Taiwan Part 1- Kenting and Taichung
Four months later, I finally got back to updating this blog. I’ll backlog my travels from Taiwan to DC, Iceland, and New Zealand. I guess this is called later-blog?
Taiwan is one of my favorite places to visit as there are many things to do and the people are very friendly and nice. I highly recommend Taiwan as this treasure island has mountains, lakes, coasts, hot springs, amazing food, cultural history. Better yet, a dollar goes a long way here, transportation, food, and accommodation are all cheap. Because things are affordable here, I ended up doing a lot and drinking milk tea every day!
I stayed in Taiwan for three weeks which was plenty of time for me to go around the whole island. I first traveled south and from Kenting, I worked my way up to Taichung (central), Taitung (east), and then Taipei (north). The high speed rail was very convenient, it took about 2.5 hours from one end of the island to the other.
Kenting
Kenting is a small surf town located in the Southern tip of Taiwan, there you can enjoy the beach and a variety of water activities. Natalie, my best friend from Hong Kong, joined me in Kenting. Our agenda consisted of eating through the Kenting Night Market (垦丁大街) , surfing and diving. Time to reminiscence the days when we were in the swimming team! But first, we need a lot of food and beer…
Every night, our mission was to eat as much food as we could. We particularly like the fried mushrooms and hanging out at one of the many roadside bars 🙂
Of course, we had to surf while in Kenting. We went to Ah Fei Surf (阿飞冲浪店), I was lucky that the head coach 飞哥 got time to teach me that day. All the instructors from Ah Fei Surf were very passionate about surfing, and they had many other talents as well! Including but not limited to tattoo designs and playing live music. I highly recommend taking a class with Ah Fei Surf. Here’s Natalie standing up on her board 🙂 
The next day, we went back again to take one on one lessons. 飞哥 thought I could use some training on my turns, so he took me out to chase some waves. Incoming:
Next day we went scuba diving, overall, it wasn’t great visibility 🙁
After three days of sunshine, Typhoon Haima hit the Southern part of Taiwan, as the weather station described, Haima was both fat and big, so Natalie and I had to leave Kenting a day early to escape the Typhoon.
TaiChung
A decade ago, Taichung might not be a popular destination for tourists, however, the city made tremendous effort in making Taichung one of the art hubs in Taiwan. TaiChung is now full of cool cafes, art studios, and amazing restaurants. My favorite part was visiting the Alishan (阿里山) National Forest.
I found an amazing Airbnb in Taichung, the owners- Sherry and Jason put a lot of effort into designing the place, and their place was super comfortable. Sherry made me breakfast every morning and we ended up having a few long chatting sessions. Sherry and Jason were such wonderful hosts! Here’s a view of the first floor common area:
There are quite a few cool places around the Taichung train station such as- 宫原眼科 and the cultural and creativity industries park. Buy the best pineapple cakes and sun cakes from Taichung, they make great souvenirs!
Random display around the cultural and creativity industries park:
One of the roof top areas in the Fantasy district:
Fengjia Sweet Potato Ball is possibly the most memorable street snack I had in Taiwan. This store in Fengjia Night Market existed for 30 years, and they sell hand-made sweet potato balls that are chewy inside and crunchy outside. The store owner mushed sweet potatoes with sheer strength, look at those muscles!
Having some iced Oolong tea before going to Alishan, great with green bean cake:
Alishan National Forest
Don’t miss Alishan if you are visiting TaiChung, Alishan is one of the most famous mountains in Taiwan, and tea grown from Alishan is the best in class. If you like trains, you can take one up the mountains. If you are travelling solo and don’t like driving, I recommend going with Taiwan Trip (台湾好行), they have scheduled buses going to and from Chiayi every day, more info here: http://en.taiwantrip.com.tw/
Xitou (溪头）and the Monster Village （妖怪村）
Another cool forest area that I liked quite a bit was Xitou and the Monster Village . The hiking in Xitou was beautiful and the rain added some mystery to the scenery:
The Monster village was a themed village right next to Xitou. The whole village was decorated with Japanese-style monsters.It was a ton of fun looking through the houses and shops. Great place to take pictures!
