It was March 8th, and I was deciding whether or not to visit Japan or Taiwan for a little adventure trip in between work related travel. THANK THE NORSE GODS I picked Taiwan. I woulda been totally butt-hammered had I chose Japandemonium.

Other than not being coated in radioactivity, one the nice things about Taiwan is that it’s easy and cheap to get there now that cross straight relations are cozy. There’s lots of flights from major coastal cities of the People’s Republic, direct into Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung. We chose to fly into Taipei, as it’s always a good starting point. Unlike the last time however, we flew into Songshan airport instead of Taiyuan International. Songshan is great because it’s right downtown, and it’s small. I love small downtown airports. Seriously, fuck all the big airports that take an hour to get to, then another hour to get through because they’re designed to be giant shopping malls selling shitty luxury brands.

So I’m sitting in the Taipei hotel room on the afternoon of March 11th, and I’m enjoying me some uncensored internet with my twitter feed going in one of my firefox tabs. One of the things I follow is this neat little bot (@earthquakeBot) that tweets every time there’s an earthquake somewhere at 5.0 or greater. It’s great because it reports them only about 15 minutes or so after they happen, and it links to a Google map and the USGS details for the quake. “CHIRP TWEET CHIRP” (the sound I imagine Twitter to make when it tweets), I look at my feed, and low and behold Japan is rocked by a massive Earthquake. I throw on CNN/BBC/Some crazy Taiwanese news channels to see whats going on, and next thing ya know they’re going into hysteria about tsunamis and Haiwaii being turned into Atlantis and what not. The first place the tsunami was expected to hit (after Japan) was Hualien…Taiwan. The very city we were headed to the next day! I swear my travel buddy must have gone threw about 5 pairs of underwear that day peeing himself in dread for the potential watery doom that awaited us. Me having nerves of steel, I brushed off the news anchors as sensationalists, which they turned out to be when only a mere foot of water swelled Hualien’s shores. If there was anything to be worried about it was that entire towns had been wiped out in Japan.

The next day we headed out to Hualien as planned via a local train. The train service is good because it takes you all the way around the coast, so you get to see a fair bit of the country. The train service is bad because even the fastest one makes dozens of stops that take a while, unlike the bullet trains that stop for 2mins at like 3 places. Hualien has a real small town vibe going on, nice and local. Everyone was super friendly, and there was none of those major arterial avenues that cut a city apart with screaming traffic. It’s also the perfect place to stay if you’re checking out Taroko National Park, which we did. It was quite spectacular. Especially if you like GORGES. I fucking love me some gorges.

Hualien is also famous for its wonton soup, so make sure you try some of that out. We did, and it was nomlicious and of course super cheap. The town has a brand new airport, and unlike most new airports (refer to above point), this one is close to the city and tiny. My planning is so last minute, I actually wait until I’m too late to do something, then go back in time to a few minutes before when I still could do it. My son of a bitch time machine was acting up that day, and I was unable to procure train tickets to our next stop, Kaohsiung. You can bet the airport came in real handy.

Kaohsiung was pretty neat, but we weren’t there for long. Perhaps it is a depressing, vermin infested hell-hole that would swallow your soul and leave you as nothing but a hollow shadow to fade away into the darkness if you stayed longer than 24 hours. We didn’t. To be more descriptive and less humorous, it was big like Taipei, but more laid back, and had really good weather. I shall definitely return.

Oh and here’s some pictures of it all:

Literati Night Market (Shilin Yeshi/士林夜市):

Infinite number of teenage girls waiting in like to buy tickets for SUPER JUNIOR:

Random Taipei:

Random Hualien and its beautiful beach!!:

Taroko National Park:

People standing around bust of engineer dude who designed a bridge that was eventually washed away by a typhoon:

Part of the road that was closed because of rockfall!:

View from the train:

Kaohsiung, the heart of darkness:

Filed under: tourist shit