Finally, some fresh air! Wulai & Fulong Beach

Life has been pretty eventful since the last time I wrote. I've taken two trips completely out of the Taipei! As I said, I had two days off for Moon Festival. On Tuesday I went to Wulai, a mountain village in northern Taiwan, and the home of Atayal tribespeople. To get there we took a bus from the southernmost MRT station in the city. The bus ride was crazy 40 mins. traveling up curvy, mountain roads. On the way up we didn't get seats so that was a little rough on my motion sickness issues! When we got there we had some of the best Chinese food I've had here so far (fish, beef, etc). Then we wandered around the small village (which was really just one road of little shops.) For the remainder of the day we ventured into the mountains to see the amazing scenery. First, we saw Wulai Falls, an 80 meter waterfall. There's a cable car which takes you over the falls for the view but we opted out of that. It was gorgeous enough from the viewing area across the river. Then we ventured up into the mountains a bit more to the Neidong National Forest. We saw another amazing waterfall with multiple levels. We hiked up to the viewing areas from each of the levels. And then we began a hike which was a bit unnerving at times, especially when the path was about 1 foot across the ground was wet and quite slippery! It was interesting to see all of the elderly Taiwanese hiking the mountain just like we were. They're in such good shape; it's incredible! Anyway, the views were amazing and all the photos are up on my site.

I also had Saturday off, so my roommates, Liz and Judy, and I went camping on Fulong Beach (NE of Taipei.) We joined some former soccer teammates of Liz (all British guys and their wives and girlfriends), so it was a fun time! We took the train from Taipei to Fulong Beach which takes about 1 hour. We camped at the Longmen campground a short hike from the beach. The campground was so nice, I couldn't believe it! Camping is very popular with the Taiwanese, and this facility was really good. There were some families there, but also two big groups of kids (a group of both boys and girls, and also a group of Taiwanese Girl Scouts!) Admission to the campground is about $1.50 US and renting a tent is about $24 US (and when you divide that up between people it gets pretty cheap!) Each large camping plot comes with a wooden platform for pitching your tent. So it's a pretty good deal!

The area around Fulong Beach is beautiful. I love the look of the beach and mountains together, it's so dramatic looking. The water was cold but I got in. After all, it was my first time in the Pacific Ocean! The first night we were there we went to the more public beach area (where you have to pay to swim!) We didn't swim but took a bunch of pictures and hung out for a while. One interesting thing about the beaches here are that the Taiwanese don't wear bathing suits. They're really conscious of their skin (hence carrying their umbrellas on sunny days.) So when they come to "swim" at the beach (but really just wade in the water), they wear shorts and t-shirts. It's so strange! I had talked to some other westerners a few weeks ago who said when they'd been at the beach the Taiwanese actually came up to take pictures of them because they were wearing bikinis. Luckily the next morning when we actually wanted to get in the water we'd found out where the more private beach was, so there was no one around! The water was so clear and clean, it was awesome! One cool thing was the suspension bridge that connected the campground and the beach. It was built in 1993 and resembles the San Francisco Bridge, and you can definitely feel it moving as you walk across! We had a fire on the beach at night which was fun. The moon was almost full so it lit everything up so beautifully! It was such a fun trip and I hope to do more camping while I'm here. See my photo site for all the photos!