Su-ao the fisher village

As my father had some rest, next day we took a trip to the East cost. After a long drive (mostly in tubes under the mountains) we reached a very nice fisher village called Su-ao. The main attractions are the Buddhist temple – where some local ceremony was held – and the fisher harbour. When the small groups of local fishers arrived by their boats, they unloaded the catch right away for sale on the fish market. Each group has a place on the market where the family members conduct the selling. The fish offer is always fresh and so various, I have never seen these kind of fishes before. The atmosphere of the busy market called forth a lunch on the port side. The food was very delicious of course except the small purple polyps what was impossible to chew and I just had some feeling that it may not be the best to eat these animals with their very dark purple liquid what I associate with poison… My father thought that the only thing why it is not so delicious that we eat it in a wrong way… I guess he will say this for many Taiwanese foods. :)
Later we left the village to find a nice beach on the southern way. We reached a small bay where a river joins to the sea. The beach side was shingly but the waves were nice for a bath. The landscape around the bay and also the life of the fisher village gave a typical picture of Taiwan for my father who is getting to like this place…

Here are some pictures about this trip:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan

My father is visiting me!

My father (Paul) has come to visit me on the 18th of October for 2 weeks. He has been always interested about Taiwan and my stay here gave a good opportunity to combine a business trip with my visitation.

An extraordinary weekend in Kenting...

The 10th of October was a day what we had been waiting for such a long time not just because this is the national holiday of Taiwan, but because finally we got the chance to go to Kenting and spend an awesome weekend at the tropical southern part of Taiwan. We felt that we deserved this trip after so many typhoons hit the island during the last few weekends.

Pictures about the tirp are in the Kenting folder:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan

Day 1: getting used to the southern lifestyle…

Me, Andreas and Maciej (A Polish “bratnaki” who studies finance for one semester in NTU, came from Warsaw btw.) left Taipei at 6:00 am on Friday by the good old Golf. It was a very nice sunny day without any cloud on the sky. It was around 26-27C in the capital but 31-32C in our destination. I really don’t understand why people has problem with autumn :P…coz I love it! :) We drove on the highways all way long, but it still took more than 6 hours to get to Kenting. Again, Taiwanese drivers are so unbelievable…even if there are 3 or 4 lines on the highway they occupy all of them by driving with the same speed. The other thing is that Kenting is one of the most popular destinations on the national holiaday…so that’s why a 300 km’s way took this much of time…

This fact became even more obvious when we couldn’t find any room in the city… But it was so hot and sunny that we couldn’t stand to go to the beach right away instead of looking for more places. The beach here is absolutely fantastic. I can not compare it to any other…it’s just simply exotic! After we admired the beautiful sunset we started to look for some accommodation…but nowhere was any free room in the city…there was no way back…we moved down on the coastline a few km’s till we luckily found 3 free rooms in a local family’s “motel” like house. They were really kind persons. The son of the grandma took us into the city by his small pick-up track. We were standing on the flat of the car attracting heavy attention among the crowd as we “marched” into the centre of Kenting. Randomly some guys felt free to join us so than the truck become a bit overloaded…:)
They were really funny guys who also liked that suddenly they became the centre of the attention too. As we arrived to the centre, our first way was to have some dinner with them. It was nice to get to know other Taiwanese students outside from Taipei. Some of them do military service through 1 year. This is very strict in Taiwan and the guys have to take it very seriously. After the delicious local food all of us went to the beach where most of the people come to enjoy the sound of the sea and the moonlight with some beers and good company around the fire… Just like we did! It was an awesome time we spent there with these Taiwanese guys. When they left the three of us still felt enough power to rock the night in a local club…I think we managed it… :)

Day 2: at the Pacific Ocean

On Saurday to gain our energy back to 100% after the short sleep we had the breakfast in the accommodation what the grandma prepared from fresh seafood in just a few minutes…it was really delicious! We decided to go to the south-eastern side to check out the beaches there. Eluanbi, the island’s southern village has a nice Lighthouse where we had to get off to have a close-up view for the coral reef and the rocky beach from the cliff. The wind is so extremely strong on at the edge of the cliff that it could throw us off balance! But it was worth to have that amazing view for the Pacific coastline. We drove forward to find a sandy beach. We arrived to a little village where we saw a vendor selling hermit crabs (look at the pictures). These cute animals caught my and Andreas’ fancy to buy some as house pet…:) Andreas has 2 (Gordon and Jerry) and I bought 3 (I still haven’t named them..) After we played enough with them :) we went out to the beach which was full of surfers. Here the waves are really good for surfing…we rent a body board which was still cool to ride a bit on the waves. But the real ride just came after with quads! …and it was not just around a circle, but through hills and bushes…cool staff.
Our main aim was to try the scuba diving during this weekend. In the afternoon it was too late to do that so we scheduled it for Sunday. Instead we went to the Sihjhongsi hot spring…we were relaxing for a few hours before we came back to Kenting to have a Saturday nigh’s party…in the club we met so many foreigners who “tried” to go for local girls… we had to show them how Europeans hit the floor…:)

Day 3: Scuba diving!

As we got up on Sunday morning we drove to Nanwan beach which is one of the best places to do scuba diving in Taiwan – from the guidebook. We arranged a meeting with a Canadian scuba diver, John who guide both beginner and advanced scuba divers into the life of corals trough all the year. It was a long process to dress up in the proper clothes and prepare the equipments… we were so excited how it will be…this was the first time for me and Maciej. I’ve always wanted to try out scuba diving, but up to now I never got the chance to do it…and now it became reality…I couldn’t wait to get to the beach! :) In the full wearing it is really hard to move, but in the water the extra weights are advantage. Although, in vertical direction you move by inflating or deflating your waistcoat you wear with the backpack. The most difficult part – I think – is to get used to the pressure in 4-10 m deep. My ears hearted a lot at the beginning but as we moved slowly into more depth it was ok. The maximum was 10 meters we dived down and overall we spent around 50 minutes underwater. It was enough time I think to learn how to move with all the stuff on your back and than to admire the life of the corals…I absolutely loved it! When we came out and changed, I took some underwater pictures and a short movie with my new camera (Pentax W60)…it’s really cool.

So after this great experience – what we will never forget – we went to eat to a scuba divers’ favourite restaurant and than we left this beautiful place to drive back to Taipei. I believe that for each of us this was one of the greatest weekends ever and the best one for sure since we are here in Taiwan.

Wulai hot spring village

Saturday (the 27th) was a rainy and a bit cool day but seemed to be perfect to try out one of the nearest hot springs. So me and Jesus took the bus towards the Wulai hot spring village which lies in a valley 25 km south of Taipei. The bus was full of people from the rural areas who like to have a closer view on foreigners by guessing where are they from…? …we got used to it…but once an indigenous look like men full of tattoo remarked that my Spanish neighbour is similar to Jesus…ok… but when Jesus showed up his name, all the bus – including us – was burst into laughter…:)

When we arrived, the Indian man who made fun of Jesus invited us into his mother’s restaurant. What a nice gesture to foreigners…ha? The food was very delicious. The rice prepared in bamboo had an excellent taste with the pork and other salads…
After lunch we went to look for the free hot spring what the guide book suggested. This is actually consists of a few little pools on the river side and it was built by local villagers to utilise the rich hot water for their own health. Different pools have different temperature what they regulate with cold water. But most of them are still very hot around 38-45 C. Anyway, sitting in the hot water during the rainy hours was a pretty cool feeling…
Later we went up to the mountain by taxi to see a water fall which is the biggest in Northern Taiwan. It was almost 5 but the Yun-Hsien Resort at the top of the water fall was too attractive to miss out. We got up there by a cable car which looks likes a ski lift. This park is basically an excellent place to spend a nice weekend enjoying the green Taiwanese nature all around. But at that time the rain was so heavy that we didn’t have too much time to enjoy the beautiful sights of the park. We were just running up on the stairs to reach the hotel’s swimming pool which looked great in a picture at the cable car station… Finally we found it with also some Jacuzzi…so than the “day of complete relax” was absolute plenary!

Pictures about the tirp are in my google web album as usual:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan