BootsnAll Travel Network



Back home…to Taipei

December 5th, 2007

We’re not really sure why, but we have felt really at home in this country.  And now that we’re about to leave it’s becoming really weird.

The people are sooo friendly here, the food is really good, and it’s reasonably cheap.  I’m sure it helps that we came during a time of the year where the weather is pretty good.  I mean, for us people that don’t like the super-hot.  Although I understand it gets really hot here in the summer.  Plus, it’s green.  Green is good.  Did I mention the people here are really nice?  Oh and the transportation is really good.  Great trains and we took the bus from Puli.  Cushy seats and movies.  We saw that movie with Grace from Will and Grace where she hires an escort for her sister’s wedding?  Can’t remember the name but her clothes are really cute in the movie.  Oh, and of course, Kevin is here.  And he’s the coolest.  Of course, since he doesn’t read this blog (which he readily admits) he’ll never know that we think he’s cool.  Poa.
Our plan was to go explore the north with daytrips but, well, we kind of had to some, well, let’s say, maintenance?  Like we had to buy airline tickets to Argentina.  Our next destination after Thailand.  And since we bought airline tickets they froze our credit cards.  Luckily, my big brother took care of the one card but the Bank of America card – let’s just say we hate Bank of America.  Biggest pain in the butt.  Luckily, the Citibank here was fantastic and helped us out a lot with the Bank of America situation.  Can’t say enough about Citibank.

And my mom and dad came!  They were staying at the Sheraton.  We were staying at this hostel right near their hotel but couldn’t take it anymore after we were bitten by mosquitos non-stop for 4 nights.  So we switched back to the Taiwanmex – love this hostel.  Mago and Raul, the owners, are totally cool and helpful.  Luckily our hostel was totally in walking distance.  Anyway – we bopped around Taipei with the parental units – and dad actually let us pay a few times (we kind of had the advantage since we’d been in Taiwan for a while) – went up Taipei 101 (named because there are 101 floors) – it’s the tallest building in the world (since the one in Dubai that will be taller isn’t finished) – it’s supposed to look like a stalk of bamboo but I’m not really buying that – it looks more like little square teacups stacked on top of one another.

Tags: , ,

Big huge massive monastery

November 15th, 2007

Okay, the reason I wanted to go to Puli was because I had watched this Globetrekker episode on Taiwan and it showed this massive monastery on it.  John, who watched it too, thought I was on drugs – he doesn’t remember it at all.  So, maybe it was on their or not, but anyway, I still wanted to go there.

It’s like a 45 minute bus-ride to Puli.  We were expecting this small town.  Nope, big town.  I swear, this Rough Guide guidebook is crazy – it makes almost every town look tiny and they end up being kind of big.  As usual, we had no accomodations, but after a couple of tries, ended up at this kind of diveish place – but it was convenient.  Fortunately, the room we originally started with had air problems so we got switched to a nicer room.

Anyway, there was no way to get to Chung Tai Chan Monastery on mass transit which we could find so we grabbed a taxi – while we were going we saw this massive buddha on the side of the mountain.  I mean, it looked massive from the road and we were very far away.  But alas, when you get into a taxi going somewhere and you don’t really speak Chinese, detours aren’t really allowed.  So we went to the monastery.  It was totally amazing. 

First off, it was huge.  I mean, massive.  Then there were all the different Buddhas.  I mean life-sized statues of hundreds of Buddhas (all with offering plates in front of them!!!).  And these huge guardians in front of the main temple.  I mean massive – like 2 stories high.  We are talking some SERIOUS cash flowing into this place.  We were kicking ourselves afterward for not faxing them to get a tour – apparently there are more interesting floors if you make an appointment a week in advance.  NEXT TIME!

And across the street was this park that had thousands of these little miniature buddhas.  And with it’s own cleaning crew.  We were so impressed with this place. 

Amazingly enough – John was able to call the cab driver that took us to the monastery (he gave us his card) – which was kind of impressive considering the guy spoke just slightly more English than we spoke Chinese (we know: hello, thank you, black tea) – anyway, he came to pick us up and dropped us off  in town.  Besides the monastery – there’s not  too much interesting about Puli – so we decided the next day to  go back to Taipei  by bus.

Tags: ,

Sun Moon Lake

November 15th, 2007

This lake was totally cool.  Of course, we went there like a million years ago it seems since I haven’t friggin’ updated this blog in like 20 thousand years but from what I remember, it was totally cool.

We stayed at this place called Sun Moon Lake Guesthouse.  Which was kind of funny considering there was no sign for this guesthouse when we got off the bus.  We had gotten the name of this guesthouse from the visitor information center in Taichung – the woman working there was totally cool and totally were helpful.  Anyway, we just kept asking different people where it was and was directed to this restaurant on the bottom with a guesthouse on top.  The room was really nice except for the fact that they were doing construction next door but that stopped at 5 pm.

Anyway, the super-nice guy that either owned the place or ran the place totally went out of his way to help us out and when we said we wanted to rent a scooter he walked us over to this scooter shop and we were able to rent a scooter for a reasonable rate (it went from 750 ND to 500 ND) in about 2 1/2 seconds for a day.  And the lady that ran the scooter shop spoke really good English and told us that if we ever had kids that they would be really cute because they would be multi-racial.  It cracks me up when people talk about stuff like that.  I mean, hello, kind of personal.  But personal in Asia and personal in the US are kind of different.

Rambling aside, we hopped on the scooter, grabbed a quick bagel sandwich (yes, I said bagel – and really good too!  can you say yum!).  Then we bopped around the lake to see all the tourist attractions.  Kick ass temples, flamingo zoos, defunct butterfly sanctuaries (which was really, really sad).  But I have to say, I like scooters, but I really am not the biggest fan of going around screeching corners – and highways (where you’re not really supposed to drive scooters) – don’t really like them.  Oh, and the lake was amazingly gorgeous.  I mean, the most beautiful blue.  We didn’t want to leave.

But alas, it was Friday and the prices of hotels jack up and us, being on a budget, really couldn’t afford that.  Plus, we had other things to see on this beautiful island…next stop…Puli.

Tags: ,

Moving up the coast

November 9th, 2007

So we’ve been pretty much going around the lake clockwise. So, logically, we, after we sat at Lotus Lake for wayyyyy too long trying to figure out where the heck we were going next (well, at least it was pretty there & since hardly anyone speaks English we can talk as loud as we want and nobody would know what we’re saying – bonus!)…so anyway, we decided to go to Taichung.

We took the faster train – they have 3 classes – we’d been mostly travelling in the middle one but for some reason – probably because we just kind of hand over the cash to the train people when they tell us to – anyway, it was amazing how fast it was. But not as fast the high speed train. Which we didn’t take because it’s like twice as expensive. But it’s amazing because it can cut a 5 hour journey into 1 1/2 hours. Kevin told us that it was a European track and Japanese cars because Japan got pissy when they decided to lay a European track so they bought Japanese cars. Typical. Sounds like America.

So anyway, we went and saw another couple of mongo buddhas, ate some really good department store food (they have food courts in all the department stores – but some of them are better at having pics/English subtitles) and just didn’t do a whole heck of a lot.  We did find a very cool woman at the visitor’s info center that helped us find a place to stay in Sun Moon Lake, our next destination!  I’m telling you, these visitor’s information people are the best here -totally helpful and so nice…but that just kind of goes for most of the people here in Taiwan…

Tags: ,

Kaohsiung & cool lake

November 7th, 2007

Hello Sunshines!

After embarking on a train journey of 3 hours that revolved around either standing up or sitting on the floor, we left Damien after 2 hours as he was to head south to his next destination and we headed north to Kaohsiung.  We get to the train station at like 5 pm and headed to one hotel that our guidebook suggested was a “2” on a scale of 1-10 and it was about double what we wanted to spend so we headed to this hostel which ended up being closed.  Then we found the Atami.  Yes, almost the same name, yet very different.  

It was in our price range, and it looked clean.  And the room looked like it belonged in Vegas.  An entire wall of mirrors.  And, let’s say, 2 “sketchy” channels on the tube.  On free TV.  Even Vegas doesn’t offer that – well, the places I’ve stayed, anyway.  So, with that in mind, we decided to stay 3 nights!  Okay, that’s not the reason but it makes for more interesting television…

Anyway, this city was the first time we ran into the drink/internet deal.  Since most internet cafes are geared towards gamers, people stay in an internet cafe for hours on end.  So they have this deal – we’ll give you cheap internet as long as you buy a drink.  Which works out fine if:  1) you’re thirsty 2) you’re going to be there a long time since the drinks are kind of expensive.  Anyway, after wandering to numerous internet cafes we just gave up, bought the drink and stayed a few hours. 

The main reason we wanted to come to Kaohsiung was to see Lotus Lake.  So we caught the train 1 stop up from Kaohsiung and there it was.  Confucius everywhere.  Dragons and bright colors on all these cool temples plus tons of people fishing and actually catching stuff!  John was in picture heaven.  Plus we ran into some kind of festival deal.  Which seem to be everywhere.  I don’t know if it’s the time of the year or if it’s just luck.  Unfortunately we never have any idea what the festival is all about and even if we had someone explain it, it probably wouldn’t make any sense anyway.  But all we know is it’s really cool and beautiful.  And really, what more can you ask for?

Tags: ,

Green (Lyudao) Island

November 2nd, 2007

Ahhhh, Green Island…we loved Green Island.  So relaxing, peaceful…except for, yes, the WAY to Green Island.

Ferry.  In the ocean.  In the rocky ocean.  Cindy.  Not so good with seasickness.  But I didn’t puke!  Either way!  Woohoo!!

Actually, Damien taught me a trick – first off, I had to go outside (where I got soaked!!!!).  Next, stare at the horizon where it’s calm.  That definitely helped – plus – it was only like an hour. 

We got picked up at the ferry terminal by our hotel, The Par Far Hotel.  On the way there were probably over a 100 scooters lining the street to rent.  They also handed us keys to the scooters we had rented!  John was SUPER HESITANT at first since he hadn’t driven one since he was a kid.  Plus he had to balance both of us on the scooter.  But after a few practice twirls around the street in front of the hotel he was okay and we headed out to bop around the island. 

First we went to the highest point of the island (not very high!) but the views were pretty cool.  Then we went clockwise around the island.  The entire island is only like 18 km around.  Not very big.  After stopping at “the little great wall” (ummm, I’m thinking NOT), sleeping beauty rock and peking dog rock we stopped for a while at this awesome salt-water hot spring.  Supposedly there are 3 of them in the world (we thought there were only 2 – one here and one in Italy, but we were corrected by this guy that lives on Green Island who said there was also one in Japan).  It was really relaxing – not super hot and we were the only ones there (these school kids came in later but not until we were ready to leave).  Did I mention this was the off-season?  I guess they get like 2000 people a day during high season but we were one of maybe 20-30 tourists on the island at the time. 

The only problem we had was – incredibly enough – dealing with the language barrier.  Finding food.  John ordered this pork with vegetable deal and it ended up being pork fat with chinese brocoli. 

The second day, John and Damien went to the 7-Eleven – I stayed behind because I already had a noodle bowl waiting for water to be added – and so I was flipping through the channels – the world series was on!  Woohoo!  I was so excited!  So, while we waited for the weather to clear up, I watched the first few innings of the world series.  It was awesome.  Did I mention that I missed baseball?

Anyway, hello, we are on an island.  With really great snorkelling.  So we rented snorkelling equipment and headed to one of 2 places mentioned in the book.  The first, had a big red no-no sign across the beach area.  Okay, nix that one.  The 2nd one didn’t so we went.  John was a bit tentative – did I mention this was a first-time for him?  Oops, forgot to tell him it’s pretty darn hard to drown.  I mean, you really have to want to sink.  He finally got the hang of it and is now hooked.  Can’t wait to get to Thailand!  Beautiful coral everywhere – awesome fish; oh, and did I mention that apparently Taiwanese people don’t really like water that much so we had the place to ourselves?  Such a fab day. 

We didn’t want to leave, but alas, we had to leave the next morning.  Well, we didn’t have to, but there are plenty of other beautiful places on this mainland we wanted to see! 

 

 

Tags: ,

Hualien > Taitung

October 26th, 2007

There were bikes for rent at the Hero Hotel (pink ones!), so we decided to go for a bike ride before heading out to Taitung – the gateway to the Green Island.  We biked along this really super-well-developed bike trail that ended at this really nice beach.  Lovely. 

The weird thing about being on Taiwan is it’s not that big of an island so you see these Blue Angel type military planes flying over all the time.  When you’re in the smaller towns, that is.  You don’t see them when you’re in Taipei and the such.  Taiwan is not that fond of mainland China right now.  There are these signs everywhere since Taiwan wants admission into the UN separate from China.  Good luck with that.

Anyway, after our bike ride we bopped onto a train to Taitung.  We found our hotel, Fuyuan, and then headed off to find a travel agent that spoke English.  The one in the Lonely Planet had moved, but luckily the neighbor pointed us in the right direction.  This super nice travel agent booked our ferry tickets for the next day and called our hotel for us to reserve a room since the owners of the hotel we wanted to stay at didn’t speak English.  We then headed off to figure out the bus situation and went to the visitor’s center in the old train station where they pointed us in the right direction and wrote things in Chinese for us so we could get tickets for the next day.

After, we headed to this Seaside park where we thought we could see the blink of the lighthouse of green island (where we headed the next day) we headed to this dumpling place suggested in our book.  Oh my gosh, I thought the dumplings were okay (not like blown away by them, but just okay), but we also ordered spicy noodles that were so friggin’ spicy – oh my gosh – I mean, like 6 star hot – then we headed to this candy shop we had seen earlier.  It was like Halloween (no Halloween this year 🙁 ).  You just pile all these funky little wrapped candies in a bag and for this huge bag you pay like a dollar USD.  Let’s just say that some of these candies were okay, and others were absolutely revolting.  Sweetness levels are different here.  And flavorings are WAYYYYY different.  But, really, here again, what more can you ask for?

     

Tags: ,

Hualien…enter the Frenchman…

October 26th, 2007

So at the train station when we were waiting for the train we saw this other westerner (it’s usually pretty easy to pick people out that are westerners – big backpack and caucasian)…like the foreshadowing?

Anyway, the train was super nice – after like 3 hours we get to Haulien, the gateway to Taroko National Park.  It’s one of the most visited places in Taiwan.  Anyway, after John and I went the wrong way out of the train station (typical), checked out one hostel, went by another hotel that ended up being closed, we ran into the other westerner a Frenchman, Damien, at an intersection close to where we would ultimately all stay in the same room in the Hero House.  It was like this super-fancy-looking place from the outside but they you could rent by the bed (4 beds/room) – so that’s what we did! 

We ended up hanging out with Damien for several days – he is very cool and we saw a snapshot of France and he got a snapshot of America.  He was just as clueless about the language as we are – he was also on an extended trip – he’d started in Canada > Japan > Taiwan and was headed to Malaysia afterwards – oh and he gave John a semi-crash-course in French wine…Steve, you’ve created a monster!  You just had to feed John good wine – now he’s wanting to learn all about it…

Taroko National Park – completely awesome.  This is a really beautiful park.  Unfortunately they were working on a lot of the trails because of landslides.  We wanted to hike the Shakadang Trail but it was closed.  So we hitched it Tiansiang and did a hike there.  We went part way up this one trail that was supposed to end at a Pavillion but we could only got partway up.  But it was good enough and the views were really nice.  There was also the Siangde Temple and a pagoda and lots of other pretty things there.  All in all, the day we spent there was really nice (although the winding roads I could have done without).  We ended the day at the night market in Haulien where John and Damien tried some internals of a chicken that I just didn’t need to know about and rode the funniest 3-wheeled bike things ever.  They played the tune “Davie, Davie Crockett” – I can’t even describe how you got these things to move but they had to gyrate their bodies to get them to move.  I’ve never laughed so hard.    

Damien told us of his intentions to go to a place called Green Island the next day.  After reading our guide book, we decided to go with him (since we had no clue where we were going next and it seemed like a good idea).

Tags: , ,

Taipei – refreshing city…

October 26th, 2007

So it’s like mid-October.  Time for the baseball playoffs!  Fortunately, we’re in a baseball-friendly country; unfortunately it’s 12 hours ahead of the east coast.  So hopefully we’ll (okay, it’s more like I’ll, since John thinks baseball is boring – WHATEVER!!!), be able to watch some baseball.

Anyway, after a quick 1 hourish flight, we landed in Taipei’s airport.  Luckily, our hostel, Taiwanmex (owned by a Taiwan/Mexican couple), had extensive directions (which of course, we kind of followed, but then kind of did our own thing – as usual).  It was pretty nice – we ended up in the 2nd bldg – 2 twin beds which we pushed together; common area with TV room/free internet/laundry.  Oh, and a really cute kitty.  I mean, what more can you ask for? 

And we saw Kevin!  John and Kevin did a cultural exchange dealie in Seattle before Kevin went back to Taiwan; we went to this curry place near our hostel at like 8:30 pm since Kevin works like a mad-man – they work a lot in Taiwan.  The next night he took us to this totally cool and out of control night market…John LOVES NIGHT MARKETS!  Especially since we don’t speak or read Chinese – so most of the time you can just point and pantomine to get something – not like restaurants where we have to look for restaurants with either English or pictures…and it’s all these little snacks so you can try a bunch of different things.  And if you hate something; oh well, you only paid $1 USD for it anyway.

Anyway, we really liked Taipei after Hong Kong.  Not nearly so many people.  It was a bit more relaxed.  The only hard part is hardly anyone speaks a lick of English (since Hong Kong was a British colony a lot of people speak a smattering of English and there are usually English menus).  And it’s not like other languages that use the English alphabet (like French, Spanish…) where you can kind of guess what you’re ordering – it’s all pictures – hard adjustment…

After 3 days we knew we had to get the heck out of Taipei or else we would never leave and see the rest of the island…so we went to the train station and bought tickets to Hualien on the east coast…

Tags: , ,

Hong Kong phooey…

October 26th, 2007

Back to the first world. And in a big way. Wow.

We found a cheap guesthouse – and $30/night is SUPER CHEAP in Hong Kong.  Smallest room ever, but with all the comforts of home – TV, bed, shared bathroom – and close to the MRT (subway) in Kowloon which is across the water from Hong Kong Island…

I’m writing this from a gaming internet cafe. They don’t have the gazillion internet cafes like in Kathmandu. So we finally found this semi-cheap one in Mong Kok which is a where John is updating photos as we speak. Everyone else is playing games. Pretty funny.

I have seriously never seen so much shopping in my life – and the malls are very confusing – probably because I’m not used to them being so big – and some of them kind of lead into another one and into another one…and just gazillions of people. The markets are very cool though. Like they had an entire street dedicated to sporting goods.  And all Jade in another one. 

I can see why there are so many expats here – I mean you can get pretty much anything you’d want or need as in the states. Movies (in English). Check.

Tags: ,