Posts from ‘Travels’
Things from May 2014
May has been a pretty crazy month. Besides the things that have been happening at work, a lot of things are happening in my personal life as well. To deal with that I’ve resorted to being more active. The Bridge to Nowhere hike has always been a goal for me to do one day. That day finally came when a friend suggested we go. I thought it was a pretty good idea but completely underestimated the length of 10 miles. Let’s just say getting there wasn’t an easy task. At the end tho, it was all worth it. The scenery is gorgeous, and nothing beats hanging out by a cool stream during a hot day in the company of good friends.
On the homey side of things, I finally had time to clean up my apartment, moved my workstation away from my bed, and did a little bit more stuff cleansing. I feel the key to living a balanced life is to be comfortable in your own living environment. For the longest time, I’ve had the workstation right next to my bed. It created a problem where as soon as I get up, get home and before bed, I’m almost always on the computer. This new layout makes it a little less accessible and separates work from rest, which I feel for me is becoming a much more important issue at this point in my life. With that finally settled, I’ve also had time to cook a little bit, do some work on my personal project.
This weekend I’m proud to say that I spend both days being active. Even though now I am physically tired, I feel a lot more relaxed mentally and much more content. Also, slack-lining is no joke, I am still hurting from yesterday.
Went to Anza Borrego Desert over the weekend. It was really REALLY hot. We wanted to do some hiking and started our trip camped out in culp valley. The next day we drove down into the desert and checked out “the slot”. The .8 mile hike while short was awesome because of the constant shade and crazy scenery.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Its partially due to internet being blocked at work, but also because I’ve been pretty busy and lazy. I’ve build up quite a bit of photos of everyone though, and wanted to post them just so I won’t forget later on. It’s been a fun and kind of crazy year so far. A lot has happened and I’m constantly feeling like I don’t have enough time for anything. Though I do feel its a good thing to be busy than to be bored all the time. Hopefully this trend continues and this will be the most exciting and interesting year so far.
I also recently road-tripped to San Francisco and had the pleasure of going to Point Bonita Lighthouse.
And since this is turning into a photo dump, might as well post this too =D (fashion shoot at my place, thanks Stanley for always bringing over really hot girls).
O and …. Bloodmoon!
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!
Last week, two friends and I decided to go on a road trip. The objective was simple, drive some of the best roads in california, head for the north through the sierras, and come back home along the coast. While I can’t describe the thrill of the drive in words and photos, we did run into some spectacular scenery. California is beautiful, and diverse. Through our travels we saw deserts, forests, mountains with harrowing cliff side roads, and miles and miles of flat farm land with arrow straight highways.
Our trip started through the Angeles National Forest and landed us right in the middle of the Mojave Desert, from there we turned left and drove into the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.
Overlooking Lake Isabella, from here we head north along the Kern River into Sequoia National Park.
Giant Trees line the road in Sequoia National Park. The road is completely empty except for us because of the government shut down.
Sunset on Lake Success, heading back down the mountain to spend the night in Visalia. Next day we are going back into Sequoia and out to Fresno and eventually north to Sonora which will put us right at the entrance into Yosemite National Park.
Yosemite recently experienced a HUGE forest fire that burned hundreds of thousands of acres, this is the devastation left by the fire.
Yosemite park was also closed due to the government shut down, we were not supposed to stop at any point along the highways but this view was too incredible to pass up.
Sonora Pass was by far one of the craziest roads I’ve driven. Heading east from monolake back to Sonora, at the beginning of the route, a sign warned us of a 26% grade incline. The road itself was like a roller coaster, taking just a few miles to get from the base of mono lake to almost 10,000 ft.
We spent the night in Vallejo. The next day we headed north west to check out Point Reyes National Seashore, due to the government shut down, the beaches and the light house were closed, so we turned around and started down HWY 1.
The entrance to Marin Headlands was packed with tourists, possibly because like Point Reyes it was closed at the top. We waited around and managed to find parking, and spent a few minutes hanging out overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we promptly left San Francisco before rush hour traffic, and spent the night in Monterey. The next day was spent cruising down HWY 1 along California’s majestic coast line.
Eventually we turned onto another mountain road that crossed us over to hwy 33 and then back onto the 5 freeway. At this point, fatigue was setting in, we arrived in Los Angeles just in time to get home and knock out.
note: missing a few photos, more will be uploaded as I get through them
Spent the weekend on Santa Cruz Island. We landed at Prisoner’s Harbor and then hiked 3 miles to the Del Norte campsite.
getting to the island took about an hour by boat from Ventura Harbor.
on the way we saw a few buoys and this container ship headed for Long Beach.
there were also a lot of dolphins
on the island there were tiny foxes, about the size of house cats
and lots of fennel
these are the natives
even cannibals eat junky these days
the hike was roughly 3 miles to the campsite, getting there took us 3 hours, while coming back only took us a little more than 1 hour
heading back to be picked up by the boat