.: Taiwan Day 6

HUALIEN DAY 2 ~Liyu Lake, Mataian Wetland etc etc many other boring places~

28 August 2012 Tuesday

I LOVE the hotel!

It's called Hotel Bayview.

Ocean view deluxe room for 4 with balcony.

TWD3700(RM370) per night which is a tad bit on the expensive side.

But still very happy i got this room because originally only left deluxe double room meaning only ONE double bed (summer is peak season for hualien) when i tried to book. But thanks to the typhoon, many people must have canceled their reservations so i was able to change my rooms. Only TWD300 difference so deluxe room for 4 is definitely more worth it.

Bathroom very nice and clean, complete with all basic toiletries. I especially like their toothbrush. So soft and proper like those sold in supermarkets.

I was like "wahhh(oﾟ▽ﾟ)o" when i first saw our water tap.

fyi the hotel is not those super large luxurious type

But the owners and most of the workers are very very friendly and helpful. It's especially such a huge difference for me because me and my friends just went to hongkong and macau and got totally ignored by the hotel receptionists when we tried to ask stuff orz. The owner here would greet us and ask how's our day when we come back to the hotel at the end of the day. Normally i would find those fake little talks annoying but he would actually hear out our complaints and do something about it. Shall elaborate in next post.

Just a 3-minute walk to another scenic spot : Qixingtan beach. Which was unfortunately sealed off with yellow tapes and guarded by patrols that blow their whistles if you go near (>__<). stupid typhoon warning. The hotel provides bicycle rental service for free which i thought mum would like. I imagined the 3 of us cycling around Qixingtan's bike trail during the evenings orz. Something to be done next time maybe.

And...and they have a 24 hours free coffee and biscuits corner ヾ( ﾟ∀ﾟ)ﾉﾞ! A very nice place to chill out after an exhausting day. Mum made a new friend with an ah po here yesterday. Chatted for over 3 hours. Why so good at striking conversations with strangers de? The ah po was here with her daughter and grandchildren. The daughter so geng. Not only bring her old mother and 2 young children by herself, still dare to rent car and drive around by herself.

Today actually i wanted to go to Mt Liushidan to see the daylilies. But the road was blocked off from typhoon warning. Whale-watching also goodbye. Jade stone picking also impossible. Decided to just stay at the hotel.

Went out for a walk. We could only watch the beach from afar T_________T. Really nothing else to do around the hotel if can't go to Qixingtan. Found some smelly boring fish museum.

After returning to the hotel, i keep pacing around until the hotel owner also beh tahan me hahaha. He said he'll call a cab and ask him to bring us around (Also another main reason why i chose Hotel Bayview. They can help prepare sightseeing bus tours and cabs so i don't have to plan ahead. They've even quoted all the prices nicely on their website.)

our first stop: japanese monastery

some historical place related with japanese

liyu lake

ok-pretty but nothing impressive *yawns*

Okay. So you've seen a few photos of my mum posing. Here's the thing: my mum dislike having her photo taken. But she saw how down i was so she actually approached random statues herself and asked me to help take photos of her lol. How pathetic of me (>_<)

some charcoal place

As you can see from the caption above, we also went to a charcoal factory-like place (with a shop beside it so you feel obligated to buy something after they explain the charcoal stuff ==)

Mr Lin (le taxi driver) brought us to a restaurant famous for pork. The food wasn't too too bad but the whole place smells of pork once you step in which wasn't very appetizing.

mataian wetlands

dad: it must be a mountain chicken
mum: haiya how can that be mountain chicken. look at its beak, it's a duck lah!

After several close-up photos revealing that the duck/chicken has no webbed feet yet swims in the water with a duck-like beak...
taxi driver: it's a water chicken
dad: there.. a chicken. my answer is closer.

mum: wow! what type of flower is that?

the harsh reality: eggs of some icky insects

The natives catch fish with the holey bamboo! So cool. It's like you just put the bamboo in the river then the fish will go rest in there when they get tired of swimming and then you just have to pull it up~!

If creativity is something tangible this is what it would look like!

The next place we were brought to was this. Some minsu on top on a hill.

Why bring us to a see minsu that we're not even staying at? Mr Lin suggested us to take a walk around the lake but there's nothing special to see so we politely refused.

Anyway it was still early and there was no other interesting places to go so Mr Lin asked if we want to see some nameless university in hualien which we, of course, rejected.

The orange line is the route we used. You can see my precious mt liushidan all the way down there. We went to about about 8 places today, some not marked in the map because i'm not sure where they are. Besides the aforementioned dull places, we also 'attempted' to go to

1) a lily pond (the pond looks very small from outside)

2) a timber museum (supposedly beautiful but i have my doubts)

3) guangfu sugar factory (not actually a factory at all but just a place selling ice desserts) which were all surprise, surprise closed from typhoon warning which was released in the afternoon. I specifically asked if we should call the places ahead first to confirm whether they are open or not but the hotel owner assured me it's ok. But i'm not missing those places at all cause they are probably not awfully interesting.

Got the taxi driver to drop us off at the town area and he'll come send us to the hotel when we're done. The taxi driver wanted to fetch other customers during that time so we had to carry all of our stuff down (which luckily, isn't much).

herbs shop

Line characters quite popular in taiwan. A lot of t-shirts with them, too.

Finally Mr Lin drove us by the train station upon our request so i can buy that the tickets to go back taipei. Though we're going back on a weekday, the plane back to Malaysia is also on the same day so we really cannot afford the risk of having the train being fully booked at last minute.