A Taroko Gorge Day

Enplane from Taipei to Hualian ... the adventure has begun (with a 5:15 am start time - ouch!)




























We were excited to already see some wonderful mountains as we disembarked from our plane. Soooo beautiful!

This narrow hiking path is the road to a local village!

Jason's already trying to decide if he could do a backflip into the water below.

Enjoying some delicious coffee made with nearby mountain spring water.

Due to the number of rocks that fall here each day we were all required to wear hard hats and walk close to the mountain in the hopes that any plummeting boulders would bounce out and away from the mountain allowing us to live :)

We stopped for lunch at a lodge/restaurant serving traditional Taiwanese Aborigonal food which was actually quite tasty!

Eternal Springs Shrine - in memorial to the men who lost their lives making the road through Taroko Gorge.

Largest hot water pot I've ever seen ... I hadn't even noticed what it was until I noticed a staff member filling up his tea pot from it!

Final tour stop at Chi Hsing Beach ... it was a tad windy!

Our final destination on our Taiwan adventure, Taipei's tallest building - and the world's second tallest building - Taipei 101. Not a great shot, but we were in fact there :) Sadly, we got their too late to get up to the observatory for the view...but with the rain, it might not have been great anyhow.

Our final thrill was getting to travel at 430 kilometers (about 260 miles) per hour on China's magnetically levitated (Maglev) train from the airport to a subway line. Whew! It was fast!

A Taipei Night

We had a fantastic time exploring a few of Taipei's sites at night ... even though we were completely exhausted after our early morning travel, we wanted to cram in as much as possible into our two short days in Taiwan.

These first few photos are from one of the main squares in downtown Taipei that hold a concert hall and a memorial hall to Chiang Kai-shek.

Afterwards, we decided to stop at the Shilin Night Market which was on one of the subway stops on our way back to our digs. It was raining which was a bummer, but it was still quite an experience. Once inside, we were in a mobbed food court of sorts ... although not all foods that we were interested in eating!

Return to Island Life

Last week we had a 4-day weekend which meant the dorm would be closed. Woo-hoo!

We decided to make our getaway and headed to Taiwan for two nights of island living. We have a Palauan friend from Angaur who works at the Palauan embassy in Taipei. He had invited us to come - anytime. We took him up on his offer and were pleasantly surprised by how refreshing our visit to Taipei was.

For those (like me) who aren't geography buffs, here's a quick map of the region ... (China claims Taiwan as it's own, although Taiwan has not been part of China since 1949)


























map from here


Our airport breakfast before departing - dumplings now seem semi-normal for breakfast!

















Upon our arrival, we were very excited to see these signs on sidewalks ... even more excited when we noticed people seemed to actually obey them! We could actually walk on the sidewalk without having constant moments of nearly getting run over. It was heavenly!


















Biggest snail I'd ever seen!



















Something we really loved about Taipei is that you could look one direction and see the city chaos, and then look the opposite direction and see beautiful green hills, with hiking trails leading strait from the subway stations! It was great!

We came upon a temple along the hilltop of our hike ... this is where it seems a temple should be, above all the hustle and bustle of the city.

(More photos to come...)