Initially I wasn’t sure how long to stay in Taiwan, I thought two weeks would be good at first, but in order to properly do Taipei, the stuff around Taipei, as well as get around the whole island, my research indicated three weeks was preferable. Fortunately the planning was extremely easy as everywhere I wanted to go was easily accessible by bus or train. And with Taiwan being only at 1/3 of its pre-covid numbers, everything was easy to book at last second, which I love. For this post I’m just going to post photos with captions, the order of the photos is clockwise around the island, so starting with the less densely populated east coast. First stop: Hualien and the Taroko Gorge
Very nice looking train station in the city of Hualien
I rented a scooter the evening before and left at 6am to catch the sunrise on the black pebbled beach on the way to the Taroko Gorge. The sun was stuck behind the clouds though
heading into the canyon, as you can some of the sections of roads are just blasted out from the rock
something about the minerals give it that nice blue turquoise color
The sun almost ready to pop through
temple buddha and cat
very nice road conditions, just had to watch out for falling rocks
view from the bridge over the canyon before the rains came. After waiting a few hours for it to clear up, I had to bail out unfortunately.
back on the beach as the rain let up
The next day it was an easy train trip to the small town of Chishang to do some bicycling in the rice fields
There was a popular airline commercial in the 90’s that used this street and this tree in Taiwan, so now it’s famous. And then a famous actress took a photo for social media in front of the wrong tree, and now that one is famous too. Groups of Taiwanese tourists love it.
Woke up early and had a nice sunny morning in the next village over
Very pleasant scenery for cycling, and nobody around
Taiwan is pretty good at placing art in some random spots
That day I hopped back on the train + bus and made it all the way to the far south of Taiwan, Kenting Nat’l Park.
I liked this rock
weird spot, nobody around
Some nice rugged beaches and coastline
good spot for a dip
And to catch fish apparently
A rocky sunset
This was part of a one night stopover on a small island called XiaoLiuQiu, famous for it’s rock formations and it’s turtles. I saw about 15 turtles snorkeling in the afternoon, it was pretty fun. Then I went scuba diving the next morning and we hardly saw anything. Pretty weak!
Sail Rock
From the island I took a bus to Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second largest city. Hustled over to the Lotus Pond to get this shot at sunset
View from the other side: Dragon and Tiger pagodas
Cool looking temples are everywhere in Taiwan
I guess you can go inside the mouth, but it was too late now
More views walking around the pond
feels like a different place in time
Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum, home of one of three remaining Buddha tooth relics
street art on the promenade
funky looking building
85 Sky Tower with the light rail in front
It is a port city
trying out all the different views of the tower
the public library
at the night market
Weiwuying Opera House
Thoughts: This was a really nice section. The Taroko Gorge as well the coastline was great, riding a bicycle in the rice fields of Chishang was lovely, the beach in Kenting was a good place to relax, snorkeling with the turtles and riding a scooter around the island of XiaoLiuQiu was fantastic, and I thought Kaohsiung was a surprisingly nice, well put-together, modern city that seemed to do all the small things right. I guess the only disappointment was the scuba diving on the island, that was pretty lame. Oh well. And meeting any new people in the hostels was difficult. But overall the diversity of the scenery in Taiwan is certainly one of it’s strongest suits.