Taiwan Take 2: Summer 2019

The end of my summer brought around another trip to Taiwan. AS I have been before, knew I liked it so I was pretty damn excited.

I met Dan in Taipei which, after the chaos of Indonesian Ferries and Singapore Subways, just felt so well organised. We arrived when we were supposed to and nothing was delayed or held up.

We hadn't really been able to get reliable or consistent information on how much time is needed for each place so we decided to play by ear and plan as we went around. Our ultimate goal was Sun Moon Lake in the middle of the Island which, according to Dan, is where the Taiwanese tourists like to holiday.

We spent a few days in Taipei taking in the tourist things, my favourite of which was the cable car up MaoKong Hill/Mountain. The trip itself was a little unremarkable but the view from the little bar around from the arrival station more than made up for it. We spent so long there that it got to the point we could stay there for sunset with not much waiting. So we did and it was definitely a good idea.

From Taipei we went north to JuiFen which is a small ancient town which claims to be in inspiration for the Studio Ghibli "Spirited Away."Now I have never seen the film and neither had Dan so we didn't really know what to expect. What we found was the best hostel I have ever stayed in, and an alright town. The place was rammed with tour groups just before sunset and in the early morning, but other than that, we were pretty lucky and had the place to nearly ourselves. Max and Osmond sent us off on the local train for the day where we stopped at a cat village, which was Dan's choice, and a waterfall which was mine. The village was a weird jumble of streets which were nearly all coffee shops. We wandered about a bit and had a coffee before getting on the train to the next place.
The waterfall as it turned out was manmade but still quite nice. It was a short walk through the train street and down a very uneventful road to get to the entrance of the park. Once inside it was a bit nicer walking along the river and over some very unsafe feeling bridges to the falls. Small but still pretty.

By this point we were hot and hungry and so battled our way back to the train.


From JiuFen, we had to head back to Taipei before getting a train to TaiChung on the west side of the island.

All we knew was that we needed to get a bus from there to get to the lake. Our trip was pretty much all made up as we went along. The city itself was nothing special and we left the following morning on the bus.

3 hours later were at the lake. Luckily for us, the weather has taken turn for the more miserable so we hunkered down in a bar and ignored the rain.

The lake itself was busy and full of boats or cruises. There is a small ferry that bounces between three different points on the lake; the side we were staying on, a weird temple place and a second small town on the opposite side with a cable car up the hill. Cable cars are always fun, so that's where we went.

This was a definite case of the journey being more impressive than the destination as it dropped us off at the entrance to a theme/water park. ten minutes later, we were back on the cable car heading back to the ferry port.

As trips go, this was another very speedy blast about the island but I still love the place. My trip was cut short but another typhoon, so I left a few days early back to Kunming and the start of the new year.