Taiwan

Hualien, Taiwan

We’ve arrived in country number 43, Taiwan (or China? depending on who you talk to).  After checking in with Immigration we collected our backpacks and set out for the day.  The port provided a courtesy shuttle to the Hotel Les Champs Hualien and the Hualien Bus Depot.  We decided to get off at the hotel and wander around downtown.  We checked out the Hualien Railway Culture Park and the Hualien Cultural and Creative Industries Park.  Other than that, we basically just wandered around looking at shops and temples.  The temples were incredibly intricate and colourful. We circled back and took the shuttle back to the ship to rest before heading back out to the Dongdamen Night Market.

Taiwan is known for its night markets, and the Dongdamen Market is apparently one of the best and largest.  We took the shuttle back out around 5pm and arrived just as things were starting to open up.  Once it got dark it was pretty lively with games, music, and all kinds of food.  Mike tried the fried crab, dumplings, curry fish balls, and fried pork ribs while I had a passion fruit smoothie.  Neither of us was brave enough to try the stinky (fermented) tofu that's traditional here. The smell was next level unpleasant, even just walking past the stalls that were serving it was a struggle. The market was neat to see and I’m sure we’ll check out another one if we get the chance.

On the second day we debated taking the bus out to Taroko National Park to see the gorge it’s known for, but ultimately, we decided not to.  It’s and hour and a half bus ride one way and a lot of the trails around the Visitor’s Center are still closed from a recent earthquake.  Instead, we took the shuttle to the Bus Depot and walked over to Mini Shabu Shabu to have a hot pot lunch with a friend.  Basically, it’s like fondue, but you choose your items and cook them in your own pot of broth.  It was pretty good and we were super full after. 

We decided to walk back to the ship after lunch stopping off at a few temples and parks along the way.  It was a relaxing afternoon despite the oppressive heat and humidity.

Keelung, Taiwan

We are in Keelung for four days since it gives us access to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.  We are pretty run down from the heat, so we decided to have a quiet day by the pool instead of exploring.  In the evening, after the sun went down and it cooled off a bit, we ventured out to the Keelung MiaoKou Night Market.  Keelung was lit up with all kinds of lights and glowing signs; it was really beautiful.

On our second day we took the train into Taipei.  We got off at the Songshan station and walked to the National Railway Museum.  They’ve done a lot to restore decommissioned railway cars, and they are working on restoring the rail yard as well.  They did a lot of maintenance in this yard, so there is all kinds of equipment to see. 

From the museum we wandered over to the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park which is next to the Taipei Baseball Dome.  The creative park is in an old tobacco factory and had lots of shops, restaurants and exhibits.  The main building houses a baroque garden in its inner courtyard.  It was quite the place.

Right across the street is the National Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall which is unfortunately closed for renovations.  We were able to see the outside and explore the beautiful gardens surrounding the hall.

Our final stop of the day was Taipei 101, formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center.  It’s a 101-story skyscraper.  It used to be the tallest building in the world, but it’s now the 11^th tallest.  However, it is still the tallest building in Taiwan.  You can go up to the observation deck for a fee and for an even larger fee they’ll strap you into a harness and you can walk around the outside.  We decided to pass and instead took an Uber back to the ship.

Our friend that we explore with came across an article about an old coal mining village that is now home to over 200 rescue cats, so guess what we did on day three?  We took the train to Houtong, a small former coal mining village that sits in a beautiful valley.  The village itself sits on the slope of the mountain. It was a really interesting place and of course there were lots of cats sleeping all over.  In total I pet 16 cats, it could have been way more had I tried harder.

We also wandered over to the Houtong Pit Mining Leisure Park.  We thought it was a museum of sorts, but it’s actually a ride on the coal mining rail trail and you get to try out some of the equipment they used when pit mining.  It was pretty cheesy, but fun.

On the way back to the train station we walked up to the remains of a Shinto Shrine and got some beautiful views of the valley.

Afterwards we took the train back into Taipei and walked to Costco.  I don’t think the Costco was technically any bigger than normal, but it was two stories, so it sure seemed like it was.  On the way back to the train station we tried to cross back over the river on the Rainbow Bridge, but they had just closed it for a water show because they had water cannons set up on the bride.  So, we stopped to watch the show since we couldn’t cross until it was over. It was pretty and short, so it turned out okay.  We didn’t end up back in Keelung until around 8:30pm, so it was a really long day.  When we got back Mike went back out to the Night Market with some friends to get dumplings.

Our final day in Keelung we spent exploring Keelung itself.  We walked over to Keelung tower and took the elevator up to the viewing platform; there were great views of the city. There was also a Buddhist Temple and a mountain lookout, so we ended up wandering around for quite a while.  We realized we should have come up at night when the tower and pagoda were all lit up, but oh well.  We decided to walk back down, and we ended up at an Air-raid Shelter at the bottom which was interesting.

Our next stop was the Keelung sign which required walking up a lot of stairs, but the views were pretty good from here too.  We then walked to the Buddha’s Hand Cave and Fairy Cave where Mike had to plank walk to get down the one passageways. By the time we got back to the ship we were sweaty and tired, but we feel like we hit the highlights of Keelung.

Tainan, Taiwan

After an uneventful sea day, we arrived in Tainan.  We were supposed to have two full days to explore, but there is a typhoon heading our direction, so we will be leaving early on our second day.  With this in mind we didn’t hold back.  We started off by walking over to the Eternal Golden Castle, which is just the ruins of a defensive castle that was built in the 1870s.  It features a brick tunnel entrance, a moat, and several sets of stairs leading up to cannons.  Even better they had free entry this weekend. 

From the fort we walked through Lin Mo-niang Park which had several lovely sculptures.  This led us to the Historic Harborside Park which has airplanes on display as well as a sculpture of a whale; unfortunately, the photo of the whale turned out a little blurry.

At this point we stumbled on the 2025 Capy-Pangla Alert: Tianan Goes Adorable, a capybara themed festival.  There were giant inflatable capybaras and a decent food market set up.  We took lots of pictures and had dumplings and bao buns for lunch.

Just across the canal we found Anping Old Street, which is Taiwan’s oldest street.  It was bult by the Dutch and features shops and food stalls along the narrow street.  Just past the Old Street was Anping Fort; a 17^th century fortress built by the Dutch East India Company.  We didn’t go in to explore, but it looked pretty interesting from the outside.

Our final stop of the day was Costco, and we decided to walk there.  We ended up on a raised bike/walking path through a mangrove forest that followed one of the main roads over to another section of the city.  It was really quite pretty.  When we arrived at Costco, we were surprised to find a ridiculously long line up to get in.  After some debate we decided to go in anyway.  Despite the number of people lined up it really didn’t seem much busier than the stores at home and they had all of the tills open which helped a lot.   

With sea days in our future, we opted to walk back to the ship even though it took over an hour.  We made a couple more stops along the way to spend the last of our Taiwanese dollars.  It ended up being a really long day and we walked over 30, 000 steps, but we saw a lot of random interesting things.

Sea Days/Super Typhoon Ragasa

We breezed through Immigration at 8:30am and the ship was ready to pull out by 11am.  The captain said we would push the engines to get across Luzon Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines before the storm passes through the strait.  The plan is to be tucked in behind Luzon Island, Philippines before the worst of the storm hits.

Well, we managed to outrun the storm for the most part. We still had some stretches of high winds and choppy waves, but it wasn't too bad. It's still going to be pretty windy and raining for the next few days as the storm dies down, but we are safely docked in Subic Bay. Now to explore the Philippines!