A weekend in Caribbean Taiwan

Now that a couple days have gone by since my last blog post it’s time to write the promised post about my weekend trip to Kenting last weekend. Kenting is the most southern tip of the island of Taiwan and it’s the most tropical part of the country. Temperatures here are very pleasant all year round, with temperatures in the 20-something degrees (Celsius that is, because Celsius is what you’re supposed to use my dear American friends).

Not that temperatures here in Taipei were very unpleasant last weekend, but Taipei is definitely not a subtropical paradise like Kenting. Far from it; noise, pollution, and seas of people crowding the streets and public transport are hardly the characteristics of a subtropical paradise, no matter how high temperatures are. Besides, to what end did I go to Taiwan if it wasn’t to travel. Anyway, long story short we thought it was time to get away from the hussle and bussle of Taipei and to go relax on the beach drinking from a coconut.

We booked bus tickets for the 1am bus on Friday to Kaoshiung, the most southern big city of Taiwan. This bus ride would take about five hours, and once we got to Kaoshiung we had to take a taxi to our hostel in Hengchun, which would take another two hours. Seven hours from Taipei to subtropical paradise is totally worth it, and definitely closer than I’ve ever been. The bus ride was long, but I think all of us were able to sleep on the bus so it was over before we knew it. And it was actually a little bit too fast, since I really felt like sleeping just a little longer. The taxi ride consisted mostly of me trying to sleep in the most uncomfortable positions ever and not succeeding. Which made the taxi ride actually feel a lot longer than the bus ride.

When we finally made it to our hostel we were all very pleasantly surprised. The hostel was called Rainbow Wave and the overall vibe of the place was very relaxed and welcoming. Also, the eight of us shared a really big Japanese style dorm room which was very clean and tidy. Because we were all kind of tired from our nocturnal journey we decided that we would just spend our first day at the beach. So we took a bus to Baisha beach. Baisha in Chinese means white sand, and boy the sand was white. The sand was white and the water was clear and blue like no water I had ever seen. It looked like something you would expect to find only in the Caribbean. Best of all was the fact that it was a Friday and the beach was actually really quiet. In order for us to not burn alive we rented a big umbrella and the only thing that was left to do after that was get ourselves some coconuts and relax. So we did.

Baisha Beach

Me and Jenny

Giulia and Sarah enjoying their coconut

Unfortunately there came a point where everyone was starting to feel very hungry and it was time to leave the beach, find a place to eat, and maybe do some exploring instead of just laying on the beach. So we took the bus to the town of Kenting where we had a surprisingly good late western lunch. After lunch we wanted to go back to the beach to see the sunset, since Baisha beach is one of the best places to see the sunset. Unfortunately our bus was very late and in the end we just headed back to the hostel to freshen up and take a nap before going to get dinner. In the end we had a wonderful first day at the beach and a very early night.

On the second day we were joined by the girl who had planned our entire trip (thanks for that!). She helped us rent mopeds and those were going to be our transportation for the coming two days. It was my first driving a moped and I absolutely loved it! Next time there’s an opportunity to explore the area by moped I’m definitely doing it again. Especially because it’s more convenient and not even that much more expensive than doing things by bus. All in all we spend about €7,50 per person to rent the scooters, that includes gas.

The motor gang

Our first stop that day was a company that offered water activities. They took us to the Baisha beach where everything was already set up. We started out by doing some snorkeling and things got more intense after that. Below, I have posted some pictures of the activities we did at Baisha.

The water activities

The activities took about 2,5 hours and afterwards we were all very hungry and we decided to go to Houbihu where we were told you get good and really cheap sashimi. The guy who told us about this place seemed a little odd and we weren’t quite sure whether he was completely in his right mind when he told us that he had 20 pieces of sashimi for NT$100 (which is about €2,50). Random guy on the beach, I am really sorry we didn’t trust you from the start! The sashimi was really as cheap as he had told us, and was actually pretty good too.

After stuffing ourselves with cheap raw fish we took to our scooters and went to Eluanbi Park to see the sunset. This park was really really beautiful and the seaside boardwalk was the perfect setting to see the sunset.

Eluanbi Park

Group pictureee

Sunset

Sunset

 Seeing that beautiful sunset made us hungry again and we went to the town of Kenting to see their famed night market. In the end, me and the three Italian girls that were part of our group decided to get a pizza from a street stand, which we ate on the beach. The pizza was surprisingly good and eating it at the beach felt like the perfect ending of the perfect day.

Sunday was our third and final day in Kenting and we only had until 13:30 to do some stuff because our taxi was going to take us back to Kaoshiung at that time. We got up early and we went up to the actual Kenting National Forest Recreation Area where we did some hiking. The landscape was really beautiful and they had some amazing caves, it was definitely a must-see and I’m glad we spent our last morning there.

One of the caves

View from Kenting National Forest Recreation Area

After hiking we went down to the town of Kenting again to have some Thai food for lunch. I got green chicken curry with rice and it was absolutely delicious. The only thing was that I was eating it whilst sitting in “kleermakerszit” (with our legs crossed) to keep my feet off the ground, because unfortunately the restaurant had a bit of a cockroach problem. It wasn’t that the place was not clean or anything, but in that climate it’s just something that is almost inevitable. The Taiwanese people in the restaurant didn’t really seem bothered by it, it was just that our Western minds were having a hard time with the idea that a cockroach might crawl up one of our legs.

After lunch we hurried back to Hengchun on our scooters to get bring them back to where we rented them. By the time we got back to the hostel we had just enough time to pack all our stuff before the taxis got there to take us to Kaoshiung. This time around the  taxi ride was a lot more comfortable and it didn’t seem to take as long as on Friday. The bus ride however took seven hours instead of five hours because there was a lot of traffic. All in all it took us around nine to ten hours to get back to Taipei but it was sooo worth it! I had an amazing time in Kenting and when my parents get here in two weeks I definitely want to go back there with them.

One final note, last week I got a question about the weather here. And I thought I would share that on here as well. The weather has been absolutely amazing so far. I’ve had very little rain since I’ve been here and I’ve been wearing shorts and t-shirts every single day. I am currently writing this blog post in the nearby riverside park in the shade of a tree, wearing shorts, a t-shirt and my flip-flops. A beautiful sunny lazy day and the perfect setting to write a blog post.

P.S. I should probably not have written that last paragraph because an hour later it started raining. Karma's a bitch...

So much catching up to do!

I know, I know, I've been a bad bad boy for not updating my blog. Now I could fill an entire paragraph with reasons and excuses, and promises for the future. But instead I will get right to it and get to the good stuff.

Since my last update I have been on a few weekend trips. Actually, I went on trips every weekend since then. The first one was actually just a day-trip to Jiufen and Jinguashi, two mining towns about an hour away from Taipei. Jiufen is especially famous for being the setting for the animated film 'Spirited Away'. Below are some pictures from Jiufen.

Temple Silhouette

The famous Jiufen lanterns

The second weekend trip was to Taichung during the National Holiday weekend. The first day, the national holiday itself was on a Friday. We went to the bus station in Taipei to get tickets to Taichung, we went upstairs to the busterminal and when we got there it looked like we had gotten to freaking Disneyland or something. Rows and rows of people lined up, and of course all of them had to get onto the same bus as us. Luckily the buses came about every ten minutes, so an hour later we were able to get on a bus. The drive to Taichung was supposed be somewhere around 2 to to 2,5 hours depending, but because of the national holiday all the freeways were jam-packed and traffic was crazy. We ended up being on that bus for four hours before we finally arrived in Taichung.

Now I won't go into detail about our experiences from that point onwards to when we finally go to the hotel because the story would become very complicated and boring. Instead, let it suffice to say that we did not see very much of the city as we wanted to see the fireworks on the outskirts of town. By the time we FINALLY get there, the fireworks are as good as over and the buses to get back to town are being swamped by all the people that were coming from the festival terrain. I'm telling you, I have probably never seen more people all trying to get into buses at the same time. We decided to walk back towards town and look for a taxi to take us to the hotel. We ended up walking for two hours before eventually finding a taxi that could take us to the hotel, an hour's driving away from the city because by the time we booked our hotel everything was already fully booked because of the national holiday.

However, even though the first day wasn't all that successful in the sense that we didn't see much of the actual city or the fireworks it did get us the two taxi drivers that drove us home that night and offered to take us around the next day on our trip to Sun Moon Lake. And because of them we managed to see and do a lot of things on the second day of our trip, to make up for that lost first day. Like we say in Dutch, "Ieder nadeel heeft zijn voordeel". Some pics of the trip are below.

Sun Moon Lake

Sunset at Sun Moon Lake

Our little group of adventurers

The third weekend since my last update I went on two day trips. The first one was to the Pingxi Rail Branch Line, which is basically an old mining rail track that connects a couple quaint mining towns in the mountains. Our first stop was a tiny cat village where they had a very big population of stray cats walking around, which was an odd sight and led to a big scare when we were having lunch at this noodle place. Something brushed against someone's leg which scared her and she scared me resulting in both of us screaming like little girls...

Stray cats

Just chillin'

The next stop on the line was Sandiaoling, from where the Sandiaoling waterfall trail started. When the train stopped at this station nobody got off the train and when I looked outside there was only a tiny tiny station right next to a cliff, so I was a little unsure whether we were actually supposed to get off the train here. But I decided to take a leap of faith and trust my Lonely Planet guide. Thankfully my guide was correct and we were indeed at Sandiaoling, and there was indeed a trail leading up to two very pretty waterfalls. This hike reminded me of why I came to Taiwan. To see something completely unlike anything I had ever seen before. And there were very few others on the trail so it felt like we were just walking through the actual jungle.

Waterfall #1

The Sandiaoling Waterfall trail

Waterfall #2

We ended our day trip in a town called Shifen, famous for the train tracks that run right through the town only a few metres away from the buildings along the main street. Another characteristic of the town is that many people go there to do wish lanterns. And like real tourists, we felt we had to make one of our own. Good thing we were with the four of us and one lantern has four different sides so we could each use a side to write down our wish on. The whole thing was actually a really fun experience and I wrote my wish in Dutch since I felt like it was something that you had to do in your native tongue. 

Sunset near Shifen

Our lantern

The second day trip that weekend was cycling to Tamsui, an oceanside town north of Taipei. We decided that instead of taking our own bikes and going through the hassle of having to take them back with us on the always crowded MRT, we would get YouBikes. YouBike is a bike system that has stations everywhere in the city and after you sign up you can just get one at one place and drop it off at another. The first 30 minutes are free, and afterwards you get charged a small fee. In the end we found out that we couldn't cycle all the way to Tamsui because there were no YouBike stations there, but we got pretty far up north cycling along the riverside paths. We cycled for around three hours before arriving in Beitou, the most northern YouBike station and took the MRT to Tamsui from there. Once we got there we took a little tour of the town and went to Fisherman's Wharf to see the sunset.

Our YouBikes

Our sporty group of pro cyclists

Super crowded bus... No fun

Fisherman's Wharf

Sunset at Fisherman's Wharf

Now you are all up to date up until this weekend. This weekend I went to Kenting in the very south of Taiwan, but that trip is worth a blogpost on its own. Which I will hopefully write in the coming week (I WILL!). 

My first weeks!

First off, my apologies for not keeping up this blog as well as I should have done. I'll try to better my life from now on and at least post something once a week. Last time I was writing at 3:30 in the morning because my jetlag was keeping me up. Thankfully, that was the last night I experienced my jetlag that severe. The second week of my stay here in Taiwan meant the start of my classes.

On Monday morning I had Cross Cultural Management. A very interesting course, mainly for international students, that is all about the definition of culture and how it affects business relationships and the management structure in a company. Every week there is a certain topic on which the lecturer will give us an introduction, and afterwards we get divided into groups and discuss the lecture's content from our own culture's point of view. This gives an interesting insight in other cultures and how being from another country can really make for a very different way of looking at certain things. It has also once again made it very clear that the differences between cultures within Europe can be very large, which is funny considering the fact that in other parts of the world Europe is often mentioned as just that; Europe. Whereas Europe is only a continent home to a large amount of cultures and sometimes very different values and norms.

On Monday afternoon I had a class called Application of Financial Modeling. This class, like the name suggests is all about applying financial models in a practical way. We learn how to analyse financial problems and how to solve them using the magical software that is Excel. I knew the basics of Excel before starting this course, but I soon found out that there is so much more to that program than I had expected. Our teacher is a true pro and seems to actually be in love with Excel. He always, very proudly and enthusiastically , shows us all the things he has made using Excel. One of which was a sort of game for his daughter meant for studying English. Later I found out that his daughter is very young still and the poor girl still had to sit behind the computer to study her English. Which is apparently quite common here in Taiwan. A lot of parents want their children to study English from a very early age onwards.

This brings me to a class I have on Wednesday morning, this one is called English Teaching for Children and it is meant for people who would like to teach English to children here in Taiwan or in Mainland China. In this class I found out that a lot of children get sent to summer school to learn English at a very young age, and the way they are taught English is the same way we learn foreign languages in high school in The Netherlands. It's a lot of plain vocabulary and grammar. This is of course not the best way to teach children a new language. Children this young still have the ability to pick up a new language fairly quickly and they should be taught in a more childlike way. By using stories and songs for examples, by playing games, by doing a small play in English etc. They learn the language by hearing it, being around it, using it in a playful manner. And this course emphasizes that and gives us a lot of insights in how children can learn a new languages and actually teaches us practical things to teach ourselves.Perhaps I will someday come back here, or go to Mainland China, to teach English.

My last "normal" (non-Chinese) class is Managing Global Acquisitions and Mergers. This class uses a lot of very up to date cases to teach us all about how mergers and acquisitions work, what the motives and goals may be, and also how things can go wrong. The class is taught by a very interesting professor. And by interesting I don't just mean he's interesting to listen to. He is an interesting personality. His "English" name is Carlos. He is quite an achieved businessman and he is a great fan of taking pictures of his students during class and having birthday parties in the classroom. Also, selfies! The guy loves selfies! Last class he also seemed to have a certain preference for Shakira songs. Maybe it's because of his latino western name, or maybe just because he likes that her hips don't lie. Who knows..

In the second week my Chinese courses finally started as well, and these are an entirely different story. These courses are probably the single most important reason I went here in the first place and it's definitely a challenge to start learning this language. The grammar is not complicated at all, or so I've heard. For example, they don't really conjugate verbs. They don't even distinguish between present or past, you just use a time indicator in the sentence to indicate when it took place. But I can tell you right now, the pronunciation more than makes up for the easiness of the grammar. Boy oh boy, my poor western brain can't handle all those different tones. Especially when people speak really fast I can't even hear them using the tones. How am I ever supposed to pronounce things right when trying to speak fast, I can hardly manage it when speaking sound by sound. BUT, I will not give up. I still have four months left here and I intend to get the basics of Chinese down before I go back to the Netherlands. I will keep you updated on my progress. And my inevitable struggles of course...

Now that we've gotten the academic part out of the way, let's move on to the real reason I'm here. SIGHTSEEINGG! So far I must admit I haven't really seen as much as I would've wanted to. In the first week we went looking for a toilet restaurant, this restaurant apparently serves all foods and drinks in toilets. Which sounds disgusting and will probably make it impossible for me to properly enjoy my meal, but I want to try it nevertheless. Unfortunately, when we got there the restaurant was under construction. I am definitely going back though! Instead we went to a Korean restaurant which where I had some very nice seafood kind of soup and afterwards we explored the Ximen area (a commercial district in Taipei).

I also climbed the Elephant Mountain, where I took some beautiful pictures of Taipei at night.

View from Elephant Mountain

Last weekend I went on a surfing trip organized by a local student here, especially for the exchange students. We went to the Yilan district on the east coast of Taiwan, to Wai'ao Beach. A beautiful black sand beach, that was surprisingly quiet on the day we were there. We had rented a tourbus to get there, which took about 2.5 hours due to heavy traffic (apparently the east coast is a popular weekend getaway for a lot of people in Taipei). Since this was a surfing trip I actually went surfing for the first time in my life. I rented a board at the surfing place on the beach and took a two hour class. The surfing was a lot of fun to do, but very hard and even more exhausting. After the two hour class I was just drained. Not only because it's a lot of paddling and moving in water, but also because most of the time I went down hard and being thrown under water again and again is very tiring haha. Luckily though it wasn't all bad, I managed to catch a few good waves and actually managed to stand on my board!

Wai'ao Beach

As you might have seen on facebook I also managed to get myself a bike. I ended up not buying a second hand one, but a new one. Because for the second hand bike auction you had to get up at 4am to get one and I was not about to do that. There are limits to my thriftiness. On this bike I have undertaken two cycling trips. The first one was to Da'an Park, a park close to the university, and to Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. The Memorial Hall was immense as you can see from the picture below and it's really humbling to stand in front of such a vast building.

CKS Memorial Hall

CKS Statue

CKS Memorial Hall

The second cycling trip was down the river with a group of people to the Bitan Suspension Bridge. That was a really fun day and the parks and bike lanes down the riverside are beautiful and really well maintained. One of the things I want to try doing as well is cycling all the down the river to the northern most point, Tamsui. It is about a five hour ride, but apparently a very beautiful one. 

Bitan Suspension Bridge

Near Bitan Suspension Bridge

Bitan Suspension Bridge

This blog post has become waaaaay too long, sorry for that. And I haven't even told you everything there is to tell! The only way to solve this problem I guess, is to write these posts more often. Which I hopefully will start doing starting from now!

The Journey

The Journey started three days ago. Something that probably won't be a surprise to most of you is that I only finished packing like three minutes before we left for Schiphol. But even despite my clear lack of planning skills I seem to not be missing anything essential, yet. Well, not counting the Taiwan travel guide I left behind on my desk in my room. I can still see myself looking at it and thinking I still needed to put that in my hand luggage, which in the end I still forgot. Thankfully, my mum and dad were nice enough to buy me a new Lonely Planet travel guide at the airport (they're visiting in November, so they'll be able to use mine then). Thanks again by the way!

Moving on; when we arrived at Schiphol we met up with my mother in law and Sharon (a family friend) and we got to the gate 15 minutes early. Checking my luggage went well and before I knew it I only had one suitcase to tow. Because I still had two hours until the gate would open we went to Starbucks to kill some time and it was nice to just take in these last moments with the people closest to me. 

Then, after what felt like both ages and seconds at the same time, it was time to head through customs. It was time for goodbyes. It felt weird to have to say goodbye to my parents since I have never been away from them for such a long stretch of time. But it was definitely hardest to say goodbye to my boyfriend Mark. He has been such a big part of my life over the last ten months that I really couldn't imagine what it would be like to suddenly not see him for 4.5 months. What it would be like to go to sleep alone, and to wake up alone, to not have him there to share all of the experiences that I was sure to experience over the following months. Yes, some tears were shed, but only reasonable amounts haha

Now, I will skip the very uninteresting parts about boarding and being on a plane for 17 hours. It will suffice to say that it was not the most comfortable experience of my life and that I spent it watching more movies than I have ever watched in one go before. 

Thankfully there were no delays, so, at almost exactly 13.05pm local time I arrived at Taoyuan International Airport. The moment I stepped off the airplane I was almost literally hit by a wall of heat which was thankfully followed by the cool welcome of the airconditioned arrival hall. At the airport I was supposed to be picked up by the university who had arranged shuttle buses for international students going back and forth between the airport and the dorms. Not only that, there were also Taiwanese students present to help me withdraw some money and buy a sim card. That was really appreciated, because the woman who helped me at the telecom provider did not appear to speak that much English.

Which brings me to an interlude relating to English in Taiwan. I've been here for two days now and I have already noticed that not being able to read, speak, or understand any Chinese is quite a handicap. Yes, I have managed so far, but life would be much easier if I would have some prior knowledge of Chinese. Especially when it comes to food. Eating out is the norm here, and I don't even have a proper kitchen to cook in even if I wanted to. And unfortunately it turns out to be challenging to find places that offer English menus, or even pictures of their food. In the end I'll be fine, and I'm sure I will start to recognise some characters quickly enough but for now it is a handicap.

Back to my arrival. The NTU (National Taiwan University) shuttle buses were comfortable and dropped us off right in front of the dorms, so it couldn't really get any more convenient. At the reception desk I was handed a stack of forms that I had to fill in before I could even get into my room. Afterwards I got my keys and was able to check the state of my room and to see if everything was there. After reading some stories about the rooms not being all that clean I was afraid I would encounter the same issue, but thankfully that is not the case. I've got a nice rather empty looking room on the ground floor of the building. This might not provide me with spectacular views, but like we say in Dutch 'ieder nadeel heeft zijn voordeel' (every disadvantage has its advantage); I can be outside in about thirty seconds, which is nice when you're late for something or when you've forgotten to bring something (especially the second thing will definitely occur).

On the first night I needed to buy everything for my room, ranging from a mattress and pillow, to a shower curtain, to a trash can. Thankfully, there was a temporary shop set up just outside the dorms, which saved me a lot of time and trouble. Even though I've been here for two days now I still haven't really settled in yet. Yes, I have everything I need. But I need to clean and personalise it still. My suitcases are still on the floor and my desk looks like my desk at home, aka full of sh*t.

The first night I went to sleep at 11pm and woke up at 10am the next morning, which was fine and I thought that this meant that I would not be troubled by jetlag. However, as I am writing this blogpost my MacBook tells me it is currently 3:30am, so I guess my jetlag has caught up with me. Which is not so good, since the second hand bike auction starts in like 5 hours and afterwards I have a campus tour and international student orientation. I hope I will survive, wish me luck!

P.S. pictures will follow!