Spring in Taiwan happens to be the season for two things, namely Tong flowers, the Taiwanese counterpart to Japanese sakura, and fireflies. Despite a slight drizzle, me, Yini and our friend Kai decided to go out hunting for both. We started by driving north east until white blotches among the green of the mountains told us tong trees were abundant. We got out of the car and walked around for a bit, finding the ground littered with white blossoms.

  • A couple of the flowers
  • They are everywhere

  • Someone had made a heart, I’m not romantic enough

Having strolled around for a little while, we found a small mountain road and just drove along slowly, stopping here and there to admire the flowers and the view. We even tried shaking some trees to make it rain blossoms.

Some random shots of tong flowers

It was not as overwhelming as Sakura but still petty good. With nicer weather it would have been lovely.  When we exited the mountains we figured there was no need to hunt for more tong flowers, so we headed south, our goal now set on finding fireflies.

Yini and Kai at the cafe

We ended up in a small, secluded mountain café where we had some dinner and sat and chatted until it got dark. Just as it was getting dark it started raining, and having left our umbrellas in the car we scampered down the path to the parking lot to go get them. When we got to the car the rain had gotten so heavy that we sheltered for a while, seeing only a few lonely fireflies. When the rain subsided somewhat we set out again. We found a small dirt road an followed it down a slope into the forest, where we saw hundreds, if not thousands of fireflies sparkling in the undergrowth. Sadly, I didn’t get anything other than black on my photos, even though I set the shutter to a full minute. Luckily I can provide a frozen moment with an excellent description of what it was like . In short it was amazing.

To sum up, the tong flowers were beautiful and the fireflies were really good. Now I just have to go back when the weather is better.