Hualien

Taroko Gorge was the number one thing I wanted to see when I came to Taiwan, and Hualien is the closest city to the Gorge. On Sunday, we finally had the opportunity to travel to Taiwan's east coast to spend a day in Hualien before going to the Gorge on Monday. The high speed railway doesn't travel on the east coast, so after breakfast we took a normal train for about 2.5 hours down to Hualien.


We passed some nice scenery on the trip down, including the eastern coastline and countless rice paddies (above).


Possibly my favorite part of the trip to Hualien was our hotel room! We stayed at the C'est Juene Hotel because it was affordable ($60CAN) and it was the highest rated Hualien hotel on Tripadvisor. A driver picked us up at the train station, free of charge, and when we got to the hotel we were greeted by an English speaking staff. They gave us a map and showed us how to get to a few places of interest. However, the best best part of the hotel was the bed! It was so soft!! After sleeping on rock hard Asian beds for 3 months, the mattress felt amazing. The room was even fitted with speakers that played music (notably, FloRida's "Low") into the room on-demand.


The hotel was only a 10 minute walk from the beach, which we headed to immediately because we knew the sun would soon go down. It was December 6th we were walking under palm trees and finding coconuts on the ground- pretty awesome!


We relaxed on the beach for a while, watching the huge blue waves, skipping stones and ignoring the factories sitting on the water to our right and left.


All along the coast there is a bike trail dotted with loads of statues and other things to see.


We spotted this oddly tall and narrow pine (?) tree growing in someone's yard. That's right- someone has a yard in Hualien, a sure sign that you're in a smaller city in Taiwan. Another thing we immediately noticed about Hualien was the massive lack of traffic. We were able to walk in the middle of the road outside of the main shopping area. It was kind of nice to have a day away from the scooters! That being said, I can't imagine actually living in Hualien!! It was a good place to visit for a day, but other than the coast there wasn't much to see that you can't see in any other city only on a much bigger scale. We went to the main commercial district, which was really just a couple of streets with the same old stores you'd see anywhere, and here are the highlights:


Pet store with cats, bunnies, birds and... a chicken?


Coffin shop, with all the hot models displayed on the street.


Chicken fried corn on the cob for sale at the local KFC.


The night market, which was really just a bunch of carnival games with a few vendors selling organs or fireworks. I was a little disappointed because I was hoping to try some new snacks, but I wound up getting some ramen at a Family Mart instead. I would say the number one thing to buy at this night market was cheap fireworks, so we sat by the water again and watched some people set theirs off. We even saw a 2 year old toddler running around with a fistful of fireworks! We had to get back to our hotel kind of early because we needed to wake up at 7:20 AM (!!!!) for our Taroko tour but the bed was so nice I just wanted to spend the day there..............