I told Audrey I would go visit her in Taiwan last year when I went on my China trip, but that never happened because ultimately we didn’t really have time. Then I said I would come visit in may but work ended up being super busy. I finally found time in the winter to take a week off to travel. This is the third time I’ve been to Taiwan, for such a small island there sure are lots of things to see.

I hopped on the late afternoon flight. Getting there took about 16 hours. On the flight I entertained myself with the inflight movies and my sketch book. It was a relatively quiet flight with almost no passengers. At around 10hrs in I felt an immense loneliness up in the air at 30,000 ft. When I looked out the window, it was pitch black, just an empty void. Luckily soon after, when I looked down again, we were flying over Japan.

As soon as I landed in Taipei, I proceeded to pass out. Next day we started our journey to Taroko National Park. To get there we have to take a 2 hour train ride to Hualien. The ride is scenic through the lush mountains and country side. As we got closer to Hualien we passed by the Pacific Ocean.

Hualien is a small ocean side city on the east side of the island. As soon as we arrived, we rented ourselves two scooters. The most common mode of transportation in Taiwan.

Having a scooter definitely opened up a degree of freedom that I didn’t have before. This was something I wanted to do last trip but never had a chance to.

We rode up through the main road in Taroko past the hotel that I stayed at last time, in an effort to catch the sunset above the clouds. Unfortunately we ran out of daylight and had to turn back.

Our hotel was a conversion from a old church. It wasn’t the most luxurious accommodations but it was cheap and clean and the view from the top of the building was fantastic.

The next day we circled back to Hualien but through some of the surrounding country side to check out the local farms. We found this abandoned house alongside a river.

This is the Hualien River, it runs north to south along the east coast of Taiwan.

We finally made it back to Hualien and picked up some tofu soup before boarding the train back to Taipei.

Markets in Taiwan are always packed but especially so during the weekends. You can find delicious foods and fresh produce as well as some everyday house hold items.

I spent the next day walking around Taipei. I took the MRT to Beitou, famous for their hot springs.

We spent the evening wandering around Shilin Night Market

Next day we headed once again. This time by car. We were headed for Nantou county in the central Taiwan.

We visited the township of Puli, a paper mill and the village of Taomi, and also the 921 Earthquake museum. We spent some time in the surrounding village of the earthquake museum which was abandoned after the disaster. Then we headed towards the mountains.

While in the mountains we came across a lot of Tea farms and Bamboo forests.

Nantou Lotus Forest was definitely a magical place, but unfortunately when we hiked up to the area, we discovered that it was dry season.

Leaving Jhushan we returned to Taipei, but not before stopping in a small provincial town to get something to eat.

annnnnnd, holiday cake.

Many thanks to Audrey and Zhong Han for taking a week to show me around your lovely island, I will definitely be back again!