Vacation Travel In HuaLien (花蓮市) Part 3
May 15, 2009 Posted by Chris
On our last day in HuaLien we took our scooters for a very long ride. Out away from HuaLien and down the coast towards TaiDong. It was an amazing ride but the weather slowly turned sour. It went from pristine and beautiful to rainy and windy, not fun weather to drive a scooter in. Since I'd never really driven a scooter very much before, it was actually a lot of fun, except for the freezing cold! The trip took all day long and into the night even when leaving at 8am in the morning. You drive in one big circle, down the coast and back up the freeway towards HuaLien.
Right immediately outside of HuaLien we saw some really cool sights: Big Taiwanese Amusement Park, Rocky Beaches & a huge, huge temple with a gigantic Buddha on the top. The temple was surrounded with small cartoon looking characters that were from the 12 chinese animal signs.
The sights continued to be great, but the weather did slowly worsen. When the rain and cold really started to hit, we had to stop at 7/11 and get ponchos and some gloves. My scooter slipped once while we were driving and my blue poncho turned brown from muddy water, hah! I'm not even sure how it happened, I was driving straight, hit a puddle and the scooter started slidding off-balance. It happened so slowly I had time to react and I was fine.
We continued on and got some more cool views of the coast and saw some expensive high-class hotels along the way. One of the girls with us got hit by a large crashing wave and fell back onto the rocks. Got a little hurt but she was fine. The weather was really turning sour. It got really dark, really quick and I didn't particularly like driving a scooter in the dark but had to finish it off.
We were tired and starving so we went to the same famous beef noodle place. It was good once again and definitely worth the long drive and long wait. Afterward we dropped off our scooters and retired to sleep for the night.
Vacation Travel In HuaLien (花蓮市) Part 2
April 14, 2009 Posted by Chris
The next stop in HuaLien for us was at ToRoKo gorge. This is a beautiful gorge with many unique looking rocks cut away by a stream of water throughout the years. We took our scooters through the gorge for many hours climbing up the mountain right in the middle. There were many pathways that we look and walked on (trail of 9 turns) along the way up and down the mountain. Take a look at the pictures and at least one should qualify was breathtaking even though I'm no professional photographer. If you ever get the chance to go to ToRoKo gorge, know that there's also a bus you can take to go through it.
The first pictures are all on at the entrance and on the way to ToRoKo gorge from HuaLien. It was about a 15-20 minute ride away. Scooters are really fun to ride but probably very dangerous. The beginning of the ToRoKo gorge trail shows you exactly how beautiful the whole trail would be.
We crossed many bridges and saw many different parts of the gorge that the river had cut away. More and more, so much to see its hard to take it all in at once or even over the hours that we were there.
The almost perfect picture with the temple & waterfall about is a very famous temple in Taiwan. It's just picturesque and for some reason looks perfect. Inside is just a normal temple but outside looks so awesome. We went back to HuaLien and went to a famous restaurant. Their great dish was simple beef noodle soup. It was actually very good, spicy like I like it.
Vacation Travel In HuaLien (花蓮市) Part 1
March 20, 2009 Posted by Chris
The next stop on our vacation was a town called HuaLien on the coast of east Taiwan. HuaLien could be called a 'surfer' town as that is one of the main things that pulls tourists to this unique city but as I saw it surfing was merely a minor part of HuaLien. While we were in HuaLien we toured the city, then got scooters and cruised around the surrounding area. Toroko gourge & the coast line were the main attractions for us. Pictures of those two places will be in the next two posts. So for now enjoy a series of pictures around the town of HauLien. Temples, tea shops & just general vacation fun!
The first few pictures are us leaving YiLan and taking the train to HuaLien. It was a quick train ride, only lasted about 1~2 hours. After getting settled into the hostel we walked around the town of HuaLien. Stopped by a huge temple and god a good view of the city from the top of it.
More pictures from around the temple. For dinner we went to one of the night markets and found a famous restaurant that served pork bun and dumplings. As long as you order enough it's very good and very filling. The night market was bustling with activity as should be expected. The shops were all pretty much the same as other night markets, just vendors trying to sell their "stuff." We were at one point 'mugged' by a group of Taiwanese going around giving random people hugs~strange for me.
These are just the last few pictures of our first day in HuaLien. Only random shots so nothing terribly special or unique.
