After 3 weeks at camp ALV I was a little tired of the summer camp lifestyle. The camp, itself, wasn’t so bad, in fact the kids were great as were most of the teachers and teaching assistants, some of which I will miss. The bad part was that I pretty much only saw the golf resort for 3 weeks straight. Granted it was a nice area and I woke up to a gorgeous view outside everyday, I really needed to get out of there before I went stir-crazy. So on the last day I collected my pay and accompanied the students on their bus to Taipei.
The following day I took a train to Hualien, a city on the east coast of Taiwan, and famous for it’s sights, surfing, and beach-town atmosphere. Upon arriving and stepping out of the train station, I knew it was true. The park in front of the train station, lined with fruit stands, locals cruising around on their scooters in shorts and flip-flops, and the smell of salty ocean air, told me; “this, this is a paradise”.
I quickly got to my hostel for a quick break and lunch before heading out to rent a scooter. The scooter rental was absurdly easy, they asked me “have you ever ridden a scooter before?” I lied and said yes. I mean, I’ve ridden motorcycle many times, I own one! But I had not actually ridden a scooter before, so once they gave me a quick once over on the features I was on my own. Riding a little 100cc scooter like that is kind of like driving an automatic car after you’ve been driving a manual for years. In the car, when you switch to an automatic you feel like you should be doing something with your left-foot and right-hand (other than changing the radio station), it just feels too easy. The scooter was the same thing, no clutch, no shifting gears, no foot break, just a throttle and front/back brakes. It was easy, yeah, but the whole time I felt like I should’ve been doing something more than wringing the neck of this poor little 100cc engine.
The area around Hualien is pretty famous for it’s scenic highways 9 and 11, north and south respectively, along the east coast of the island. As well as one of the most beautiful areas on the entire island, Taroko Gorge, on HWY 8, NW of Hualien. The first day out I rode down past Jici Beach, one of the most famous surfing spots along the east coast, unfortunately the weather was a little cool and there weren’t many surfers out. The ride however, was fantastic, so many twisty turns, great scenery, good weather, and roads devoid of any major traffic. I like to think of it as Taiwan’s Pacific Coast Highway (similar to California’s PCH), I was smiling the rest of the day.
The 2nd day out I woke up early and took HWY 9 up to the Cingshui cliffs, the views were fantastic but the drive wasn’t as nice and relaxing since HWY 9 was filled with big trucks and cars driving towards Taipei and I was spending my time dodging them while driving through tiny tunnels. Later in the day I cruised over to HWY 8 and drove about halfway through Taroko Gorge. I now know why everyone wants to go there, it really is very beautiful, and the roads through it are all very nice. Perfect for riding a two-wheeled vehicle through. I saw other guys on their motorcycles and instantly became envious that I only had 100cc under me, but then I saw a bus and was glad I wasn’t on that.
Hualien was probably the best and most exciting part of my trip to Taiwan, despite only being two days of my 32 day trip. 21 of those days were literally the same thing day in and day out which you can read about in my previous post. I saw other things in Taipei of course, like the Taipei Zoo, Taiwan 101, night markets and temples. I even made a few friends at the summer camp, with whom I was fortunate enough to hangout with in Taipei and have some beers. Overall I’d say it was a good trip and well worth it, I made a decent amount of money since I didn’t have to pay much to get to Taiwan, and I had free room and board for 3/4ths of my stay here. Just wish I had more time to go down south near Kaohsiung. Unfortunately I can’t easily come back to Taiwan for at least one year, why you ask? Well I made a mistake scheduling my flight tickets and scheduled my trip for 32 days, but Americans only get a 30 day landing visa. Meaning I overstayed my visa by two days. Resulting in a $NT 2000 ($63 USD) fine and a restriction of no free landing visas for one year from today. So unless I want to pay for a visitor visa, I can’t come back for a year, oops. I tried to correct the problem ahead of time but it would’ve cost me more to change my flight than to pay the fine. Oh well.
I’ll come back one day Taiwan, just not for another year. See my pictures here.
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