Part 1: Taipei
We left Kaohsiung on Saturday and bussed it to Taipei, sharing the back row of the Ubus with a Taiwanese dude whose sleeping arrangement of preference was resting comfortably on Roisin's chest, but who sensed that this wasn't working out for her and kindly moved away after a while. We got to Taipei at 3 and after circling Main Station 3 or 4 times found Renata and subsequently our hotel. We spent the afternoon wandering around 2/28 Peace Park (it was peaceful) and bumping into people we knew from KHH. We got dumplings from the angry dumpling lady, had some chills in our hotel and then headed out to get insatiably lost in search for dinner, ending up at a pub called the Brass Monkey where we befriended our Hongkongese waiter Gary who gave us free magnets and sorted out the rest of our evening for us (i.e., wrote down the addy of the club we were going to in Chinese so as to avoid further getting-lost-age) We made it to Room 18, a swank club in the basement of a shopping mall, and it was kind of a scene out of The City Mouse and the Country Mouse - we felt a little like bumkins, coming to Taipei from Kaohsiung, but we loved every minute of it, from the surprisingly great looking Taiwanese men to the slutty underage girls. We abandoned ship at the point where it became so crowded that we couldn't walk 5 feet without being separated, stood around in the rain outside the 7/11 for a while, talked to a really drunk girl who told us that we sucked, hopped in a cab and continued our party in our room.
The next day we headed to the National Palace Museum, the highlight of which was definitely the true-to-life-form jade carving of a stalk of bokchoy cabbage, got a bus to Yangmingcheng National Park for some freezing cold hiking (it was 12 degrees - the travesty!) and formed the "I Hate Rachel Hoffman Fan Club", of which I am president. That was all.
Part 2: Hualien/Taroko
On Monday we caught the train to Hualien where we were greeted by the lovely Yan-Cheng who escorted us to our hostel, which was a gem even though our room didn't have real walls and it sometimes smelled like cat litter in the morning. It was raining, for the third day in a row, and of course I hadn't packed my $120 MEC raincoat, so I purchased a child-sized yellow poncho from the 7/11 and braved the weather in style. Found some curry fried rice and a temple, and called it a day. That night we hit up the "All Star Live House", a.k.a. the Only Bar in Town, for some dirty pub food and live music - little did we know that this would be our first of three nights there. The last night they gave us glowsticks to thank us for our devotion.
On Tuesday we rode the bus up to Tiansiang with the home-schooled polygamist family that was staying in our hostel. The bus smelled faintly of sausages and I had to pee the whole time but the view was spectacular so I couldn't complain. We hiked Taroko Gorge for about 5 hours and hitched down when we were ready to leave. Robyn and I were picked up by 4 very nice Taiwanese people in a sweet SUV who kept saying , "Yilan, Yilan!", which is a town in Hualien county that we had bypassed on our journey. I thought that they were suggesting that we visit Yilan, and even went so far as to draw them a map of Taiwan in the air, tracing out our itinerary with my finger and assuring them that while I was sure that Yilan was very beautiful, we weren't going to make it there this time around. Upon the realization that what they really meant was that they were GOING to Yilan, now, I got them to drop us in Taroko proper, because we didn't want to go to Yilan with them, and got an expensive taxi back to Hualien.
Our last night in Hualien was Chinese New Year. Everything was closed, and the town was pretty quiet. We made our own fun. It must be noted that having a firecracker set off under your ass does not feel very good.
Part 3 - Kenting
After all this we took the train to Fongliao and then headed down to Kenting for some sun, beer, food, campfires, meat on sticks, street games, and banana boating. It was glorious. There were copious amounts of young Taiwanese couples wearing matching outfits and families of 6 riding around on scooters. We had a serious sand-burying session and we let Taiwanese tourists construct sand breasts with firecracker nipples for Rachel and then take pictures of her in exchange for snacks. Kenting is always awesome, but the highlight of this trip there was definately running into my neighbor from third year on the beach. He lives here too. It's a small freaking world.
Back in Kaohsiung, we arrived home to find that our cat had gained five pounds and desperately needed to be neutered and that we had to go back to work. This was less fun than frolicking around our beautiful island. Life is back to normal now, busy, and wonderful. My parents arrived a few days ago for a two week visit - a whole new kind of adventure for me. More soon.
Because I'm too lazy to post pictures from the trip up here, please do check out the following links:
http://carletoncanada.facebook
http://carletoncanada.facebook
Oh...and the meaning of life is, obviously, cookies.
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