Singapore

My latest (and most likely last, since I'm broke) trip was to Singapore.  Our flight left Taoyuan on Friday around 9:00 pm and we arrived in Singapore at about 1:30 am.  I sat next to a Singaporean guy named Eugene so we chatted for the entire flight, causing me to get no sleep whatsoever.  It was worth it though because I learned a lot about Singapore from him and he was a lot of fun to talk to.  We cleaned up and got McDonalds in the airport before taking a taxi to where our hostel was (the red-light district).  We should have slept in the airport.  Our hostel was the sketchiest thing I've ever seen, especially at 3 in the morning.  The cab driver even tried calling the hostel for us, to make sure we would be let in, but no one answered, so I said screw it and went up to check anyway.  The manager eventually opened the door, but he didn't have a room for us, since technically our reservation didn't start until later that day.  He said we could split up and sleep in separate rooms if we paid for an extra night, but we didn't feel comfortable being apart, so we slept on the couch that night.  Eva, bless her, stayed awake all night to keep watch so that Mami and I could sleep.  When I woke up in the morning, I kept watch so that she could sleep a little.  So that first night we dealt with some extreme exhaustion.  Our check in time wasn't until 2:00pm, so I poached a shower while the manager was out and we took our stuff and headed to Arab Street.  We looked at the shops and the large temple, and also got some lunch.  I got some extremely spicy Nasi Goreng, and drank some Teh Tarik.  We then walked around the neighboring streets before returning to the hostel to properly check in.  We finally got put into a room, which we shared with two girls from France and two guys from Indonesia.  It was nice to have a bed.  We cleaned up and got ready for our evening activities.  We met up with a friend of mine from UNC, and her friend from high school, and ate dinner with them before we split up and explored Clarke Quay, which was very beautiful with the water and night lights.  We met back up with Kathleen and her friend and had a drink at a bar in Clarke Quay before we left and went up to the bar, Ku De Ta, on top of the Marina Bay Sands casino and hotel.  The bar was disappointing since the cover was $38 and we only got one drink ticket, and it was filled with old people, but the view was pretty awesome.

On Sunday we did quite a lot.  Especially walking.  We started with the Merlion Park, where we got some cool pictures of the Merlion statue and the surrounding bay, despite the pouring rain.  Next we went to Chinatown and walked down the many streets full of vendors.  We ate Laksa for lunch at the Maxwell food center, and later bought matching "I <3 Singapore" shirts (which fit horribly, by the way).  Later, we checked out Little India, which was pretty shady.  Finally, we headed to Orchard Street so that Mami could hit up the malls.  Eva and I got dinner in the food court while she shopped, freaking out about how much money we were spending.  We met back up and then took a bus to the Singapore zoo, where we were going to experience the night safari.  I had been pretty skeptical about how active the animals could be at night, but this was actually probably my favorite part of the trip. The animals were all quite active and in some cases, very close to the tram.  The zoo also had a Ben & Jerry's, something we've greatly missed since coming to Asia, so we blew $6 and bought small cups. We then took the bus and MRT back to our hostel.

Our last day, Monday, was devoted to Palau Ubin, a very small island just ten minutes off the mainland. We took a bus to Changyi ferry harbor and had lunch in the hawker center there.  I ate some Nasi Lemak and drank Sugarcane juice that I watched the vendor squeeze from the actual cane with a crusher.  We then went to go board the tiny boat, which we could only do once 12 passengers had arrived.  On the island, we rented the world's crappiest bikes and rode around the island.  It was incredibly hot, and we got a lot of ant and mosquito bites, but it was a cool contrast to the city.  We saw some quarries, lakes, beaches, and a pretty chill monkey.  By the end of it, we were completely exhausted.  We returned to Changyi in the late afternoon and ate at the hawker center again.  This time I ordered Beef Ho Fun and Pineapple juice.  After eating, we took a bus to the nearest MRT station and rode it to the Gardens by the Bay, where we enjoyed the beautiful light trees and night view of the city. From there, we headed back to the airport.  After another McDonald's feast, we boarded our plane at 1:30am, eventually arriving back in Gongguan at about 8:30.  I returned to my room, showered, and passed out for a couple hours before class.

Hualien and Taroko Gorge

Our trip to Hualien and Taroko Gorge was one of my favorites.  We took an early train and got into Hualien in the late morning, and then checked into Amigos Hostel, which was fantastic- I highly recommend it if you ever plan on staying in Hualien.  We bought day passes for the bus and then headed to Taroko Gorge.  Our first stop was Swallow Grotto trail, but it was just a staircase through the woods (the usual), and I don't think it actually offered any views of Swallow Grotto.  We should have just turned around and gone back the way we came, but instead took a long and winding detour back up the road to try to get back to where we started.  People driving down on mopeds would yell "加油! (good luck)" to us as we sweated profusely.  We got back to the top just in time to take a bus right back down.  Throughout the day we saw Swallow Grotto (for real that time), the marble gorge that Taroko is so famous for, the Lüshui area with its pagoda and suspension bridge, and more.  It was truly gorgeous, and I'm so glad I was finally able to make it down there to see it.  We caught the last bus back to Hualien at 6:30, just as it started to rain.  About an hour and a half later, we were back in Hualien, where we got xiaolongbao for dinner and shaved ice for dessert.  Back at the hostel, we played a few drinking games before going to bed around 1:00 am.

The next day our group split up as Tim and Thomas wanted to return to Taroko Gorge to see some things that we had been unable to visit the previous day.  Eva, Caleb, Mami, and I rented scooters, filled up the tanks, and hit the road.  We drove South along the coastal Highway 11.  We stopped at a few beaches, and all of us managed to get excellent sunburns.  Luckily no one had any motorbike accidents, though Mami and I did fall over at one point.  But no one got hurt, and that's all that matters.  It was a great day of scooting, except when Caleb and Eva stopped without telling us right before we merged onto the highway, and I thought they had crashed and died, before they finally caught up.  We returned to Hualien in time to return our scooters and grab take-out dinners before joining back up with Tim and Thomas and catching our train.  However, the workers were rude and wouldn't let us board the train because we didn't have seats assigned on our tickets, despite us telling them that we had planned to stand anyway.  So we had to argue with the bitchiest of them all and pay an extra $100 each just so that our tickets could say "no seat."  I was pissed, but we were able to get on the next train, and the ride back was actually pretty fun since we passed the time by playing stupid games like MASH.  We returned to Gongguan and grabbed some food at the night market before parting ways for the night.

Taidong and Green Island

Our next trip was to Taidong and Green Island.  Taidong is in the Southeast of Taiwan.  Unfortunately Eva and I missed our first train (I'm fairly certain it never came) so we had to cough up another $280 each for the next one.  At least we got seats!  In Taidong, a local that we had met before boarding the train helped us find the last bus that was leaving the train station to Taidong city.  We arrived at Fruit Street and found our hostel pretty easily.  The owner was very helpful-she instructed us on how to get to Fugang harbor for our adventure to Green Island the next day.  After we had settled, we went out and walked through the pretty unimpressive night market, in search of dinner.  We ended up getting Aboriginal boar meat sandwiches.  The vendor also let us try some 米酒 (mijiu- rice liquor) that he had for sale, which we had been curious about.

The next morning, we had a very early start.  After some initial confusion, some locals helped us find the right bus to take to the ferry (it was actually a van).  We wanted to eat breakfast, but didn't dare due to what we had heard about the ferry ride to Green Island.  The talk was true; it was the roughest boat ride I've ever experiences.  As the boat slammed into the incessant waves, I played my music as loud as it would go, closed my eyes and gripped my jacket as hard as I could in order to resist the urge to puke.  Even through the music I could hear the people around me barfing, and you could smell it on the air.  The ride felt a lot longer than fifty minutes.  Somehow Eva and I made it without throwing up, and we got off the boat as quickly as possible.  Once back on solid ground, we walked around trying to figure out what we were going to do about transportation.  We eventually aasked a random hotel if they would be willing to rent us a moped, and lucky for us the worker was very helpful.  He drove me over to a nearby rental place and I followed him back.  However, the moped was electric (I don't have a Taiwanese or international license, so I don't think they would have given me a gas-powered one) and wouldn't be able to get both Eva and I and all of our stuff up hills, so he lent us an ebike for free, which Eva rode.  We then set out to find our campground.  It started raining almost immediately, and didn't let up until late that night.  At the campground, we had to wait for a while before a manager finally showed up and showed us which spot we should use.  Luckily the campground had spots with wooden platforms and roofs, so we didn't have to worry about getting soaked at night.  After paying and dropping off our things, we hit the road again, planning to go around the entire island (not hard to do since it's so tiny).  We stopped many times to see things such as the Little Great Wall, the Pekinese Dog and Sleeping Beauty rock formations, a waterfall, a cave, the Zhaori hot springs, and more.  Zipping around on the motorbikes was great fun, even though we were getting pelted with rain the entire time.  We finally ate lunch around 2:00pm at a sketchy little shop, but stopped again a couple hours later at a proper cafe, when we couldn't bear the coldness and wetness any longer.  We ordered hot things: coffee, venison pizza (apparently the island is popular for its venison meat), and french fries.  It was hard leaving the wifi and dryness to go back out into the incessant rain, but we did, buying some snacks and playing cards for when we would be back at camp.  We then headed back to the camp to change into our bathing suits for the Zhaori hot springs, which we had decided to visit since we were unable to snorkel that day.  Zhaori hot springs is one of three salt water hot springs in the world, the other two being in Japan and Italy.  The warm water felt great after a day of borderline hypothermia, and we relaxed there for a couple hours, before taking proper showers and heading back to camp.  We set up the tent in the dark, and had to construct a questionable system of strings, since we couldn't stake it down into the wooden boards.  We then played card games and talked until we fell asleep.

The next morning we got up very early again and packed up, returned our scooters and then awaited the dreaded ferry that would take us back to Taidong.  We intentionally kept our stomachs empty again, but the ride back wasn't nearly as bad as the initial one.  I didn't feel nauseous at all.  Back at Fugang Harbor, we shared a taxi with a man that had also been at our campground the night before, and went back to the city center.  He wouldn't let us pay for our part of the ride and also recommended us a popular restaurant for lunch.  Taiwanese people can be so nice.  After lunch, we didn't really know what to do, so we walked around and tried to make it to Liyushan park, but didn't have sufficient time, since we had to catch a bus back to the train station.  Instead, we got gelato at a nearby shop.  Finally, we made it back to the train station and after 4.5 hours of standing on a train, arrived in Taipei.

Yilan

A couple of the girls from ISIS had planned a day trip to Yilan for surfing and barbecue, so I got up at about 7:20 in order to join in on the fun.  Waking up that early certainly wasn't fun though.  I met up with Mami and Eva and we Ubiked to the meeting point for the bus that would take us to Yilan.  The bus took us to a train station, and after a short ride, we finally arrived at the beach.  We walked over to the surf shop that was renting us the boards, and they shuttled us over to where we would be surfing.  After a short lesson, we all got in the water and failed miserably.  It was hard work, especially fighting the current which kept wanting to pull us toward sharp rocks, but I eventually was able to stand up on the board and ride a wave once.  So I'm basically a pro.  Once we were all properly exhausted, we gathered around the barbecuers like hungry dogs waiting for food.  We left the beach around 5:00, passed out on the bus that we had waited forever for, and got back around 9:30. We finally Ubiked back to Gongguan and called it a night, being as beat as we were.

Jiufen/Jinguashi/Jilong

I got up early because Eva and I had big plans for the day.  We took the MRT to Zhongxiao Fuxing and then took a bus to Jiufen, an old mining town in the hills that overlooks the ocean to the East.  It also apparently inspired the look of the movie "Spirited Away," but I couldn't really see the connection. We walked up the old "jinshan jie (gold mountain street)," looking into all of the shops that lined the sides while simultaneously battling the insane crowd.  At the top, we took pictures at an overlook of the view below, and then took some less-traveled staircases/tunnels.  We briefly checked out a temple up on a side street.  Eventually we ate lunch, but it was a bit disappointing since it was overpriced and the waiter was kind of rude.

After lunch, we walked around some more before heading to the bus stop to go Jinguashi, a neighboring mining area.  There, we explored the Gold Ecological Park, looking into exhibits, a mining tunnel, the Prince Chalet House, and looking at the world's biggest gold brick.  Eventually, we headed back down the mountain, grabbing some fruit popsicles on the way.

We eventually figured out which bus to take to get to Jilong, and endured a long ride with the craziest bus driver I have ever encountered. At one point he jumped out of the bus to scream at a man, drawing attention from everyone around.  I wanted to get off the bus but I was afraid he might murder me.  We finally arrived in Jilong, and a helpful high school student directed us to the famous Miaokou night market.  It was jam-packed with people and seafood.  When we had seen our fill, we asked around until we found a bus station, passing the Jilong Harbor in the process.  A kind woman heard us speaking English and asked if we needed help, and she took us directly to a bus that went straight to NTU campus for only $45 NTD.  It was only about 7:00 pm at this point, and we figured we should eat something substantial, so we went to Bravo Burger and reveled in the Americanness of it.

Spring Break in Hong Kong

While many students explored Taiwan over their Spring breaks, my good friend Mami and I decided to be bold and see what Hong Kong was all about.  We left for the Taoyuan airport around 3:00 pm on Tuesday and arrived in Hong Kong at about 9:00pm, not getting to our hostel until 1:00am, since we had trouble finding it.  Our hostel, Golden Island Guesthouse, was one of the sketchiest places I have ever encountered, but it was too late to find anything else, and it was cheap, so we endured it.

On our first full day in Hong Kong we visited the Tian Tan Buddha, also known as the Big Buddha. We had planned on taking the gondola to the statue, but it was storming, and they had closed it.  The monument was quite impressive, even in the pouring rain.  We also walked around and checked out the temple nearby before walking through a small collection of shops on the way to the bus stop.  We stopped and got some noodles for lunch, and then headed back to the city.  After getting some hot bubble tea, we explored the Ladies' market and the Temple Street night market.  Unlike Taiwan, you can bargain the price in Hong Kong markets.  The vendors are very aggressive and at one point I had to tell one that if she kept grabbing my arm, I definitely wasn't going to buy her stuff.  I got a few things for my friends and family, but most of the time I just got a cruel pleasure out of denying the vendors my business. I'm a horrible person.  When we had finished shopping, we grabbed dinner at a nearby shop. My wontons had the most questionable looking meat I'd ever seen, but I survived.

On our second day, we took a day trip to Macau.  We woke up early and ate McDonald's breakfast before heading to the Central Piers, where we bought our ferry tickets at about $20 USD each.  The ride took about an hour, allowing us to nap.  We arrived at about noon, and bought coffee in order to break our bills and pay for our bus fare.  The bus drivers weren't very helpful, misunderstanding our questions and just saying "no", gesturing for us to get off their bus, but a local man was kind enough to tell us which buses we could take to get to our first stop, Las Ruinas de St. Paul.  The ruins were beautiful, but only consisted of the front facade, since the rest had been burned down, so it didn't take us long to look at.  We looked through the Macau Museum and then walked back through Senado Square, stopping to buy some delicious egg tarts on the way.  Our next stop was the Guía Fortress.  We took a bus there but then got lost, and ended up walking around that part of town for a while until we found the garden we needed to enter.  We took a short gondola ride up to the top of the hill, where we then had to walk a bit more to the actual fort.  It was small, but offered a very cool view of the city, and some nice pictures.  We then headed back down and made our way to the City of Dreams, to spend the evening in the Venetian casino.  We changed into dressier clothes and checked our backpacks in before walking around the huge mall within the casino.  It was styled after Venice, with a river going through it and gondoliers serenading passersby.  We did some shopping and ate a very fancy Brazilian barbecue restaurant.  It was one of the most delicious meals I've ever eaten, but then again I was starving, and food always tastes better when you're hungry.  After dinner we took some pictures and walked through the casino (I pretended like I was old enough), and then caught the conveniently free shuttle bus back to the ferry terminal, returned to Hong Kong and called it a night.

Day three was more relaxed since Macau had been such a big event.  We tried to get lunch at a Dim Sum restaurant, but apparently it had been closed down.  We were starving, so we just ate somewhere nearby and I had the most disappointing lunch ever.  At least my milkshake was good.  Next we went to Victoria Peak, using the extremely steep and popular Peak Tram.  The view from the top was incredible, but again didn't take us much time.  Back at the base, we took an open top bus to Victoria Bay, where we did a Star Ferry tour, whcih took about an hour.  It was a cool change in perspective after being up so high.  Afterwards we took the MTR to meet some of Mami's friends from UBC, who were studying abroad in Hong Kong for the semester.  We ate dinner and dessert with them, and then checked out the shadiest place on earth, Chungking Mansions, which consists of a lot of hostels, shops and exchange services.  We eventually ended up on the Avenue of Stars, enjoying the cityscape and trying to figure out who the Hong Kong celebrities were.  Our last stop of the night was Lan Kwai Fong, where most of the nightlife is.  The ground was littered with broken glass and the streets filled with drunken foreigners.  We had a couple of drinks at a bar before going to a club, which was uncomfortably packed.  We got back to our hostel around 4:00 am

On our fourth day, we went to Lamma Island.  I had the spiciest curry imaginable for lunch before we took a thirty minute ferry ride over to the island.  We hiked around the "Family Trail," checking out the beaches, views (which almost always included the huge factory on the island), and random side trails along the way.  We finished exploring just in time for dinner, which we ate at a seafood restaurant near the piers.  We feasted on squid, prawns, fried rice and veggies before catching our ferry back to the mainland.

Day five consisted mostly of shopping  We tried (again) to eat Dim Sum, and were sort of successful. We were told we had to come back later since we didn't have a reservation, so we ate a Ramen joint before we rode up the 800 meter long "travelator,"which is an elevator that allows you to go up basically an entire mountain, and look into building from a different perspective.  Back at the Dim Sum restaurant we were treated extremely rudely, and ate disappointing and ridiculously expensive desserts.  We only stayed about thirty minutes.  We then shopped for about three hours inside a gigantic Forever 21, where I dropped about $60 USD.  We then met Mami's friend again and a couple other exchange students for dinner.  After dinner we hit up the nearby H&M and then returned to Nathan Road (where our hostel was) and went through the Temple Street market one last time.

On our final day, we woke up at 5:00 am and took cab to the airport, arriving back in Gongguan around 3:00 pm.  A very successful trip.

Alishan

I met Eva at 5:30 and we headed to Taipei main station to catch our train to Jiayi.  We stood for 3.5 hours, and it was pretty miserable.  Once it cleared out a bit I was able to sit down on the ground and sleep a little.  We got to Jiayi around 10:00 and met our friends Sarah, Austin, and Nathan.  We grabbed some food at the nearby market, since Eva and I hadn't eaten.  At the hostel, we prepared to sleep for two hours, as we were getting up at 2:00am to go to Alishan and seen the sunrise.  We grabbed breakfast at 7-11 and then met some other NTU exchange students who had just arrived, and our private driver, Ming.  He drove us to Alishan, about two hours away, driving like a maniac through the pitch black and fog.  He was very helpful though, taking us into the park in such a way that we didn't have to pay the entrance fee, and then taking us to the most popular spots.  Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to properly see the sunrise, but the sea of clouds nestled in the mountains was beautiful.

After a lot of stopping, pictures, and some hostile Formosan Macaques, we ended up at the Forest Railway station.  We had lunch/breakfast/whatever at a small shop before deciding to take the train to the cherry blossom area.  The blossoms were beautiful, but I'm not Asian, so I don't quite grasp the obsession with them.  Austin and I ended up falling asleep on a marble wall while the others walked around some more.  So naturally we got very sunburned. Back at the forest station, we still had a lot of time to kill, so we took another train to see some old trees.  It required hiking up a lot of -you guessed it- stairs, and since we were all so sleep deprived, we didn't make it very far.  Some mainlanders took interest in us and we chatted with them for a little bit on the trail.  Back at the station we ate again and waited for Ming to come pick us up.  He drove us all the way back to Jiayi, again like a maniac.  So much so that Sarah had to tell him to take it easy.  Back at the hostel, we cleaned up and went to eat dinner at a dumpling restaurant, followed by some dessert and Sarah obsessing over Kano posters.  At the hostel we talked for a little bit, but I was unconscious by 10:00, and stayed that way until about 9:30 the next morning.  We hurriedly ate a disappointing "western" breakfast at Shark Bites Toast, before sprinting across town with all our belongings to avoid missing our train.  We made it with seconds to spare.  Luckily we all had seats for the journey back, so I was able to sleep some more.  We arrived in Gongguan at about 3:30.