Taidong

Taitung

台東

With people being able to take very little time off from their jobs, long weekends are very big deal in Taiwan. Any time there is a public holiday, the trains and buses are immediately crammed full with thousands of people all moving around the island, with tickets to the more popular places selling out minutes after their release.

This April, we just had a four day weekend with days off to celebrate both Children's Day and Tomb Sweeping Day (where people pay respect to their ancestors at their family's tomb).  A couple of friends and I decided to take advantage of this long weekend to visit areas along the east coast which were previously unexplored by us, namely Taitung (actually pronounced Taidong) and it's surrounding towns and scenic sites.

Taitung is located in the southern section of the East Coast of Taiwan, and is both the name of a city and a county. The East Coast is notable in Taiwan for it's interesting terrain, and as you travel along the coast, you have the mountains on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, which leads to some beautiful scenery. Taitung is also home to the largest population of aboriginal people and is home to seven different aboriginal ethnic groups. Resultantly, there are plenty of opportunities to better explore Taiwanese aboriginal culture.

The train down was as packed as expected, and we were only able to buy standing seats. The aisles of the trains were crammed with other people who had also delayed too much in buying their tickets, and at the far end of the train, the section of the train which is used to carry cargo was opened up to tourists, who filled every inch of floor space available. Fortunately there was just enough floorspace to go around in the aisles, and I was able to sit for most of the four hours, although I frequently had to stand up and make way for people passing through the aisles.

We arrived in Taitung around midday, on Saturday but our final destination for the day was actually a town a little further north, called Dulan.

After a bus ride from the train station into the town centre, we hung out on the beach for a little bit while waiting for a friend with a van to pick us up and take us to Dulan.

The town of Dulan is very small, consisting mostly of one main road of hostels and restaurants and then a number of back streets with different houses and the occasional restaurant.

 The main appeal of Dulan is the Dulan Sugar Factory, an old sugar factory which has been converted into an art space where people sell handmade goods and set up small food stands (selling hot dogs, quesadillas, and other international street foods). The Sugar Factory also has a small bar with locally made alcohol and holds live music performances every Saturday from local performers. The night we went included a performance from a singer and a number of stand up comedy acts.

The factory had a very friendly, intimate atmosphere, and was a really nice place to sit outside with a drink and unwind. The local bar had some really tasty drinks and I was especially into the homemade cranberry mead, which sold for the very reasonable price of 120NT.

That night, there was a performance from an aboriginal lady with a really great voice. After the music performance, we were treated to some really great standup comedy from a number of acts who'd travelled to Dulan from other parts of the country.

Fun fact about Dulan! The name Dulan comes from an aboriginal language, but the name translates in Taiwanese to 'poke penis', which leads to a lot of amusement amongst the Taiwanese. (Having so many languages in one place can apparently lead to plenty of funny translations). People are particularly amused by the local elementary school, Dulan Elementary School (都蘭國小), and bags and products with the name of the school can be find at a number of tourists spots along the East coast. 

The next morning, we set off to explore what we'd heard was one of the most beautiful hot springs on the island. Li Song hot springs is located deeper into the mountains, north west of Dulan. My friend and I had originally planned to go there by public transport, which apparently involves a bus from Taitung city to a town called Li4Dao4 (I can't find any information about this online, but they can give instructions at Taitung train station's information desk), followed by an hour long walk alongisde the road to the start of the trail. Fortunately, it turned out that our friend with a van was also heading to Li Song Hot Springs, so we were able to catch a ride with him.

The journey to Li Song Hot Springs (栗松溫泉）involved a two hour journey along winding mountain roads before reaching a small marked area with a path leading down the mountain and into the woods.  A heads up to anyone planning on taking this journey that apparently the roads can sometimes be closed at certain times while construction is being done, so it's best to enquire at an information desk to make sure you don't have to wait for them to reopen. They allegedly close after 6:00 on the mountain itself, so it's also important to make sure you are down before then!

The top of the mountain at the beginning of the trail head had really great views.

We walked along a fairly straight forward downhill path for about twenty minutes, passing a number of very tired and sweat looking hikers coming from the other direction, although of them telling us to 加油 (literally 'add oil', but more like 'go go!' or 'keep going!') for the remaining journey.

There were a large number of dogs along the journey down, including this one who was keeping guard on a small metal barrel which he'd seemed to to had made his home.

Soon we reached the official sign for the hot springs. After this sign, the path became a little tougher as it turned into very steep stairs going vertically down the mountain. This lasted for another forty minutes or so, and though not especially difficult, did require concentration so that you didn't fall as you walked down.

After the stairs, the journey became even more complicated. The slopes were much steeper, and the path turned into a series of ropes and ladders which you could hold onto as you walked backwards down the mountain, holding on to rocks, ropes and ladders as you made your way between the various flatter parts. Fortunately the weather was great this day, as I imagine that after a rainy day, this path might be near impossible.

A large number of ropes were tied around rocks and trees to help travellers make the journey down.

Almost at the bottom! (my housemate Ethan)

At the bottom of the ropes and ladders was a river with another rope tied across it. In order to get to the hot springs, we had to cross the river, which was pretty freezing and had a surprisingly strong current. You can see one of the many dogs at the bottom of this river. They seemed to be communally owned by the locals or something, and they entertained themselves by effortlessly running up and down the mountain alongside hikers, showing off their superiority in balance and nimbleness.

After crossing the river, we reached the most difficult part of the journey. It involved climbing along the rocks which bordered the rivers, sometimes aided by ropes and sometimes relying just on parts of rocks which stuck out. The rocks could sometimes be pretty slippery and the water below was running pretty quickly, and this definitely was the part of the journey I was least confident about. I did fall in the river one time, where I couldn't see any logical place to securely grab onto while climbing across one of the walks. Fortunately my landing was fine and I was able to quickly walk to a patch of land on the side. My friend who saw me do this quickly made the same mistake as me.

The journey was definitely worth the reward of the hot springs, which really were stunning. The springs actually just consisted a small cliff with very hot water trickling down below into it. The water seemed to have left some kind of deposit along the water, turning it a really striking emerald green. The wild natural setting around the springs made the whole place spectacular.

Some sand bags had been set up around the falling hot water, allowing a small pool to be made. The water itself was boiling hot, so you had to keep splashing in the freezing cold water from the river to keep the temperature bearable, which required constant vigilance.

Although the journey back to the top of the mountain was a little less challenging (the threat of tumbling down the hill became much smaller), the steep incline made it pretty exhausting and everyone was thoroughly sweaty and tired by the time we made it back to the van.

After driving back down the road, passing the construction site just before the 6:00 deadline, my housemate Ethan and I were dropped off in a small town called Chishang (池上）a little further south, but still west of the mountains which run along the coast.

The east coast of Taiwan is apparently famous for its high quality rice, on account of the water quality, and Chishang is supposed to produce the best rice in the whole of Taiwan.


The town itself is pretty small, but is located next to a huge stretch of rice fields, which have a number of long bicycle paths stretching through them. Apparently Chishang really came to people's attention after it was featured in an Eva Air advert, which depicts a Japanese celebrity cycling through the fields before stopping at a tree where he drinks some tree. Of course, that tree is now a popular destination for visiting tourists to line up to take a picture with.

The EVA Air Advert (the real fun begins at 00:51)

We stayed in a place called the Rice Field Penthouse which was basically a large apartment that had been converted into a hotel, with a shared living room and then a bunch of separated bedrooms. The price was pretty reasonable for what it was, and the location was great, facing right onto the rice fields. Admittedly, it did take us ten minutes or so to work out the entrance (the hotel was part of a bigger complex of restaurants and hotels).

The view from the hotel window.

Chishang had a really quiet and relaxed pace to it.

There were a huge number of establishments renting out bicycles for only 150NT to cycle around on for a day.

The rice fields were not quite as full grown and luscious as they are in the EVA air commercial, but they were still very green and it was cool to see all the plants rising out from the water.

Cycling around the paddies.

There was one very popular road where you could take your photo in a large white picture frame. Being Taiwan, this had a huge line of people waiting to take their picture, so we gave it a miss.

The further you moved away from the main photo sites, the more empty the roads became. Eventually, we were the only people around which was nice.

While cycling around, you could also see the way rice farming works, with huge rivers of water flowing into smaller channels that empty out into the various fields.

We passed one of the stars of the EVA Air commercial. Apparently the tree was uplifted during a typhoon, and is now protected with a number of chains and a fence, as well as a sign warning people not to touch the tree. Again, there was a large number of people lining up to photograph themselves with the tree.

After biking around for a couple of hours, and fully exploring the paths on offer, we headed into town for lunch. Along with the rice fields, the other key reason to visit Chishang is its famous lunch boxes which contain some of the town's famous rice. We headed to the Lunch Box Museum which sold a variety of bento boxes. The line for the food snaked outside the building.

The bento boxes were made of folded wood and had sausage, tofu, a big chunk of ginger (which I unknowingly tried to eat all at once), some vegetables and Chishang rice. You could choose which kind of meat you wanted with your meal and I went for the fried cutlet. The food was good, especially for the 80NT price tag, although it didn't especially stand out from any other bento box in Taiwan.

The upstairs of the museum had some small displays on both the history of bento boxes and on the process of making rice.

After our bento box lunch, we headed to a place called Do Re Mi (多力米）which we'd seen advertised around, to buy some ice cream. The museum had a variety of interesting flavours, including sweet potato, pumpkin and purple rice. I went for a scoop of rice and a scoop of pumpkin. The rice one tasted like very mild rice pudding, and you could occasionally feel the texture of small pieces of rice in it. The pumpkin one had a very strong pumpkin flavour, and almost tasted more savoury than sweet, as if I was eating a frozen scoop of mashed pumpkin. Not my favourite, but you could definitely tell that the ice creams had very natural flavourings!

After our ice cream, we headed to the train station to journey down to the city of Taitung. After a couple of hours (transport outside of Taipei quickly becomes much less convenient), we were in our hostel in Taitung City Centre. We stayed at a place called the Angel Fish, with a really friendly, if not very flustered owner, who was very helpful with information for us about getting to places in the city and surrounding area.


After dropping off our bags, we headed down the road to our destination for the night, a place called Tiehua Music Village (鐵花村). Tiehua is a really cool outdoor aboriginal area where local bands play a few nights a week, and where a number of stalls are set up selling various goods, such as rice wine, jewellery and postcards.

The whole area was completely decorated in hand painted hanging lanterns which gave the 'village' a really enchanting atmosphere.

The music for the night was an aboriginal folk band made up of a few adults and then lots of students.  Entrance was 300NT, which included a drink, and there was also a small bar which sold some cool cocktails, such as rice wine and coffee liquor. The whole venue was outside, with a small stage surrounded by stools and tables. It was a really relaxing way to spend the evening!

The band were all dressed in traditional clothing and sung a variety of songs in their native language. Although we obviously couldn't understand what they were singing, the people had incredibly beautiful voices and were a lot of fun to watch!

The next morning was our last in Taitung, with our train tickets booked for 3:00 that evening. We headed off early from our hostel to catch the East Coast Scenic Bus, which follows a route along a chunk of the East coast around Taitung, stopping at various tourist destinations on the way. You could buy a day ticket （一日券) for only 300, which let you get on and off the buses as you pleased. We headed along the bus to it's ultimate destination, a part of the coast called San Xian Tai (三仙台).

San Xian Tai is a small rock beach area with a small island just of its coast. The island is connected to the mainland by a 320 metre foot bridge. The bridge is made of eight arches and said to resemble a dragon (bridges said to resemble dragons are not too uncommon over here). The name of San Xian Tai translates to the Terrace of the Three Immortals and is derived from a legend which says that three famous immortals once rested here, leaving three gigantic rocks as their footprints.

The 320m bridge was surprisingly taxing, especially in the summer heat, and the arches were harder to appreciate when you were constantly walking up and down stairs because of them. However, the views of the island ahead and the mainland behind were really beautiful.

The island started with a small wooden walkway which took you towards the big rock at the other end.

However, soon, it was easy to just go off the trail and walk around the craggy rocks and explore you own paths.

Me and my housemate, Ethan.

I wasn't too excited about this place before we got here, but I was really taken aback by how beautiful the scenery was once I was there in person.

There was also a small path leading to the top of the main rock on the island.

The path itself didn't lead quite to the top, but it was pretty easy to make your own path all the way to the peak. The amazing view was definitely a worth reward.

After walking around for a couple of hours, we headed back to the bus stop. We still had a little time before our train, and decided to have a look at one of the other destinations on the bus route. Feeling pretty hungry from our hiking, we decided to check out Dong He Baozi （東河包子), a restaurant famous for its steamed buns. 

The restaurant was pretty busy, and sold a number of interesting variety of buns, including bamboo shoots and pork, pickled vegetable, peanut and sesame.

I opted for the bamboo shoots (竹筍包子), pickled vegetable (酸菜包子) and peanut (花生包子) all of which were delicious. It was cool to try different flavours other than your standard leak or ground pork buns too (although it's worth noting that the bamboo shoots and pickled vegetable buns did also include pork).

Donghe Baozi marked our last stop on the East Coast for this particular trip. Shortly after finishing our buns, we were back at Taitung train station, where we were soon treated to four and a half hours of standing on the packed train headed back to Taipei. A word of advice- always book your train tickets in advance when a four day weekend is approaching!

Cat Ba Island and Lan Ha Bay

Cat Ba Island and Lan Ha Bay

One of Vietnam's most famous attractions is Northern Vietnam is the collection of thousands of karst mountains rising out of the ocean in Ha Long Bay and the surrounding area. No guide book goes without mentioning it, and tours to the area are seen at every turn when navigating the old streets of Hanoi.

Although the area undeniably looked beautiful, I'd initially decided I'd give it a miss this time around as the weather in the area is supposed to typically be very cold and misty, with people saying you sometimes can't even see anything.

However, after arriving in Hanoi, which had been blessed with blue skies and warm sunshine, and looking at the optimistic weather forecasts for the following days, I decided to give the area a shot.

The most popular way to travel Ha Long Bay is through a boat tour on a junk boat, which generally takes you on an overnight trip on the bay in a luxury cabin with meals included. However, my budget prevented me from participating in the more luxury tours and I'd read some pretty worrying reviews about the more budget cruises on offer. I'd also heard from some friends that Ha Long Bay is so popular with tourists now that the water can sometimes be pretty polluted, with garbage floating around in it.

With this in mind, I decided to do a slightly more independent kind of travel and instead go to Cat Ba Island which is located a little south of  Ha Long Bay. On Cat Ba, you can stay in relatively cheap accommodation and take day trips into Lan Ha Bay, which is an extension of Ha Long Bay, but much quieter in terms of tourists as overnight trips from Hanoi cannot make it that far in just one day.

I managed to get transportation sorted to Cat Ba Island leaving just the day after the Tet holiday. The transportation didn't seem to go quite as smoothly as our travel company planned, and they walked us for about thirty minutes along a road in search of transportation to take us to the bus station, before eventually finding a willing driver. (We were subsequently told how we were 'very lucky!' that they'd found us someone, despite us already having payed inflated prices for the transportation...)

Transportation to the island involved a further two buses, followed by a half hour ferry journey (where there was so little space that most of us had our bags balanced on the roof of the ferry), and a final short bus journey on the island itself.

I knew immediately on arrival that I'd made a good decision about coming here. The weather, thought not scorching, was warm and beautiful, and even though we were only on the edge of the bay, the scenery was spectacular.

After checking in to the hostel, I had a wander around the island to take in the views.

The greater Ha Long Bay area is famous for the thousands of plant covered karsts which rise out of the water, with the name 'Ha Long Bay' literally meaning 'Where the dragon descends into the sea'. The scenery was stunning, and as you can see, the island was nearly empty (much helped by the proximity to New Year).

As it was already afternoon by the time I arrived, it was too late to actually venture out into the bay. Instead, I decided to climb to a place called Cannon Fort which promised excellent views of the bay, as well as a little bit of war history. 

After a relatively steep uphill climb (I seemed to be the only person walking, with many motorbikes whizzing past me on the journey), I reached the top of the hill where there were the remains of a fort that were apparently installed by the Japanese in WWII, but then used in subsequent wars in Vietnam. (again, the scope of areas that the war seemed to reach continued to surprise me). The fort had some models of army supplies tucked away in the bunkers.

There was also the cannon which gives the fort its name.

However, the main draw of the fort was the amazing view it offered of the karst mountains that snaked their way along the bay.

As I walked back down, the sun began to set, which transformed the landscape, but made it no less beautiful.

After the sun was down, I made my plans for the next day, which would be my only full day on the island. I decided that I wanted to explore the area by Kayak, and booked a tour through a company called Asia Outdoors who are based on the island. The tour involved being taken right into the middle of Lan Ha Bay where you could Kayak around for a few hours before stopping for a lunch break and then kayaking for another few hours. I was tempted by another tour they had which included kayaking and rock climbing on the karsts, but this was pretty far out of my budget.

The next morning, we were all driven to the harbour and boarded our ship which went for about forty minutes, taking us deeper into the bay.

The water was a really pretty greenish colour, and the karsts rising out of them were spectacular. If you look closely in this picture, you can also just about see the conjunctivitis which was slowly creeping its way in to my unknowing eyes (by the end of this tour, my right eye was burning and it soon became clear that pink eye was the culprit).

As we chugged along in our boat, we passed a number of small fishing villages who actually live in the bay. Many of them make their living through pearl farmings, where hundreds of are put in baskets filled with sand and dropped at the bottom of the bay. We could later see hundreds of baskets in the shallower parts of the water as kayaked along. According to our guide, Cat Ba Island produces some of the cheapest pearls in the world.

We soon boarded our kayaks, where I was paired with a guy from Denmark who was travelling with another group of friends on our trip. Initially the weather was a little chilly, and the skies were greyer than the day before, but soon the sun came out and the weather was pretty beautiful.

We stopped at a small island which had a beach (one of the draws of Lan Ha Bay is that it offers the only white sand beaches in the area). This was when the weather was at its best and we lingered on the island for about half an hour, swimming in the water and taking in the sun.

A little climbing and exploration also offered some really beautiful views of the beach and islands.

After the island, we navigated through small tunnels under the karsts, being careful to avoid some of the huge rocks around us. The bay was really peaceful and scenic, and the kayaking tour wasn't very rigorous, so we could really take our time and chill in the water. There was no garbage in the water and virtually no other tourists, and it really felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.

We stopped back on the boat for a short lunch while the boat took us to a different part of the bay.

After lunch, the weather was getting a little chillier and the sun was again submerged behind clouds. I'd made the really stupid mistake of wearing my sweatshirt in the kayak and then taking it off when it got too hot. This meant my sweatshirt got pretty wet, and after the sun went in, it was unable to dry and just made me feel really cold. For the second half of the day, we kayaked into small grottos and just took in the scenery around us.

The whole area was unlike anywhere else I'd ever seen, and felt almost like we'd been transported to the Jurassic period, with me half expecting to see dinosaurs roaming in the horizon.

Ha Long Bay is an example of a karst landscape where dissolve rock leads to huge chunks of limestone sinking, creating caves, tunnels and huge structures of vertical rock that seemingly rise out of nowhere. 

One of the locals who lives on a house boat in the bay. You can see the piles of baskets on his boat which are used for pearl farming. Many of these house boats had dogs on them which barked at us we went past. We were warned that the dogs were known to sometimes jump into the water and swim after kayakers, so it was best for us to stay out of the reach of any of them.

Around three or four, we got back on the boat and started to head back to Cat Ba island.

On the way, we were suddenly all ushered to the front of the boat, where one of the tour guides noticed some movement on one of the karsts near us. It turned out to be a Cat Ba Langur, which is one of the rarest primates in the world. There are only 60 or 70 of them remaining in the world, and we were told that we were very lucky to be able to see them. I, of course, was the last person to be able to see it after staring in the direction of the langur for a good two minutes.

After the tour, I headed back to the hostel where I made some friends with a few other people at the hostel with whom I made plans for the next day. Cat Ba Island also holds a small national park which offers some opportunities for hiking.

Our initial plan was for everyone to rent motorbikes before driving to the entrance of the park, exploring there a little bit and then driving back to the town centre. A few other people in the group had never ridden motorbikes before, so we gave ourselves sometimes to practice in a parking lot across from where we'd rented the scooters.

About five minutes had passed while everyone had seemed to adjusted to the controls of the motorbikes when I decided to really show my motorbike riding skills. Having already struggled to get the hang of turning and accelerating, I managed to accelerate my bike more than I wanted to and started heading to the (thankfully empty) main road. While I tried to break the bike, I was simultaneously turning the handles which accelerated, which meant that the bike didn't stop and I was soon running along side it, unable to stop it and getting ever closer to the road. About a metre from the road, I finally figured the only way to stop was to let go of the bike, which resulted in me falling to the ground and the bike too stopping and falling on me. Fortunately I was pretty uninjured, save for some ripped jeans, and the man who had rented us the bikes had been looking in a different direction when this happened. It was generally agreed that it was best that I ride on the back of someone else's bike (all the others had completely gotten the hang of it by this point) and my bike was promptly returned (the guy who rented the bike so us seemed pretty happy with this decision, as he didn't seem too confident when we'd first rented the bikes out, and he told me he thought this was safer).

We started to head on the bikes to the entrance to Cat Ba National Park, which was supposed to only be fifteen or so minutes away. After about forty minutes or so of driving, we'd figured that we'd maybe missed it. However, the drive was full of really amazing scenery, with karsts rising vertically from the ground in all directions.

The area was almost empty and really beautiful.

After reaching the other end of the island, we turned around, before finding the entrance to the park, which had been subtly marked out with huge gates and the words 'Cat Ba National Park' in giant gold letters.

We followed the main trail in the park (much of the national park has not yet been cleared of undetonated mines and cannot be explored without a guide). The guide was pretty marked out with stairs that were all completely built into the rocks and nature around.

At the end of the trail, we were treated to really incredible views of hundreds of karst mountains rising from the ground in every direction. 

After taking in the breathtaking scenery for a little while, we headed back down to the entrance and back to our hostel for the bus (then ferry, then bus and one more bus) back into Hanoi.