A very wonderful perk of MCAS Iwakuni is that the Guy in Charge decided a while ago that all 3-day weekends for federal holidays will be 4-day weekends. With 96 hours off, this allows Nick to travel quite far from Iwakuni without having to take actual leave. And having been bit by the travel bug recently, we decided to take full advantage of this by traveling to Taiwan for Memorial Day Weekend! We'd heard rave reviews about Taiwan and have a friend from College teaching English there so, why not? (It's funny actually because even though Nick didn't have to take any days off work, I had to take one!)
When we first contacted our friend, Shana, about traveling to visit her over Memorial Day she already had plans to visit this music festival in central Taiwan. Sounded fun to us so we prepared to join her for part of it.
She would already be at the festival when we arrived so we were to meet her at the Train Station in Taichung... Unlike Vietnam though, it was a piece of cake to take a shuttle from the airport to the train station, buy a train ticket, find our train and travel to the middle of the country! How novel.
This is where we were headed- Puli- smack dab in the middle of Taiwan.
25 minutes after arriving, we were successfully on the shuttle bus to the train station. What a smooth transition! It made me realize that this is what I expected in Vietnam and never found. But it makes sense because Taiwan is quite a few steps ahead of Vietnam. So just don't travel to Vietnam expecting this and you won't be (as) disappointed.
Buying train tickets for the HSR or High Speed Rail. We were about to find out that it is essentially the Shinkansen/Bullet train of Japan. Just orange and a heck of a lot cheaper.
But of course!
Hey! These souvenirs look just like the ones they sell for the Shin. Isn't that funny?
Oh, because the HSR is the Shin, duck-faced and everything.
Southbound: Taiwan to Taichung! Only 3 stops.
Had to take a photo of this because that's my boss's name!
Which is doubly funny because in Japan they sell "Boss" coffee
and then there's "Mr. Brown" coffee here!
Which was also a farm? Ha we were greeted by cows.
The more deluxe tents.
Tents in a pond- yes, it started pouring shortly after we arrived and this whole area became a lake. Luckily, our camping spot was elsewhere....
The bathrooms-even showers!- and food vendor area.
Shana so graciously offered me her stylish rain poncho. Surprisingly, it was purchased in the last year- which means it either hadn't sold in the 80s and they were trying again or this is just what the Taiwanese wear.
The rain let up after a short while but there wasn't much grass around so the whole festival area became extremely muddy. Like really, really muddy.
Heading to practice our techno dance moves in the mud.
They tried very hard to make you feel like you were in a Techno club with their decorations.
Since it was still quite early, meaning it was too light out to dance, we went on a walk around the area.
and found a really big spider! See him circled in red above Nick's head?
There he is again- that too large of a speck above the trees on the right.
Turns out we had been climbing a hill. Shana and I at the top!
Found some sort of creepy, abandoned (?) shack at the top.
And a creepy abandoned bath tub?
Dinner time! Found the driest place we could to sit and eat.
Here's our campsite! It actually stayed nice and dry throughout the rains of the weekend.
It was also located right between both stages (there were only two-turns out, this was a rather small festival) so it was a good location. But- oh yeah- the music went all day and ALL night. The tag line for the festival was "72-hours of nonstop techno music."
Luckily, camping and staying up late makes you tired so we were able to sleep through most of the night regardless.
More decorations from stage #2.
That night, I didn't even attempt to capture the festivities. I didn't have the right camera, flash, etc. so instead, here is a pretty good video of what it was like to fest in Puli:
Daytime ^^ Nighttime \/ \/
Nick was a little too long for the Taiwanese tent. Plus he head LAYERS of mud caked on to his feet. This is the scene I woke up .
The concert ended at about 1pm but we weren't ready to be done partying until about 4:30pm. Turns out, this was after all the shuttles had stopped running because most everyone had already left. Never fear, we called for a 10 person cab back. But first, we had to wait for it to make the hour drive out to the festival location.
So while we waited, we made friends with some of the staff that were still there. Jinger had worked the bar area and was particularly cool. Shana and her friends wanted a way to be able to contact her when they returned to Kaohsiung and there was no paper in sight!
Oofda! was it good to rinse off the mud and get back to civilization. We went with Shana and her friends to Kaohsiung where they all teach English. While Shana's friends were too tuckered out, we had a quick dip in the pool at her apartment and then headed to a night market.
The night market was REALLY neat! Definitely a highlight of the trip. Unfortunately, my phone only had enough juice left for this one photo of the variety of dried fruits offered. Just one stand of the dozens offering interesting and cheap things to eat. We tried chicken feet (ew), pink guava (weird), squid, mystery chicken organs on a stick, chicken sandwich (pretty good), Australian meat pie with mashed potatoes (tasty), and milk tea in a bag. Overall, my appetite was squashed by the intermittent whiffs of stinky tofu- which was pungent, pervasive, and putrid- it seriously like raw sewage- yuck.
Shana had the morning off so we wanted to try to see Monkey Mountain and get to the beach- because it was BALLS hot and humid. The best form of transportation in Taiwan is moped. Shana had her own but it could only fit one more. No worries, though- she just called up her mechanic who just lent us a scooter and helmet for the day- no license, no ID, no insurance, no collateral, and completely free! It's terrific when you can still trust people.
So we got the scooter, had a breakfast at the bakery down the street- yum!, and set off to see some wild monkeys.
It was a GORGEOUS day but it must have been too hot for the monkeys. We made it to the top of the mountain to no avail but did find an awesome view and neat temple!
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
We were struck by how colorful the temple was! Very different then the monochrome browns of the Japanese temples.
Once again we were without paper- but Nick was a willing medium.
It was hot- really hot- so we stopped at a tea shop on the way to the beach. Shana only knows a handful of words for Chinese fruits so we ordered what she knew- passion fruit, lime, and pineapple tea- SO tasty and SO refreshing! It even had chunks of passion fruit in it with the seeds which were quite sweet!
Shana then had to leave for work and we didn't want to get lost so she lead us back to the main road and we didn't make it to the beach. Oh well. She had drawn us a map of another cool place to go but first, we wanted to get out of the heat so we went back to her apartment for a siesta and to wait out the heat of the day.
So later, we got back on the scooter and followed her map to Lotus Pond, which has these amazing and colorful temples along the shore.
Quick stop for Wax Apple from a street vendor- yum!
The Lotus of Lotus Pond.
Into the dragon's maw!
This is what the inside of a dragon looks like, in case you were wondering.
It's full of Chinese folk tales.
The lake and the day were so beautiful we took a few laps on the scooter and tried to capture some of the beauty.
We had plans to get food with Shana when she got off work but we needed a snack to tide us over. Nick likes to try McDonald's in other countries so yes, that is were we went. Although, it turned into a highlight of the trip because there was this sign in the bathroom...
(so we should through it on the floor?! lol)
...this 'playroom' for the kids...
(The kiddie play area was just a small rubber room with no toys. We found this so funny because you know how the McDonald's in the states have those really cool playrooms with the tubes to crawl through and plastic ball pits and when you were on road trips as a kid you used to always beg mom and dad to "please, let's stop there! That one has the best playarea!"? Well, apply that same concept to the Taiwanese children- do they beg mom and dad to "please let's stop at that McDonald's! It has the best rubber room. It's nearly 7 feet long! Can we please stop?" !! hahaha
We stopped to check out a 7/11 and found these gems:
Black Fungus Drink, anyone?
Instead of "one cup" that it's called in Japan, in Taiwan it's just "The Cup."
Parking our ride for the night
Dinner with friends. We had wild boar's meet, some delicious peppered beef and tasty fried rice.
All too soon, it was the last day of the trip. Shana had to work that morning and we still had to return the scooter so we set out bright and early at 8am (jk) to return the scooter. Alas, it was raining that morning. We only had a 10 minute ride ahead of us but it was enough to get drenched.
View from the elevator lobby on the 15th floor of Shana's building.
(Her apartment is also on the 15th floor.)
The scooter shop wasn't open yet so we just parked it and left the keys in the cubby for the owner to find later.
As we said our good-byes to Shana under an awning, a little Taiwanese woman saw that we were drenched and ran up to us to give us a yellow poncho. Too bad our scootering was over for the day but I still wanted to put it on, over my backpack and purse, while we hailed a cab.
We hailed one less than a minute later. It kept me dry while I walked to the cab though! But then, I didn't fit in the seat because my backpack was still on. haha
We soon arrived at the HSR station to catch the train that would take us all the way vertically across the whole country, and would last 90 minutes. Such a lil place!
Instead of calling it the "unloading zone" or "drop off area" they call it the Kiss and Ride! We did not kiss our cabbie. I had to capture this for my dad though because when he would drop us off at school, he used to call it the Kissing Lane.
A 90 minute nap later and we were back in Taipei. We had about 3 hours until our flight which wasn't quite enough to fit in any last sights so we had 'brunch' and then discovered what a cool airport Taoyuan International airport is!
So this airport, which we had a layover in on our way to and from Vietnam, was really neat! Terminal 2 anyways. (We had been in T1 in April). After we checked in and got through security, there were lots of activities throughout the airport to entertain you for free as you waited! We did crayon rubbings of famous sites, tried calligraphy (paint in the lines), had tea, free 10 minutes in a massage chair and used some iPads and destop computers to browse the internet! All free! It passed the 3 hours quite quickly.
Overall, it was a really, REALLY good trip and I would DEFINITELY recommend anyone to go to Taiwan!! So much fun!
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