A rather unspectacular week passed although it was definitely full of worries and unpleasant conversations. On Friday, June 10, I went to a rave-party. Hidden in the middle of the woods was a Confucian temple and lots of free space to dance and camp. The most fun part of the story was that it poured heavily right before we got there turning the dance floor into a giant mud puddle. After ruining my shoes I decided to go barefoot and spent the entire party shoeless. I met some great people to have fun with and unexpectedly Lauren showed up with her crowd. Time passed so quickly that before I could realize it the sun rose again and we stood on top of the temple roof seeing the sunrise over the mist-covered mountaintops. This moment was extremely elevating. The organizers announced 40 hours non-stop music but after about 20 hours I felt like getting away from that noise and finally get some sleep. Sure enough I didn’t bring my camera, so you will have to take this pic and imagine the rest.
But of course the weekend does not end here. Lauren, Bernise, Michelle proposed to go to Taidong and I gladly joined them. Kiel also decided to take off some days to join us. After missing the first train we got to Taidong by means of bus and train in the early evening. The train-ride took us along one of the most beautiful spots I have seen in my life. Most of the time huge mountains would just drop into the sea leaving only a small terrace for the train tracks. This gave us a great view on the mist-shrouded mountains to the right and the rough surf on the left. As time went by we came into a valley and the fading sunlight hit the mountains on one side painting them in gold. It was gorgeous! When we finally came to Taidong, we got picked up by a driver from our ‘hotel’, which was a house with a great sea view. It was also only ten minutes to walk to the sea, which we did and climbed over the rocks for several hours before heading back. The first night I got pretty sick, which could still have been the aftershock from Earthfest.
The next day we hired a driver who took us all the way up the coast to the ‘eight-arch-bridge island’, stopping on the way there and explaining us every single detail about the way. It was beautiful. The weather was neither too hot nor too cold (for Taiwan weather that is) and the scenery was quite diverse and included gorges, mountains and coast of course. At the island itself we spend over two hours and we fought a bitter battle against giant beetles who wanted to ‘suck our blood’ (quote Michelle). We had a blast. The highlight was the tip of the mountain where you could pretty much see the whole island. As luck usually plays, my camera ran out of batter just when we got there. But I was still able to capture some moments.
The view from our cabin
All of us
Michelle, Kiel, Bernise, Lauren on the Moon
Palm-tree paradise!
Yes – we climbed all those stairs to the top…
Top of the mountain
Exhausted but happy I returned to Taipei that day. I had my first fully Chinese conversation on the train, which made me extremely proud. This weeked really was able to lift many worries I had and made me live the moment to the fullest. When I fell into my warm cozy bed that night I slept like a baby (after those million stairs to the mountaintop). The next morning I woke up with a terrible cold – that’s the toll for such an awesome weekend!
Hey there! I'm a Taiwan-born student who's spent most of his life in the States, and I've just returned to Taipei to spend my summer. I actually stumbled onto your blogpost by accident when I was googling for info on the rave scene in Taiwan, but you guys seem like a fun bunch, so I figured this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. The name's Mark, and I'd love to get to know you guys! Shoot me an email or something. :)
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