Taiwan

Flight to Taiwan

Not as exciting as my Bangladesh flight, but I didn’t pay attention to my flight type to Taipei until I reached Bangladesh and I noticed half of my flight was business class. So, I was looking forward to seeing how business class would be like. The airline that I was flying with was Malindo airline. Oh boy, I did not expect it too be so nice. The chairs you sat in were massage chairs, and we even had our own bathroom (which worked for me since I still had food poisoning). We even got to order our food from a menu that they brought to us and when the food arrived, they would bring us a tray of delicious food. All I can say is it is quite hard to go back to economy after that.

Taipei

After arriving to Taipei, I was so relieved that I escaped the mosquitoes in Bangladesh, but then the first thing that landed on me when I went outside of the Taipei airport was a mosquito (kill me now). I was staying in Taipei for two weeks and my first hostel was at Taiwan Youth Hostel. It was my first time staying in a hostel alone and my first time staying in a capsule. The hostel itself was really nice as it had a common area that was accessible to everyone (I’ve stayed in many hostels throughout my trip where they had their common area on the second floor). The capsule was probably the best one I’ve stayed in because it had a huge locker inside your capsule that locks when you remove your card and the capsule even had space for a mini table for writing.

People I’ve met in Taipei

The first person I met at the hostel was Ryan and he worked at the hostel and he used to live in Canada. Soon after meeting Ryan, I met Ronnie and he invited me out for lunch, where I met Renee and Sofie.

Ronnie is from Singapore and was travelling around Taiwan for a few months. He was probably the most outgoing person in the hostel because from what I’ve seen, everyone else kept to themselves, so it was very refreshing when talking to him (Check out his blog https://rawrnie.com/blogs/wander/the-people-i-met-in-taiwan)

Renee is a Dutch student who lives in a city called Weert in the Netherlands. She is travelling around Asia while figuring out which careers she wants to switch to and is doing workaway at the hostel by singing on Sundays (She is really good at singing). Also Renee hates Amsterdam and Belgium with a burning passion and it is hilarious.

Sofie is from Sweden and was in Taiwan to meet her biological parents but is also doing workaway.

Later on that day, I also met Clitza who was Italian is currently travelling around Asia while trying to find a permanent place to live (I call her the travel hacker because she always has the cheapest way to travel places. I believe she lived off 5-10$ a day in Taipei).

One of the nights at the hostel, Renee and Clitza wanted to have a hotpot and that was how I met Will, who was Clitza’s online friend. Will decided to move to Taiwan to learn Mandarin and he was originally from California. He recently quit his job and he is a huge foodie like me, so we naturally exchanged contacts. That night, we also met Teresa who was a student from Waterloo and she was just travelling around Asia for her summer break. Teresa also is a huge foodie and had her own Korean checklist, which all Koreans apparently knew about. It was very useful for me because I didn’t have to look up any places to eat because I would just follow her 😊.

Tony – who was a TDSB English teacher at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts for 14 years decided to quit to teach Mandarin in Taiwan.

Alvin – From Hong Kong and we started talking one of the nights in the kitchen and we played Smash together (Obviously I won 😉😉😉😉).

Patrick – Renee, me and Teresa were playing board games and he joined in (He was a lot better than me at the stupid stacking game). He was from California so him and Will got along fast because they were close to each other. He was travelling around Asia for a few weeks and was solo travelling.

Walking Tour

I’ve actually never believed in tours because of how rushed it was but I wasn’t feeling the best because of my stomach of course, and there was a free walking tour that was available that day. The tour guide’s name was James and he was actually a very entertaining tour guide. He was on the TV show Fresh off the Boat and in a few German and Filipino TV shows. Throughout the tour I met this old lady from New York named Bonnie and we actually had a great conversation and she even offered to buy me a bubble tea because I was a “good fellow” (I was going to cry). The sad part though was near the end of the tour, I decided to run to watch the guard change at the Chiang Kai shek memorial hall and when I looked back at the tour group, Bonnie was gone!! ( I wanted to say bye 😓).

Mulberry Smoothie Day

Renee read somewhere on the internet that this Mulberry smoothie shop in the middle of no where was a must try, so it must be amazing. So me and Renee made plans to adventure out to try it So We walked to a little shop, in the middle of no where (Moonlight Riverside Cafe) and we noticed it was a famous cyclist pit stop (We tried renting a bike but did now know any Mandarin). Moment of truth, we got the “famous Mulberry smoothie” and it tasted like a regular mixed berry drink.

Later on that day, when me and Renee were heading to the Shilin Night market we noticed some old people performing Karaoke and while we were watching outside, one of the members asked us if we wanted to come inside to watch. We did, and it was a wonderful experience. Everyone inside the singing club would meet every week and would just start singing. Some of the members came up to us to show us what they were singing and started taking pictures of us (Not sure where those pictures went).

Private Hotspring

Around Taipei, there are quite a few hot springs and I wanted to treat myself to something nice. So I booked 1 hour at the Volando Urai around Wulai district. Personally, for a private hot spring, it was worth the $60 Cad but if don’t mind people then you can just go to Spa world in Osaka for 12$ and stay as long as you want with a sauna, cold bath and themed onsen.

Famous Singer?

During one of Renee’s concerts I met this girl named Heni and she is from Indonesia. She is lives in Taiwan and works as a translator for an Indonesian and Mandarin company (She learned Mandarin in a year and a half 👏👏). She was a huge fan of Renee’s singing and we exchanged contacts after the concert. We decided to meet up and she invited us (Will) to her friend’s singing gig at one of the pubs. At the pub, Heni’s friend Li Ting who also performed at TYH (Taiwan Youth Hostel) was performing, and during the end of her performance there was apparently a famous person singing. He was blind but boy oh boy he was so good (FYI I can’t understand Mandarin).

Getting Lost in Yilan County

There is a city near Taipei called Shifen and it was known for its sky latern lighting. Teresa and Renee have never went before, so we all decided to go. We’ve never used the train system before, so when we got to the train system, it was very confusing. We noticed the sign that said Ruifang and we went on the next train at that platform. The train ride was scenic and I was excited to see what Shifen has to offer. We noticed the train was taking a while so we checked our map and it looked like it was going down and we were so confused. There was a group of Japanese girls in front of us and they were also confused. We overheard them ask another group of people on the train where this train was bound for. The group told them this train heading for Hualien and the next stop is Yilan which was an 1 hour away. Once we arrived to Yilan, we were deciding if we should just head back to where we came from but it was getting late, so we decided to make the best out of it and explore Yilan. The experience kind of felt like the time Spongebob went to rock bottom.

When we were in Yilan, Renee really wanted to rent scooters so we walked around multiple store fronts to try to find electric scooters because me and Teresa didn’t have our international licence. One thing I did learn from this was the word “méiyou” which meant “I don’t have.” We eventually found a place to rent electric scooters and we got two bikes because that was all they had. I got the single bike for the first half of the night and Renee and Teresa shared the other one. I’ve never ridden a electric motorcycle and I guess I was just paranoid from all the horror stories that I’ve heard but it turned out to be so fun. We made our way to a mountain top for a view of the city at night and we noticed some random lady on a motorcycle yelling at us from behind us. It was the shop keeper and she rode like 10 minutes away from the shop just to inform us that the mountain top is closed (That was nice of her).

We still decided to ride up to the mountain view because we had nothing else to do and we discovered this random hotpot place at the top. It was empty but the decor of the place was really cutesy and we decided to give it a shot. We got an enormous amount of food and the hotpot broth was shaped as a bunny. After the hotpot, we were offered free drinks at the cafe beside it and it also was very cutesy. It had a bunch of instagramable picture spots at the back of the cafe and it also had a very nice view of Yilan.

Unfortunately we were running out of time for our bike rental so we had to rush back. I was sharing the scooter with Renee this time and it was a lot more terrifying at the back than driving (Renee drives pretty crazily). At the end of the day, our adventure to Shifen failed, but it was worth the detour and that is how the scooter gang was born.

Shifen and Jiufen

We finally attempted round two of trying to get to Shifen and this time, Will attempted to join the adventure. We actually got on the right train this time and we got to Shifen sucessfully. We really wanted to paint and light our sky lantern so we got a pink latern and we all got a side to paint on.

Shifen is also famous for its waterfall and we rented some electric bikes to go there but when we got to the waterfall, it was closed (why sell us the bikes still??). We just started riding the bike for fun randomly in pitch black. It was really surreal because I felt like was riding to nothingness (deep).

After Shifen we took a taxi to Jiufen because it was close enough. Jiufen was famous for its tea houses and the film, Spirited Away, was based off the city. We tried going to the famous tea house there but it was closed (we have bad luck) so we said screw it and decided to go to Mala Hotpot. There are two different locations for Mala Hotpot and we went to the one which had AYCE premium beef. The other location had the AYCE fruit and in our opinion was the better option. Definitely worth the $34 cad because you get AYCD beer, drinks and the quality of the food was exceptional. The AYCE food options were really generous and the broth was very flavourful as well. It is definitely a must come back when I come back to Taipei

Notable Food in Taipei

Hualien

My next city was Hualien and it was located on the eastern city of Taipei. The main reason I’m going there was for Taroko Gorge and everyone on the internet was raving about it. I booked a few tours on https://www.islandlifetaiwan.com/tour-category/hualien/ because I was kind of lazy to figure everything else and supposedly it was really good. The hostel I was staying at was called World Inn and it had a very homey feeling hostel. It was low season, so I had the whole mixed dorm to myself for a few days :). World Inn was probably my favourite hostel I’ve been to so far because the staff there was so so so friendly (Maybe because it was low season?). They would ask you how your day was and when you come back to the hostel, they would ask what you did. One of the staff also started giving me recommendations for where to go for 20 minutes and invited me out to go karaoke but I needed to sleep 😔. I was even able to draw and colour the Ontario flag.

I’m not sure why but I seem to have problems with mosquitoes while I sleep and I guess I wasn’t thinking about them for some time. The first night I slept, I heard buzzing in my ear and I tried several times to find the pesky bastard but to no avail. In the morning I woke up and finally saw it lying still. With one swift movement, I kill the monster and I see all the blood it sucked from me.

The first tour I attended with island life was the Taroko Gorge tour and Iris was our tour guide. What I like about this tour company was it was only a maximum of 6 people so it was more intimate. There was a family of four and another solo girl on the tour. Of course since, me and the girl were the only solo travellers, we bonded first. Her name is Val and she is from California. Her father actually lives in Taiwan and she is just visiting for the summer. She was really cool and we made plans to go to the night market together. The tour itself was really good as we got to most of the popular sites early and even got to swim at a hidden swimming spot behind a food vendor (Legally you aren’t allowed to swim there but the locals do it anyways). Before swimming though, my stomach wasn’t feeling the greatest (The Bangladesh curse) so I had to use the squatting toilet and to be honest it wasn’t half bad. I would even say it was cleaner than the conventional western ones sometimes. Anyways, the water at the lake was super cold and super clean, but I wish I was able to spent more time there.

At the end of the first tour, I told Iris my mosquito story and she told me in Hualien, there is a special kind of mosquito where they are really small and you can barely see them (GREAT TO HEAR). When she dropped me off at the hostel, she was nice enough to tell the hostel staff about the situation, and they were nice enough to put a mosquito repellent scent in the room. For most of my time at the hostel, I was either really tired or just suffering the Bangladesh curse (I was debating going to the doctor because it had been two weeks since I left Bangladesh), so I didn’t interact with many of the hostel mates. The people I did interact with though were quite interesting. I met a illustrator who had been freelancing and has been living in hostels around the world for three years (his website https://www.thewolfandtheforest.com/). What I found cool was that he will be in comic con in Australia this year. I also met a Polish guy who works for Uber as a software developer and he was telling me some cool spots to visit in Poland next time I’m there.

After the the Taroko gorge tour, me and Val made plans to go to the Hualien nightmarket. The Hualien night market was different from the ones in Taipei because it was very wide and it didn’t have a shit ton of people everywhere. It also had plenty of seats around the market and even had an aboriginal section (Fun fact,ee indigenous people in Taiwan inhabited the island for over 5,500 years and are Austronesian people. They have genetic ties to the people of the Philippines and other Polynesian groups).

Due to my stomach blasting out everything I eat in a very short amount of time, I decided to go on a spiritual cleanse. So I went to grocery store and bought asparagus juice, bananas, apples and bread, but when I was walking back, I noticed Teresa and Renee walking in the distance towards me. I was super surprised because I knew they were coming but I didn’t know when. We all decided to make some plans to rent scooters for the day since they didn’t have plans but they both had to go to their hostel to unpack their stuff. The thing is, Renee and Teresa really like to nap so when I walked over to their hostel they were getting ready to sleep…

Well when the finally got up, it was dinner time and we decided to get some dumplings and it was simply amazing.

The next day I had one last tour with Island life and this time it was the Zhuilu Old Trail. I wanted to attend this tour because I didn’t want to deal with the getting the permits and everything. Due to how dangerous the Zhuilu old trail is they only limit 100 people per day to enter and you have to buy a permit well advance. Our tour guide this time was Simon and he was such an interesting tour guide to talk too. He told us that there was one time where a couple wanted to run all the way up the trail and he had to follow them (feels bad man 😥😥). In our tour group, we had a couple from Milwaukee and a solo traveller from Sweden. I’ve never met anyone from Milwaukee and the couple told me the only thing they do there is drink. The whole hike took around 3-4 hours and once we got to the top of the pathway it got really steep. Near the end of the hike we all decided to go swim at a local river (Only locals knows about it and it is usually pretty packed but we got lucky).

While I was on my tour, Teresa and Renee were doing their own adventure in Taroko gorge. I actually didn’t know they were able to rent a motorized scooter because Renee didn’t have the proper International licence but I learned in Hualien they are very lax about it. So here is a video of them going around Taroko

I actually tried riding their scooter and it was so scary because we had three people on the scooter.

Taipei Again

Originally I was supposed to go to Kenting and stay an extra week in Taiwan but Teresa was going to Korea and Renee was thinking about going too. They invited me to come and there was no better time to go to Korea than with going with a local. Therefore, I had to go back to Taipei for a few days so I could leave to Korea. While in Taipei again I was able to meet up with Val again and I invited her to go to Renee’s performance. I did not know but Val sings and she was able to sing during Renee’s time slot for a little. It was actually really funny because usually these performances are pretty PG but one of Val’s song was called “Betty you fucking whore.” Near the end of the performance, most of us went to a local late night restaurant where most locals would usually go to for some food with drinks. At the restaurant, there is a huge fridge of alcohol at the back and you can just pick whatever you want from it. (There were 20 Taiwanese Mafia looking guys that arrived during our meal and they all sat down and looked at their phones while silently eating)

Trip Overview

Personally, Taiwan was my favourite destination because of the amazing people I’ve met throughout my trip and for some reason, I just love the atmosphere. I will definitely be coming back as there is so much more to the country that I need to come back to explore.