This morning I was headed to the east coast of Taiwan which meant catching a bus from Taichung to Taipei, another bus from Taipei to Luodong and a train from Luodong to Hualien - where I would meet my host at 5:30pm.
I left with Rebecca and caught the bus to the city, thanked her for her wonderfully hospitality and then waved goodbye. I arrived at station and brought ticket and was straight onto bus and in Taipei within 2.5 hours. Same went for next bus 2 mins after buying ticket we were boarding - oh and how's this for service a guy came around and have us Tea and biscuits whilst we were waiting.
Want long before we had arrived in Luodong - a small industrial city just outside of Hualien. I headed to the train station where I spent the next 30 minutes trying to explain to the ticketing officers that I wanted cheapest train to Hualien- I did sharades, wrote down, drew pictures you name it I tried it, they had no English and amazingly they didn't get frustrated with my seeming less mutter of in-recognizable words. We had a break through and ticket was purchased, I then headed off into the city centre for some lunch. I stopped at the 7/11 my now favorite lunch spot here in Taiwan and got some Chinese soup brothed eggs and sweet corn, relaxed for a while and then made my way back to the station for my 2:50pm departure. The train ride was very scenic but I could barely keep my eyes open as I was incredibly tired. Arriving to Hualien I had about 1.5 hours to kill so I went to the visitors centre got some info and then went Chinese Delicacy tasting. There must of been about 30 Delicacy shops selling everything from plant jelly to pineapple cake - it's great to you get to sample everything. There were loads and loads of Chinese tourists going absolutely mad over the stuff buying enough to sink a small ship. I met Dylan my host who is actually an Aboriginal from the local Toruku tribe and we headed down to the beach to see some sights. We also went and ate Chinese Dumplings - my first time but unfortunately I couldn't eat the flour/bread wrapping. After dinner we headed to Dylan's cousins house where we would be staying and met the family. They are all so nice and so excited to have a foreign guest - there English is very limited but we shared laughs tried a heap of different fruits (the fruit here really is as good as it gets) drank South American wine and even watched a film in English. A great day in anyone's book :)