last day in taiwan for us. this means getting up early, having breakfast, packing things, trying to fit all the additional stuff we acquired since day 01 into the luggage along with all the other things, checking out, leaving our luggage at the hotel, then wandering some malls to find a suitable bag for hand luggage, as all the stuff didn't fit into the rucksacks, returning our "easycard" that was used for the metro, and then spending all the money we got left on souvenirs, cute and cool stuff we saw, and, and, and. you see, we've been pretty busy. our flight will leave at 22:15 and so far no signs of any typhoon-related troubles. so plenty of time to spend the last taiwanese dollars (TWD), because at home there wouldn't be much use for them. one thing we used to money for was souvenirs, useless stuff[02,04] and food[09-19,31-32], like this steam pot restaurant[09-19] right at the central station. there was steam everywhere, and one had to decide was soup all the stuff will be cooked in. nina went for a chinese medical soup (whatever that means), i went for the seaweed soup. then we could choose rice or noodles (where we chose the latter), and then some pork[13], and a sea-food plate[15-17]. so at first we got a bowl[10] full of vegetables, mushrooms, and other stuff we could not identify. by that time we didn't know there will be the really huge seafood plate, because the bowl already contained some crab stuff and shrimps. all the stuff was delicious and fun to prepare. in the end the soup was a mix of flavours of all the stuff we put in it to cook. so very nomnom. desert was a taro-cake[18-19] - totally weird and strange colour, but it tasted delicious. then it was time so say goodbye and head for the airport. so we got on the bus to the airport and drove back the same way we came on day 01. sniff, sniff. but it wouldn't be taiwan, if there wasn't a nice surprise for us at the airport (just to make farewell even harder). a hello kitty self-check-in area[20-22,24]! how awesome is that? but also the normal check-in counters[25] where in hello kitty style! by now nina got hungry again, so she had a dumpling-snack[31-33] right next to "taipeh 101"[27,30], after check-in, and did some last calls home on the hello kitty phone[34-35]. after security checks we also found this cute hello kitty store[40] that even has a lovely hello kitty mahjongg[41]. aaaw, so cute, too bad we have to leave... resumee: wonderful holidays, thanks nina. also thanks to jeff once more for all the good tips and suggestions on where to go and what to eat. it's really hard to find information about places on the internet, since the romanization of chinese characters is not standardised. thus, e.g. to look up some stuff on the "jiji" train, one should also use the search terms "chichi", and "qiqi". it did not get easier that nina had an english, while i had a german travel guide, since they also differ in the names. 1718 pictures turned out to be useful. i hate typhoons. track: day 22

today we had a long stroll through taipeh, again with loads of nice people, shopping, eating, heat and humidity. but at least it seems "kai-tak" is not affecting the north of taiwan at all, though the south gets hit hard, at least according to the news we've seen on monitors in the metro and on tv-screens in the malls. baeh, typhoons suck, poor people in the south :/ for us, the more lucky ones, this means that there should be no problem with the flight tomorrow. we also got up pretty late because nina was very tired in the morning (because of yesterday's massage maybe?). but we made it to the breakfast, and then went to a tiny shop only about 50 metres from our hotel entrance away, called "melecat". they had all kind of stuff with the cute little melecat on it, most of it being bags of all sorts. nina bought a bag there, i got a key fob - so cute! then follows a shopping spree by nina, i spare you all the details... at around 15:00 o'clock we arrived at the "hello kitty sweets shop"[01-28] and were escorted to our table by staff all dressed in pink, and with loads of bows and lace. and, remarkably enough, also the male member of the staff was wearing a pink apron! then we ordered hello kitty cake, coffee, and got a free hello kitty pudding, and the LMFAO song "party rock anthem", and waitresses in short skirts. aaaaaw, so much pink, so much kitty, it was totally awesome! BUT!... and here comes the biiiiig but... there was a thing that totally puzzled me... see pictures on slides 11 and 12, for example. do you notice any oddity? after this wonderful coffee/cake break we were walking around the area to later go to "zhuji", another restaurant recommendation by jeff. jeff told us to try the pastries there, and so we did. some beef, vegetable, leek and seafood pastries[42,45], a soup with braised beef[43], and a wonton soup[44]. super delicious! with full bellies we were rolling to even more shops afterwards. nina again was on a shopping spree :) later we got back to the hotel to have our last night in taiwan. time flies... track: day 21

thanks to "kai-tak" today was a constant mix of sunshine and rain, but permanently hot and humid. so we decided to go shopping. in the shops they usually have A/C so we could cool down a bit. unfortunately almost all shop owners are not happy with people taking pictures inside, often with a sign explicitly telling you not to take pictures. so, unfortunately, i cannot show you all the fancy cool sh** they had in the shops - too bad. then in the early afternoon nina said she'd have a surprise for me, and, after searching for the address and exact location, brought me to the "hello kitty sweets shop"[10-13] - yippieh! unfortunately the cafe was fully booked, but we got a reservation for the next day, 15:00 o'clock. pretty close to the "hello kitty sweets shop" was "din tai fung" dumplings[21-24,26-30]. a restaurant recommended to us by our native taiwan friend jeff (hey, jeff! glad you enjoy my bLog, and thanks so much for all the awesome recommendations!). so after having eaten awesome dumplings with all kind of great fillings, and noodles with peanut sauce[29] (super-nomnom!) we went to the next-door souvenir shop. yop, that's right. the "din tai fung" chain seems to be so popular, it even has its own souvenir shop[23], and of course its own mascot[22], and restaurants all over asia and even in the US of A. oh, and we got a present because we showed our "friend's of taiwan" membership card - a little dumpling, as a cell phone accessory. after another tour through various fancy and cool shops we went back to the hotel, deposited our stuff, took a shower and made another visit to one of the thousand massage shops. while i was going for the foot massage again, nina this time tried the back massage, as she did not dare to risk another painful foot massage. i was totally happy with my choice, and this time also nina was super relaxed and happy after the treatment. aaaaaah, i wish we had such things in austria too - i will miss them. back at the hotel we decided to stay at the "hotel flowers", and thus booked our last night in taiwan. *sniff* track: day 20

we left taroko today, heading back to taipeh again mainly because of "kai-tak", the latest typhoon, but also for shopping. so after going by hotel shuttle bus to hualien train station, where we got on a pretty crowded train back to taipeh. we were lucky to still get a seat, unlike other passengers, like three guys travelling taiwan on bike. but they also switched to train due to the typhoon. in the afternoon we arrived at the taipeh station, had yummy waffles[02] at "aunt stella"'s cafe, and then headed on to our new hotel called "flowers hotel". so called because they had (plastic) flowers in every window. after a long shower (which actually was pretty useless, because it was raining, and this makes it only more humid and hot), we decided to go to "shimen district", a loud, crowded, and busy shopping district with all kind of fancy stuff. just the right place after the days in taroko. but before we came by the "chenghuangtempel van taiwansheng"[03-09]. in shimen (actually called "ximending") there were really cool shops. some having cats[16,19-20], some having "chi's sweet home" stuff[23]. oh, and i bought another book of "chi's sweet home", this time part five, since it became tradition to buy one book in every japan or china related place. so far i bought book one in tokyo, book two in chicago (in a japanese mall), and book four in hong kong. only four books to go (at the time of writing) - yay! one shop[31-33] was our favourite. it had tons of little plastic figures of manga and movie characters. i bought a little "totoro" figurine from the movie "my neighbor totoro" that is also a calendar. later we had some dinner[34-38], and for the first time we were not pleased with the food. while i considered mine as "almost ok", nina was not happy with hers. amazing, isn't it? after 19 days! track: day 19

we had planned today as a hiking day, so started our hike with the "swallow grotto trail" (aka. "yanzihkou trail"), that should give a nice view over some parts of the gorge. starting from our hotel we had to take some steep and long stairway[007], walk along the street[008-014] where also the bus would go, and finally arrived at the "swallow grotto"[015-045]. usually the water here should have been crystal blue and cyan, but guess who's to blame once more. yop, typhoon. so thanks to "haikui" (that's the name of the typhoon) the water was all gray and dirty. too bad, as we had only seen it with clear water so far. on pictures at the tourist information centers and in information brochures. but at least the streets were opened and not closed as the "changchun trail" was, which would have led us from the "eternal shrine"[046-101] via the "kuanyin caves", "taroko tower", the bell tower, and a hanging bridge, to "changuang temple". but closed. grrr... while taking a break at the nearby parking lot we had some snacks called "meat zongzi"[103,105] (with a chestnut inside) and "bamboo tube meal"[103] - nomnom! we found out there's another way to the "changuang temple" and the bell tower. so we went along a road[106-111,122,139-148] that was not the main road, and we soon ended up being all alone. the road was next to a riverbed[112-121], and we found a way to get down there. after exploring nice rock formations[117-119,121] we got back on the road to reach the "changuang temple"[126-138]. but the hanging bridge[125] to the bell tower[131] was closed too. oh well, at least we got to see a nice temple with a little balcony[128,132-134] where one got an awesome overview over the gorge, and besides a praying police man we were the only ones there. tranquil, quiet and contemplative - wonderful. enjoying the atmosphere we almost forgot about the bus. so we had to hurry back[139-152] to the bus station, as the last outbound bus goes at 15:30. fortunately the bus station was not far away. in the meantime it had also started to rain, so we were lucky we had to go through a tunnel[146-148] to reach the station. while waiting for the bus, we enjoyed all the different lions[153-155,157-158,161] at the shakadang bridge. for the rest of the day it was raining, and it seems a new typhoon (named "kai-tak") is approaching taiwan, hitting land tomorrow. i hope this does not affect our flight back home... in taiwan, garbage trucks have a distinctive tune they play when they come to collect all the garbage. we have heard the sound so many times and also seen people waiting in the street to hand over their garbage. why i mention this right now? well... even here, far away from the next town and civilization we heard the truck at the hotel. it's a wonderful tune to whistle along too, which we also did. i considered to get the tune for my telephone as my new ring tone. dinner buffet at the hotel this evening was awesome (i think you might already get bored of that, right?). track: day 18

today we got up early and were fetched by a bus to be brought to the harbour. there we started our whale watching tour, hoping to finally see whales. so we got on a boat and drove out to the sea. soon we spotted some other whale watcher boats[009-010,024-025], and then some dolphins[011-023,026-032]. luckily they were in the mood to come closer, and also there were quite a lot of them. so they followed us, some also swam in front of our boat. aaaaw, so cute! we were happy, but still whales would be nice, because that was the main reason for the trip (and also because we already had the "swimming with dolphins" experience in new zealand). so we drove along the coast, but there were no whales. bohoooo, unlucky us. but on the way back to the harbour we spotted another small group of dolphins[036-037] - this time a different kind of dolphin, though we had no idea which species, as all the information on the boat given by the crew and the captain were not in english. all we got over the loudspeaker was a "different dolphin" - hehe. the whale watching trip was surprisingly cheap, compared to the ones we already had, so this is definitely a recommendation for whale lovers (and/or watchers). also they handed out some kind of "diploma" once you survived the trip. or was it for spotting dolphins? we don't know, as we didn't get one, because no one told us they will be handed out to the brave survivors. bohoo! back at the visitor center we fetched our luggage from the nearby hotel, and got on the "taroko gorge shuttle bus", heading to buluowan[048-052], where our hotel is located. a wonderful trip inside the gorge, winding and steep on sometimes pretty narrow streets, close to the abyss. but the bus driver drove like a boss, and so we soon arrived at our accommodation. unfortunately it was a long stairway from the bus station to the reception of the hotel, but we made it, with some breaks for examining strange coloured caterpillars. our japanese style bungalow[053-057,063-070,077] (equipped with two cool chinese hats[055-056]) was located in a park[064-067,077] with other bungalows in a circle like shape, surrounded by high mountains. what an awesome resort! also they had all kind of insects, and each of them way bigger than what i am used to. spiders[058,071-073,075,078], stag beetles, crickets, caterpillars[098] (though they were tiny, and the ones we already spotted when we arrived), undefinable, strange bugs[079-080,082-083], locusts[099-102], etc. especially the spiders were everywhere and pretty big. their body is like my forefinger, the entire spider with legs has the size of my palm. luckily they always sat high up in the trees or under the roofs. later that evening we were invited to an show. they even had an english handout what were are about to see, namely aboriginal rites[103,111], dances[104-106,108,112-122] and some old instruments[107,109], and new ones[110]. the performers were all from the hotel, and although no pro performers, they all had fun and were committed. especially the younger girls really seemed to love the dancing. also the singing parts were quite impressive. and another impressive thing was the demonstration of the echoes (that's what "buluowan" means in the taroko aboriginal language). all people at the show were shouting, than waiting several seconds to hear the screaming all around them. when walking back to our bungalow, there were stars all over the sky. really impressive and lovely. what a great place. ah, and of course the food was great too, but we did not bring our cameras, so no pictures of that, sorry. track: day 17

so today today was our bus tour in the hualien area. after getting on a small bus, since our tour group was around ten people, we had our first stop at liyu lake[001-012], a lake that has loads of carps, and also - according to our guide - resembles the shape of a carp. by guide i mean our lonelyplanet by the way, as there was no english guide on the bus. just us, and luckily a lady that translated the most important stuff the bus driver said for us (that was when to be where to continue the tour). we had a stop for about 40 minutes there. not enough time to walk around the lake, but to have fun with a little lizard [006-010]. nice scenery, but again it was very very hot, so we had enjoyed the shadow and kept walking to a minimum. next stop was the "butterfly valley resort"[021-053] that had - as the name implies - loads of butterflies, and also poisonous snakes, plants and wasps. the perfect place for tourists like us. the driver gave us a map of the resort, and we had about one and a half hour to walk around the park. so we chose two of the trails through the area. snakes and wasps we did not encounter, but there was one particular place where there were loads of butterflies[045-047]. unfortunately you don't see them on the picture, but believe me, there were butterflies everywhere. really lovely. time for some lunch, so our driver stopped at a little restaurant, picked up several biandangs[057] (that's the taiwanese version of the japanese bento boxes), put them in the back of the bus, and drove on to the "pastureland resort experience area"[056-072]. now it gets a bit crazy and kinda WTFed. the resort (or what we saw of it, as we actually just stopped there to occupy the benches and tables there) offers a little shop all around the local heroes, namely the black and white spotted cows. parents can buy their kids grass to feed it to the cows. also one can buy all kinds of milk-related edible products[058-060]. and, once customers are convinced that cows are cool and milk is awesome, one can buy all kind of merchandise stuff at the local souvenir shop[063]. this experienced lasted around one hour. got milk? but it would get even weirder. next stop was the "hualien sugar factory[076-081]". if you expect some presentation of the sugar processing business, you were wrong - just as we were in believing so. what we got was... hm... hard to describe. loads of shops, loud music, and a huge crowd of people[077-078] buying all kind of stuff offered there, ranging from candies and sweets (of course) to clothes, which we bought there. nina got a cute dress, i got a nice t-shirt. after 20 minutes we entered the bus, which was hard to find due to all the other buses that parked there too, and drove on. puh, that was a little disturbing, and way too loud to us. but - according to our guidebook chinese people love that. noise and a crowd makes them feel cosy and happy. whatever floats their boat. next stuff was nice again, namely the "lintiansuan historical studio", where we spent one hour. it is some kind of an open air exhibition, showing how logs were transported and processed in the last century. so they had the old tracks from the train transporting the logs, and other nice stuff. but what caught our attention was something that all the other visitors ignored. we found an old abandoned house[096-120], and we were the only ones there. in an exhibition hall they showed amazing wood carvings[122-131]. carved out of one huge trunk they created wonderful sculptures. according to the schedule we got handed out when we booked the trip, this would have been the last stop. but the bus driver had a nice surprise for us. he brought us to a bamboo charcoal "factory"[142-146]. they made bamboo charcoal their, showing how efficiently it can filter water (and indeed it went from brown to pure), how one can use it for fabrics, how one can use it as an edible coating for peanuts (that really tasted awesome!), and how conductivity of the bamboo is achieved by turning it into charcoal. really impressive stuff this bamboo tree. also they had a little cafe right there, where they sold the civet cat coffee[144]. though not the original "kopi luwak", this was coffee beans digested by the local civet species, the formosan masked civet. so cat poo-poo coffee for me - yippieh! but i will have one back home, as the package only includes six sachets for quite a high price. after 20 minutes we left the place and went on to another unscheduled stop. and it seems the bus driver has saved the craziest sh** until last. we stopped in front of the "jota food company"[150-154]. right after getting of the bus loud music was all around again, several girls dressed as aboriginal women made some additional noise, and showed us the way. inside tons of people, little room, no turning back, always straight on with the other visitors. the first 50 metres were dedicated to the history of the jota food company and their products. the remaining 200 metres were all dedicated to sweets and food. all the other guests there seemed to be on some kind of a shopping spree and bought tons of sweets, while we seemed to be immune to all this candy madness. all we did was try some provided samples and bought a soy ice-cream[150-151], since it was still hot. we were happy to get out of this jota hell again. in the shadow we enjoyed our pineapple and peanut ice. all in all a good choice to take such a day tour, since one gets to see a lot, without the need of a car or scooter rental. also we got a little more insight of the chinese idea of recreation and leisure time activities. back at the tourist information, we booked a whale watching tour, so we finally get to see one - hopefully. we already failed at spotting whales in iceland and new zealand. let's see if we are lucky this time. also back to our hotel we decided to book a hotel in the taroko gorge online (after the fiasco on little luichiu island). this turned out to become quite a challenge, because, although the taroko gorge homepage is available in english(!), the booking site was not. but thanks to the google translate service, we managed to find out what the form fields were all about. once i got to the site with the credit card payment, visa decided that i need to be "Verified by Visa" on the spot. so no booking until i had undergone the initial process to be visa verified. but about one hour and several grrrrrs later, we had our double room booked. so far the most expensive hotel, but it seemed pretty fancy, and besides there's not much choice when it comes to accommodation in this national park. track: day 16

today we went straight to the tourist information center after the breakfast to ask for a recommendation on what to do and what to see in hualien. unfortunately the ladies did not speak english, so we decided to rent a bike (yes, a bike, not a scooter), and explore hualien by bike[02-36]. so we spent the morning and afternoon biking along the river to the shore on really nice cycle lanes[02-07,12,18,22-23]. oddly enough we were not the only ones doing sports on a very hot and humid day. there were quite a lot of taiwanese and chinese people on bicycles. but i guess we were the only ones getting a nice sunburn. nina in the face, me on the back of my hands. but the ride was really nice, and we got to see a lot[19]. after having a long shower at the hotel, we went for a stroll in the area around the hotel. we found a little market hall where they produced mochi and other sweets (no photography allowed). also there was a little coffee house where we had a taiwanese coffee. the shop was owned by two lovely ladies[39-40], that seemed to be drinking coffee all day long. to us it looked like they were on drugs, talking a lot and very fast all the time - great fun. and really nice. after that we went to another sweets shop where we bought bamboo mochi (that's mochi inside a bamboo stick), and tried several other sweets. all very nomnom. next we found a pachinko hall[44] (as in japan, these are amusement arcades, full of gambling machines (again no photography allowed). so we spent a few hundred taiwanese dollars on games. each one of us could pick a game, then we played one game, then the other one could pick a machine. so when it was nina's turn, she picked an alien shooter[45] - hmpf. it hurt to kill all those cute little aliens... after all the suffering and pain we went on to grab some dumplings - as usual, very delicious. in the meantime we also decided what to do on the next day. so we went to the tourist information center, and booked a one- day tour, called the "rift valley tour", to see some stuff from the area around hualien. also we booked one more night at our hotel, the "green hotel - ching yeh". we hope there's an english guide on the bus tour. track: day 15

after saying farewell to the guys at mvilla hotel we got a ride to the pier, where we got on the ferry back to donggang today. on our way to luichiu we had to take a taxi from the bus station to the ferry, so we thought let's get on a taxi again, and go back the same way we came. but the taxi driver seemed to be misunderstanding (on purpose or not we could not say), and instead he brought us to the next bigger city, namely khaoshung. and although the trip was pretty expensive (compared to a bus ride in taiwan, but still way cheaper than what we would have paid for this ride in austria), at least we gained loads of time. at the railway station in khaoshung there was an english speaking girl at the tourist information center that helped us plan our trip to hualien. she suggested we take the bus, since the trains might be full and there might be no seats available. yet we tried our luck at the railway ticket counter, and, lucky us, we got two seats - yay! since we still had about 30 minutes until the train would leave, we went back to the tourist information lady and asked her to book us a room in hualien, which she did. so we got on the train, passed by loads of rice fields, and after a five hour ride, and a total change in the weather, from sunny to rainy, we arrived in hualien. track: day 14

the typhoon will not hit taiwan at all - lucky us! so i returned the scooter today, grabbed a coffee at the 7-eleven store and went home by foot. on the last 200 metres the hotel owner's son drove by with his scooter, and gave me a ride back to the hotel. nina was a little sick because of having eaten too much eggs for breakfast (she had eaten my portion of scrambled eggs too), so she was sleeping in the meantime. the weather was fine again, just a few light rain showers from time to time, but overall it was sunny all day long. so we spent the day on our balcony, enjoying the fabulous view[1-3] over the sea, cooling down in the room (thanks to the A/C), watching a few movies on HBO-asia and FOX-asia, sorting out and editing our photographs, writing bLog entries, and the like. the hotel staff was also busy, cleaning all the floors, and seemed way more relaxed than the day before. most likely due to the good news about the typhoon. in the afternoon the first new guests arrived, we were not alone anymore. amongst them was an english speaking girl, which made communication with the staff way easier. in the evening the phone rang and one member of the family asked if we wanted to join them and the other guests watching "burning birds" (at least that's what we understood). curious about what we will get to see we joined them. we walked around in the hotel area when suddenly they were pointing in some direction. they wanted to show us glowworms - hehe. also we learned that the scary and pretty loud noises we heard the night before came from frogs (or toads?), though we did not spot one, as they stop making noise as soon as you come close to them. we also tried (and bought a package) "twisted dough", a delicious sweets offered by the mother. after a beautiful sunset[3] at the end of the day and we went to bed, knowing that we will have to leave this wonderful hotel tomorrow. it was really relaxing and a nice break from the strenuous trip. track: day 13