Chasing Summer –

September 13-14

After leaving Japan, the Odyssey headed towards Taiwan. Oddly, we went to mid-eastern Taiwan and the tiny port town of Hulian. Here we spent two days.

Most tourists come to hellion as a gateway to Taroco gorge. Other than the gorge its other claim to fame is a night market.

On day one, after clearing customs and immigration, Angela, steve, Scott, and I headed into town. Steve was looking for a place for good WI fi to help upload a video and Angela and I decided we could drop them off and then go exploring. Unfortunately, Taiwan does not have starlink which is the Internet system that our boat uses.

After finding a starbucks, and settling the boys in, Angela and I headed off to look around. Almost everything was closed and would not be opening until the afternoon. Apparently, this is an afternoon/ evening kind of place.

One of the things we did stumble upon was a very elaborate temple. The temple was colourful and looked like it was getting ready for some sort of celebration.

Walking around on we found pedestrian areas, but nothing was really open. So we took pictures of the anime statues that we could see.

At lunchtime, Steve’s video still wasn’t uploaded, but I wasn’t willing to eat Starbucks, so I left and tried some local stuffed buns and found a bakery with delicious goods.

Later on that evening, a group of us headed out to see the night market. The Night Market is supposed to be a good place to get food, listen to music, play games, and enjoy the cooler evening weather.

We arrived a little early, so went and saw another temple, some statues.

Going through the market was an interesting experience. There was different categories of food such as Traditional Chinese as well as some more western choices hurried. We tried some local beer and rice wine.

As the sun went down more shops opened up. One of the most interesting things was walking past stinky tofu. To me, stinky tofu smells like pig poop. It must be an acquired taste.

My group began sampling different dishes like scallion pancake, pork rolls, fish balls, gooseneck, corn on the cob, and dumplings.

There were several small bands or solo artists performing throughout the two block market.

On the second day, Sue and I decided to take the 310 tour shuttle. The only thing left to do was to go to Taroko Gorge, but to do that, we needed a tour or rental car.

Several people had gone the day before on this shuttle bus and it got you to the entrance of the Gorge and you would have to hike in about an hour and a half to see any of it and that of course meant an hour and a half back in the heat.  We needed to be back on the boat by 4:00 p.m., so it didn’t seem like a good idea.

They also have a timed entry to the gorge, so only a certain number of people are allowed to go in at certain times so even if we had gotten up there early and we’d have to start the hike we’d need to wait for our entrance time and that could have been anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours later.

But we had nothing else to do, so we decided to take this 310 bus, which was actually free if you have a Transit card. We caught the first shuttle to the bus station to ask about the travel card. The gentleman let us know it costs 100 NTD for the travel card, so it wasn’t really free, but we can use the cards everywhere in Taiwan. 100 NTD is approximately five Canadian. It wasn’t too terribly bad, so we purchased the cards.

We had about 45 minutes before the bus left, so we went over to 7-Eleven to get some water and then around the area area where there were some random statues.

The whole route from beginning to end takes approximately one and a half hours. If we wanted to get off anywhere, we’re waiting 50 minutes to an hour for the next bus, so we really are committing if we wanted to go see anything at any of the other stops.

So we decided just to go all the way to the end on the first round, and after, if we saw something we really wanted on the way back, we could get off if we still had time. Some of the stops had some interesting names on the map, and the route didn’t exactly match the road we were going on, but it was close enough.

One of the ones laughed at was Pine Garden. We couldn’t see any pine trees, so perhaps they’re super hidden. The fishing harbor actually looked interesting when we went by.

Then we continued and we went out of town and we went past a few villages and museums and there was a Fun Potato Paradise, which name made me laugh and I had no idea what it was about. I’d never heard anything like it, and the brochure didn’t give you any information about it, so my mind was free to imagine what a Fun Potato Paradise might actually be out in the middle of nowhere.

Xinching Train Station was near the end, so we could have taken a train up here rather than the bus, and it would have been faster and probably cost more money.  This is where the Customer service person recommended that if we wanted to go for lunch this would be a good spot for lunch, so we just looked cuz it was three spots and we wanted to see how close together they actually were.  If they were close together, then we thought after we came back that if we were hungry, we could stop there and grab some lunch and just walk from the few different spots.

Then one of the other interesting spots was the third last one called the Asia Cement Corporation. I couldn’t quite imagine why anybody would want to get off at a cement corporation because I couldn’t imagine them letting you in, but one of the things that was kind of mislabeled on the map was that it was an ecological park. Rather than Asia Cement Corporation, they should have had ecological park there, and more people might have been like oh hey that could be something I wanted to do.

We went all the way to the Toroka Visitor Center, and there we got off. We knew we had about an hour so we went on a little bit of a trail, walking a little bit to see what it was but it was going to get too steep and too long so we didn’t go too far up there, but we didn’t need to stretch our legs after sitting on the bus for an hour and a half.

I went through the center and looked at a few things and then went down across by this main gate where the original tunnel was leading into the gorge.

Now, there was a major earthquake here several years ago, and many of the trails and sidewalks and roads are still under reconstruction and are damaged. Many trails and sections of it are closed, and I can’t really do a lot of it.

We went back up to the visitor center and got the bus coming back. I looked at Sue like, “Well are you hungry?”

She was like, “No.” So I suggested we wait till we get back to town to actually eat and go back to the dumpling place that I went to the previous day that was really good and really cheap.  She thought that was a great idea.

Since we wouldn’t get off at XIncheng I asked her if there was any other stop she wanted to go to, and it was kind of like a nah she’d rather just go back, so that’s what we did.

If I got off at any other, it would be at Mambo Oceanic Recreational Park. It had a garden by the coastal Waters, and there were food trucks there as well, so it looked like it could have been a very good spot if we wanted to kill another hour somewhere.

I did look up the Fun Potato Paradise because that one was still on my brain, and I was like, what the heck is a fun potato paradise? And I couldn’t tell anything from the bus because it was just a big old building. So I looked it up, and apparently, it is a farming museum based around the sweet potato, which is the main agricultural thing in the district. There’s all sorts of things about processing this sweet potato and sweet potato products. There is a gift shop full of the sweets made from local produce. So if you had some time it would be a fun thing to do.

Once we got back to town, we went to get dumplings and the bakery 181, and it was delicious, and I loved everybody bite of it.  Then there was a pub called Salt Lick that was run by an expat. So we stopped there at about 2:15 which was lucky because at 3:00 they closed before they opened again for dinner and the kitchen closed at 2:30. We told them we were just there for a flight of beer.

It was a low-key but interesting day.