Blogs from Hualien, Taiwan, Asia - page 3

Roughly halfway between Hualien and Taitung lies the small town of Yuli. The main reason for us to go there is to do some hiking in adjacent Yushan National Park, explore the surrounding area, and spend Chinese New Year's Eve in relative peace and quiet. The southbound local train takes only little more than an hour. We arranged to get picked up from the train station, as our homestay is located a few kilometres outside of Yuli. A friendly bald man in his sixties approaches us, waving and smiling, and we proceed to introduce ourselves. After a few minutes' drive, we arrive at a big country house with a beautiful garden overlooking the Central Mountain Range. The lady of the house comes out to greet us. Inside, we are sat back and offered some tea. It ... read more

Animism is the ancient belief that spirits reside in nearly all features of the natural landscape. Do latent traces of this religion still persist among the tribes of eastern Taiwan? That is the question that I wanted to answer on a recent visit to Hualien County. A friend and I set out to meet members of the secretive Sakizaya tribe, a group of just 10,000 or so aborigines who from 1878-2007 merged with the Amis tribe in order to hide their identity from a Japanese military out to punish them for their resistance imperial rule. The Sakizaya were supposed to be the most “superstitious” of Formosa’s fourteen tribes, and this appealed to me. We drove down Highway 11, heading south along the Pacific coast toward the town of Shuelien, a small enclave in the coastal mountains ... read more

Danes je bil dan za bicikliranje. Tako sem odbiciklirala ze do zelezniske postaje, da sem ob 10.02 sedla na lokalni vlak za Hualien. Ne mores ravno na vsak vlak z biciklom, ampak jih je dovolj, poleg tega je infrastruktura za moje pojme tukaj odlicna in je kar dober priblizek raja za kolesarje. Nasplosno je tole zelo bike frienldy drzava, opazam, saj lahko bicikel povsod vzames s seboj, stegne so opremljene s posebno linijo za kolesa. Le placati moras dodatno polovico karte, kar se policajki Celii zdi nefer, saj imajo nekateri vecje kufre, kot so veliki bicikli, pa ni ne placajo. Kakor koli, jaz se ne pritozujem, ker je cena se vedno nizka za moje standarde. Svojo biciklisticno odisedajo sem tako zacela ob 11.40 v Hualieni. Podala sem se skozi mesto na highway 9, ki pelje po ... read more

Najprej zajtrk. Penny je skocila dol po sojino mleko, dan bing in tiste kitajske buhteljne (z zelenjavo, ker sem ji pojasnila, da za zajtrk pa res ne zelim se mesa). Ti so bili prvic polnozrnati, in tudi Penny je poudarila, da je to posebnost enega od stantov tukaj, da pac prodaja bolj take zdrave buhteljne. Super, pa sem ze mislila, da ne obstajajo. In potem spet hop na skuter, odkivat mesto podnevi. Kaohsiong je sel v zadnjem desetletju skozi renesanso, dozivel je totalen facelift, predvsem zaradi vizije prejsnjega zupana (prosim brez vzporednic). Ta je povsem spedenal mesto: reko je ocistil nesnage, zgradil ceznjo razne mosticke, spedenal parkce, sprehajalne promenade, kolesarske steze (!), vzpostavil ucinkovit MRT (kaj pravite na kaj takega v LJ?), organiziral vse za World Games 2009, odprl je pristanisce za turizem ... Sli sva ... read more

If you only have a few days to visit Taiwan, I highly recommend a visit to the eastern part of the island. Just outside of Hualien lies the beautiful Taroko National Park, a large park named after the impressive Taroko Gorge. Hualien is only a 3 hour train ride from Taipei. Trains leave regularly from Taipei Main Station and buying a ticket should be no problem. Try your best to get a seat on the left side of the train when heading to Hualien as the ocean views are striking. Hualien itself is a small and quiet city and doesn’t have much to offer in the ways of sightseeing but there are plenty of ways to keep yourself occupied. Hualien boasts a remarkable amount of stone quarries and many of the artists in the area utilize ... read more