Burning Desire For FIRE

The view from my window before breakfast reminded me of something Cindy said on our first day. I can’t remember her exact words, so I’ll give you the gist.

She said that we may look at the buildings here and think that some are very shabby and need to be knocked down or repaired. The Taiwanese feel the same way. When Chiang Kai-shek lost the civil war in China in 1949 and fled to Taiwan, he brought 2 million people with him. Buildings were put up fast to house them.

Nowadays, most apartment blocks are privately owned. If any improvements are to be made on the facade, EVERYONE has to agree. I need say no more.

On a national level, the government has ruled that when a building is torn down, the site must remain vacant for 2 years before any rebuilding is done. Any person living there has to find another place to live for 2+ years, and if they’re paying rent, the rent would be much higher in the new place because… well, everything is new. Plus, show me a landlord that will happily forego at least 3 years’ rent??

So the buildings remain dilapidated.

Two years ago an earthquake struck Taiwan and Taroko Gorge was hit badly. 

Earthquakes usually last for a few seconds. This lasted over a minute. It not only shook side to side, but up and down as well, which was the killer.

The gorge was a major tourist attraction, and its closure has hit the hip pocket of the town nearby. The damage to the gorge was so severe that they estimate it’ll take until 2037 to repair and make it all safe.

Luckily for us, certain sections of the gorge are now open, as of early 2026. Fortunate Frogdancer strikes again!

It’s heavily controlled. Cindy has just warned us that we HAVE to be back on the bus on time, because the gate is only open for 5 minutes…

They weren’t kidding. Cars are queued up and if we don’t get through in time, we’ll have to wait until midday. Luckily for us, there was a gap in the queue and our driver nipped into it as quickly as a huge coach can nip anywhere.

Marble as far as the eye can see.

Blogless Sandy had the window seat today, so this is me, not taking photos and just looking at the scenery.

I couldn’t believe the colour of the water.

The walls of the gorge rise straight up. And when I say up, I mean UP. They are like hills that little kids draw.

Stunning, isn’t it?

Once we arrived at the car park, Cindy pointed to the pagoda. Yep, we’ll be climbing up to that.

Buddhist temple. Built in 1968. These are the first of 300 steps.

For some reason, it seems like everywhere I go, I have to climb something. I don’t know why.

I certainly don’t enjoy the actual climb itself.

I do enjoy the views at the top, and the feeling of relief when there are no more steps to climb.

The ease of going downstairs is also nice.

I suppose even monks have to dry the washing.

We stayed for about 20 minutes up here on the balcony. It was so pretty and peaceful.

They were drying daikon radishes in the sun.

This was a lovely calm boy. I’m sure he could smell Scout and Hazel on my jeans. He is trained to chase the monkeys away when they come to steal the offerings.

Of course, I walked to the pagoda.

Taiwanese toddlers are cool.

I asked Blogless Sandy to stand beside this statue for scale.

I was walking with Earnest, a lovely boy from Brissie, when out of nowhere this monkey jumped onto the girl in front of us. He was literally hanging off her, and he grabbed her water bottle.
omg.

Believe all the signs telling you to keep all food and drink out of sight. There were 2 more attacks in the car park.

Blogless Sandy took this one. There was a man killed for every kilometre of road, and the road goes for a couple of hundred kilometres. Imagine chipping through marble to turn a tiny track into a road big enough for a bus to drive down? You can see by the overhang how much rock they had to remove.

We went to an indigenous restaurant for lunch, which was very good. While I was there, Georgia31 sent me this photo of Hazel.

It’s the best photo of my girl I’ve seen. It’s now the wallpaper of my phone.

After lunch, we had a 4 hour drive ahead of us. Halfway through, we stopped to stretch our legs and take in the view. This is the Pacific Ocean.

They had some cool indigenous art scattered around.

Everyone loves a slash.

We arrived in Taitung just after 6:30. It was a long day, especially for the bus driver.

As he was parking in front of the hotel…. Crunch!

He backed into a van.

After we dumped our bags in the rooms, we walked with a nice couple to get dinner at the night market. As I was walking by a man with a little toddler, I saw him place the little boy on the kerb, then he put 2 boxes out into the street. He grabbed a lighter, and said to the boy, “Boom! Boom!”

Boom boom all right. It was spectacular.

We ran into a mother and son who are in our group. They’re Asian and they have very good taste in street food. We followed their recommendation and bought these fried batter balls with shrimp, octopus and veggies.

Delicious.

Dad joke of the day:

We left Taipei today and headed into the mountains. Shifen is the only place in Taiwan where sky lanterns are allowed to be released. I wasn’t expecting much from this, but it ended up being unexpectedly moving.

I saw this sign outside a shop as we walked into town.

I was expecting the lanterns to be small, but boy, was I wrong. They’re huge! Four people paint their wishes onto the four sides of the lantern. Cindy told us on the bus ride going up the mountain to take some time to think about what we wanted to write on our lantern.
I sat there and realised that, for the moment at least, my life was almost perfect. I messaged Georgia31 to ask what she wanted to wish for herself. I was going to give the lantern-luck to her. She’s a bit stuck and could do with a bit of luck to come her way.

She asked for longevity and good health. I added a couple of extra things because why not?

In between trains, the lanterns are carried out onto the railroad tracks and set alight.

I watched it fly up, up, until it was just a speck in the sky. I hoped it was a good sign for Georgia’s wishes.
We saw one lantern catch fire and flame out two seconds after they let it go. I’m tipping their wishes aren’t looking good.

After wandering around the town for a bit, we caught the train along the Pingxi Branch Line.

Much to her delight, Blogless Sandy remembered that she still had a banana and chocolate brownie from yesterday’s lunch.

There was some beautiful scenery along the way.

The town of Zhou tong is famous for its cats, Cindy said. Apparently, people come from all over the place just to hang out with the town’s cats.

After the train, we hopped on the bus again and headed to Jiufen, which has stunning views of the East China Sea.

We had an hour and a half to walk around Old Street, which was full of interesting little shops.

Also a cute baby.

And a cool dog.

And a chic cat.

It had mysterious laneways.

Then it was back on the bus, heading down the coast. We saw rice paddies, and I remembered how last year I was holding rice seedlings by a rice paddy in Vietnam.

Now we were driving beside the Pacific Ocean. Over the horizon lies America.

Here are some fun facts that we learned on the bus:

Firecracker festivals.

In one, firecrackers are aimed at you. If they hit you, it’s good luck. People have to wear helmets and cover themselves all over to avoid getting hurt.

In another one, a volunteer rides on a cart, topless, wearing red shorts and carrying a “fan” ( a branch and leaves in reality) to knock aside the fireworks people are aiming at him. A French guy did it two years running, even though the guy always gets burned.

Housing here is expensive.

Remember when we used to measure housing in square metres? They charge 2.5 million Taiwanese dollars ($113,700 AUD) per square for the most expensive.

700,000 ($31,000 AUD / square metres) for the cheapest ones. I guess housing is expensive wherever you go.

Earthquakes happen every single day here, because they are formed by two tectonic plates. Most are micro, so no one feels them. The good thing about all of the earthquakes is that Taiwan has a lot of hot springs.

3/4 of the island is mountains.

The Portuguese named this island Formosa in the 14th century. I was excited… I have heard of Formosa but I never knew where it was.

We loved the mountains.

Our last stop for the day was the Hualien Night Market, where one clever stall holder trained her dog to help bring the punters in.

We got there right on 6 PM, so we scattered in search of an early dinner. We chose wild boar fried noodles, which were delicious, and only cost $150 NTD / $6.50 AUD.

Tomorrow? A way-famous gorge. ( I’ve never heard of it, but some people on the tour are psyched!)

Dad joke of the day:

Our first stop of the day was really interesting. It was the National Palace Museum, which houses over 60,000 Chinese antiquities that Chiangmai Kai-Shek “rescued” from the fighting that was around the Forbidden City as he fled China.

If you peer beside the magnifying glass, you can get an idea of how small the stone is, that the carvings are on. Cindy, our guide, said, “ The ancients seemed to spend a lot of time carving onto impossibly small things. They must have had a lot of time on their hands.”

The two things in the front were given to dying people to hold, in the belief that all of their money and their luck will pass to the next generation.
The same tradition is still done today, except that it is now red envelopes stuffed with money.

You pour the wine in the top, then tip it and pour it out through the droopy neck. It honestly doesn’t seem like a very efficient process to me.

These are ancient seals. I was surprised when Cindy told us that seals (she called them stamps) are still in use in Taiwan to this day. When people make big purchases, like a house or a car, they bring their personal seals to stamp onto the documents.

Another wine pouring vessel.

Loved this one. Her chubby cheeks!

This one was INSANE. The ball has 16 layers of ivory and it took 3 generations over a hundred years to complete.

Of course there were many more things that we saw. We spent an hour and a half and we barely scratched the surface. You could easily spend a whole day here.

Taipei 101, which was the tallest building in the world from 2004 to 2010. We stopped here for lunch. Some of us decided to go to the observation deck on the 86th floor.

Remember recently, when I went to the Eureka sky deck in Melbourne with Scott for a Little Adventure? This one was far more interesting.

Taipei is ringed by mountains, so there was a lot of variety. It wasn’t just a city scape.

Plus, it’s the only building in the world that has its Tuned Mass Damper on display to the public.

This is the thing that stops skyscrapers from breaking apart during earthquakes and typhoons. It sways as a counterbalance to keep the building intact.

It is 5 stories tall and weighs 680 metric tonnes. I’m not usually drawn to hydraulics, but I found this interesting.

Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall. It’s huge.

He died in 1975, and that’s when the government decided to build it.

Finished in 1980. Both his and his son’s bodies are not here, as they wanted to be buried in China. They are mummified, like Chairman Mao and the Kim family of North Korean. The hope is that one day China will allow them to be taken back, but I think there’s fat chance of that happening any time soon.

On the 4th level, there’s an enormous statue of him.

He looks benevolent, don’t you think?

It’s part of a large area, with the state theatre and library housed in the orange-roofed buildings. Blogless Sandy and I went for a walk outside, and I was passed by 3 school groups. They must’ve been learning English, because lots of them called out, “Hello!” “Hi!” as they went past.

Then it was back in the bus, on our way to a weird little temple.

The street view was as you’d expect. But the first courtyard?

It was as if Disney workers on crack designed their version of a Taiwanese temple. The place was crammed with statues like these, all made from wire and cloth. It was bizarre.

Longshan temple looked more normal once I moved in from the outer courtyard.

As you know, I’ve been to quite a few temples in the last few years. I couldn’t help noticing something I’ve never seen before.

Many people were tossing two red wooden chips on the ground, then picking them up and throwing them down again. Some people would only do it once or twice, but others would do it for a while. Then, they’d suddenly put the chips in a container, grab a long stick from a bin, stare at it, put it back and then race away.

I asked Cindy what was going on.
“Oh, we believe that

HOLY SHIT… I’m on the 6th floor and we just had a mini earthquake!!! My room was swaying and I could see the water level in Wanda moving.
WOW.

Anyway, what was I saying?

Cindy said, “ We believe that when we ask the god a question, we then toss the chips. If they both land the same way, then the answer is yes. But if you really want to be sure that the answer is correct, you throw them again. If they land the same again, then you can be sure it is certain. If they land differently than the first time, you have to ask the question again, but in a slightly different way.”

She laughed. “Sometimes I have been there for an hour!”

Our last stop before heading back to the hotel was a culinary one. Apparently, pineapple cakes are one of Taiwan’s way famous foods. We were going to make some for ourselves.

It wasn’t all that challenging. Basically, you wrap a biscuit dough around a pineapple and melon purée. Then they set us loose in the gift shop while our cakes were baked.

The packaging they chose to present them in was a little unfortunate, but the cakes were nice.

Blogless Sandy and I went back to the night market for dinner. This time, we had steamed pork dumplings and they were fabulous. We were served 10 for less than $5.

On the way home, we stopped at a shop across the road from the hotel and Blogless Sandy tried Bubble Tea. She liked it. ( I won’t try it because I can’t stand milk in my tea or coffee. )

Tomorrow, we leave the city and head out on our trek to circumnavigate the island.

Dad joke of the day:

Despite leaving from the same city and being on the same tour, Sandy and I had different flights from Hong Kong to Taipei. We were both looking at the board to see which gate we had to go to, when Sandy saw her flight and said, “It’s gate 27,” and off we went.

I did think it was strange that she was looking further to the left than the 9:30 AM flights, but hey. She saw the gate, so after stopping her from taking an escalator down to the train line, we went to gate 27. It was miles away.

They were finalising boarding as we got there at 8:30. She was ushered straight on board, while my boarding pass wasn’t being accepted.

Of course not. It was for a different flight, leaving shortly on the other side of the airport. I set off at a run and made it, but Sandy was on her plane, not knowing what had happened to me. I knew she’d be freaking out.

Here I am, waiting for boarding, looking at the seat where she should have been sitting in.

We’ve checked the flights for the way home. Both are the same, though we only have an hour and 5 minutes between flights at Hong Kong airport. We’re worried that even with only having carryon, it might be cutting it too fine…

But all’s well that ends well, and we’re now in Taipei!

We were dropped off at the hotel at 1, which was a couple of hours before being able to check-in , so after finding an ATM to get some Taiwanese dollars, we decided to explore the streets around the hotel.

Taipei is reminding me of a cross between Japan and China, with the amount of motorcycles throwing in a hint of Vietnam for good measure.

My hotel room has a Japanese bidet! I’m so happy.

We stopped for coffee and carrot cake at a funky little café across the road from the hotel. An Americano was $70 Taiwanese. I nearly had a heart attack until I used the currency converter on my phone and realised that it was $3 AUD.

James from Ireland messaged me as we were walking, so I sent him this as proof that I was here. Nothing says Taiwan more than Homer Simpson, that’s what I always say.

There was a little park, with many sculptures.

We were walking to see where the night market was. Maybe we’ll go there for dinner.

Sandy wanted to check out the 7-11 stores, to see if they were similar to those that are in Japan. To my great satisfaction, they sell sushi and salads, so lunches on the run are sorted.

Coriander gin, anyone?

This manhole cover has fish and trees.

As you can see, Wanda the water bottle is still with me. She and I have been to seven continents together.

Sometimes when you travel, you see little things that suddenly remind you that life is different in other places in the world.

Remember last year, when I was taking photos of the beautiful doors in Stone Town, Zanzibar?

We were walking to see one of the oldest shopping streets in Taipei.

You’ve never seen so many dried foods in your life. Heaps of shops were selling bags of huge dried mushrooms that were bigger than my suitcase.

We browsed in a gorgeous pottery store.

I liked this old decoration around a very high-up window. It looks like parsnips.

It was a beautiful afternoon and we were having fun.

On the way back to our hotel, this little building nestled at the end of the street caught our eyes.

How funny! We couldn’t find the night market’s location earlier in the day, even though Google Maps was telling us we were there. But when we came back at 6pm, the answer was obvious. The street had closed down and there were stalls set up on the road.

That’s the back of Sandy’s head as we wandered around seeing what the options were for dinner. Somehow, I didn’t fancy the boneless chicken feet or the small intestines inside large intestines. We ended up choosing fried rice.

Tomorrow I might get these.

Pretty.

Sandy found herself drawn back to a stall that was selling peanut butter ice cream.

This is a massive chunk of peanuts and toffee. The guy grates along the top…

… lays out a thin crêpe, puts the peanut shavings on it with two scoops of ice cream and a little fresh coriander (not pictured), then wraps it all up like a burrito.

Look how happy she is!

Tomorrow we have an 8 AM start. Let’s see how punctual this group is.

Dad joke of the day: