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Recapping my grad trip to Taiwan has been a pretty fun experience. So far we had spent some time in Taipei, and then down to Hualien, and now we were moving south to our next stop, a very rural town in southern Hualien County called Ruisui where we had a rather unfortunate attempt at rafting in the absolute wrong season. We woke up super early in the morning to catch out train here, and we had to spend our time looking for accommodation because we hadn’t been able to find anything online before arriving. Just around the corner from the train station, we chanced upon Yang He Guest House – the owner actually ran a betel nut factory below and a guest house on top, and it was one of the nicer places we stayed all trip long. We shared a single room with damn comfy mattresses on the floor and an attached toilet, including toiletries. It was pretty nice by budget standard, and the owner organized all our activities for us. Look at all those signs Ruisui is famous for whitewater ...

After 2 days in Taipei (see Day 1 and Day 2) and a rather grey welcome to Hualien City, we decided to go exploring the next day and ended up at Liyu Lake, or Carp lake, a beautiful lake up in the East Rift mountains of Hualien. It’s pretty chillax and we were there mostly to relax.   How to get to Liyu Lake from Hualien We took a bus from Old Hualien Railway Station Take Hualien Bus bound for Shoufeng or Zhinan and stopped at Liyutan (Liyu Lake). The journey took about half an hour. Check the bus schedules to and fro to make sure you know when to be at the bus stop because buses don’t come that frequently and we waited for more than an hour for our return bus.   Paddle boating on Liyu Lake We took a paddle boat – a nice red dragon – out to the middle of the lake to enjoy the scenery from there. The people were pretty strict about wearing life jackets and staying in your seat because we totally got yelled at from shore for not doing that. But this ...

More about my Taiwan grad trip way back in 2007 and travelling with my friends, collectively known as the Unholies. We had just arrived in Taipei the day before and were now looking to explore more of Taipei’s natural sights on a day trip around the capital. First up: Yang Ming Shan Lovely green views We headed to Yang Ming Shan by catching Bus 260 from outside the Taipei Main Railway Station. The trip takes about an hour and drops you off at the YMS bus terminal, where you either hike around or take another bus to get around the place. YMS, to put it simply, is an old people place; other than us, everyone else on that bus (and that mountain) was old. Personally, I thought there wasn’t much to see there, but according to the YMS website here, it’s more an R&R location than anything else. You can hop on the bus that brings you around there, but it comes every hour so there really isn’t that much time flexibility. Add the super winding roads and crowds and...