pants (remember that she did pee them), while I called mom to tell her all about the day! After she got back, she couldn’t find any pants, so we decided to check out this store that we saw earlier in the day. Not before I got a random phone call from a woman who wanted me to model and get about 300 u.s. dollars for a day! (Well, it didn’t end up working out, but that was just icing on the cake). When we got to the shop, everything was dirt cheap. Like three dollar shirts all over the place. We nearly bought the whole store. We had to pick them fast though because it was closing soon and there was no dressing room. I said to her, watch all of the shirts fit now, and we never even got to try them on! That is how well our day went….we thought we had died and gone to heaven..The odd thing was, they all did fit. So we went home and tried them all on and bathed in our cheap clothes. I was exhausted by this time, but Colleen really wanted to find a place to have a drink. I only went for her…I really almost fell asleep in the bar. I knew that once midnight hit, our lucky day was over. So, until the end-January 15th will always be our lucky vacation day. And that is the SHORT version of the day’s chain of events. I just wanted to get it on this blog before I write about the next trip…which was a few days ago for Chinese New Year! So that one is going to follow very soon….working on it now.
