A day in Jinguashi & Jioufen / Goodbye

Back in Taipei, Tammy took us to this hidden hole in the wall for a Taiwanese breakfast of sweet & savory soy milks and fried things. Now with fuel in our bellies, we took the train to Jinguashi and Jioufen, both on the northeast coast of Taiwan.

We checked out the historic town of Jinguashi first, which is an old Japanese-era mining town. They've preserved a lot of their historical buildings and have a museum about the area's history. Being that it's all built on hillsides, getting lost in this town was quite an ordeal since it involved a lot of walking up and down unmarked back alleys comprised entirely of stairs. Let's just say that we burnt off a LOT of that morning's fried breakfast.

We then took a bus to Jioufen, down the hill. This quaint little town is essentially one big market alley that snakes through small shops & food stalls. The food here was amazing, and we ate things that were so entirely foreign and bizarre and delicious. We would taste, eat, shop, taste, and eat some more. Wending our way through to one end, we rested up at the Jioufen Teahouse during sunset. We later took a train back to Taipei, and had a nightcap at the Taipei Bear Bar (yes, "Bear" in the gayest sense of the word).

The next day was our last shopping day, and we met up with Tammy's sister-in-law (who was also from/visiting Taipei) to do some street market shopping. Later that night, Tammy's friend Zoey took us to an all-you-can-eat Taiwanese barbecue dinner, at which we consumed an obscene amount of meat. Still reeking of delicious barbecue smoke, we headed to In House lounge where we met up with her other friends Nina & Peggy for a last night of drinks before going home to the US the next day.

Pictures can be found HERE.

Breath of fresh air (literally) in Hualien

We took an overnight trip to Hualien, which is a city outside of Taipei on the eastern coast of Taiwan. This region is breathtakingly beautiful, and is supposedly the place where the Portuguese sailors who first explored the area shouted the words "Formosa!", which means "beautiful" (or something like "well-shaped", as Marco explained) in Portuguese. Hence the original name for Taiwan: Formosa. One of the attractions here is Taroko Regional Park, and the area is also the native home of the Taroko people, one of the several aboriginal peoples of Taiwan.

We stayed at Crossing the Rainbow Bridge bed & breakfast, a "homestay" owned by a Taroko gentleman & his Taiwanese wife. There were also two resident dogs, "Ati" ("Little Brother", although she was a girl) and "Muffin". Upon arrival that afternoon, the hotel provided bicycles for us to ride to the Taroko Regional Park visitors center. They also provided us with afternoon tea, followed by a traditional Taroko dinner with all of the B&B visitors (who were all from Singapore). The owner had ferried the four of us in his car, and he took us to a shop afterwards to pick up some local Hualien pastries & mochis & of course, the local wines.

After a lovely alfresco breakfast, we went on a private tour with an English-speaking guide, who took us on an all-day tour of the park area. We learned from our guide that the B&B owner is actually a very well-known and highly-regarded Taroko member who has founded a lot of community services & organizations, has been highly-educated & a principal for 30 years and married outside of his group to a Taiwanese woman (all of which are very unusual for a Taroko minority), and has even spoken in front of the UN regarding minority issues. We didn't see him again that morning because he had left early to be a guest speaker at a university conference. Jeez... if only we knew what an importang guy he was, we would have asked him for a picture. And to think, all we did was ask him "do you know where we can get some booze around here?"

HIGHLIGHTS OF HUALIEN & TAROKO REGIONAL PARK:

• Discovering all sorts of crazy/cool-looking marble, quartz, and granite stones at Cingshui Cliff beach
  
• Walking the Shakadang Trail and wandering its riverbed... made of MARBLE
  
• Watching the birds swoop around the Swallow Grotto
• Lunch of indigenous Taroko foods at Buluowan Village hotel
• Seeing the Cihmu Bridge & the crown atop Frog Rock
• Crossing a swaying suspension bridge, Indiana Jones style
• Taking the rail equivalent of the "chicken bus": on the train ride back, our car also had several "country bumpkins" who spoke loudly, acted rudely, and snorted/spat their snot rockets without shame or aim. Gross gross grossness all around.
  

Pictures can be found HERE.

Boys and Girl in Taipei's Underworld

Tammy & Marco went to meet up with her auntie who lives in Taipei, so we wandered about on our own for the morning/afternoon. It took us a few days to find out where the nearby bars/pubs were located, since there appeared to be none in Ximending other than a TGIF's, even when we asked around.

Desperate for some kind of night scene, we went to the Shida district near Taipei University, figuring college students would know where to get some booze. We caught this really great band, Boyz and Girl, at the small, smoky, and psychedelic Underworld nightclub on Shida Road.

The next day, we discovered that right across the street from the Hero House was the GLBT district, which was (of course) filled with bars! The interesting thing was that either no one knew about this district, or it never occured to anyone to recommend this district to us. It was very well hidden behind the historic Red Pavillion Theater, and you wouldn't know the GLBT places were there unless you walked behind this building. Wow, what a discovery!

MORE HIGHLIGHTS FROM TAIPEI:

• Longshan Temple visit in the early morning.
• A very sad Core Pacific Center. Most depressing mall EVER. Lonely store clerks would perk up like hopeful little puppies waiting to be adopted whenever we'd walk past a storefront window.
• A day-jaunt to the Spring City Resort at the hot springs area of Beitou.
• Meeting up with Tammy's college girlfriends Nina & Zoey for a Taiwanese hot pot dinner, one of which involved using bendy straws to suck up marrow out of ox bones.
• A nightcap at one of the many gay-friendly bars in the Red Pavillion square.

Pictures can be found HERE.

Street performers (the band is "Happy Circle") in Ximending near our crash pad:

So Long, Seoul / Taipei on the twenty-third!

We hitched ourselves to Taiwan for the 2nd week of our trip. Our homebase was at the Hero House in Taipei, a building formerly used to host military veterans but is now open to Taiwanese residents &/or "youth" guests (thank you for making us young again, Taiwan!). We would then take day trips out of the city for the next several days. The Hero House was pretty centrally located next to a main subway station in the Ximending district. This is usually described as a hoppin' place for younger people, the "Harajuku of Taiwan", filled with shops, clubs, bars, etc. We thought it would be our scene... until we got there, and saw that Ximending is filled with KIDS!!! Frickin TEENAGERS!

HIGHLIGHTS FROM TAIPEI:

• Seeing "Betel Nut Beauties" at roadside towns on the way from the airport to the main city.
• Wandering Tammy's old neighborhood, where we saw the market, streets, and apartment homes of her childhood (awwww so cute!)
• Got glasses for cheap.
• Visited the immense Taipei Zoo & saw actual panda bears.
• Had tea & snacks up the mountainside & saw the sunset.
• Went up to the Taipei 101 observation deck (and was able to stand outside in the blasting wind!)
• Dinner at Modern Toilet Restaurant (where I had the worst spaghetti and meatballs ever, but hey, we're not there for the food, right?)
• Saw ridiculous & unintentionally funny late-night informercials for Chinese viagra, starring potbellied balding guys (and special-effects "boners") & young ladies. And then there was that one channel which was nothing but pole-dancing girls in a un-sexy badly-lit 70s-era-disco-looking studio.
• Toured the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall.
• Visited the National Palace Museum and saw the famed carvings of cabbage and pork (not kidding, it was actually pretty cool).
• Awestruck by the beauty of the Confucious Temple at dusk.
• Street food and shopping at the Shilin Night Market (and endured a Chinese foot massage afterwards).

Pictures can be found HERE.

Up at Taipei 101: