Man Man Zou

I couldn’t help but feel a little too touristy on our trip to the Southern Cross Island Highway, Taitung, Lanyu, the East Coast Highway, Tailuge, and the Central Cross Island Highway- most of the major tourist destinations in Taiwan.

The first day, we rode our scooters from Yuanlin, down through Douliu, through Jiasian (a town famous for taro) and to Baolai, near the Southern Cross Island Highway. We took the scenic route (Hwy 3), which was better than stopping at stoplights every 100m on Hwy 1. We didn’t actually know what we were doing though, we just guessed which way would be better.

In Baolai, we found our hot springs campsite. There were only a few other people there at the time, and, being the westerners that we are, we set up our tent as far away from people as we could.

I know I’ve said that I don’t like hot springs, and it’s true, but it’s the easiest way to find campsites in Taiwan. These hot springs were exceptional though, because it was the only swimming place I’ve been to in Taiwan that didn’t force us to wear bathing caps. It was nice to be free again!

We went to bed very early, and slept through the karaoke put on by the superbus tours that showed up in the evening. The group camping nearest to us was drinking quite heavily, and while I was lying on my sleeping bag, almost asleep, I heard some footsteps approach the tent. Someone peered into the top of the tent (we didn’t put the fly on), and demanded, “Quickly, we still have food. Come eat!” It wasn’t an option.

So we stumbled out of bed and walked over. They couldn’t speak any English at all, which was good for us. They were interesting to talk to because they spoke a mile a minute, but when we didn’t understand, they reworded it. And they had some good questions for us, including why we put our tent so far away. I said it’s because that’s the way western people usually are, and they confirmed that most Chinese people don’t have a problem with sharing close quarters, and sometimes even prefer it because they feel safer.

After the impromptu meal with our neighbors, we tried to go back to sleep. A new group pulled up, but I didn’t think much of it because there were many kids and I figured they’d go to bed soon after. We fell asleep, but were woken up at 2am by the kids setting off heart stopping firecrackers. I knew this campsite was too good to be true. So that was bad-sleep night number one for us.

The next day we had a perfect ride from Baolai to Taitung (then to Jhihben hot springs). The Southern Cross Island Highway is much easier than the Central Cross Island Highway to ride. It got a little cold, and I think we passed around 2700m elevation, so not too bad.

There was a lot of damage on the roads from the typhoon, which made for an interesting time and we often stopped to survey it. At some points the power lines were so badly damaged that they were just hanging by a string over the cliff. We would have been alone on the road for the entire ride, but we often passed clean-up crews clearing out the landslides.

Riding was so nice at this point, that we both felt we could have just kept going. Sure our butts hurt beyond words after 6 hours, but the air was just so nice and the roads were so easy and free of traffic.

We couldn’t find any campsites in Taitung, so we drove a little ways away to Jhihben, famous for its hot springs. It was a different world there, even though it’s only half an hour away from Taitung. It had the most resort feel of any town I’ve seen in Taiwan, but the gorge was still beautiful, even with all the hotels.

A few minutes before approaching Jhihben, there were dozens of people on the road trying to get us to stay at their hotel. A lady tried to get my attention at an intersection, but I just drove by. She hopped on her scooter and few minutes later she caught up to me yelling Luguan! Luguan! (hotel). I had to stop and explain that I am camping and don’t need a hotel. That got me off the hook.

We found a campsite and were assigned a camping spot. If covered camping on padded platforms with electricity and taps isn’t enough of a culture shock for westerners, how about camping on the third floor? That’s right, we were camping on the third floor.

The campsite was massive, and they assigned us about a foot away from the next tent. Later, we politely moved our tent over a tad, likely to the confusion of our neighbors. Us rude foreigners are nuts.

After trying to sneak in the hot springs without bathing caps, someone was quickly alerted and ran over to us in concern. We were then given some used caps to wear. Swimming in Taiwan is strange. You must wear swimming caps. And most places don’t like it when people wear loose swimming suits either, so most guys have to wear speedos or other tighties.

We slept well that night, and woke up as the sun was rising (no other choice, due to the heat and noise), and rode to the Taitung airport to catch a flight to Lanyu.

After getting lost in Taitung, we got to the airport at 9:30am, bought our tickets, and caught the 9:55am flight. The airplane was a 19-seater, a terrifying thing for me, but the flight was smooth.

At the Lanyu airport, we were approached by a drunk guy with betel-stained teeth offering us accommodation in town. There was nothing else on offer in the airport, and no one at the information desk, so we had no other choice but to take him up on his offer.

He took us to his homestay, got us a scooter, and we never really saw him again after that. So it wasn’t exactly the homestay we were expecting, but that was ok since there were a lot of other things to keep us happy on Lanyu.

Lanyu is an aboriginal island, home to the Amis tribe. Not surprisingly, the aboriginal people of Taiwan suffer from similar problems as in Canada, so I couldn’t help but feel that we were barging in, unwelcomed, on traditional life. Lanyu is a touristy island, but only seems to attract ‘cool’ tourists- as in young people from big cities. I don’t recall seeing any families touring on Lanyu. There are several flights daily, each with only 19 seats, so it’s not exactly overrun with tourists (who can be easily spotted as the only people on the island wearing helmets while on scooters).

We rode around the island several times, as well as over the “Lanyu Cross-Island Highway”. Since Lanyu is a volcanic island, the mountains were impressive. We drove up to a lookout to watch the sunset, and met Henry- a Taiwanese guy who is living in Canada, attending UBC (the same University we went to).

We hung out with him for the rest of our stay on Lanyu. He gave us the latest news from UBC, and we spent a lot of time talking about Taiwan and Canada. I was greatly interested to hear about how his parents adjusted to the move to Canada, since that’s one thing that often crosses my mind- Canada must be pretty boring for those Taiwanese who enjoy late night activities and noise.

The homestay that Henry stayed at was exceptional, so we did a lot of things with them even though it was about half an hour’s ride away from our town. One of the sons took us to a really nice swimming area and we snorkeled. Out of all the places I’ve snorkeled at, the coral around Lanyu was the best. It was undamaged because so few people have swum there.

I was disappointed at first because I quickly realized that Lanyu wasn’t exactly going to be the ‘hanging with the natives’ kind of experience I somehow got into my head. We often saw the Yami people carving canoes, drying fish, and other activities that I considered to be quite fascinating, but I didn’t invade because I knew they wouldn’t have appreciated it.

One time I walked down a street and no one was around so I took a picture of some fish drying on a line. I didn’t know there was a woman lounging in her hut nearby, and she immediately came out and demanded that I buy her some cigarettes. This more than annoyed me, since she obviously was taking the tourist invasion issue a little too far. It was just some fish, perhaps not even hers, and I don’t even think she actually saw me taking the shot. So out of respect, I settled on giving her 30nt and walked away without making a scene.

We were, however, extremely lucky in another village. The son at Henry’s homestay offered to take us through the traditional part of his village, where people live in underground houses. This wasn’t an organized tour, or anything that he’s ever done before- the son was actually just visiting his family on Lanyu as well, since he attends school on ‘mainland Taiwan’. We walked past the rooftops of the underground houses, and through many chatting groups of people. He found one gentleman amongst a group, and asked him if we could see his house. The man agreed, and before we knew it, we were sitting in front of a TV in his underground house.

At first the conversation started in the Yami language, and the son translated it to Henry in Chinese, and Henry translated to us in English. Then it switched to Japanese, since that’s what the man preferred to speak.

The underground house was hot, but very clean. Not bad for a single guy (his wife died some time ago). He talked a lot about the Japanese, since he was educated during the time of the Japanese occupation. He showed us some pictures. He led a lot of protests against all the nuclear waste that Taipower has been dumping on Lanyu and even went to Japan to join a protest there.

Besides talking about the Japanese, he also talked a lot about Christianity. Lanyu was invaded years ago by the missionaries, and now, in each tiny village, there are a couple of churches.

The underground house, built to protect against the harsh weather on the island, had two levels. On the first underground level, where he could sleep and where the TV was, we could barely see outside because it was already so far underground.

One level down was the storage and working room, with boarded floors.

Down there was extremely clean, and I don’t think it was used for working anymore. Instead, he had it decorated with goat horns and boar jaws, as well as swords and tribal helmets. He told us that before he and everyone else in the village converted to Christianity, everyone was so afraid of ghosts that they used those things to protect themselves. He was so easy-going and open about his life that he offered to let us try everything on, as well as demonstrate his warrior stance to us.

So I did, after all, ‘hang with the natives’. Even if I hadn’t, Lanyu was still a unique place for other reasons.

There were hundreds of goats that roam freely there. We saw them way, way up in the mountains, along the road, in yards, and on the beach. Sometimes they were alone, and sometimes they were in large packs- a pack of goats? I don’t know, but it was a highlight of the trip.

And then there were the kids. The cute little aboriginal kids… or not. After getting settled, we walked around the neighborhood and I heard a Fuck you! from a kid way off in the distance. I didn’t think much of it, but then I heard it from another kid again later that day. …Hmmm… The next day we were on a beach on the other side of the island, admiring the beautiful canoes on the sand, and there were four boys playing. They didn’t pay too much attention to us, just a few whispers, and they continued playing. On our way off the beach, Mark said good-bye and what was their response? Fuck you! Fuck you! and a heck of a lot of laughing. It even made me, an avid swearer, raise my eyebrows in frustration and wonder what kind of English teacher the kids of Lanyu had. It was a little disturbing, and after one more encounter with kids, when they fingered us as we drove by, I swore off any further contact.

So after two nights on the island, we flew back to Taitung, filled up on much missed milk tea, and headed up the East Coast Highway to Shihtiping. We observed my favorite nerdy monument that I enjoyed last time we drove the East Coast Highway, marking the Tropic of Cancer, and hunted for a camping spot. There were no official sites to be found in the area, so we drove down a small road, parked our scooters, and walked along the beach for about half an hour until we felt we were secluded enough. We camped right on the Tropic of Cancer line, I could just see the tip of the monument from our tent.

It was hard to tell what was happening with the tide that night. We looked around for a safe looking place to camp, but the driftwood was everywhere, there was no obvious line in the sand so we just guessed, set up, and tried to go to sleep. The waves were roaring, and I was almost asleep when my phone rang. That was the last sound I was expecting, given my location. It was my roommate, calling to warn me that a typhoon was on its way towards Taiwan. That was a little unsettling, as the fierce waves were already scary enough, and I could see flashes of lightning over the sea. She said that rain wasn’t expected until the next day, so we just stayed where we were.

That night, I don’t think we slept for longer than 10 minutes at a time without one of us bolting upright to look outside of the tent to see where the waves were crashing. They sounded like they were right at our doorstep, and by the time the sun started coming up, they almost were. We were fine with that though, since it was better to get packed up and go before the sun got too hot.

We made it to Hualien before 9am, which amazed us both, since we had already covered most of what we had planned to ride that day. We were so tired and hot that we lazed about in a Starbucks for a few hours before hitting the road again. I’ve only been to Starbucks a handful of times, and I must say that spending a few hours plunked in an extremely comfortable chair was more than worth paying a fortune for an overpriced drink. We might have to try that again in our future travels.

We rode part way up the highway north of Hualien, to Qingshuei cliffs, sometimes referred to as the most beautiful highway in the world. It was extremely scenic, we stopped at most lookouts to take in the views. There was a dusty/mist problem in the air, but it was so windy that it quickly cleared. After a while, we had to turn back towards Hualien because it was so windy, and there were terrible gravel trucks that sprayed us with little pebbles everytime one went by.

We went to Tailuge (Taroko Gorge), to enjoy yet another amazing highway in Taiwan. From the coast, we rode the 14kms into the gorge, then rode back to the coast (to fill up with gas), then back into the gorge again. The scenery was so nice that I could have gone up and down the road even a few more times.

At Taroko Gorge, we found a free camping site near Tienhsiang. We were almost the only people there, except there was a foreigner guy who avoided us at all costs, until we befriended his Taiwanese girlfriend and he had no other choice but to acknowledge our presence.

We saw a few foreigners on the trip, almost all of whom were the same. No returned nods or smiles. This was hard to take, after living in Yuanlin, where most foreigners don’t hide their surprise and try to act like they don’t notice when they see another foreigner. We always give a simple hello in Yuanlin. I mean, come on… I know that when a foreigner encounters another foreigner in the middle of nowhere, that they’re both thinking about the fact that there’s another foreigner around. To hide it is just not cool. I know it’s different in big cities like Taichung and Taipei, but still…

Anyway, sleeping in Taroko Gorge was nice, likely because we were so tired. It rained a little all night, and we woke up at sunrise, packed up, and took off. Apparently, there was a typhoon on our trail.

At first it was a little chilly, but I was just happy that it wasn’t as cold as two years ago, when we drove our scooters over the Central Cross-Island highway. At that time, it was the coldest winter in 10 years, and we had to take a mega-detour because Hehuanshan had too much snow.

Then it started raining hard. And it got a lot colder. Like two years ago, we had on all our warm clothes, but I was just wearing sandals. I couldn’t feel anything after a while, and finally we came to a building that looked like it had some life in it. There were a bunch of people inside, and when we entered, one guy excitedly told us something that somehow we didn’t understand a word of. Someone spoke up in English that the typhoon was coming, right now, and that we either had to stay put at this lodge, or quickly get out of the mountains. The temperature at that place read 11 degrees, but it felt no different from -20 to me.

We opted to keep going. The wind was strong, but not typhoon strong. It was foggy, but at least it wasn’t snowing like it was the last time. So on we went, over Hehuanshan. The highway was amazing, even though we couldn’t see anything. It climbed to above 3200m in elevation. Not bad!

On our way down, it stayed foggy and dumped rain the whole time, but my mood lifted as it got warmer. My favorite part of the ride that day happened in the middle of nowhere. We hadn’t seen any cars in a while, we were blinded by the fog, it was windy and raining, and suddenly we heard garbage truck music- we had descended back into civilization!

When we finally got to Yuanlin, it was pouring. We hadn’t stopped for anything that whole day except for gas and a bathroom break. Judging by the sky and our feelings, we figured it was dinnertime and talked about where to go for dinner. When we got up to the apartment, it was only 1:30 in the afternoon!

And that marked the end of our Taiwan travels for this chapter of our life. Another Taiwan trip that made it into my top 10 travels.

Don’t miss the 2 minute video of the scooter ride!