Category Taiwan
Taiwan’s government was nice enough to give us a nice long four day weekend to kick off the new year. Me and Renegade Wife spent new years day being lazy at home, which felt really good. The other three days we’ve been travelling around both here and there and had a pretty good time.
We started with a trip up to Xiaowulai in the mountains, where there are plenty of waterfalls and suspension bridges.
view on the way up
First view of the waterfall
A smaller waterfall
Looking down at the big waterfall from above 
The main waterfall from
Yini and I both felt a need for a mini vacation, so this weekend we took Friday off and headed to Taidong on the south east coast. This is about as far away as you can go in Taiwan while still staying on land. If you are taking public transport you can either get a high speed train south along the west side, change to a normal train and cross the southern tip then go north again along the east coast, a process that takes around six or seven hours. Or, you could get on the normal train right from … Read the rest
Doufeng (兜風) is chinese and translates to “to catch the wind” basically to go for a ride in the fresh air. My favourite way to do doufeng is random exploration by motorcycle.
Some weeks ago me and Yini passed by an abandoned house at the outskirts of the city. We had no chance to get in and explore then but today we drove up there, better prepared. I jumped the low wall and started looking around when all of a sudden some kind of alarm went off. I guess the place was less abandoned than I thought (despite being dark … Read the rest
Recently my good friend’s father passed away in cancer (my condolences Kai) so on Saturday me and Yini headed south to meet him up and comfort him in these hard times. We arrived in his hometown of Tianzhong in the evening and spent a couple of hours with him. Knowing that he felt comparatively good, we said good bye and went out to find a hotel. We ended up in a kind of motel where I promptly burned my lip on the what looked like a drinking fountain but turned out to be a hot water dispenser. Not the nicest … Read the rest
Since today was the last day of the weekend we had to get back home. With a few stops along the way it took us the better part of two days to go right across the island. Instead of going back the same way we took the route around the northern tip.
There is a fast highway option that takes a short cut through a long tunnel, but we went for the scenic route along the coast line instead. We have done this route before so there shouldn’t be that much new to see. However, a storm must be brewing … Read the rest
This is part two in a series of posts about crossing Taiwan from west to east. Unfortunately part one has gone missing somewhere in the land where data goes to die. At this point I’m not able to recreate it so a quick summary will have to do. Basically, we took the car and drove through the mountains north of Hsinchu, following the so called Roma Road going eastward, stopping here and there along the way. Here’s my favorite photo from the first day:
That’s it for the summary, now on to the second day of the trip:
We slept … Read the rest
This weekend the wife and I decided to go for a mini vacation in Miaoli. We started right before lunch, took my motorcycle and went south out of the city. Before long we were entering the mountains and drove along a winding road through lush green landscapes. The road was so perfect for a motorbike ride, I just kept going along and soon enough we reached our hotel.
After checking in we went out again to explore the mountains some more, stopping here and there whenever we found something interesting. Here are a couple of pictures taken during our exploration.… Read the rest
Last weekend some of Yini’s old friends had organized a short trip to have a chance to see each other and visit a number of interesting places. We joined but took our own car and made our own hotel booking for convenience.
The trip started with a short drive to Miaoli where the group gathered for lunch and the girls ended up chatting for a long time. Due to my still rather poor Chinese, I was not really able to join the conversation and ended up reading blogs all the while. We left the restaurant and planned to take a … Read the rest
This weekend we are visiting Yini’s parents. Normally that means staying in their house and playing with her nephews but this time Yini and I decided to go on a small outing instead.
We started by driving to Beigang and had a late lunch nearby the kind of famous Mazu temple there. After lunch we took a stroll through the temple area and the market there. There was a big pedestrian bridge spanning the nearby river and two huge temple guard statues at the bridgehead, which was pretty impressive, but nothing overwhelming.
The bridge 
Yini taking a rest under part
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything because it’s been too cold and wet to really go anywhere. Last weekend however, it was nice and sunny so Yini and I took the opportunity to go out with the motorcycle. We rode east out of the city, passed through the little town of queerly painted houses that we visited last year, and on to the Five Fingers Mountains.
At a small temple we found an fairly steep little walking trail that we followed. It was a bit of a struggle for Yini and I got pretty tired as well but … Read the rest