Hitchhiking Trip with Florian
Because the time of Florian’s studies in Taiwan was coming to an end, we decided to undertake our last big adventure. Florian and I were playing around with the idea of making a hitchhiking trip for a long time but I guess there was always something better to do. Nevertheless, we did it and I would like to tell you how it went.
We packed all the necessary stuff such as beers, sleeping bags and huge and very practical hats and we started our trip at the 17th July morning (noon). As a total hitchhiking newbies we struggled with the humiliating failure for the first one hour, when we were standing with a sheet of paper at one of the busiest crossroads in Tainan. Few moments before loosing all our faith in the Taiwanese generosity a car pulled over and a guy offered us a lift to Kaohsiung. Hallelujah and we were on the road in the van of young fisherman and his companion.
Since our plan was to cross the mountains and it was getting dark, we started to be little bit nervous. Additionally we couldn't find a fine place to stop a car and therefore we decided to walk a few (after all almost 10km) kilometers to find a better place.
Well, we did, but it was already around 8pm and was about to start to rain. So far we tracked around 80km instead of suggested 200km and it looked like we would sleep somewhere in the central park. Being at the end of our tether and almost looking for a train back a salvation was about to appear next to us. A youngster in fancy BMW pulled over next to two hopeless-looking Europeans with idiotic hats and offered a help. With a glory we got in the car and started to explain him what we were up to. Unfortunately our friend could not understand our plan (I dont think it was just because of the language barrier but more likely it seemed to him just too crazy to be true.). As a result our saviour took us to the police station. Now we were standing in the interrogation room somewhere in the middle of nowhere. For our surprise one police man was able to speak quite good English. "Ok, so now we are really in trouble", we thought. Not really, this is Taiwan and police is here to help you. English-speaking officer offered us a help with hitchhiking! What are the odds! This can happen just in Taiwan.
After a long discussion with other colleagues they decided to help us just to wait with us at the bus station. Since the buses are not very convenient way of transportation here, no one was surprised that none is coming. Finally the police gave us a lift :-).
Unfortunately the officers insisted on taking us to a hotel. Naturally they convinced us that it is too dangerous to travel at night.
Next morning we were on the road again and this time we were much more successful.
It didn't take a long time and we attracted another driver. It was a family on a weekend trip to mountains.
Ok these people were cute, friendly and just awesome! It was a very pleasant journey and moreover we got invitation for a delicious lunch. Sadly the family was heading to a different place than we but they were willing to help us to find another car. I believe they asked almost everyone in the village but they didn't find anyone. Against all our complains the super-cute family became even super-cuter when they told us that they would change their plans for the weekend and they would take us to the place we wanted to go. That was too much! :)
They took us to a crossroad from where we wanted to cross the mountains.
In the nearby 7/11 they found us a ride - a young couple. This time we were considerably less successful. After few km we were for some reason asked to change a car. There was an old and at first sight not very likeable driver who was taking us to the eastern coast of Taiwan. We felt that something is wrong and therefore we asked how much he wants for the ride - 5000NTD was the answer. STOP the car we NOW. We persuaded him to pull over and negotiating started. (Just for your imagination, for 5000NTD we could have bought a flight tickets from Tainan to Hualien). Luckily we paid "just" 500NTD but still it was not a very nice experience. After we had calmed down, we arranged to attract another sweet Taiwanese driver, who took us to Taidong.
My friends Laco and Cindy provided us an accommodation and showed us around. A huge thanks to them again! You were a big help.
We saw monkeys and fearless (and sometimes yelling) Taiwanese handing bananas over to them on our Taidong roundtrip with Laco.
Our final destination was Green Island. We took a ferry from Taidong. I would like to note all possible travelers to Green Island: "Do not eat anything before getting in the ferry". It is really a strong experience and more sensitive people may easily suffer from sea-sickness. My guess is that about one half of the ferry passengers vomited. Luckily we survived without any harm.
Green Island itself is breathtakingly amazing part of the World. But frankly speaking there are some quite disgusting places as well. The port is a typical example of how should not human kind behave to nature. Thus my impression was firstly not really positive, but luckily the eastern part is without any doubt heaven on earth.
Ok, that was all about our hitchhiking trip, it was an amazing experience :-)
Besides our hitchhiking trip, I was attending an intensive Chinese language course the whole July. I, Florian, Kathrine and Sepehr - a strong Chinese quartet. We decided to ask students at NCKU to become our Chinese teachers instead of joining the Chinese Language Center. Our teachers were Wenching Chen, Amber Xie and Wei-ting Chiu. Without any doubt these young perspective ladies were more than comparable to other professional teachers we employed at CLC. They have our best references and a big thanks to them again - I know it was not always a piece of cake for them to be our teachers.
Ok these people were cute, friendly and just awesome! It was a very pleasant journey and moreover we got invitation for a delicious lunch. Sadly the family was heading to a different place than we but they were willing to help us to find another car. I believe they asked almost everyone in the village but they didn't find anyone. Against all our complains the super-cute family became even super-cuter when they told us that they would change their plans for the weekend and they would take us to the place we wanted to go. That was too much! :)
They took us to a crossroad from where we wanted to cross the mountains.
In the nearby 7/11 they found us a ride - a young couple. This time we were considerably less successful. After few km we were for some reason asked to change a car. There was an old and at first sight not very likeable driver who was taking us to the eastern coast of Taiwan. We felt that something is wrong and therefore we asked how much he wants for the ride - 5000NTD was the answer. STOP the car we NOW. We persuaded him to pull over and negotiating started. (Just for your imagination, for 5000NTD we could have bought a flight tickets from Tainan to Hualien). Luckily we paid "just" 500NTD but still it was not a very nice experience. After we had calmed down, we arranged to attract another sweet Taiwanese driver, who took us to Taidong.
My friends Laco and Cindy provided us an accommodation and showed us around. A huge thanks to them again! You were a big help.
We saw monkeys and fearless (and sometimes yelling) Taiwanese handing bananas over to them on our Taidong roundtrip with Laco.
Our final destination was Green Island. We took a ferry from Taidong. I would like to note all possible travelers to Green Island: "Do not eat anything before getting in the ferry". It is really a strong experience and more sensitive people may easily suffer from sea-sickness. My guess is that about one half of the ferry passengers vomited. Luckily we survived without any harm.
Green Island itself is breathtakingly amazing part of the World. But frankly speaking there are some quite disgusting places as well. The port is a typical example of how should not human kind behave to nature. Thus my impression was firstly not really positive, but luckily the eastern part is without any doubt heaven on earth.
Ok, that was all about our hitchhiking trip, it was an amazing experience :-)
Besides our hitchhiking trip, I was attending an intensive Chinese language course the whole July. I, Florian, Kathrine and Sepehr - a strong Chinese quartet. We decided to ask students at NCKU to become our Chinese teachers instead of joining the Chinese Language Center. Our teachers were Wenching Chen, Amber Xie and Wei-ting Chiu. Without any doubt these young perspective ladies were more than comparable to other professional teachers we employed at CLC. They have our best references and a big thanks to them again - I know it was not always a piece of cake for them to be our teachers.
