Taitung

Picked up my rental car at 9am and surpringly got out of taipei relatively easily compared to the chaos i was bracing for. Despite not seeing any mountains near or within taipei, as soon as i left the city i was up and down mountains. And through. The engineering in this country is remarkable. Several different driving segments of at least 20 straight minutes each, going through a mountain tunnel. Thats a lot longer than it might sound. Huge tunnels.

After 3 hours of driving, finally got to world famous taroka gorge. Except it was closed. How devastating! Literally meant to be the highlight of my taiwan trip. But it also messed up my other plans too. The highway through the gorge was the only way i could get across the massive mountain range down the middle of the island. Now i either gotta backtrack to taipei or drive all the way to the southern tip and back up the wrstern side. I haaaate backtracking, so i continued heading down the east coast. Really pretty drive!

Got to a city called Taitung about 75% of the way down the east coastline around 6pm, so decided to stop there. Found a great downtown hotel for 50 bucks. and then went in search of a nice restaurant. Yikes, lots of restaurants but they all look like cafeterias. All of them. Decided to eat a nice seafood linguini at the sheraton fancy restaurant instead of eating in a cafeteria.

And by 1030pm, i was done. Sooo tired. Passed out immediately.Read more