Hualien City

Unfortunately we decided not to go to to the Taroko Gorge as the clouds over the mountains looked quite low and threatening, so instead we spent the morning setting the world to rights. We had quite an in depth discussion about how we felt with regards to the current pollution crisis and what we feel we can to ourselves to help from vegan ism, transport systems, housing and how we feel the government can and should encourage the population to make the right choices. Obviously us taking so many flights etc is not helpful towards this so we actually looked to see if it was possible to do the shorter journeys by land or sea, but it was interesting to find out that a lot of them you actually can't. 2 coffees and a green tea in we decided we should probably go for a wander.

We wandered to a park to have lunch, Will bought a ring donut from a bakery and then we went along the river towards Pine Garden. It was hot, cloudy and muggy. Along the river we found the perfect spot for watching jumping fish. That entertained us for a while!! No idea what the fish were but they were big, silver and could jump impressively high. We thought they might be salmon but we are unsure. We also spotted a yellow wagtail on the side of the river.

Once we got to the Pine Garden we realised you had to pay. It is literally 5 pine trees in a garden!! There were pine trees outside the park! Seriously why do they make people pay for these things. So needless to say we didn't go in. Instead we walked back to the river walked to the opposite side, watched the fish, saw a grey heron and then walked around the city centre until we could justify it being dinner time.

For dinner we went on a bit of a foodie tour. Will had a chicken roll (3 chicken balls wrapped in chicken skin and grilled on a stick, it wasn't great actually), a KFC style chicken drumstick, we tried green bean mochi (still not a fan of mochi), a croissant filled with custard with a meringue on top (this was dessert when we got back) and then xao long bao (sooo yummy, will ate 5!!). Will was then super full so we started to head back, but I was still pretty hungry. On the way back I saw a buffet style restaurant that had looooads of veg so I just had to go in. I just filled the plate with lots of veg and... the thing we have been looking for since we got here... the famous 1000 year egg. Also known as the Pidan it is a Chinese preserved food product and delicacy made by preserving eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, quicklime, and rice hulls for several weeks to several months. I can't describe how God awful this looks,but I will try and describe its textures (see last pic below, bottom left weird eggy thing... ). What would normally be the yellow yolk is still runny, but is a congealed, green, slimey goo, which oozes when you cut up the egg. What would normally be the white of the egg is a brown jelly. The whole thing tastes like a Kippery Egg. If you close your eyes it actually isn't that bad but the look of it is another level. To sum it up, I thought it was fine, but Will was feeling quite queezy after just one bite. Finally we went back to our long await gyoza shop and bought 5 gyoza. All in all we only spent £6.38 on what was actually quite a lot of food 😊

When we got back to the hostel we booked our taxi for the morning, packed for our 7kg handluggage flight and then ate our amazing desert, yum!!Read more