TAIWAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just got back from a week-long vacation in Taiwan, while my students were taking their final exams. It was a much-needed break before my last 12 days in Korea. I think it will be very hard to say goodbye -- goodbyes like these are always so surreal.

Anyway, about my trip to Taiwan:

Wednesday I made an early journey up to the airport in Incheon and met up with Matt and Tim, my travel buddies for the first half of the week. We also saw Emily there, and saw her off to America!! (a little jealous....) The plane ride was an uneventful 2 hours (although we did take off 45 minutes late) and then we had an hour bus ride into the city. Taiwan's money is called the "New Taiwan Dollar" and the exchange rate is about 32NRT = 1USD. Once we got to downtown Taiwpei, our journey still wasn't over. We were actually heading down to the southern part of the island! So we grabbed a bite to eat, then hopped on a super fast train which took us to the other end of the island in only 90 minutes! It was a really nice train and I enjoyed seeing the country side. The mountains in Taiwan are much bigger than Korea's. I also saw a couple pig barns and chicken coups, and noticed that there seemed to be fewer rice paddies in Taiwan and more barley and other crops I didn't recognize. After we arrived at the train station in Kaoshiung, we STILL weren't done with our travels. We planned on taking a bus down to Kenting, but met up with a nice Taiwanese woman who spoke English (named Lilian) who had made a reservation in a van. We rode along with her because it was faster and AC'd and only a little more expensive than the bus. The van ride was quite an experience -- the driver was playing English music on the radio, so we started to sing along, and then it turns out he had karaoke equipment in the van. So, they wanted us to do karaoke! But all of the songs were in Chinese (except we found Happy Birthday and We Will Rock You). The van driver asked if he could take pictures of us and use it as promotional material. We said sure, what the hay. We arrived in Kenting after 9pm, so it had been a long day of travel. Lilian recommended some youth camp for us to stay in, and we went there and they were full (and swarming with middle schoolers). Luckily they gave us a recommendation for a "cheaper hotel". It turned out to be in the back of a t-shirt shop! But it was perfect!! It had 2 double beds and a single bed pushed together into one wall-to-wall bed, and a private bathroom, and an AC! (The AC was key -- Taiwan was HOT and HUMID!) We were pretty exhausted by the time we got to the hotel, so we showered and hit the sack.

Thursday we woke up and got some breakfast across the street -- ham and egg toast sandwich and orange juice! Then we were off to the beach. We ended up walking about 3 miles to find the beach we were looking for (and the last little bit was across sharp and jagged lava rocks -- our own fault!) and spend a nice relaxing late morning/early afternoon on the beach. The water was a beautiful blue color, but the wind was really strong and when it picked up the sand it was quite painful on our skin! It also seemed like the purpose of the beach was for jet ski's and tubing -- no hotties like we were hoping for! We had read that we could cliff jump near this beach, but found out that the wind was too strong to do it that day. So I did a baby jump (5 feet) and we did a little snorkeling sans the snorkel (but still saw pretty fish!!!) We wanted to find some delicious Taiwanese food for lunch, but most of the restaurants that we found were selling foreign food. So, we ate at a pasta place. I got "garlic with chili" spaghetti, and was hoping for a meaty chilly topping. Instead, it meant garlic with chili peppers! It was QUITE intense and I felt like I could breath fire (and keep away ghosts). After lunch we caught a bus back to Kenting and headed to a beach on the other side of the city. There were no jet skis or tubers, so it was really nice. We all went in the water together and were riding the waves. I also got stung on my hip by something, and the boys wouldn't believe me. Then whatever it was stung me on my wrist! Then the boys finally believed me. Luckily it wasn't anything serious, and it stopped stinging after an hour or so. We went back to the hotel and cleaned up and then headed out to the night market that spanned the length of the main street through Kenting. It turned out to not be a very good market, but was still interesting. There were lots of carnival games, and lots of food. I tried bubble tea for the first time, and basically fell in love with it! (Bubble tea is tea with giant balls of tea flavored tapioca in it!)

Wulai

Bullet train back up to Taipei

Friday we ate breakfast at the same place and then set off to find scooters. We planned to drive around the whole tip of the island that day. Well, it turned out we needed an international driver's license to get them, so that was a no-go. :-( Instead we decided to get bicycles! Tim and I got a 2-seater and Matt got his own. We biked down to the tip (maybe 6 miles or so) and it was pretty interesting on our two-seater, since it had no gears and the road was quite hilly. Also, we think the back seat of the bike was made for a child, because I kept hitting my knees on the handle bars, but oh well! :-P When we got to the tip, there was a light house and a park we could walk around in. So, we just walked through the jungle in this park and saw some beautiful views off the coast. We couldn't go in the lighthouse, though. It started to look like rain, so we turned back towards Kenting. We stopped halfway and got some Taiwanese food. The menu was all in Chinese, and the owner spoke no English (this was actually quite common in Kenting. There was HARDLY anyone who spoke English, and they all seemed surprised that we couldn't speak any Chinese!) so we just pointed to a few random things on the menu and ordered them. They all turned out to be ok! We biked the rest of the way to Kenting and returned the bikes and headed to a Starbucks to check our emails. Right after we got there it started POURING! We were pretty worried about our 10 min walk back to the hotel because none of us had umbrellas. Luckily it let up a bit and we made it back to the hotel completely dry. Then we had quite an ordeal trying to get back to the train station in Kenting. We had made a reservation for 5pm with the same van company that brought us down, or so we had thought. (We had our hotel call) Well, at 4:45 we saw the van down the block and so went down to talk to the driver. It turns out that he was taking an earlier group, and he said our driver would be there at 5. So, we waited. At a little before 5 some taxi drivers came over and tried to get us to go with them, but we had already made a van reservation. Then a taxi driver came back and said that the van company called him and he was supposed to take us. Well, we obviously didn't believe this. So he said "wait 10 minutes" and left. Well, by 5:15 we were wondering what was going on! So we went back to our hotel, and the one man who could speak a little English was there, so he called our driver again. I guess the driver had never said he would come get us, so our hotel guy was just like "sorry." So we go back to standing on the street, hoping another taxi will come by. Then some random guy with an unmarked van pulls over and offers to take us. We say, what the heck! And all got in. It turned out he was a legit driver, because picked up another 5 people (including one from some sort of prison-type place with barbed wire?!) and then drove in the rain up to Kaoshiung. we planned on spending the night near the train station and taking a train up to Taipei in the morning, but it turned out there were no hotels nearby. So, we grabbed some food and hopped on a late train up to Taipei. (All our plans for this day had failed, hah!) We got in to Taipei quite late, but decided to try to stay at the hostel I had booked for the following evening. We showed up there and it turned out to be a TOTAL DUMP and the lady tried to get us to stay on her couch for a discounted price, but the couch was full of creepy guys, and then she magically had 2 beds and a cot for us. For some stupid reason we went ahead and paid. Then we thought "we really don't want to stay here" so we went out and found a nearby hotel, which was 4x the price, but SOOO nice! Luckily we ended up getting our money back from the hostel and instead stayed at this very nice hotel. It was FABULOUS and we slept pretty well that night!

Saturday morning we slept in in our cushy hotel and then ate the hotel breakfast buffet. We were supposed to meet Anne at the train station at 12:30, so we had some time to kill in the morning. We decided to walk around a bit and ended up in Peace Park downtown. It is a memorial park to the uprisings against the Japanese colonials that started on February 28, 1947. We also went to the 2-28 memorial museum. None of us had heard anything about these events before, so it was interesting. The park itself was beautiful!! After the museum we stopped by good 'ol McD's for an ice cream cone. We got to the train station a little early, maybe around 12:15, to meet with Anne. We waited.... and waited... and waited. around 1:00 or so I think we sat down and started playing word games with each other. Every now and then someone would take a walk around the station to make sure she wasn't waiting for us somewhere else. Well, on his 1:30 walk, Matt found Anne! It turned out she had been waiting for us since 12:45 but on a different side of the terminal. Oops on all our parts, but its good that we found her. That station is huge and confusing and we got lost in it many times over the next few days! We took Anne and her bag back to the hotel, then set off to go to a museum about Aboriginal culture in Taiwan. It was pretty interesting to learn about all the different communities and their cultures. I especially liked their textile styles. Then we headed back to the hotel to rest for a bit and THEN we headed out again, this time to a night street market. We were supposed to meet up with one of Matt's friends from college who lives in Taiwan, but she was really late. Eventually she came, and she took us to try some Taiwanese street food. We had dumplings, Chinese pepper sausage, stinky tofu (fermented tofu -- a typical Taiwanese food I think), chicken anus, noodles, and bubble tea. Overall, I didn't think the market itself was very good. There were no crafts or souvenirs, it was all just cheap clothing and carnival games. But, I'm glad we went for the experience. I think Saturday nights must be the busiest time for the market, because it was jam-packed with people everywhere!! After the market, we were all feeling a little sleepy and quite full, but our night was just beginning. We headed back to our hotel and got cleaned up because the boys wanted to go to a gay bar that night! Let me just say we had a little too much fun pre-gaming in the hotel and I don't remember much about the gay bar except that Anne and I were basically ignored by all the other guys who were super focused on the other men, hah! It was a good night, though!

2-28 Peace Park.
Night market in Taipei. (above: me holding bubble tea)

Sunday was a rough day for all of us! Matt had to catch a flight home, and Tim didn't get home until the morning hours. Anne and I got up for the hotel breakfast, then I went back to sleep until 11am. I woke up feeling not-so-hot again, so we went and got lunch at McDonald's and, MAN OH MAN, it was the best chicken nuggets, french fries, and oreo mcflurry of my LIFE! :-P After lunch we headed to a handcraft store that had all sorts of Taiwanese pottery and other crafts. I ended up buying quite a bit (surprise surprise!) -- 2 hand painted rice bowls for my host family, a large vase for myself, a small vase for my mom, and 2 tea cups for my mom. After our brief shopping expedition, we headed back to the hotel to rest, but it started pouring on us when we were just a couple blocks away. We got completely soaked!! The rain was a good excuse to lay down and waste the rest of our day though! :-) Later that afternoon we set off to find Taipei 101, which is the tallest (completed) building in the world. I guess they are building something in Dubai that will be taller once it is finished. We took the fastest elevator in the world up to the 89th floor, taking only 37 seconds! And we could also go up to an outdoor observatory on the 92nd floor. We had really pretty views of the whole city. Inside there is a giant "wind damper" ball, that I guess helps stabilize the building during strong winds, earthquakes, etc. Taipei 101 is mainly an office building, but the first 5 floors or so are a shopping mall. We decided to get Thai food in the food court, but then also saw Auntie Anne's pretzels and HAD to get some pretzels!! ^^ Taipei 101 is located in a really nice and modern district of Taipei, near the City Hall subway stop. We walked around the area for a bit, then headed back to the hotel. We finished the night by taking a walk around the neighborhood.
Walking to Taipei 101 -- the tallest completed building in the world.

Monday was our last full day in Taiwan. After eating breakfast, we set out on our journey to Wulai, a small town about 15 miles south of the city that is also a national park. Our adventure involved taking the subway to the end of the line, then trying to find a bus, which we found with the help of some nice people, and then standing on this bus that was on a VERY windy road for about an hour. The bus took us out into the country which was very lush and jungle-like. Then we got dropped off on the side of the road and had to walk about a mile down towards the river and then back towards a stream. We found it eventually, thanks to my Lonely Planet guidebook! We only saw a few other people near the trail leading to the river, but once we walked a little up the stream we saw no one! It was gorgeous and we had it all to ourselves. We went to Wulai to do "river trekking" which is basically hiking/walking in a river. My guidebook recommended buying some special shoes to help us walk in the river without slipping. The shoes have felt on the bottom and they really helped! (That doesn't mean that we didn't fall at all though! ;-) ) Further up the stream we came to a deeper part of the river and took some time to just swim around. We also had a little too much fun jumping off a rock and taking ridiculous pictures! A little later on we heard one clap of thunder and got pretty nervous. A rain storm would make the river swell and much more dangerous. We turned around right away, but it never did rain. On the way back Tim and I decided to jump off a large man-made dam/waterfall and it was really scary but also really awesome! There were some Taiwanese guys there who told us the best part to jump off of, etc. We really had a great time and this was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. We headed back to the city and to our hotel quite exhausted. That night we got dinner at a chinese restaurant and we had some delicious sweet and sour pork, egg with mixed vegetables, and fried rice! YUMMY! We ended our trip by heading back to the area near Taipei 101 to go see the movie "The Hangover" which was really funny!!

River hiking in Wulai!
Jumping off a man-made waterfall!

Tuesday was basically a solid day of travel for me. We left the hotel around 8:30, had a half hour walk to the bus terminal, an hour ride to the airport, 2 hours waiting at the airport, a 2.5 hour flight up to Seoul, and then 4.5 and 1.5 hour bus rides, and then a taxi, and then I was finally home around 10:15pm. YUCK!! It felt good to be back with my host family!! ^^

A few general notes we had:
1. we were not stared at like we ALWAYS are in Korea. Why is it that Koreans are so surprised to see foreigners, after more than half a century of having westerners here?
2. The Taiwanese wait in line for the subway! On the floor they have little waiting line areas to get on, and open spaces to let people get off. People actually stay in their designated space, unlike Korea where everyone just rushes to the door!!

Here are the links to the pictures from my trip, choose one:
**This one has fewer photos, lower quality, but has captions:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024583&id=62600128&l=73230f94c4
**This one has more photos, higher quality, but no captions:
http://s378.photobucket.com/albums/oo228/bvitteto/Taiwan%20July%202009/