My last weekend which I was allowed to spend in Taiwan, I planed to spend with some travelling and visit some place more far away from Taipei than all my day hikes. Fortunately Johanna, Simon and Shuwei wanted to travel as well, so we planed to have a trip to a place in the mountains, called Alishan. Alishan is famous for the beautiful sunrise and the amazing nature, that’s what made us decide to go there.
Our party started on Friday evening around eight o´clock – little later as we planed but nevertheless the same joyful mood, as expected. Nevertheless Taiwan offers a lots of possibilities to travel, like the high speed train and a huge number of buss organisations, for this weekend the most convenient way to travel was definitely the beautiful white VW-Golf from Shuwei. With lost of good music and mood in our luggage, we started down the highway heading south.
As it was around 2.30 when we arrived in the Alishan-Area we decided to find a place to put up the tent as soon as possible. We found a adequate place to put up hour tent. As a true gentleman honors debts, especially gambling debts Shuwei had to build the tent alone. Nevertheless three of us spend the time without doing anything to help him the tent was put up very soon, so that we could lay down not half an hour after we found the place. But as most of us still know it from the time as child, when you lay down into one room with three friends you start chatting. Chatting includes telling stories, interesting, emotional, profound or funny things and telling jokes. This made me laugh so much, that I could hardly stop. And everybody who knows my laugh knows that it is impossible to sleep beside me. When ever I think about this night I feel sorry for the others, that I did not allow them to sleep before half past three – but this thought is always with a smile. This smile even becomes more acute when it comes to my mind that I tried to wake the others up after I woke up. I did not knew, that it was just around half past five. As Johanna told me, she forced herself to keep her eyes closed, to pretend being asleep. But my simple tricks worked out with Shuwei. For the sun arouse around four it was daylight outside and the two of us got up to have a small walk.
This was one of the best experiences I have had until this weekend in Taiwan: To wake up and see the tropical flowers directly after opening the eyes.
The great nature which the Taiwanese nature offers was one of the things we planed to enjoy on the following Saturday. We drove into the Alishan Nature Park to do some hiking. The day started with lots of sun and ended with heavy rain but the scenes we saw during this day were beautiful. Again, this is the point to switch to pictures to give you a better impression.
(Pictures will follow)
On this Saturday one of the funniest thing at this weekend happened: Shuwei lost his flip flop while sitting on a bridge and the shoe fell down on rails. To let all of you join as good as possible Johanna and I took a small video report on the happenings around the Flip-Flop-Action. Just have a look:
Due to really heavy rain, we were not able to put up the tent this night and slept in a hostel near the highest 7-eleven, located in Taiwan.
After a breakfast at Starbucks we headed east to stop at a hot spring place. This hot spring, we decided to go for this day was located on the roof of a hotel. There were two separate rooms – one for male and one for female visitors. Johanna and I tried to get into the water for nearly half an hour but it did not work out, since it was too hot with its 45°C. So we decided to finish the visit by having the usual shower. As they offered a kind of bathtubs for the shower we adapted our plan to the conditions and headed ourselves with a bath.
This relaxing stop was followed by a long ride through the mountains on windy roads. At the beginning this was truly exciting but as it took us around three hours to get to the Tarroko gorge and another hour from there to the final destination for this day it became a little boring in between. But don’t worry, we found some other funny things to do, like painting each other on our notebook or eating Pringles – Once you popped you cannot stop. (For all who do not know this is a slogan from a German advertisement for Pringles – Yes, it might be that I am little addicted to advertisement.) Another thing which made the ride a good thing was the stopover at the Sun-Moon-Lake. A nice view but I figured out that it was good, I did not spend a whole weekend on this area, cause for me it seams to be just a lake like some others. But nice!
Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Johanna that evening, because she had to go back to Taipei to work the following day. To give her an adequate farewell we danced the “Fliegerlied” (a German Aprés-Ski-Hit with a fitting dance, just ask Google.com or Youtube.com for some introduction).
Give me night of sleep and than I will finish this post about the amazing and long weekend…soon!!
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