When we arrived in Tainan, we had to take a shuttle from the HSR station into town. I stepped on to the bus while my brother spoke with the driver. An older gentlemen in the back of the bus ushered me to a couple seats next to him. He spoke very broken English so I'm not really sure what he was trying to tell me.
Fortunately, my brother came over only a few seconds later. When Kenny began speaking Mandarin, the man's jaw dropped and it took him a second to get back in the conversation. From that moment on he did not let Kenny do anything else but talk to him.
He asked where we were going and what we were doing in Tainan. When we told him we were there visiting, he insisted on giving is a ride to our hostel and taking us around the city the next day.
With Kenny sick at home, I decided to test out my directional skills in Taipei. I looked up Elephant Mountain directions, which looked pretty straight-forward, and made my way from the hostel to the MRT (subway).
The directions, while I took a much easier route back, were spot on and I made it to the bottom of the hike in no time. The hike was pretty short and effortless (although I sound like I'm super winded in the video) and definitely a lot better than paying $20 to go up in Taipei 101.
I woke up Monday morning to an email from Kenny saying he had been sick all night, was not going to school that day and probably wouldn't be able to hang out that evening.
Fortunately, I had already planned to meet up with a Couchsurfer that morning and was staying at a hostel with a number of other people my age who I could hang out with later that evening.
Xavier, the Couchsurfer, meet me for coffee at Wilbeck's, a coffee shop close to my hostel and the MRT stop, Guting. After chatting a bit about life in Taiwan, the legalization of marijuana in Washington state and his favorite pop music, we decided to go get some breakfast. It was far enough away that he took me there on his moped. Riding through the busy city was a lot of fun especially looking as cool as I did.
Kenny still felt pretty bad that evening so I stuck around the hostel for a particularly intense game of Apples to Apples later that evening.
A day after our hot spring adventure, Kenny, myself and Kenny's good friend from Taiwan, Karen, headed east to celebrate the final day of the New Year celebrations!
We were not quite sure what to expect and took off on the MRT (subway) around 1pm. From the MRT, it took another hour on the bus to get all the way out to Pingxi.
I was surprised when we finally hopped off the bus. I wasn't sure at that time how many people would be at the festival but from the looks of things, this town was not very big and already crowded.
One by one, lanterns floated up into the sky. We saw people all over the tiny town painting words onto their lanterns. Karen told us that the words were wishes for the new year. We bought a lantern and began writing wishes for ourselves.
As the sunset, everyone began migrating over to the main stage that was not initially visible when we arrived. Once it was dark the true ceremony began. There was music and then all of a sudden all the lights went out and they released hundreds of white lanterns.
The sight of these delicate white lanterns floating up into the night sky was breathtaking. Truly something special.
After the ceremony, we made our way back to the city center for some food. Seeing all of the people, we thought it would be a good idea to let some of them leave before going back to the bus line. We were wrong. The line for the buses was the longest line I've ever seen. We waited in it for almost an hour.
As we waited in line, watching the steady stream of buses file through the city, Kenny and I tried to calculate how many buses were in service specifically for the festival. Later we asked the bus driver and found out our guess was pretty close. Roughly 500 buses were shuttling people out of the town. With about 50 people crammed into each bus, we estimated that at least 25,000 people had attended the evening events. That's a lot of people!
On Wednesday afternoon Kenny and I headed south for his four-day break from school. He still wasn't feeling great but had gone to the doctor for medicine.
The HSR system is particularly effective. It only took us two hours from Taipei to Tainan (at the other end of the island). Trains run frequently and a very clean.
Even though this is my trip from Koahsiung to Taipei, this video will still give you a good idea of how fast we're traveling:
After 24 grueling hours of travel, I'm happy to report that I'm safely in Taipei!
On my arrival, an older Taiwanese gentlemen offered me a ride to the city in his town car. In any other situation, I may have hesitated. Parents always teach you never to ride with strangers but this is Taiwan. A place were I've quickly learned individuals go above and beyond to help you out.
After scoping out the area around my hostel, I met up with my brother. His hair is abnormally long and his ripped cargo shorts have now been patched up with jean squares. At 6'3", he is an unusual site to behold next to his surrounding Taiwanese.
Besides the jean patches, my brother has grown up a lot. This is going on his second year in Taipei and watching him interact with everyone is incredible. For those of you that don't know, Kenny is over in Taiwan taking an intensive course to learn Mandarin Chinese. He has been trying to teach me a few phrases but the tones are so important in this language that I keep saying the phrases wrong. Kenny says that even if you have a great vocabulary it really means nothing if you are not able to get the tones right.
Kenny has been a great host so far and has all sorts of fun things in store for me. The first night in Taipei, Kenny took me over to his friend's house. Graci, a Korean-born New Zealander, works as a foreign diplomat for her country. She's over here for two years before moving to Beijing to work in trade relations. If you didn't think that was impressive enough, she's also a budding YouTube star with her own cooking program, has the coolest Frenchie named Yoda, and was bumping '90s jams when we arrived! Think Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls and Usher! Here is one of her most recent episodes. Notice the tall, skinny white boy scarfing down his food in the program?!? :)
Here are some pictures from the dinner we had that night:
We took off early in the morning the next day for our Hot Springs Adventure. Kenny had been planning on taking me to Wulai Bayan but the previous evening one of Graci's friends had mentioned another hot sprints off the beaten path. He drew a map on a sheet of paper and gave us the number of the bus we were supposed to take out there.
The bus took over an hour and climbed into the hills behind Taipei. As we got further and further into the hills, the weather became more damp and foggy. Kenny and I were not sure what was in store for us when we got off at our bus stop to find that we were out in the middle of nowhere.
Looking at our map, we managed to put the pieces together and find the trailhead. We passed a "No Trespassing" sign and had to wade through a small river (where I almost chucked one of my shoes into the water):
The Trail
$15000 NTD?!?!?
The River We Crossed
Walking around in my bathing suit bottoms after the river crossing!
THE HOT SPRINGS!
We were blown away when we got to the hot springs. This location was especially cool because the natural hot springs met up with the river and the only other people there were a local Taiwanese family. Here's a video:
Later that evening, Kenny took me out to a noodle restaurant in Shida night market and had me try something that he thought I might be repulsed by...
Pigs Blood
Of course, Kenny was still hungry after having a regular order plus an extra order of noodles so we stopped on our way home for a little snack!
It's the morning of the third day now and I can't wait to see what Kenny has in store for me today. It's fifteen days after Chinese New Year and the celebration ends with the Lantern Festival! Stay tuned!
The day is finally here. With 22 hours of travel time ahead of me, I can't really say I'm very excited about the next 24 hours but the reward of seeing my brother at the end definitely makes it worth it.
I leave today from Seattle at 5:55pm. I travel to San Fransisco, where I have a four hour layover. I leave for Taiwan at 12:05am on the 21st and arrive after a 14 hour flight at 6:00am on Friday the 22nd. I must really love my brother.
From there I'll make my way to my hostel, which of course would be called Eight Elephants & Dream Dragon (awesome!), hopefully for a few hours of shut eye. Brother is going to meet me there at 4pm that afternoon at which point the true adventure will begin!
My bag is packed, I'm ready to go and I can't wait to see how much it weighs at the airport! :)
