Colours, shapes and sounds of Taiwan

It’s only a week since I have returned home from my trip to Taiwan and already it is just a blur of colours, shapes and sounds. Fast trains, slow scooter rides, ambling walks, people everywhere, people nowhere. I began my journey with a 23 hour layover in Shanghai. I originally bought the flight as I wanted to explore Shanghai before Taiwan but some visa complications later I realized it was a sad impossibility. So, armed with my laptop, ipod, a book, my camera I felt enough projects to keep me occupied for at least a few hours. Dismally I walked into customs where I was transported to another desk and a lot of stamping and mandarin conversation later I figured I should say something. I began with, “Is there any way I can go into China?” She looked at me and responded “Just take the train.” Flabbergasted and a little tearful, I walked away with a passport complete with a one day entry permit into China!

Well then I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know anything about Shanghai. But at the luggage check I saw a blonde boy checking his luggage as the same time. An idea was forming so I tried my best welcoming-conversation pose and the German obliged and asked me where I was from. So I told him my Shanghai plight and he told me he was being shown around by his Shanghai-ian friend who he had been studying with in a university in Australia for 6 hours. And then he said “would you like to join us?” and I responded (with perhaps a way too enthusiastic “I’D LOVE TO!” and we were on our way.

As they were engineers they needed to take the high speed rail into Shanghai and we were soon traveling at 300km/h and were in Shanghai 8 minutes later. Then onwards we went on a tourist bus and to see the Shanghai telephone tower and the river and a ferry ride across it and then to an AMAZING Chinese meal of all sorts of yummy strange things (complete with cooked pigeon with his beady eyes still staring at us). The lovely Shanghai-ian and his beautiful girlfriend found me a hostel for the night and promised to meet me for breakfast the next day. They picked me up the following day for yummy Chinese dumpling breakfast and hot soya milka and we watched the old people doing their morning tai chi or variations of it in the park.  And then a walk and talk later I was off to the airport to begin my adventures in Taiwan. I figured Shanghai was an excellent prelude to unexpected adventure I was so ready for more! 

Taipei was pretty much as busy as Shanghai but I found my dear boyfriend Roman on the other side after some plane delays and such. We couchsurfed at this guy Jon’s house, shared some stories about korea versus Taiwan and went to a night market to get some yummy food and an awesome yellow zebra hoody! The next day we were off on our climbing adventure. North of Taipei there are the most amazing boulders or cliffs right along the ocean called LongDong and to a climber, it is heaven. 500 routes stretch along this coastline and as you climbThere are more than 500 routes of different levels and just beauty unsurpassed. However, the bus dropped us off at the wrong stop so we had to walk back and a kind driver stopped and gave us a lift to where he thought the beginning of the climbing was. Well he was kind of right, yet is was on the other-other side so we went on a rather precarious hike with all our things down this muddy path onto the rocks and along the rocks. At times the path kind of petered out and the only way to get across was to climb across with quite a large drop down. It was heaven for me, I was born to leap across rocks and after a real climb (with ropes and harnesses and such) and some hours we made it to where we were meant to start. No matter, we found some water and went back to find a camping space. The only place to camp was a very uneven sort of flat rock and after a sunset climb and some food and watching a Weeds (a TV show) together on my Ipod we found some sleep to the harmony of the crashing waves.

We woke up the next day to Christmas day itself and after some climbing we decided to search for Christmas lunch. We found a little dark roadside room and ate some noodles, vegetables and a pink milk drink for the total of $3 or R20, Christmas Score! Then we decided to enjoy the sunshine and fell asleep in the sun until the sun decided to retreat behind a cloud and we decided to cross a million rocks once again to go climbing and met some very nice Taiwanese climbers who shared their ropes with us.

Not wanting to sleep on the uneven rock again we decided to hitchhike to the closest bus stop and go from there. We got a lift from a man working on a Taiwan’s second nuclear plant and coming back from work as Christmas is simply another day in Taiwan. He took us further along the way to his town and a short and cheap train ride away from Taipei. Our Couchsurfer said we could stay another night so to waste time before we could get into his house, we traveled to the other side of the city to some hot springs. At these hot springs we were included into a conversation with 3 Taiwanese adults who taught us a little bit about the Chinese language and characters. Apparently Mandarin does not have a past or future tense, yet they just say “tomorrow” or “yesterday” (which really, REALLY makes sense) and about how all the Chinese characters look like what they are trying to say. We learnt the symbol for “small” and “heart” which together means “be careful” but then I didn’t know how they really say “he has a small heart” without saying “he has a BE CAREFUL!” 

The next day we went forth to Hualien which is a small city which is the gateway to Taroko Gorge. Taroko Gorge is the place in Taiwan which holds most of Taiwan’s animal and plant life. It is characterized by a small precarious road the goes along the gorge and is surrounded by huge cliffs and mountains above. The water is a kind of unreal smoky blue and along the way are little hikes one can do around it. We rented a scooter for a few days, set up our tent in the campsite and were ready for some exploring. 

We also heard that here was a hot spring one can go to in the gorge but we were advised we shouldn’t go there because apparently 7 years ago a rock fell on a park ranger and killed him. This didn’t seem like enough reason to deter us and we rode along the sketchy road in the dark, found the entrance and descended down to the gorge. Because people are encouraged not to go there, there is no easy way to get into the pools, one has to climb through the fence and down precarious ropes, but once you are down there you are in these amazing hot pools right next to a rushing cold gorge. Absolute magic.  

The rock fall situation in Taroko Gorge was actually quite serious and in the morning we would see so many rocks on the road that had fallen in the night. The road itself had all sorts of tourist buses going up and down it daily and at times the road shrunk to one lane and with the traffic, rock falls and its twisty nature, it was interesting, if not rather harrowing driving. The reason the road was even built was to make a link between the east and the west of the island. As Taiwan is a long oval that is incredibly mountainous in the middle, one had to go all the way around the coast of the Island to get from the east to the west. However in the work, 450 men died building the road due to the many rock falls. 

We slept there for 2 nights and on our last morning we had permits to go on a longer hike up into the mountains. On is only allowed to do it with a permit and people are only allowed in before 10am every day. We were the first ones in and went up and up and up to the most heavenly views and a rather precarious walkway along the edge of mountain. Roman had been talking about wanting to see a monkey as he had only seen monkeys in the wild in Cambodia yet our couchsurfer host had told us in the 7years he has lived in Taiwan he had never one. But while walking along this hike we saw our first Macau MONKEYS! All just sitting around a staring at us giving us a wonderful show. YAY for monkeys and pretty insects and lots of spider webs. 

We then left the haven of Taroko and went back to Hualien to take a train down south where we heard the weather was warmer. All I wanted was one day of bikini and beaching which could see me through my last 2 months of COLD COLD winter in Korea. We explored Hualien a bit, had some yummy almond tea at a tea shop and kept on seeing people burning yellow paper in huge metal fire buckets. When we asked a lady why, we kind of understood from her it was something to do with Buddhism. She was burning incense as well. After some internetting I think what it was the burning of Joss Paper which is meant to be spiritual money that one’s ancestors can use in the afterlife and apparently people don’t only burn this yellow or “gold” paper but also credit cards or cheques to help their deceased relatives. 

 

Our train took us South to Fangliao where we needed to take another bus to Kenting. We walked out of the station and immediately a girl told us we needed to share a taxi with them. We decided not to argue and got in the car and after listening to some loud Mandarin conversations one of the English speaking girls told us “they are talking about how much they like fruit” and the taxi driver abruptly did a U- turn and our friend said “he is taking us to buy fruit”. So we returned to Fangliao to buy some delicious cherries, pineapple and bananas. Back in the car we again endeavored to go to Kenting. Our friends asked us where we were staying and when we admitted to having no idea they made some phone calls and found us a hotel for only $30.  

Well the hotel was really nice and fancy and we had such a comfortable sleep after sleeping on the hard ground every night and a tiny couch at the couchsurfer’s house. We tried to stay again the next night but the price had gone up to $120 dollars a night because appaently the whole of Taiwan had officially gone on holiday. 

OH DEAR! We had been living from cheap to cheap and avoiding tourists but now they came in droves. Family upon family, all accommodation and backpackers were booked up yet finally we found a dodgy looking place which gave us less spectacular accommodation for the same price as the fancy hotel the first night but a bed is a bed. We then went exploring the Kenting National Park, around the “Alley of the Butterflies” and again we saw some Macau monkeys just waiting for us! But then the rain came DOWN and we got ponchos and continued scootering to a restaurant where we ate our way through the rest of the afternoon and then around to the night market in Kenting. A huge street night market with wonderful food and cheap clothes and good vibes However, there is this Taiwan specialty called Stinky Tofu which one presumes is some mistranslation yet it REALLY isn’t. At a market it smells out about 30 metres on either side of it and it’s so vile that one immediately feels like vomiting at its putrid invasion into one’s nostrils. Apparently the taste is really good once you get past the smell but I just cannot understand why something so disgusting smelling could exist and as taste and smell are very closely connected ,this cannot make logical sense. Thus we didn’t  try any and according to experts this makes me a failed Taiwan traveler. 

Failed travelers as we were, we decided Kenting wasn’t lovely and warm enough and way too touristy, so it was officially time to find more places. But the next day dawned dark and stormy so we abandoned our leaving plans and decided to brave the weather on the scooter. Well it was the windy season and true to its name, it blew and blew us across the road in any direction it pleased yet we still decided to drive around the peninsula. Although being thrown off the road and into the roaring ocean was definitely possible we drove on and after crashing stormy rain in my eyes we arrived at a sign which said Special Scenic Area. Intrigued we stopped and found the great “Nature Fire.”

This area had natural gas coming out of cracks in the ground and when it ignites it never stops burning. Many people were gathered around this “Nature Fire” making popcorn and we braaied some marshmallows (tourism rocks sometimes, they always have just what you need). What I loved most about it was that it is fire that does not smoke on your clothes as it is not burning anything to cause smoke and secondly, when the pouring rain came and everyone ran away the fire didn’t stop burning and while the rain was wetting us, the fire was keeping us dry. 

We finally did leave Kenting and hitchhiked our way back to the Fangliao train station with some lovely couples (one of which took us to the station doorstep and gave us a present of Taiwanese snacks) and we bought a ticket to Tai-dong where we were going for the day before we took an overnight train to Taipei. It was New Year’s Eve and we figured the train was the easiest place to find accommodation. Well Taidong took us by surprise as we discovered that an Aboriginal festival was happening that very night. Although Taiwan is only 2% Taiwanese Aboriginals the culture still runs alive and proud and that night we went along a long dark road where a girl had pointed us down earlier and after walking pretty aimlessly I decided it was time to celebrate New Year’s Eve. I pulled out a bottle of wine and was just about to open it when a car pulled up. They didn’t speak English but they were trying to help us and telling us to get into their car which we didn’t think was the best of ideas as we didn’t know where they wanted to take us. Finally they told us to go into the big house we were standing next to. We asked if anyone knew English and could point us toward the Aboriginal festival and he replied “Here is the festival!”

Well they did look a little unTaiwanese and I didn’t know what aboriginals looked like so we sat down at the couch and the huge family started feeding us, ignoring our pleas that we had already eaten. I set the wine on the table and they opened it and poured it for us and asked a million questions and took a million photos. Soon they gave us both a small green ball thing, apparently “Taiwanese Coconut” that we had to chew but we mustn’t swallow. Not sure if this was in any way salubrious we realized we had no choice and chewed away at this leaf-ball-thing. My mouth went numb and Roman said his head became dizzy and I was wondering if they were drugging us when all of a sudden I was spitting out this red liquid into a bucket. Finally they announced we could spit it out and I was happy to have my mouth back. Now know that it was an Areca Nut wrapped in Betal Leaf which is a mild stimulant related to coffee. Yet it is extremely carcinogenic and when I saw some of the family’s teeth I didn’t really think it would be something I’d get into. 

Anyway soon they dressed Roman up in some traditional aboriginal wear and we wear dancing around the living room and then they herded us out to see the real festival. 100 metres down the road there were many many people all dressed in colourful clothes with bells on their ankles and going from door to door into people’s living rooms to sing songs . Apparently this is some sort of proposal where back in the day when a man wanted to marry he would take his men and they would sing to the family to ask for the girl’s hand in marriage. Now it is simply a ritual, bringing singing and dancing into many people’s homes. And as I said to Roman, it really takes the idea of caroling to a new level. We danced along the streets with them and that it was time to get on the train. 

 

Midnight passed quietly with both Roman and I fast asleep after aboriginal madness and 2013 raised its sleepy eyes on us at 3am when we had to give up our seats for other people as we were now in the standing section for the rest of the journey. We found a place to huddle on the floor and found Taipei at 5am. Then onto collecting our climbing gear and soon back to the airport and a long sleepy flight back to Korea land. 

It was one hell, or heaven of a week. Traveling laughing, being silly meeting such kind hearted people.  Hiking, climbing, scootering, hot springing, camping and Aboriginal dancing. It was one of those trips where I felt open to everything.  I always find that when you are open to everything the most magical and surprising things happen to you. Holiday gives you time to welcome the unexpected and to ride that wave of new cultures and experience. As usual I hope to always bring that “why not?” attitude of the holiday-er to my everyday life, so that new moments of kindness and love can be shared from myself to you, from you to others, from others to me. Open to give. And open to receive.