After a long and fruitless search for a traditional Christmas dinner in Taipei city that either was not fully subscribed (like Jake's and Wendel's), making a vague nod to Christmas (such as pudding for dessert at various 4 and 5 star hotels around town), or the just plain bizarre (like the full Chinese menu including chicken feet, or the totally French menu including freshwater trout and foie gras!), I finally found a place that served a traditional Christmas feast with wine. Of all places, Carnegie's nightclub, most famous for it's wide bar where patrons are encouraged to writhe and dance to the pulsing beats into the wee hours, had lunch set of turkey and vegetables, plum pudding and a glass of champagne and red wine! We taxied down to take advantage of such, had a great time, then lazily ate our Papa Poulet cooked puddings for dessert...bliss! We slept early, still tired from our trip before rising to watch the test match, where we camped on the lounge all day till stumps...double bliss! A little bit of packing then an early night before we were due to set out the next morning.
Car packed away with board and bags, CDs stacked and GPS taught a destination, we were off! The freeway system in Taiwan is stellar, yet pretty boring. The GPS guided us on and off alternating freeways at irregular intervals as it determined how we could thread our way down to the opposite tip of the island in the least amount of time. Our CD selection was pretty cool and we kept up a fairly constant karaoke performance the whole way down! The official pit-stops along the way are utilitarian but slick, allowing some easy on and off access and quickly getting us fueled, toileted or fed. A bare 6 1/2 hours later we'd sped past the megalopolis of the smoke belching west coast, a seething pit of endless building and populace, a morass of dipping and weaving freeways, ducking over and above each other, sometimes stacked two, even three high. We'd sped past the thinning cities, past the ever lush and tropical vegetation on the southern isthmus and finally, as the roadside coffee stalls dotted the coastal highway heading into Kenting, we palpably relaxed and began to soak up the tropical charms of this fascinating piece of Taiwan.
Our first destination was the boutique hotel where we'd stayed 4 years before. Sand was a great find, situated through the main part of town and opposite the white sands of Shadao, before the Eluanbi lighthouse, which is the official southernmost point in Taiwan. If it wasn't there, had changed, was booked etc, no worries, we'd try one of a myriad other small places which seemed to have cropped up in the time since we'd last visited. To our surprise and delight, it was still there, had room and had been refurbished! I launched into my Chinese, stumbling a little, but negotiating a price, a room a length of stay and various other stuff necessary to book in....the Japanese tried to creep in a few times, but I held it at bay!
It was great to be back and the room was just fantastic (all for the ridiculous price of $80 a night, including breakfast), so we unloaded our junk then went across the road to check out the protected little beach in front as well as watch our first "proper" sunset over sea. A rarity when you have always lived on the east coast (in Australia) and the north coast (here), the novelty of this magnificent sight just doesn't wear off. We watched as the sun sank lower and lower, playing lights and colours across the ruffled water until it plummeted below the horizon at the very end. Why does it always seem to disappear so quickly at the end?
Dinner was a short drive away in Kenting town and we enjoyed wandering the market stall crowded streets after our dinner at Cassy's favourite "Tex-Mex" restaurant, Smokey Joe's. It was pretty good fare, but we couldn't help comparing with last time: when we were here before, there were so few Mexican based places in Taipei, yet now it almost feels overrun by them...we're very spoiled for choice these days. After a full day surfing at the wonderful laid back break of Jialeshui, with Cass relaxing on shore, we again hit the town, this time enjoying some Thai food. At a roadside stall, Cass bought some ridiculous swizzle sticks made of glass...they were cute, but I suspect kinda useless!
The next day we started up the east coast, heading vaguely for some of the spots we'd discovered years ago on our first foray into the wilds of eastern coastal Taiwan. If Taiwan's west coast is heavily and densely populated, polluted, unattractive and hectic, the eastern equivalent is exactly the opposite in more ways than compass points. It has hints of Indonesia, Thailand and even outposts like New Caledonia about it. You can breathe crisp and clear as the air floats off the mountains before mixing with the salt sea mist. The local people are languid and unaffected: they talk through blood red dripping, betel nut drenched teeth in a southern drawl mix of Taiwanese and Mandarin and laugh open mouthed at the foreigner's attempts to make himself understood! The road draws a straight line up the coast, tracing through hill-billy towns and almost deserted villages, most of the way right beside the ocean. I was getting a neck-ache looking at all the "potential" surfing spots as we flashed through on the way to various discovered spots.
We stopped at a classic little spot, known as "Water Running Up". They're not real big on the poetic naming of places round here, but the literal monicker at least allowed us to realise what it was! It was a funny little spot and the water really does appear to run uphill! Obviously it's an optical illusion of some kind but....check the little video here.
We had lunch at the famous Donghe river mouth, but the surf was all blown out from a fairly fierce onshore wind. Such was its strength that I actually began to despair of getting any surf at all that day. I did hold out some hope for the slightly protected point breaks of Sansiantai and Bashien if all else failed: trouble was they were still more than 100 kilometres away! I stopped the car and asked Cass to take a photo at the newly built "surfers" statue at Donghe, but in my wild excitement that such a statue might exist I ran to jump on, only to crack both my lower shins straight into the metal platform. Can you see my grimace in the photo above? I did a little war dance to deaden the pain (that always helps!). It is still bruised and sore as I write!
We eventually found some awesome surf at the strangely named "Eight Fairies Cave" (Bashien). A minor tourist attraction on one side of the road (the caves), has been completely ignored by every surfer who has passed this spot. It is a perfectly formed rocky point break and I'm sure if it was closer to any population centres it would be overrun all day everyday. As it stands, the traveling surfer stops and savours the beautifully formed waves, yet full scale exploitation has not begun....please hold off a little longer! Check out one of the waves I caught here to give some indication of its excellence (but not mine!). Cass had her heart in her mouth as she watched me out at this break. The take-off is straight into rocks and if you miss the first turn, you could easily get smashed into same: she worries what she'd do, as it is so isolated.
After an exciting and exhilarating session we headed off again to Hualien, where we wanted to spend the night. As we turned down one of the main streets, Cass kept her eyes peeled for a hotel. It's a tough job as the buildings often don't look like hotels and there are no English signs. She spotted one and we pulled in. We eventually went and stayed at one over the road, a very Chinese business hotel. It was super cheap, but it was tiny: we had to negotiate around the foot of the bed one at a time! It was super clean and comfortable though, and after a dinner in town and a take away coffee, we slept like the dead.
The Quingshui Cliffs are a world famous Taiwanese natural scenery highlight and in drizzling rain and fog, their appeal was only mildly diminished. About halfway along this engineering marvel that had been hewn from precipitous vertical cliffs which plunge straight into the sea, all traffic was halted due to a land slide across the road. About 5oo metres ahead of us, a crane and team of labourers worked furiously to clear the debris and re-open the road. It gave us another chance to take in all the beauty and majesty of this road and general area. Cass had already spotted the different colour of the sea which delineated where the deep ocean shelf started. In places, the vertical cliffs dived straight into the sea so that deep water was just a few metres off shore...i mean really deep! Our road was like a continuous crazy step carved from the vertical cliffs, but a step that continued for 80 kilometres. It snaked up and down the mountain, hugged the ridges and ducked itself beneath landslide shelters that covered the road in critical sections. It sliced right through the mountains where hugging the edge would have proven too calamitous: the tunnels oozed moisture and occasionally were breached to the extent that gushing torrents rained from the roof! It is a spectacular and sometimes scary experience. Add to this mix some speeding betel nut chewing truck drivers and you've got some real excitement! Bursting out the end, we were relieved to trace our way through the calming rice paddies of Nan Au, where the surf was again thundering on deserted shores. These are the times when I really feel like investigating a little piece of real estate down here: Cass, less so!
We got home in the late afternoon and both felt really tired, but totally relaxed. As we began to reflect on our holiday, we could hardly believe the things that we'd seen and done in two geographically similar yet vastly different countries and societies. Even after a week back at school, we're still going over many of the things we saw and did, and I think we will be for some time to come: we're very lucky to be able to experience these things the way we do. Photos above or here.