Taiwan 2013
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!
Spent the weekend in beautiful San Diego with awesome weather, delicious food and good friends. Besides the usual cesspool of dirty jokes about ass raping and pedos and porn (we’re all nit wits stuck at a level just below 3rd grade, and thanks Dony even tho you were absent), we spent the time talking about marriage and kids, and work (some). OH GOOD OL’ DAYS, I wish I were young again, but hanging out with these wonderful people certainly makes me feel so.
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
Congrats to my friends Yin and Abby for getting hitched! Let the partaying begin!
As the party got on, the night quickly descended into happy drunken blur.
Soon I lost the ability to take straight photos.
There were lots of high-fiving, and funky dancing.
The newly married Mr Yin taking a break on the outside patio
but not for long
As the night came to an end, we all happily migrated to the after party upstairs, where I became too inebriated to hold my camera.
twilight ride on Angeles Crest Hwy
