Taiwan went on my top 3 countries

Once again I found myself in a situation that I needed to do some decisions about where to go and when. I was sitting in Subway eating a delicious Italian BMT sub when It came to me in a form of a passing truck with and advert on its side. There was something I wanted to be witnessing in HK but there was two weeks to spend before the occasion. I didn’t wanna spend those days in HK but luckily I had a Taiwanese guy telling good things about Taiwan in my room. Two days later I was in Taipei. Taiwan fitted my “my plan is to have no plan”-plan perfectly because I never ever had even thought about going to Taiwan and there I was trying to figure when to alight from the shuttle bus to centre.

Nothing much happened in Taipei so I’m not gonna go deeper in to that place now. You will read more about that place in my “Food journalism from Taiwan”-entry which shall be posted in the future. 

Holy shit, its that time of the year already.
Taipei's main station.

"Nooooo, please don't take a picture of me. I'm having a bad
nose day"

Taiwan is only 450km long island with a high speed train on the west coast meaning that you can do almost the whole island from south to north in 90 minutes. With these facts in my back pocket I had this scheme in my head that I’m gonna go around the whole island clockwise. 

So I started from east coast which has small cities and villages and nice mountains only few kilometres from the coast. Went through couple of cities. Did some hiking in the national park. Only problem with hiking in Taiwan is that (this is not racism but the truth) the national parks are mostly visited by Chinese tourist and they really dislike walking. That has lead to a point that many of the hikes have deteriorated to a point that they needed to be closed and the fact that there’s not gonna be so many tourist have lead to the unfortunate decision not to clear the trails anymore. Well you can do proper hiking also but for that you need permissions from local official and I heard that it can be quite time consuming if not hard.

Believe or not but this was the beginning of a hiking trail.

heavy vegetation.

Red bridge over troubled water. 

This is where Pocahontas swims

"No sir, don't like it. Where's the god damn water? 

Gorgeous gorge! 

ZZZzzz-zzzZZZZ. Didn't see any =/

Few minutes later I was down there.

I was in my Hostel in a place called Hualien when a guy with an acoustic guitar entered the hostel and went for the bar. Half an hour later we where jamming with 3 guitars and a Cajon. These guys also told me about a place called Dulan which was supposed to be a haven for surfers and expats in Taiwan. I don’t give a shit about surfing but the place had a nice ring to it anyways and the fact that they have live music concerts every saturday on open air stage basically locked my destination.

Gummball 3000?

Colourful guitars, ay?

This is where Uncle Ben gets his rice!

Lanterns

Tree!

Taitung

Back-of-a-car-karaoke!

"It's so beautiful that I'm crying"

Dulan is a fly’s shit on a map but proved to be a place of my taste. Everything worth seeing/going was along the main road on a 500 meter distance and by that I mean the 7/11 and the restaurants. Other than that there was the beach, the people and the atmosphere. 

I just chilled, grilled, drove around with a rental scooter and enjoyed my days of doing nothing. Spent couple of nights on a beach with campfire and drinks from 7/11 just listening the voice of pacific ocean and enjoying the light pollution less night sky and of course the sunrise. 

Beach in Dulan

Saturday night in Dulan is famous for it’s open air concerts in a old sugar factory. I went there with high hopes and it was not in vain. First there was a expat troubadour and after that a band playing instrumental music but the cherry on the top was the open mike-happening after these two acts. I saw a lonely electric guitar on the stage and I just knew that it’s now or never. I stormed to the stage, smiled and waved to the band and just grabbed the guitar. Ended up playing 45 minutes with the guys as singers kept changing. Spent two evening after this jamming with the local hostel staff and their friends. I just had the best times in Dulan.