![]()
Embrace The Intricate Beauty of Uncertainty Nik
anything
you can put anything here
|
| Day 5: Dolphins, family dinners and fireworks in Beautiful Hualian
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 @ 1:12 PM PERMALINK
As per earlier arrangement, we were bound for a 720am express train to Hualian. In my alcohol enhanced state, I had forgotten to slide my alarm on and Kah was soundly asleep when I heard my phone ringing. It was the brothers (who had managed to get up and catch the 6am train, IDK HOW) checking on us.
Needless to say, I jumped out of bed, tried repeatedly to shake Kah up, threw everything into an overnight bag and forced her to rush to the train station. We missed our train in the end because it didn’t stop at Songshan train station but the next train we got on was really empty and we managed to get seats all the way to Hualian.
We were supposed to pack our bags up for Thomas and Dave to move into storage so we hastily did that, left our room door open and ran to the train station. I had to text like 3 people to get the hostel’s number to inform Thomas that we had left in a hurry. (Bong was the one who got the number to me first while worrying if Kah and I were in serious trouble)
When I managed to get him, Thomas very nonchalantly informed me that he had already noticed us gone and that he would change our sheets and air our mattress and would miss us. Teehee. (Major love points to The Meeting Room)
Mr Andy Chen who runs Hualian Bay Minsu was great too. Missing our earlier train meant that we were not able to reach at the time we had originally told him and when I texted him to apologise, he quickly called me back to tell me not to worry and that he would still pick us up from the train station.
Hualian is beautiful. As Mr Chen drove us to his house, we were captivated by the view of the mountains and the sea.
Hualian Bay Minsu is a sight in itself. The two story house that houses 10 rooms is built in the middle of luscious greenery with a fish pond and a ton of space behind it. The views from each room (that we would later find out) are pretty outstanding and while we didn’t get the best view, the brothers had a room that overlooked the ocean. (Majorly jealous)
The front of Hualian Bay Minsu. Thats one of their dogs, Nuinui
Apart from the fish pond in front, Mr Chen and his wife also rear goats, chickens, geese and turkeys on their huge home grounds. Don’t worry about there being any kind of farm smell, there isn’t. Mr Chen and his wife also have two dogs and a rabbit.
Once we got to the Minsu, Mr Chen and his wife kept plying us with great food and drink. There was freshly grown Hualian pomolo, moon-cakes and sandwiches. Mrs Chen even went out to purchase Taiwanese styled lunch boxes for us while we waited for our rooms to be prepared.
Our rooms were tastefully decorated and the bed was super comfortable. We rested for abit before Mr Chen informed us that the whale watching tour he had arranged for us had arrived.
Our amazingly comfortable bed
The tour cost us 750NT (inclusive of insurance) and was arranged for us by Mr Chen himself.
The brothers were a little reluctant to go at first because they had just been talking to a couple earlier who had told them that they had been out the day before to see dolphins and had seen nothing at all. They did change their minds in the end after Mr Chen convinced them that it would be fun.
The mini bus driver who was bringing us to the dock to get on the boat informed us that if we were afraid of getting sea sick that we should take anti-sea sick medication that was available at the dock. I thought it would have been a pill but I was so wrong.
This is what we had to take and we had to drink the whole vial, mind you.
As you can guess, it tasted hella nasty and after retching my stomach contents out the night before, it was not very pleasant to drink. BUT! It works! (either that or I’m never sea-sick, which I doubt)
The views you get on the boat are spectacular, the sea is a beautiful shade of deep blue and so unpolluted. You also get to see both mountains and see in the same frame, something I’ve never seen before. (noob city dweller)
View as we leave the Hualian Habour.
The water starts to get choppy here as the channel enters te ocean so it took us awhile to get our sea legs.
We were extremely lucky, barely half an hour into searching we came across a large dolphin pod. (okay, it was not by any means a super-pod) but there was easily 20-30 individuals.
I wish I could tell you what kind of dolphin they were but I really can’t because I didn’t understand their name in Mandarin. According to tourism sites as many as 29 species of cetaceans can be found near Taiwan, so your guess is as good as mine.
The dolphins are so cute though and they love to come all the way up to the boat to play in the waves the boat makes and to investigate what this intrusion in their environment is. The pod stuck around for a pretty long time and after about half an hour or so our boat made the decision to return to shore as the sea was super choppy and a ton of people were getting seasick.
The afternoon out at sea in the sun got us all pretty tired and once we got back to the Minsu, we fell asleep and abandoned our plans to go cycling by the beach (sadly)
When we woke up, the Chen family invited us to their Moon Festival BBQ. We had chicken (from the yard, a bit gruesome I know) which was super juicy and tasty, homemade tau kwa and other assorted meats.
Mr Chen then dropped us off at the nearby night market for us to explore and we got a couple of snacks and walked by the beach before he came back to pick us up and brought us to buy fireworks.
Stone Marker on the Beach
When we had arrived we had told Mr Chen very excitedly that we were hoping we could get to launch fireworks and he told us that he would hook us up with a local contact to purchase them as they would be cheaper than at the night market.
The door to our evening of entertainment
This is our arsenal of pyros. There are large and medium firework displays, hand-launched fireworks and fireworks that you put into the ground and huge sparklers. The Singaporean couple that was at the minsu with us also purchased a sky lantern.
With the help of Mr Chen and the guests at his BBQ, we put off the fireworks and our generally cautiousness (or rather cowardliness) provided the entertainment for the night.
We ended the night looking forward to a good night’s rest in luxury (personal television, private showers and airconditioning) and ready to set off for Taroko National Park the next day.
(Sorry for the sore lack of photographs of the fireworks, my camera was already dead by then and all the pictures are in Kah or Minghui's camera)
Labels: Hualian, Taiwan, travel |
|
