Taiwan Days 4 and 5

Now on to my final days of summer vacation in Taiwan!

On Thursday Greg and I headed to Hualien by train. I wanted to go to the beach, and he suggest Hualien. My coworkers in Korea told me Kending was a good beach place (it was on the western coast of Taiwan), but Greg was adamant about not going to Kending, so he suggested Hualien (on the eastern coast). The problem was that there weren't as many beaches in Hualien as Greg and I were hoping for, so the first day was spent exploring the town, eating delicious Chinese food, buying souvenirs, and walking through the night market there.

The coastal landscape we pass on the train

Hualien on our way to our hostel. You can see the beautiful mountains that surround it

View from our hostel room

We had this entire room to ourselves for the night. Awesome.

Our hostel in the lobby has this big map, and guests write their names and where they are from and stick it here

Can you find my name?

I was exhausted so Greg and I killed some time by napping. We then tried to find the beaches, but we then realized it wasn't how we thought it was going to be. Oh well. But below are some shots I took of Hualien and the area that we explored.

A small Chinese restaurant we ate lunch at in the market. They had absolutely delicious dumplings

The Hualien night market

We went to bed finally, and then woke up early to take a bus to Taroko Park where there were these gorges.

The visitors' center

You can see a Buddhist temple here

Going up to the Buddhist temple

View from the Buddhist temple


Buddhist prayers being done

The monks have their own garden

After our trip to Taroko Park Greg and I caught the train back to Taipei. The next day I flew out back to Seoul, and thus ended my Taiwan trip.

However, my ties to Taiwan didn't end there. I bought an Amazon Kindle a few months ago, and a week after I had returned to Seoul I realized I had left it on the airplane when I was coming back from Taipei! Thankfully, it was at Incheon airport, and I picked it up over the weekend.

Phew! OK, the next post I guess will be about my Philippines trip. Haha, let's see how long it takes me to load those pictures up (considering I went to Taiwan back in July, and only now at the end of October I'm finishing up posting pictures this might take a while...)

-AALA