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New Years day we headed to the second biggest city in Taiwan - Kaohsiung.  It had recently been developed so had an MRT which only opened last year.  Very spick and span

It’s a nice city, modern, open and seemed clean (although the haze makes you realise you are still in a city).  We hired bicycles and cycled around.  The river is called the Love River and is pretty cool - we had an evening exploring bars and drinking.  Lotus lake was beautiful, if not a little misty.  There was a peaceful confucious temple, a pier with a mythological emporer at the end, and two pagoda towers where you have to walk inside a dragon to get in, and through a tiger to get out.  Good times.  We saw a religous procession walk past too, it was nice to see men carrying swords and women carrying flowers… After the lake we visited the beach which was awesome, got a ferry across to the island, and chilled out.

The Sunday we went to Guanziling again, but this time visited some hot springs which were excellent - our own private room with a mud-water pool and a jacuzzi.  So nice!  Afterwards ate a barbequed chicken then headed home.  Love 3-day weekends!

6 of us hired a minibus along with a driver, and got escorted down to Pingtung.  From there, we hopped on a ferry, and sailed across the beautiful blue sea towards a tiny island. 

We stayed here for the weekend, and it was ace.  The best part was the campite - on grass! (grass is rare in Taiwan!) Right at the edge of a cliff with the sparkling sea below us.  We hired scooters (of course) and drove around.  For a small island there were a lot of temples! We also hunted down a white sands beach and sat on there.  We went snorkelling which was ace, and saw pretty fish in the sea.

October was a good month; went go-karting, saw a baseball game and dressed up for halloween.  My parents came at the end of October, and spending time with them in Taiwan was excellent.  Then along came November, and it was off to Thailand I went…

Me and Simon planned to meet each other in ChiangMai.  We arrived on a friday, and were picked up from the airport headed to a nice, fancy hotel Chiang Mai is nice - the night market is probably the main highlight, where you can wander around and buy whatever you like.  We also wandered through the old town seeing many beautiful temples.

We went as part of a small group of 6 and hiked through the jungle, seeing a beautiful waterfall and swimming in it along the way.  The hike wasn’t crazy difficult, but it was gorgeous, and hot, and it was amazingly nice to be out of the city.  We stayed in a small village of Karen people, and that was lovely, sleeping in a small wooden hut raised above the floor.  The second day we hiked again, and then stopped for lunch at an elephant camp.  They werent expecting us so the camp was deserted, and we managed to cook our lunch by Simon resurrecting their fire from the night before.  Finally the elephants returned and they carried us majestically to the next village, where we swam in a river and slept.  The third day we went bamboo rafting - they are literally bamboo poles tied together which we sit on, and the boys are given the task of punting us down the river.  It was wonderfully relaxing at least for me!

After returning to ChiangMai we spent a day ziplining through the trees in gibbon style (I think like Go Ape), and then we headed North to a place called Pai.  Pai is lovely, a small village in the mountains, it was much more enjoyable and relaxing than Chiang Mai.  We stayed in a tiny little wooden chalet right next to the river, and wandered around the town stopping at cute little shops, cafes and restaurants.  Our days in Pai were mainly spent completely chilling out, or getting on an awesome orange hired scooter each and exploring the local area.  A highlight was the hot springs, which we ended up visiting twice.  Completely natural, we sat in a river and fully relaxed, whilst other tourists further down boiled eggs in the water.  Each to their own…

Finally, after a week and two days, we left Thailand and each returned home.  Only a few weeks left in Taiwan for me now……

September was funfilled with exploring local towns and cities.  We went to Jiji on our scooters via a beautiful route, and saw mountains and palm trees and blue sky and other such wonderfulness JiJi was eventually arrived at, and we decided to exchange our scooters for a 3 person bike.  This was a LOT harder than ever imagined, but eventually after almost crashing a million times, and taiwanese people pointing and laughing at us, we could just about manage to cycle in a straight line.  Visited a park full of old military machines and such like.  Also saw a beautiful temple that had collapsed in an earthquake, so the roof was basically on the floor, that was pretty cool.

A different weekend we went to Tainan, the old capital of Taiwan.  It was pretty awesome - very big, but thankfully all the touristy stuff was in a nice concentrated area, so we did a walking tour to see all of it.  We saw temple after temple, some statues and some buildings.  It was actually all very interesting! However I do think the highlight of the weekend was finding a stand that did fried cheese…..

Finally got around to putting up these photos from July - it’s meant to be a mini Toroko Gorge, it’s so beautiful though.  Lots of steps! We wandered away from the main path and found a pool which we could swim in, it was stunning.  Unfortunately we didn’t realise we had to be out of the area after a certain time, so whilst walking leisurely back to where we had left our scooters, a car was waiting to escort us back quickly! oops! Saved us walking all the way back up the steps though.  The whole area is absolutely stunning scenery-wise.

We went as a school (without the children - teachers and Taiwan teachers only!) to a theme park nearby.  It was awesome!  Fairly busy so still with the queuing that I guess is inherent to all theme parks, we rode as many rides as we could in the time allocated.  These included upside down, water rides and the usual fun and frolics.  The best ride however was the teacup type, where we span so so fast around and around that I literally couldn’t see.  Or tell which way was even up.  It was terrifying but so fun and so hilarious that we couldn’t stop laughing the whole of the ride. Fun!

At the weekend we celebrated an annual ‘Lovefest’ organised by foreigners near Taichung.  The best part was the venue - an abandoned theme park!  Awesome!  With the mountains as a backdrop, excellent musicians playing, surrounded by wonderful people and the feeling of love in the air, it was an excellent way to spend an afternoon We finished the weekend off by going for a short walk, having a dip in the river and soaking up the sun.

Just a quick note about the photos I’ve put up -

A few weekends ago we visited our nearby town of Changhua.  There is a big Buddha there, and some beautiful buildings.  The next day we went to the nearby city of Taichung to visit ‘Modern Toilet’ restaurant.  It was ace! The whole place is colourful and kind of crazy.  As you can probably guess from the name, there is a theme of toilets, which once the weirdness factor passes, is actually really fun.  Our table was a bath, with glass over it as a surface.  All the seats are toilets, and you eat out of a toilet bowl.  The dessert came in the wonderful Taiwanese squatties.  The sinks to wash your hands are also toilets.  It was an excellent experience!

The weekend just gone, we visited the Earthquake museum nearby.  This was a much more sobering experience.  The museum is on the site of where a large earthquake hit in 1999.  The buildings we walk around are the remains of a school which was devastated in the quake.  Thankfully it happened at night so the school wasn’t full of children, however a lot of people did die and get injured in the surrounding village.  The museum was excellent, really informative of the area and earthquakes in general.

We celebrated my birthday on the Thursday, then early Saturday morning we left our apartment and went to the airport, ready for a week long holiday of tropical island paradise :-)  The journey there was interesting, we had bought the cheapest tickets we could, which meant we were in ‘P’ class as the air attendant said, (’Poor’ class Simon retorted).  This meant we were at the back of the plane, half the leg room as everyone else, no baggage space and no food.  Oh, and the TV had broken.  Good times! It wasn’t so disastrous really, we flew from Taipei to Manila, and then after visiting all of the terminals in Manila via a few bus rides, we finally figured out the one we needed and then boarded a tiny tiny plane with one air hostess, for our journey to Caticlan.  The flight was cool, and we got to see the Taal volcano out of the window - apparantly the world’s smallest volcano.  Arriving in Caticlan we made the final stretch of the journey - a boat ride to the Island.  Finally we made it and man was it awesome.

Our accommodation was a little cottage made of wood with a veranda and a hammock, surrounded by lush plants.  We were a two minute walk from the beach, where we were greeted by beautiful white sands, palm trees, gorgeous blue sky, glittering turqoise sea, and pretty boats.  Sweet! 

Over the week we really didn’t do all that much, which was how we wanted it The sea was beutifully warm, and because it was beginning to be the stormy season, the waves made it all that more fun.  We ate some good food (seafood, mexican, indian, basically not taiwanese fried rice - hurrah for real food!), drank a fair amount of beer and coctails, and wandered around the beach and the Island.  It rained on one day, but that really didn’t matter as it was such warm rain, and as it was so heavy it was pretty cool.

The highlight of the week was when we treated ourselves to a diving experience.  Neither of us were qualified so we just did a basic trip where there was someone guiding us the whole time.  It was amazing.  The undersea world is so crazy! But spectacular! The coral is so colourful and beautiful, and the fish are also immense - some of them are the weirdest shape in the world.  It’s peaceful under the sea, although sometimes a bit eerie.  Loved it.

Unfortunately the day came where we had to leave, and head back to Taiwan.  The week was awesome though, pure relaxation in an absolutely stunning part of the world.

In holiday and adventure mood, the weekend following guanziling and the waterfall, me and Simon got up early and headed to Chiayi.  Here, we baorded a tiny train called the Alpine train, on the Alishan Forest Railway.  This railway climbs up over 2000 metres and takes about 4 hours, but the scenery is awesome - you start in a town and then watch as the palm trees change into alpine forests! And the train winds and winds around crazy steep mountains, it’s amazing how they built it.

Alishan is the last stop and where we got off.  A cultural show of dancing greeted us at the station which was nice, and then a Taiwanese person took us to their homestay.  Unfortunately we could not communicate at all, both us knowing way to little of the other person’s language, however that didnt stop us trying and we ended up talking at each other for a while - that would have been interesting to subtitle!  The town is pretty small, high up so a nice crisp air, and mountains all around.  We drank beer and watched the awesome sunset, ate hotpot and enjoyed the atmosphere and scenery.

At 4am we woke up, to be taken to the mountain to see the sunrise.  We ended up being really near where we were the weekend before for Jade.  We got offloaded at the side of the road, and given a dark glass to look through.  The sunset was nice, you could literally see the ball of sun appearing millimetre by millimetre over the mountain.  Although the lack of clouds didn’t make it very colourful, it was still nice.  On the drive home we stopped at a big tree, and also to see a group of monkeys bouncing in the trees, on the road, and eventually on the cars!

Back in Alishan we had a nap to recover, ate some brekkie then headed back down the mountain, this time in a car rather than a train, the scenery gradually changing back into tropical, and the air getting warmer and warmer.