24 Hours in Hualien...

Hualien (pronounced Wallion) is a little city (and county) located on the Eastern coast of Taiwan(the side closest to Hawaii). Located in Hualien is Taroko National Park. This park is famous for its huge marble canyons and beautiful mountains. I had such a great time here. The entire time we were there was full of funny experiences and we basically flew by the seat of our pants to everything. To get there, we had to take a train south to Kaohsiung for an hour and then cross over to the eastern side of the island, then drive up the coast to Hualien for four hours! The drive along the coast was beautiful! It was a little bit different from Kenting because Kenting was tropical and sandy but this coast was rocky with huge cliffs and green mountains along the coast.

When we arrived in Hualien, we went to book our tickets for the train ride back to Tainan but ALL of the seats were already booked! I guess this is a really popular weekend for Hualien. The only ride that was available until Sunday night was one the next day at 11:45 am. Sooo….instead of spending two full days in Hualien like we had planned….we only had 24 hours! Ha ha And then the fun began…we zipped from place to place. Our first adventure…trying to find our Hostel. We decided to just walk to it because it was supposedly close by….but that was a mistake. It took us FOREVER to find it. The streets were crazy and didn’t match the map we had. We had to stop at tons of shops along the way to get pointed in the right direction. About an hour and a half later we finally arrived….

I absolutely loved our Hostel, the set-up was a lot of fun and the atmosphere was even better. I can definitely see myself traveling around the world just staying at hostels. You get to meet so many people with all kinds of crazy life stories. The hostel manager spoke English (and basically saved our entire trip). She was extremely helpful and planned a lot of things out for us. When we were given our room we were informed that it was a co-ed hostel. Ha ha ha And we had a random American man staying in our room. Some of the girls were way upset! Lol I just thought it was funny…it’s all part of the experience. I love surprises like that.

After we got settled in the hostel manager called a taxi for us to take us up Taroko Gorge. I thought Alishan Mountain was beautiful….but it doesn’t even come close to Taroko. It’s amazing. There are huge marble canyons all over with bright blue water running through them. There are stops all along the way up the mountain that you can either just sight see or go hiking in. There are also temples all throughout the canyon located high up in the mountains.

In the pic below, look at the road (and tunnel) on the right in relation to the gorge. It gives you an idea of how big it really is! Because you can't really tell by just glancing at it. It was all absolutely beautiful. The only downside was that it was completely packed. The entire drive up was backed up with tons of tourist buses. Luckily we were in a taxi so we could swerve through. It was also fun because there were a lot of people that spoke English. Europeans, Japanese, Koreans, Americans….so I got to meet a lot of fun people that I could actually talk to ha ha. My favorite was an adorable Korean man. He walked up to me and asked if he could take a picture with me. I didn’t have a camera (because I left it at the hostel) so I told him I couldn’t but that we could borrow one of the other girls. So everyone got in, here’s the pic. After we took the pic he just kept asking question after question. You could tell that he was so proud that he could speak English and he wanted to learn as much as he could about us. He then told me all about himself and Korea. I ended up talking to him for quite a while.

About an hour later at our very last stop, we saw an American couple and we asked where they were from. They were a newly married couple from Utah!! The man (his name is Josh) served his mission here in Taiwan so they were there visiting for a couple of weeks. It’s so random that I can be on the other side of the world at a random place in Taiwan and run into an LDS couple, let alone an LDS couple from Utah. Ha ha

After Taroko Gorge we had our taxi driver drop us off at a jade market in Hualien to shop around. The jade market was packed. I guess it’s one of the more popular places in Hualien. I ran into so many foreigners from all over the place. One particular guy was so funny and he really liked me for some reason. He’s an old man in about his sixties and he’s from Scotland! He came up to me while buying some stuff at one of the markets and he told me to buy more and to take advantage of how cheap everything is here. We then got talking and once he found out that I was from Utah, he would not stop making fun of me (in a joking way). He got a kick out of it that I was from such a small town and that I’m now in Taiwan. He was really fun and we kept running into each other the rest of the night so he’d poke even more jokes at me.

After shopping we watched a show with native dancers and the same mormon couple that we met earlier was there! So we went out with them downtown to explore around and eat. We ate some delicious dumplings and then had cua bing afterwards. When we got back to our hostel there were a bunch of people hanging out in the lounge so we got to sit around and chat with everyone. I really think it was my favorite part. I love meeting people and hearing about their lives. It’s especially fun here because Taiwan is such a random place and the stories about how and why they’re in Taiwan is always fun. We met the American that was staying in our room ha ha His name is Joe Curd and he’s from Montana. He’s 24 and he went to college in Idaho…random ha ha But he currently lives in South Korea so he took the weekend to come to Taiwan. He was a really nice guy….but I felt bad that he was in a room full of young annoying girls ha ha

In the morning we were supposed to get up at seven and head to a beach until we had to catch our train….but we all slept through our alarm and didn’t wake up till eight. We had no idea what to do because we don’t know the area very well. We went downstairs to get help from the hostel manager but she wasn’t there! We tried to do some research on our own and decided to go to “Hualien Cultural Park”. So we hailed down a taxi and pointed to the park on the map. He took us there but when we got there he said “No beautiful” over and over. We looked at the park and it was dry and dead and trashy. We really didn’t want to go to it anymore but we didn’t know what else to do and we couldn’t tell the drivers that we didn’t want to. After 15 minutes of attempting to talk to our drivers (they didn’t speak ANY English), one of the drivers called an English speaker on his cell and let him talk to us. We told the English speaker the situation, then the drivers hung up the phone and talked for about 5 minutes, babbling on and pointing at stuff….then all of a sudden we took off! We had NO idea where we were going and the drivers kept spouting off stuff in Chinese. We were really nervous because we had to be back to the train station in exactly two hours but the drivers just kept going and going. We started a drive up through the mountains and kept going and going……then we finally arrived at this beautiful lake! It was gorgeous, surrounded by mountains, and had perfectly still water. The drivers stopped and just beamed. They were so proud they had such a great idea and that we loved it. It is amazing to what extent these people will go to to help us out. I know I keep saying that over and over but it truly is.

These men could have just dropped us off at that park and left us but instead they called an English speaking friend and really wanted us to see something beautiful before we had to leave so they rushed us up there. Here is a picture of us with our two taxi drivers.
At the lake we took out two paddle boats and explored around. It was so pretty and it was such a fun experience. Fortunately we got to the train station safely and on time. The ride home was quite the experience. We took the four hour ride to Kaohsiung and randomly got off at a station…but we didn’t know if it was the right one or not…..and we couldn’t find ANYONE that could speak English to direct us. We were completely at a loss. Finally this adorable man came up to us and asked us if we needed help. Apparently we had gotten off at the wrong spot but he took us to find a conductor to switch our tickets. It took over an hour but he stayed with us until we were completely set. It was so nice of him. I have to put one quote from him though….it cracked me up. Kris was asking him about his job. He said that he was laid off and he was trying to find a new one. Kris responded by saying that a lot of people are losing jobs in America and that the economy isn’t very good. He responded by saying “I’m feeling you. Hopefully your president will lead you from darkness to sunshine”. ha ha ha We were laughing for quite a while after that one.

Oh and CUTEST baby ever.