I went to Taiwan on a recommendation from someone in a hostel, who was also from Taiwan, but who said I should visit. She was bound to say that I should visit, but the question that stuck in my mind, was ‘if you don’t go now, then when are you going to go?’. This becomes more pertinent when you think that home for me is almost on the other side of the planet.

I spent 2 weeks in Taiwan, covering both the Christmas and New Years periods. I think I escaped quite lightly, paying only marginally higher prices than in mainland China in some places. The thought of staying in Hong Kong for 3 weeks was too much and it would have left me no money to do anything else. Taiwan was a good choice, both in terms of the trip itself and the financial side of things.

This is the rough outline for what I did whilst I was there:

Taipei (3 nights)

Whilst I was in Taipei, I had to move hostels, but nothing on the scale of before. This involved staying in one hostel, which I found first and because of the time of year, I had to move the next day. There is a problem with hostels in Taiwan, in that they’re not recognised legally and any attempts to get them legalised are met with resistance and the requirement for a hotel permit. This are difficult to get, as there are numerous safety requirements, all designed for running a hotel. This is what was explained to me anyway and the second place I stayed in was not on the Hostel World website. It was on hostels.com (or something) and even though that said it was full, the woman in the first hostel rang them and checked there was space. This was somewhere that they were recommending anyway and as it was only down the road, I happily moved. I actually preferred the second place and the owner, Lin, gave me a good idea of what I should do with my time in Taiwan.

I spent the first few days exploring the city. I quickly decided that I much preferred it to Hong Kong, as there seemed to be the best parts from both mainland China and Hong Kong in one place. The weather was good, the women were beautiful and things were relatively cheap. During my time in Taipei, I went to the Botanical Gardens and the Museum of Contemporary Art, but it was on trying to find the Taipei Contemporary Art Centre (I had a very arty couple of days!) that I found something called the Culture Express, which is basically a guide to what’s going on in Taipei. Here I found the basis for the next day or so, going to a digital art galleries, open-air cinemas and an artists’ village. I also did a few other things, but basically decided that I could quite easily live in Taipei.

Taichung (2 nights)

I got to Taichung late on my last day in Taipei. I spent the morning trying to book somewhere to stay and after a few hours of trying, I gave up and got on the train. Once I was there I walked around for a bit, trying out hotels until I found one I liked and decided to stay there for two nights whilst I visited Sun Moon Lake.

Tainan (1 night)

Here I inadvertently spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. After exploring the city on Christmas Eve, I returned to the hostel to find them having a Christmas party. I was too tired to participate, so ate some German Christmas cake and then went to bed. The woman running the hostel, Jasmine, helped me find somewhere to stay in Taroko gorge, which was something I had been having problems with. She also recommended that I buy a train ticket for the lest leg of the journey, back to Taipei, as soon as possible. This I did in Kaohsiung, a day or so later.

The time in Tainan was spent wandering around the city, as they have a lot of historical landmarks and walking the entire distance from the hostel to the beach. This I did in under a day and managed to get back to the hostel in time for a train to Kaohsiung.

Kaohsiung (2 nights)

I arrived in Kaohsiung late the same day as leaving Tainan. I went to the night market for food and spoke to the women running the hostel the next day for advice on what to do whilst I was there. I got my second haircut of the trip in Kaohsiung, after getting the hostel worker to recommend somewhere and explain the instructions in Chinese to the woman over the phone. Once I got there, it was all pretty straightforward, but I think the hairdresser cut the fringe a bit too short and so I had to get the rest to match. What I was left with something slightly different to what I imagined, but it was still much better than having it long!

The rest of the time in Kaohsiung was spent going to the P2 art gallery, which was actually shut (and very expensive), walking to the Municipal Film Archives (which wasn’t very good) and going on a tour of the night markets. The second day was spent going to the Ciaotou Sugar Factory, which was amazing. It is a disused sugar factory which is now a museum and you can walk around the entire site. I think I went into a lot of areas that I wasn’t meant to be in, but it was still excellent and well worth the trip.

Kenting (2 nights)

Kenting is a national park in the far south of the island. I got a bus here from Kaohsiung, after not really following the instructions I’d been given and trying about 3 different places before finding the right bus station. I met a fellow traveller from Denmark on the bus, who was clearly the only other foreigner, before jumping off when the driver told me to. The hostel that the man in the previous hostel had recommended wasn’t shut, but the door was open and there was nobody there other than a dog and a parrot. I went next door and got someone to check me in, but after discovering that I was the only one staying there, I decided to write them a note and find somewhere else. The place that I found was just down the road and was far nicer, even if it was slightly more expensive. It seemed far nicer anyway, until the next morning when the traffic started using the main road, which was right outside my window and I could hear all of it.

The following day was spent riding around the national park on a scooter which I had hired using my previously un-used International Driver’s Permit. I hadn’t driven anything for about a year, but they weren’t to know that and after getting one of the other customers to help translate, they lent me a bike. I went around practically all of the roads that it’s possible to go round in the park and managed to get back on one tank of fuel. The shop owners thought that there was something wrong with the bike, as I’d brought it back so soon, but I just gave it back whilst both me and it were in one piece and I had enough fuel in the tank to mean I didn’t have to fill it up again.

Dulan (1 night)

My journey to Dulan was my first experience of hitch-hiking, I think. I got to the train station and the tri-lingual woman on the information desk had explained which bus stop I needed to wait at. On her recommendation, as I hadn’t booked anything, I was on my way to Dulan, instead of finding acommodation in Taitung. The bus left without me, as it was full and whilst I was waiting for the next one, two women in a type of peple-carrier/van asked me where I was going. They both looked sweet enough and their car was empty, so I got in and they took me to Dulan. One lived there and was coming to Taitung to collect her sister (the other one), who happened to know someone with a hostel. They took me to it, I had a look around and decided that I was going to be staying somewhere else. After the woman who owned it had turned up, she rang one of her competitors and the two sisters drove me to it. We all had a look around and it was exactly what I was looking for. I spent the rest of my time there trying to get to the beach (unsuccessful) and socialising with the two South Africans that ran the hostel and the people around the Dulan Sugar Factory.

Tienhsiang (2 nights)

I got the train to Hsincheng Station from Tainan and got a cab from there to Tienhsiang. I was hoping that the Chinese person who had helped me establish how I was going to get to Tienhsiang was going to get me a bargain, but after speaking to the people in the hostel in Tienhsiang, I had paid twice as much as I’d needed to. Whilst I was there I did two things; walk along the routes marked on my Map of Taroko National Park map and celebrate New Year’s Eve.

The walks consisted of the Eternal Spring Shrine Trail, the Lushui Trail and the Baiyan Waterfall Trail. The Eternal Spring Shrine Trail was good, it was a walk around a shrine than had been built to honor the workers who had died building the route through the gorge. The second one was rubbish; it was a gradual incline, some rocks, a tunnel and a bridge. The third one, the Baiyan Waterfall Trail, was amazing. I had to rush, as it was getting dark, but after squeezing some information out of someone in the tourist information centre, I set off. The entrance to the trail was within the wall of a bridge and was a tunnel that went on for about half a kilometer. The scenery on the other side was stunning and everything was on such a big scale that it put the Lushui Trail to shame. There were about 7-8 diferent tunnels that you had to walk through, all pitch-black inside. The final one, with the water curtain inside, featured pressurised water escaping from the strata in the rocks. This was also pitch-black, but there was a small path on the inside that led onwards to the deafening sound of water coming through the ceiling and hitting the tunnel floor. It was the best part of the whole day and I got soaked.

When I got back to the hostel, the hostel workers were having their dinner around the fire. They invited me to share it with them and whilst I was sitting there, someone else in the hostel asked if there was anything happening that evening, as it was New Year’s Eve. The answer was no, but we ended-up gatecrashing the party of one of the posh hotels in the village and generally just making the most of it. The next day I got up early and walked to some hot springs the other foreigners in the hostel had told me about. New Year’s Day was spent lying in a river, in about 30 cm of scorching-hot water and then jumping in the main part of the river to cool off. I had to get out after 20 minutes, as it was so hot, but I managed to get to Hualien in time for my train to Taipei.

Taipei (1 night)

This was just a stop-over to make sure I got my flight on time. Everything went to plan and I was reminded how much I like Taipei.