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Taiwan

September 2018 - April 2024
An open-ended adventure by Shahnavaz Read more
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  • TravelerTaiwan
    Day 1

    Bye bye Singapore, Hello Country No. 8!

    September 25, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ 🌧 30 °C

    5am...ring ring ring... Ahhhh!! I've not missed this feeling... Up we get for country number eight, Taiwan! Upon booking our trip we didn't have Taiwan on the cards but after finding very cheap flights it quickly became our top destination and after a bit more research we got more and more excited. Taiwan is an island with great food, beaches, mountains and affordable. Tick, tick, tick.

    Definitely got the hang of our airport efficiency, Grab taxi setup, breakfast (leftover biryani), packed, clothes laid out, all we had to do was roll out of bed, check-in, and find a seat. So, I'm not sure if other people play the game "Let's see what we can get with the leftover currency", but it is always a highlight of our early morning airport trips (we are pretty tired so need some excitement!). Today we were able to get two coffees (£1.50 total) and two mentos tubes (£1.10 total), bargain!! You couldn't even get that in a normal shop in the UK never mind an airport. Singapore is such an affordable, yet established country, we really love it here.

    Now on our flight waiting to jet off. Taipei here we come!

    Of course we do the majority of our research for Taipei on the plane over. First panic... after being in Singapore for a while I forgot that actually everything here will be in Mandarin. Well downloading Google translate offline will be the first job when I get WiFi! Many people have said 2 weeks is more than enough time but from reading more about it I don't think 3 weeks is enough, let's see.

    On arrival everything went pretty smoothly, immigration was straightforward, grabbed a Sim card, got out cash, jumped on the MRT, walked for a bit and checked into our hostel.

    The hostel is very modern inside and seems pretty quiet so far but it is the middle of the day. Our "room" is pretty cute. We booked a double bed in a dorm room. There are 4 doubles and 4 singles each with their own compartment. Of course ours is the tiny hatch in the corner on the bottom, we literally have to crawl in 😂 Inside it is super roomy though so overall its looking good.

    By the time we got in it was dinner time as we hadn't had lunch so we headed to one of the largest night markets in Taiwan, Shilin Night Market. It absolutely chucked it downWe tried Peppered Pork Bun (really yummy), Chargrilled Spring Onions Wrapped in Bacon (way too oniony), King Oyster Mushrooms in a lemon, pepper and seaweed rub(number 1 of the night), Long Xao Bao (tasty) and "Small cake wrapped in large cake" (the lady smashes up a crunchy sugary thing into a pancake and sprinkles coconut on but it was tasteless and a waste of calories). All in all a success 😊    Read more

  • TravelerTaiwan
    Day 2

    Wandering the streets of a rainy Taipei

    September 26, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ 🌧 25 °C

    I think my worst nightmare of sleeping in a dorm room is to have someone snore like a foghorn the whole night and guess what that just happened. If people are party animals and being annoying you always have the power to tell them to stop and worse case get the hostel to shut them up. However, if people are horrific snorers you are completely powerless. It's not actually their fault so I can't get angry but at the same time I wanted to die after the first 20 mins never mind the next 8 hours.

    Ah well, after a 20 min nap at 9am when they left I felt refreshed enough to get on with the day. Not sure if you've seen in the news but Japan is taking quite a hit from Typhoon Trami which is creating quite a lot of rain here in Taiwan. Rain coats on and off we go. Today we visited Bo'an Temple, Confusious Temple, Elephant Mountain (why we thought this was a good idea I will never know) and then to Taipei 101 the tallest tower in Taiwan. As the weather was pretty dreary it wasn't really worth going up but we did attempt to get in the highest Starbucks in the world. Well we attempted... Unfortunately we were rather unsuccessful as you have to book a day in advance, so instead we wandered round the mall tried a lot of pineapple cake tasters and then sat down to rest our feet with a Bubble Tea.

    For dinner we went to Tonghua Night Market and ate Stinky Tofu (very stinky but tasted fine) and pork dumpling noodle in a chilli sauce with a green bean/okra side dish. Happily full and a bit sick of the rain we headed back.    Read more

  • TravelerTaiwan
    Day 3

    World Tourism Day

    September 27, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ 🌧 29 °C

    Today's plan is to take advantage of being a tourist by going on a free Historic City walking tour and then to the National Palace Museum which is normally around £10 but free today!

    After an amazing night sleep we went for our Historic Walking tour. Molly out tour guide spoke fantastic English and really knew her stuff. We saw the Longshan Temple, bought ice cream at the oldest ice cream shop in Taiwan, learnt about the various rulers of Taiwan, saw Taiwan's equivalent of Times Square, learnt why the Chinese design curvy streets (to prevent attackers and the Chinese Zombie), saw and heard about history of the 228 Peace Park and the stories of Chiang kai-shek. During the break me and Will ran to a bakery where we had a voucher for a free tourist gift, a pineapple cake and two nougat bars. Then we saw the Presendital Parliamentary building, the concert hall, theatre Hall and finally the Chiang kai-shek memorial.

    For lunch we headed to Nanmen market hall for beef noodle soup and then to the National Palace Museum. By the time we got to the museum it was about 4pm and we had been wandering round since 9:30am so we were quite tired with pretty sore feet. The museum was free so we decided to make the most of it anyway. Overall it was quite interesting and had a few pieces of interest but I was very much looking forward to a proper sit down. At the museum we saw various paintings with calligraphy, a meat shaped stone that looked like pork belly but was actually a mineral known as banded jasper, a jade bokchoy and much much more. The museum was huge, we only got round one section before having to stop due to throbbing feet.

    We are now both starving for dinner so it's time to head off in hunt of food. We tried Raohe Night Market and having been to 3 night markets in Taiwan, I'm convinced they are the same with different names and size. We had beef bone soup, pan fried dumplings and a Peppered Pork Bun again and then headed home to plane for our next day.

    The original plan was to stay one more day and do a day trip to Jiufen, a neighbouring town. However the hostel tried charging us double as its a Friday and the rain from the passing typhoon is supposed to be worse tomorrow and therefore worse on the north east of the island. So we are going to go to Taichung, famous for its food and on the west of the island. We've also booked in for our very first couchsurfing experience! Bit of an adventure so let's see how it goes 😊    Read more

  • TravelerTaiwan
    Day 4

    Taichung - Phew no rain!

    September 28, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ 🌬 26 °C

    When asking about getting to Taichung everyone said don't take the bus and take the train instead. Obviously we decided to ignore this advice and go for it anyway and I'm glad we did! The bus was very empty, comfy and took pretty much the same time as the cheaper train and their was a bus every 15 mins! 2 hours 45 mins on the dot and we arrived in Taichung, blue skies! Unfortunately our host for couch surfing isn't available till 10pm so we needed to stash our bags in lockers. I'm so glad we have such small bags as we were able to fit them into the medium lockers, well with a pretty hard shove!

    To be honest we didn't know very much about Taichung until we got here and it actually has quite a few things going for it. It has a lovely park in the middle which is full of various birds, Miyahara which was a bit like walking into a Harry Potter shop selling various posh delicatessens, a small but scenic river walkway, the original bubble tea shop, a street full of animation street art and rainbow village. To sum up Taichung I'd say it's an Instagramers heaven with all the fun photo ops dotted around.

    The people have been very lovely so far and understanding of us not speaking Mandarin, but it's not held us back in daring to go into restaurants and point at food or just say 2 and hope for the best. When looking for lunch we wandered through an area that had all its shop signs in Vietnamese, it made me feel so happy. I have such incredible memories from Vietnam 😍 For lunch we went to a very busy looking restaurant and had pork knuckle noodle soup. It was really nice.

    In the evening we took a very round about journey (seriously it took us nearly 2 hours in the complete opposite direction to where we need to meet our couchsurfing host later) in hunt of the famous Feng Chia Night Market for its highly rated street food market. Was it worth it, YES! Although some of the stalls were the same it was also ideal for all those instagtamers out there. We had a crispy duck filled bao (Amazing!), the one and only fried chicken (a must eat in Taiwan), what looked like a hotdog but instead of the bread bun it was steamed rice (oddly sweet but had to be tried) and a custard tart (yum).

    Drained and tired we headed back to the bus terminal to pick up our bags and then went to meet our couchsurfing host just in the nick of time. Phew... what a crazy day (again)!

    As I mentioned this is the first time we have ever couch surfed and to be honest I was a bit nervous, but wow, I'm sure they won't all be this incredible. If they are wow. We are staying in Kevin's art studio which is in a private apartment about half an hour bus ride from the town centre. It is absolutely incredible. We have the whole flat to ourselves for free. We have our own private double room with ensuite, a kitchen, a washing machine and the best part is all his absolutely stunning art work around in every room. He's said we can stay as long as we need! I don't think this is the usual couchsurfing experience but I'm over the moon with it. We've decided to stay till Monday, so that we can cook vegetables!    Read more

  • TravelerTaiwan
    Day 5

    Things don't always go to plan...

    September 29, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    As we pretty much did every must see place in Taichung yesterday we decided to try and hunt out WiFi to plan the next couple of days after Taichung.

    In the morning we chilled out and admired Kelvin's Art work around the flat and headed out around lunch time. It took a while but through absolute luck and lots of clicking we were able to understand how to sign into the free WiFi on the street with a backup plan of going to McDonald's. We found a popular noodle soup shop and saw people picking up either a pink or yellow slip of paper and then ticking their food choice which was obviously in Chinese. I was perfectly happy to just tick a random box on a random paper but Will was rather hesitant. After a couple of minutes the owner saw that we looked quite lost and helped us out and we had Tofu noodles with veg. It was absolutely gigantic!! We sat there till it closed and ended up taking most of it home. As we were in desperate need of veg we decided to go to the shop and buy some veg to bulk out the soup for dinner.

    We then headed back to the street found a couple of chairs and sat attempting to plan. Originally when looking at Taiwan I saw that it is a smallish island but with lots of mountains, therefore plenty of things for us to do. But the more research we are doing the more disheartened we were getting as to climb most of the mountains we have to have a permit and to get a permit it seems you have to apply well in advance. Then when we started looking at more low land options and looking for accomodation it seems there is next to nothing! After about 4 hours of making 0 progress it was time to make an early dinner. It was so nice to have something simple and scummy. In need of a change I decided to read for a bit, I'm currently reading Anne Frank: The diary of a girl.

    After an hour it was definitely time to get out the house and get fresh air, and of course do our daily steps (currently on a 9 day streak and don't want to break it). We went back to Feng Chia Night Market again. Not really in search of food but wanting a snack we went in search of the biggest queues ie the most popular food. We had a treacle bubble tea (Wow), a green tea custard tart (yum) , sweet potato balls (meh, it was OK, we only queued because it seemed so popular for 2 days) and pan fried scallops and prawns with pepper and onions (only £2.50 so can't complain!). Our mood was definitely lifted and we even, although it was quite late, decided to walk the 45 mins back home as we needed to get our steps done 😊    Read more

  • TravelerTaiwan
    Day 6

    Lukang - In a hunt for temples

    September 30, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ 🌬 30 °C

    After our attempt at planning yesterday we decided to have a bit more fun and do some more site seeing by going to the village of Lukang around lunchtime. It was quite a small village known for lots of temples. We aren't quite sure if this was a normal Sunday afternoon or if it was a festival but there were hundreds of people in the small village and a couple of small parades that would visit each of the temples.

    While eating oyster omelette (It would have been great if it wasn't swimming in weird slime... Not sure what the slime was...) we were entertained by a small girl singing Let it go in very broken English. It was really cute.

    After wandering the various market stalls and more temples we headed back to the bus stop in the early evening. Unfortunately the bust was full so we were told we had to wait another half an hour. So I stood in the line while Will went to get us a bubble tea. Annoyingly another bus came 10 mins later and Will came 15 mins later with the bubble tea. Another bus soon came and we headed home.

    For dinner we bought some steamed dumplings and cooked a veg noodle soup in the apartment. Taichung has unexpectedly been really fun and has definitely lived up to having amazing food. Next stop Sun Moon Lake tomorrow.    Read more

  • TravelerTaiwan
    Day 7

    Sun Moon Lake

    October 1, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    Having had a great time in Taichung it's now time to move on and go to Sun Moon Lake a very popular place for Taiwanese at weekends! We ended up getting a much earlier bus so arrived at Sun Moon Lake by 11am. We started walking towards our airbnb when a man in a car pulled over and showed a picture of me on his phone. The owner came to pick us up which was really sweet!

    The room was basic but just what we needed. We sat outside with a view of the lake eating our sushi rolls from 7Eleven. I must admit this time we are roughing it a tiny bit more as things are a bit more expensive and we are worried about costs! So you'll probably see that we do eat from 7Eleven quite a lot (equivalent of Tesco express apart from you can heat food in them).

    Our plan for the afternoon was to hire bikes and cycle round the 35km lake. Our intentions were high but not as high as the hills around the lake so after 3km we headed back and decided to just do the easy side of the lake 😂 We still cycled around 20km, just not with steep uphills. I'm sure a normal cyclist could do them but I am not a cyclist and ended up just getting off the bike every minute! The other side of the lake was great, still tiring enough. It was a really lovely day with the sun shining the whole time.

    On our way back we popped into 7-11 for an ice cream and to top up our travel cards. Annoyingly we couldn't pay by card so we had to come back after getting our bike deposit back! Now exhausted we popped back to 7-11 to pay for our travel cards and after a look round found some bento boxes that would suffice for a cheap and cheerful and, more importantly, instant dinner. Oh and Will purchased his first Taiwanese beer. It's only 6:30pm and we are done!

    Unfortunately we haven't done our steps, despite all the cycling, so we went for a little wander before heading home.    Read more

  • TravelerTaiwan
    Day 8

    An early start... Or not

    October 2, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C

    Today is our last day at the sun moon lake. Our alarms went off at 7am as we had planned to go up Mt Shuishe. However my knee was killing after yesterday's cycle and with the high humidity doing a 12km hike was probably not the best idea. So we fell back asleep and then got up a bit later. In the morning we wandered to the top of Mt. Maolan and it was a pleasant walk through forested tracks. It's 85% humidity here so the view is ridiculously hazy. All the same it was nice to get to the top for a late lunch picnic. We sat at the top chatted for a while and then headed down. On the way down we saw some lovely butterflies and heard a woodpecker. After a lot of searching we eventually found a grey capped woodpecker! I can't remember if I've told you about my binoculars that Will got me for my birthday, but they are fab and I'm using them everywhere we go 😍

    By the time we got down it was 4pm so we treated ourselves to a salted brown sugar bubble tea along the pier. It wasn't as good as the one we tried in Taichung! Gutted.

    For dinner we went to a local restaurant that our airbnb host recommended and we're done for the day by about 6ish, so headed back to the house to pack and plan for tomorrow. When we arrived out host looked ready to go out and had been waiting for us. We didn't get his message but basically he wanted to take us to a local night market with his son. When we got there he asked us if we were full (we were ridiculously full), but we felt too polite to say... We ended up eating a Peppered sirloin steak with noodles, with a sweetcorn soup as a starter and he bought us an oyster omelette as well. We were absolutely stuffed!    Read more

  • TravelerTaiwan
    Day 9

    Alishan Forest Walk

    October 3, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    We were up and out with plenty of time to walk to the station to begin our journey to Alishan. Our host saw us and gave us some biscuits and then drove us! He's been fantastic!!

    The journey to Alishan was pretty windy around the mountains, but luckily the driver stopped a couple of times so we were able to get some fresh air and clear our heads. Upon arrival it was cold and really foggy, so we had a chicken curry and rice from 7-11 with the rest of the local tourists.

    As usual upon entering the park there were steps and boardwalks across the whole forest area. It was pleasant and the trees were so lovely but it was a shame to not be able to feel the natural leaves and soil under our feet. Once we got going the fog lifted and the sun was beaming down. It ended up being a really nice walk, very easy but a nice little wander.

    After finishing the walk we caught the train to our final stop for the day, Tainan, the old capital city and now known as the City of Snacks. Here we booked the cheapest accomodation yet and its a nice hotel room, luxury. 😊    Read more

  • TravelerTaiwan
    Day 10

    Tainan

    October 4, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    Sometimes it's the little things you miss, a soft towel, a shower that is actually warm and doesn't constantly go cold every 30 secs, a bed that you can lie on without thinking why am I lying on bricks. Well this hotel ticked all the boxes and we even got a free caramel macchiato in the morning from their coffee shop 😊

    Today we visited the Anping District which was the original ancient capital of Taiwan during the imperial times. For brunch we ate milk fish skin and fish ball soup and battered shrimp. We then walked along the canal to Anping Fort. Anping Fort, also known as Zeelandia, was excavated in the 17th century by the Dutch as a sea port for sea trading across South East Asia. Due to another typhoon heading towards Japan the winds were very strong, but luckily it stayed sunny! We then visited Anping Tree House, which was originally the warehouse of Tait & Co. During the Japanese Occupation it was the office and warehouse of the Japan Salt Company. After World War II, the salt industry in Anping declined, and this area was abandoned. After about 70 years of abandonment the site is now encased in Banyan Trees. Its absolutely incredible how these trees grow!

    The late afternoon was spent visiting Shennong Street, a hipster coffee street, various temples and then finishing off in Tainan Wu Garden listening to a guy playing complex classical music on his recorder - he actually made the recorder look like a cool instrument!

    In the evening we walked to Garden Night Market and tried coffin bread, a chowder in a deep fried bread (unexpectedly sweet!), scallion pancake (yum!), a hell of a lot of fried chicken and brown sugar bubble tea (honestly this stuff is incredible, obviously super bad for you but amazing!). Before coming to Taiwan I was never a fan of bubble tea but actually when you add a tonne of treacle and mask the bitter green tea flavour it's amazing! 😂

    Annoyingly buses are pretty unreliable in Tainan so we had to walk back, luckily it was still earlish.

    The rest of the evening was spent attempting to plan our next step, but with the weather constantly changing this is now becoming a bit of a chore. We have about 12 days left and have still not done any real hiking so we are thinking of heading northwards to try and get some good weather. We've decided to go to a place called Dulan which is on the south east coast, in hope for some OK weather. Let's see.    Read more

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