tuesday, 4/1/2008:
the day before, the hostel had arranged for me a one day tour of taroko national park, 998NT (~$30). i like exploring places on my own, but usually on a tour i can see more sites because my own transportation involves public transportation (which often involves waiting) and walking (which is slow), and because the tour is better at planning an efficient day. usually i don't mind having a less efficient day and even seeing less stuff if i can navigate my own day, i always have more fun, get to talk to interesting people, and feel more accomplished at the end of the day. but today, i decided to leave it to the tour guides and see as many taroko sites as possible, life is such a compromise. two other people from the hostel were also going on the taroko tour that day, a romanian woman who was teaching in taiwan and on vacation, and another woman on vacation from hong kong. (the hong kong woman took a week, flew into kaoshiung in the south of taiwan, traveled by rail up the east coast of taiwan, visiting taitung, hualien, yilan, and finally taipei, and then flew home from taipei...i need to plan a more efficient trip next time!) a van came to pick us up at the hostel at 8am and took us to the tour bus at the train station, where our tour officially started. it was about a 40 minute drive from hualien to taroko national park. shortly after entering the park, we were let out after the tour guide explained that the bathroom there was "award winning". ...i guess it was okay for being in the mountains, but nothing special. in fact, on this 3 week trip, i felt that, in general, all the bathrooms were pretty okay, i don't think i had any particularly frightening bathroom experiences. most of the first part of the tour was just sitting on the bus and looking out the window as the tour guide pointed out stuff. he kept saying, i can't let you get off here we have to keep driving because there is danger of rocks falling on us, which i guess is partly true. the view was pretty good; the marble gorges (main feature of the park) were pretty impressive. we did get to get out of the bus at a couple of places to take pictures. at the tunel of nine turns (picture), we were finally allowed to take a small hike/walk. this is an extremely easy and short "hike". then we were bussed to the lyushui trail, and took another small hike. then we had lunch at grand taroko formosa (some fancy hotel) at tiansiang. what i really wanted to do, though, was eat at the little foodstalls nearby!!! and we were pretty much on our way back to hualien, stopping one or two times more to see a few sites. the last stop on the tour was chishingtan, a beach just north of hualien. the whole day was pretty cloudy, so the water wasn't very brilliant, but it was still nice to watch and hear the waves lap onto the beach. this was supposed to be the last stop of the tour (~4:30pm) before heading back to the train station, but since we were close to the harbor, the three of us that stayed in the same hostel asked the tour guide/bus driver to drop us off at hualien harbor instead of taking us back to the train station. at the harbor (pretty normal harbor), we saw some boats and docks and what was left of the fish market was pretty small, but there was still some pretty interesting seafood to look at. our purpose for taking a detour to the harbor was to try the very cheap sashimi! i wondered at the hygeine of the sashimi, which was sold by one of the vendors selling seafood, and cut by this old woman with grubby hands. the three of us got about 9 pieces of sashimi (3xtuna, 3xsalmon, 3xbass) for 100NT (~$3)! i'm not a huge sashimi fan, but it was pretty good, very fresh! after eating, there was not much to look at. the clouds looked somewhat ominous at the time, and the harbor seemed quite a long walk back to the road, so the seafood vendor called us a cab and we rode our way to nanbin park. nanbin park has another beach, this time made up of large rocks (i love this kind of beach!). we took pictures, and i even caught a rainbow! then next to the park is nanbin night market (where i had wanted to go the first night, but didn't quite make it). again we didn't pick a very happening time to go to a night market, it was just starting up, but we walked through the games section and food section. i think it would have been fun, with friends, and later at night. my hostel mates went on their way to the street of stone art craft, and i stayed at the night market to meet up with my tour buddy again!
my tour buddy took me to meet four of her friends and we went together to a japanese restaurant. it was fun to chat with them and they asked me a lot of interesting questions, one that i remember was, "are american guys or taiwanese guys hotter?" after dinner we walked around hualien a bit. by the time we went our separate ways, it was 10pm. my tour buddy took me back to the hostel. i was so thankful for how easy transportation became once i met up with my tour buddy!! that night i stayed in the hostel's 6 bed dorm style room, which was a good deal at 400NT (~$13)!
WORTH SEEING: taroko national park, hualien coast scenery
WORTH EATING: cheap fresh harbor side sashimi
full set of pictures at picasa!
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