On Monday afternoon I set up for the trip to Hualien county, the east coast. Everyone was telling me how beautiful place it is, so I didn’t want to miss it. I am really not sure how everything happened, I had just good luck again and wonderful people around me – so in the end Claire remembered that one of her students studies and works in Hualien and asked her to help me. I didn’t have to find accommodation and also they promised to take me around there.
The only thing you have to do when travelling so far is to make reservation for the tickets (online) or go buy it in advance, because there are many people who do the same and then you would have to stand maybe for 4 or 5 hours if there were no left seats. So I went to Taipei by local train and then took an express towards the east coast. I was going to stay in Ruisui, place bit more south from the Hualien city, so it took one more hour to get there.
At the station a young boy picked me up, his nickname is A-Chen, and he works at a tea farm. His friend and also a boss A-Xiang met as later and took as to the place I was going to sleep – a small house for friends to sleep over. In the evening we drank a lot of tea in their teashop and I really enjoyed their company. A-chen can speak English really well, although sometimes he didn’t know how to explain something to me, A-Xiang’s English is worse :)) The girl Wing, who is the student of Claire, joined us later.
A-Chen prepared some green tea, oolong tea, honey black tea and their speciality – pomelo black tea. He was very surprised that I can sense the taste of tea very well. ALso when I tasted the honey black tea, my first reaction was that it is similar to the Oriental beauty. And I was right, the process is similar – leaves are eaten by a kind of bug, but this one is a black tea and Oriental beauty is oolong. I drank so much tea that I couldn’t fall asleep till 2 am!
In the morning I had to wake up early, before 7, but I was so tired, that it was very hard. Fortunately A-Chen also overslept In the morning we went to Yuli, a nearby town, to pick up Alice and have breakfast. Alice is an English teacher, she taught in a cram school for 10 years, but then she said enough and gave up her job and started living here in Yuli in a place they call GeekTopia. She is very interesting person, she travels a lot, mainly because she loves MotoGP! So maybe in the future she will visit Brno and we can see each other again.
For breakfast A-Chen took us to eat miso soup! I never imagined that it could be good for breakfast but it was delicious! Together with soy bean milk and egg omelet! After that we went up to the mountain to meet A-Xiang, who was playing basketball in an aboriginal village in the mountains. The place was so peaceful and the view of the mountains wonderful. I could also see the east part of Jade Mountain – the tallest one in Taiwan. Next time I want to go and climb it (it takes maybe 2 days to get to the top and 1 day down).
the east side of Jade Mountain (in the middle)
After that we were so tired that we went to my place and lied down for 2 hours For lunch we had some rice dumplings. It was raining a little, so they said it is too dangerous to go to the famous spots as Taroko gorge, that there are falling stones and the path is very slippery. Instead A-Chen took me to a small tea factory to see how the tea is made. I really never thought about the tea making. So now I know that you can make green, oolong and black tea from the same tealeaves, only the procedure is different. There are 2 main tea trees, so you have to choose wisely which is good this year to make f.e. green tea, which would be better for black tea… The first step is to dry the tea leaves by hot air. They were drying one box of leaves so I could smell the beautiful smell of the tea leaves.
In the afternoon we took also A-Xiang and his girlfriend Serena and went to the seaside. I could finally see the Ocean! It was really splendid, even though there was a big wind and the clouds were heavy with rain. We spend an hour running into the waves and playing in the sand.
A-Chen and A-Xiang
The waves on the sand are very white and look like a beer foam! It is a myth that every time a mermaid dies (because she has no soul) she becomes the seafoam, and here it really looks like that
Afterwards we went for dinner. That was also something. A normal restaurant for farmers and fishermen, with very fresh fish and seafood! I tasted not only the yellow tuna fish sashimi, squid, but also fish eggs and fish milt. Everything was so delicious!
After dinner they took me to see the hot spring. This one is old, from the time of Japanese domination, it’s name is An-tong. There were some baths you can take outside without paying, but after a while it started raining so we decided to go to the hot spring hotel. We did not have swimming suit, so we had a bath in separate tubes. If you have swimming suit you can take a bath in the outside, Japanese style pools. I enjoyed the bath for more then 35 minutes It was so relaxing.
the photo is not good because there was not enough space to take it, but this is how the private bath looks
They took me also to the Geektopia, a small house, which is the seat of their doings. These people try to revive the life in this region, to bring more young people to live here and work here. It is hard, because most of the people here can work only as farmers, and there are no big companies (and then kind of hospitals, because this region is good for rehabilitation), so not many young people want to stay here.
I made them a new poster (the Chinese one is saying something like “drink a lot while you are young:D )
On Wednesday we woke up early again and went for Alice. While eating breakfast we met a young farmer, their friend, who said he will accompany us to the mountains in the afternoon. They wanted to walk part of the Walami path in the mountains.
We left Alice to sleep after breakfast and A-Chen took me to see a hidden waterfall. That place was wonderful. We had to go on foot a while and climb a little to get there, but the place was so charming, hidden in the steep rocks with very fresh air and so peaceful. We enjoyed ourselves here for maybe an hour, just throwing stones to the small lake and building a rock tower.
the hidden waterfall
rice fields
For lunch we went to an Italian restaurant owned by one of their friends. I had some pasta with crams, and it was really good. Another of their friends Yung-Ching, accompanied us for the lunch and also to the mountains. He stays in Geektopia for a while and he si doing a research about aboriginal tribes. His wife and child live in Taipei. He has a strong connection to the nature here, but what I could see many people like the nature and they appreciate it very much.
The Walami trail lies in the Yushan National Park, high above the Nanan river. Along the path there are some high waterfalls, suspension bridges and wonderful lookouts. In the subtropical forest, or jungle, you can hear many birds and if you are lucky also see monkeys. I did not see them but when we were climbing the road by car, others could see some monkeys The nature here is so raw, you should really try this! But next time I’m going to climb the Yushan (Jade mountain)!!
The first suspension bridge – Alice is not the only one afraid to pass it!
One of the waterfalls
In the evening they asked me to cook something czech for them! It was so difficult o decide what should I cook, because many of the ingredients are difficult to find and also the taste is bit different. I decided to make “bramboráky” (potatoe pancakes), hokkaido pumpkin soup and sweet dumplings. Usually we make the dumplings with strawberries or apricots, but we couldn’t find anything like this here, so I filled them with some plum-looking fruit and with chocolate+banana. The banana ones were really good! A-Chen and Yung-Ching helped me in the small kitchen while everyone else was eating! But we had a lot of fun and we enjoyed it. We finished and cleaned the kitchen it was nearly 11 pm. I had a little beer with Yung-Ching but because A-Chen was driving and he wanted to have a beer, we decided to go back to my place and buy a beer in 7/11. I Have never been shopping in a store around midnight! I never realized that 7/11 is nonstop!:D We talked until 2 am and drink beer. It was a nice time!
In the morning A-Chen picked me up and we went to the train station. A-Xiang bought us breakfast and also Wing came to say goodbye. They accompanied me to the platform. When I sat in the train I started crying for an hour Those people who I met just 3 days ago are so close to my heart. I was really sad that I have to leave them…. Thank you for taking such a good care of me, I’m really glad that I’ve met you!
A-Chen, Wing and A-Xiang my dear guides!
I arrived to Neili around 2 pm, went home to take a shower and then went back to school, because in 308 they asked me to come. I wanted to say some words to them but I just started crying and it was too difficult. Eva prepared a song for me, which she will sing at the final singing contest. It was in chinese but it was very sad and beautiful. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHXr4bBxHCo)
After that I went with them to play volleyball, till the end of school. In the evening we went to Zhongli with ZheWei, Eva, YuanYuan and YuRou (Nicol) to a night market. We tasted a lot of things again, like the tasty chicken ass, pigblood cake, some noodles, and also we tried snake soup. I have to say that snake soup is not very good. It tastes sweet and the snake meat is dry and a little like fish. I think one time was enough! We met Alex, the EP from Canada and spend a while together, making him taste many things. It was fun , because I tried them before and now I was the one who knows what it is and who can laugh at the reactions.
Thanks for the last time at the night market! I’m gonna miss you so much:(
2015/10/13 
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