Tag Military tunnels
In Hsinchu City, not far from the very center, is a hill somewhat ambitiously called 18 Peaks Mountain. As you might guess, it’s not much of a mountain but local people like to go there for “hiking“ and jogging. The main entrance is big with several parking lots nearby but there is also a second entrance on the backside. Actually there are two entrances on the backside, the nice new one and the dilapidated old one. Last weekend I took my son out for some toddler friendly hiking and figured it could be fun to try the backside entrance. … Read the rest
Ever since I moved to Taiwan, my wife and I have slowly been working on visiting all of Taiwan’s outlying islands. So far we’ve been to Green Island, Penghu and Matsu, and last weekend we went to Kinmen. It is a small island just a stone’s throw (well, a rather long stone’s throw) from Mainland China. Given its location there has been a lot of military activity on the island and most of the actual fighting between China and Taiwan took place here in the 1950’s. Before it became militarized, Kinmen was home to a fair amount of merchants who … Read the rest
Shortly after I made my last post about the old military tunnels at Fengqi Sunset Trail, my friend Johan, who is a Youtuber, contacted me saying he wanted to make a video about the tunnels. My other friend David, who was the one to introduce me to the tunnels in the first place, said he would also like to join (you can find David's post here). Said and done, the three of us met up at the trail head and with Johan filming we made another foray into the tunnels. Continue reading about our underground adventure.
When my friend posted a video of walking through a long, seemingly abandoned tunnel I immediately knew I would have to go there. I asked where it was and he sent me the location. From what I could understand, there was a big network of tunnels down there and I somehow got it into my head that I shouldn't just go there, but I should try to make a map. Despite a few of the tunnel branches being blocked, the place is still so big I had to go there twice to fully explore every part of the system. I did eventually end up with a map. It's not particularly accurate; it's not to scale and I only made some rough estimates of the twists and turns of the different passageways. I also didn't come up with a good way to add in slopes and stairs, so that's not included either. That said, every intersection is included, as is every exit and every dead end. If you go down into these tunnels you should be able to navigate using my map. Check out the map
Whe we woke up this morning the rain had stopped but the sky was still grey. That didn’t matter to us since the goal of the day was to see several of the underground bunkers and tunnels that are no longer in use by the military. The first one was tunnel 88 which used to be for tanks but now acts as a storage place for the local wine. My camera doesn’t capture smells but if it did you could get a whiff of the rather strong wine odor in there.
We thought the wine tunnel would take a bit more … Read the rest
We woke up pretty early this morning and after a quick breakfast on the terrace overlooking the ocean we went for a stroll in the little village where we slept. I really felt like somewhere in Southern Europe, with old style stone houses climbing the cliffs just above the water.
sitting on the wall enjoying the sun 
can you believe this is Taiwan? 
After walking around for a little while we got on the scooter and drove to the War and Peace Memorial Park. Unlike most other military installations on the island there are some here you can get into … Read the rest