19th Mar - Hualien to Chingjing

we woke up in the morning to the smell of delicious breakfast made by Auntie Liu. Before she decided to run a minsu, Auntie Liu used to run a 'breakfast shop'. I guess that explains why the breakfast she made for us was so delicious. Auntie made us 'Pizza', which was actually thick toast with mashed potato & mixed veg. My description does not do the toast justice but it was really delcious. Jeff had the home made burger which was equally delicious. We also had nice warm milk tea to accompany the sumptous breakfast.

After breakfast, we got onto the cab of Mr Chen, who was goona bring us on a tour of Taroko, Mt Ho Huan, Ching Jing farm & eventually to Lu Shan. what was in stall for us was what I call the 'extremes'. Taroko was an extremly mountainous area. The sights we saw there was amazing and I can understand why tourist all list Taroko as one of the must-sees in Taiwan.

Aftr Taroko, we went on an extremely dangerous drive to Mt Ho Huan. The fog was so bad that you can barely see beyond 2m. While the rest slept like babies, i was so afraid that I stayed awake for most parts of the journey. the other 'extreme' at Mt Ho Huan was the extremely cold temperature. It was only 3 degrees! It was freezing. I went to the loo there and my hands were numb when i washed my hands!

After Mt Ho Huan, we made our way to Mt Ching where we saw two extremes. Extremely beautiful scenary that was comparable, according to my sister, to Switzerland. It was also extremely boring for and the goats & cows were extremely smelly.

When we have had enough of Ching Jing Farm, we travelled to Lu Shan. We were told that Lu Shan was the top hotspring location in Taiwan. I guess that raised our expectations significantly. However when we finally picked a hot spring resort..we were extremely disappointed. It wasn't quite like the one that Jianhui had brought us to the last time. It looked a little run down if you asked me. But i guess we eventually made do with it.

Surprisingly, that night at Lu Shan was quite enjoyable after all. We had a simple dinner and walked around the little town. The weather was very cooling and it was all very nice. We bought some snacks and sat at the patio outside the room and chatted the night away. It was very relaxing and therapeutic to not be rushing around for once.

Taiwan - 18 March 2008

We woke up early on this day as we needed to catch the 7.30am train from Taipei Train Station to Hualien. We had bought the tickets earlier on just to make sure that we get seats & get to sit together and not with some stranger.

The hotel we stayed in Taipei was nice enough to pack us breakfast (ham & cheese sandwich, a packet of tea as well as a bottle of mineral water). We took the MRT from Nanjing E Station to ZhongXiao Fuxing Station where we changed to the Ban Nan (blue line) for the Taipei Train Station MRT Station. The travelling took us about 30 mins and soon we were all comfortably seated on the train headed for Hualien.

I think everyone appreciated the 3-hour train ride because of the late night and the lack of sleep over the first few days. We all slept like babies on the train. Sadly, I didn't manage to get the Bento box that I was looking forward to accompanying my train ride so I settled for the packed breakfast from the hotel instead.

Before long, we had arrived in Hualien and the first thing that I noticed was the weather. It was WARM! We were all expecting it to be cooler than Taipei but it was not. It was actually warmer!. Auntie Liu from the Stone's House Minsu that we were gonna be staying at were there waiting for us with Huang Shifu (the cabbie who will be bringing us around for the day). We unloaded our luggage onto Auntie Liu's car as she transported our luggage to the Minsu. We waited a bit outside the loo as Don took a crap. After that we followed Huang Shifu on our tour of the east coast of Hualien.

At my request, Huang Shifu brought us to a bento take-away shop that sells, in his opinion, one of the better spare ribs bento in Hualien. We realised after that that it was really that tasty as compared some of the other stuff that we tasted after that.

Our first stop was to the Farglory Hotel, which to me looked normal. But i guess the real reason why he brought us there was because of the view that it offered. Resting at one of the hilltops, Farglory offered its occupants a very good view of Hualien. After Farglory, we started on a scenic drive along the east coast, stopping occasionally at some scenic spots that I now cannot remember. There were nice beaches with a fantastic view of the ocean. There was this particular steep climb that i chicken out..haha...

The slapping of the waves on the rocks were beautiful and we all became excitable kids waiting for the waves to come in..haha

One other place that we stopped by was this limstone cave that had a huge pool of water in the middle of the cave. The place were ran by the aborigines there and we managed to con them into believing we were students, well, it was really Huang shifu who coined the idea. We merely followed his instructions. we did the same at Ching Jing Farm on the next day..haha..The ride was really short cause it was a really small cave but there were tonnes of bats in there so it was still interesting.

Before heading back to the Stone's house, we asked Huang Shifu to bring us to a shop that sold fresh mochi and another one that sold firecrackers! Jeff and I really like the salty mochi so we bought quite a bit..we also bought the Hualien sweet potato...i kinda like the taste.

Stone's House looked like any huge landed property but inside the rooms looked really cosy. Each came with a balcony of its own. And in most cases, it offered a view of the Sunrise. Unfortunately, the morning after was misty so we din see the sunrise. Sianz.

Anyway, about Stone's House...
Stone's House Minsu's owner is a nice auntie whom guests all refer to affectionately as 'Liu Ah Yi' (Auntie Liu). She runs the place together with her Indonesian madid who speaks a reasonable amount of Mandarin, her husband and an elderly gentlemen who might be her Father-in-law or Father. Of course there are 2 adorable doggies, one call 'niu niu' and one call 'Xiao Xiong (Little Bear).

As soon as the vehicle pulls into the porch, we were greeted by Liu Ah Yi and her doggies. She showed us to our rooms and told us to rest for a bit, maybe take a bath and meet her downstairs at 7pm. she will then drive us out for dinner.

As there were 6 of us, Liu Ah Yi had to make two trips. She recommended that we try the spare ribs noodles in the city center. She also strongly recommended that we try the 'golden eggs' which were actually hard boil eggs with runny yolks. The sort you get when youhave Japanese Ramen.

I personally liked Taiwanese hawker fare heaps and I really liked the noodles and the eggs..not so sure about my friends. some of them prefer bland tasting stuff...

After dinner, we took a slow walk to a nearby square where there were performance by the local aborigines students. It was a 'free show' (pun intended: the boys were wearing such skimpy costumes, G-strings look-alikes. We wanted to be supportive but the weather was not permitting. So we ended up returning to the minsu a little earlier than planned.

En-route, I requested for Zhang Shifu to bring us to this 'Zhong zheng Bao Zi' that he highly recommended. We had wanted to just buy a few since its just after dinner but Huang shifu wanted to give us a treat so we ended up with more buns. The buns were really tasty. Really wished I had more space to stomach them.

Upon returning to the minsu, we realised that Liu Ah Yi had actually bought us milk tea with pearl. We had bought some ourselves but she thought we should try this stall that she thought was really good...So it was really a night of buns and milk tea!!

Liu Ah Yi was a hyper person, she was always doing something and no sooner had we tucked into the buns, she led us outside to try the fireworks that we had bought earlier on. We had such fun. The trade off of being a Singaporean meant that we had not touched fireworks in our entire life. that night, We had so much fun with the fireworks. Liu Ah Yi was so nice, she even took a video and burnt us a Cd to bring home. Yes, she's very tech-savvy!

After all the excitement. It was time to calm our nerves alittle from the little explosions. At Stone's House, its a must to do some rock painting...i was a little apprehensive initially knowing how i sucked at art. But i think i did oka dn so did the rest. It was with great satisfaction that we retired to our rooms in anticipation of the next day's sunrise (which we did not get to see eventually).