Thursday 30 June 2016

Taiwan Trip (Part VI): Shihtiping - Highlight of our Hualien Days

After a horrendous ‘camping’ (more like asking-for-murder)experience in Liyu Lake, we were very skeptical about going for camping at Shihtiping. There’s only this much of waddafuq moments our little hearts could take. Still, since we didn’t have much idea where else to go, we carried on with our Shihtiping plan and it turned out to be such a serendipitous experience.
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We had to stop by Guanfu for one night, and it’s this little town (a ghost town by the time we reached at 9pm) with barely anything to do. And here we were, mercilessly destroyed by Hualien mozzies, getting our instant noodle dinner fix in 7-Eleven. 

Our accommodation was a guesthouse that was in fact more resort-like with very nice gardens. When we arrived there, there was no one in but through the door we could see the lights were on, computer was on and so being the shameless beings that we were, we just went in and put our things there. We called their mobile (using their home-line hahah) but no one answered. So I left a note (on my boarding pass) explaining everything and we went out for food. 

Our host were back by the time we returned and we learnt that they actually went to celebrate Mothers’ Day earlier. See how trusting these people were! Gates unlocked, door unlocked, computers, drawers all unlocked when no one’s home! So yup, they were SUPER nice and welcoming and their rooms had a very calming naturally-wood smell to it. 


Morning came around and we were served homecooked brunch with their self-grown veggies. It was so yummmmy we were practically gorging down the food and I didn’t want to risk going back to retrieve my camera in case my boyfriend finished the food while I was away. Ya, he can be trusted with everything but food. Or being on a mountain with shaky tent during an oncoming storm. 
STILL LOVE YOU DARLINGG!

Here’s a one last look at our very lovely guesthouse – Summer Trail B&B! Highly recommend this place if you too are looking for a stopover place on your way to Shihtiping from Hualien. See here for all its booking details and also my other accommodations in Taiwan.



Say hello to the mighty Pacific Ocean! 
I CAN FALL IN LOVE JUST LOOKING AT THIS BODY OF BLUE!

And GOODNEWS ERRBADY! The Shihtiping Campsite turned out to be as legit as it shows on the official Taiwan website – the COMPLETE opposite of Liyu Lake Campsite. This place screams 'HOLIDAYYY VIBESZZZZ'!



I was soooo happy that I let my inner China tourist came out (see first picture for what I meant), but instead of posing with scarves, I upped my game to sleeping bags, while I forced Q to the tent. (Truth: No we had better taste in life. We were just sunning our stuffs)

The sun was BLAZING hot, you could really feel it on your skin, but the sky was amazingly blue and you could hear the waves in the near distance. I just sat there (read: look into the horizon and contemplate about life) while Q read Economist on my mozzie-bites infested legs. 

 A small stretch of padi field was found on our way to hunt for some food. And except this ‘rice-in-a-leaf-cone-sprinkled-with-dried-fish’ thing (the place was called the Flying Fish), there was no eateries around anymore! So please my darlings, if you are going to Shihtiping, remember to pack your own food!

From the depth of my heart, I loved the place. It was so beautiful and the fact that the whole place was formed by mountains eroded by the oncoming Pacific waves was just poetic. 

Spotted some fishies who looked like they should belong to Avatar instead and guess who became obsessed with them for the next 15 min.

This cute old man was getting flustered at his tangled nets, cos the waves were coming in more and more with each passing second and he needed to lay it out before it's full tide. 

See the difference:
Boyfriend's photo taken by me - him basking in the golden hour twilight, contrasting with the emerald ocean background 
My photo taken by him - over-exposed ocean with poor composition of me and the rocks

We settled down, showered (yes they have hot showers starting from 6pm), and went out for a walk when it was completely dark. The stars were everywhere, and a storm was happening in the near distance and so the lightnings lit up the entire sky every 5 minutes. We caught a glimpse of our first shooting star in Taiwan that night and I am sure you'd get to see more if it's a clearer night. 

 
The night was, however, the most horrible night of my entire Taiwan trip.

The bites - some new some old, I dont know, I've lost count- were working up and getting increasingly itchy due to the heat in our tent. You see, our tent was meant for hiking on cold mountains, not for humid beach nights. But it's not like we could zip it down cos we would otherwise become full-course buffet for ALLLLL the mosquitoes buzzing around our tent.

So I was whining in my sleep, waking up to slab palmful of menthol creams, while my dearest boy fanned me with his Economist throughout the night. I woke up seeing him fanning me, smiling at me with his dark-circles, and I felt couldn't feel more sorry :( 

This was Q not willing to leave the place without another playing session. 
They are not men, they are all just boys.

Bye bye Shihtiping!!
I really, really enjoyed my times with you! 

We then headed for Taitung, but decided to stop by Donghe for a night.
It's this surfer town that's increasingly getting more popular in recent years. But nope, it's a wrong decision. We were there during the low-season for surfing and so, it's yet another ghost town for us.

This was RIGHT along the highway.
It should be a tell-tale sign for anyone that there's really nothing much over here.

How to spot a hitchhiker:
Dressed shabbily
Holding huge water bottles
Have bags bigger than their torso 
and stranded on a highway 

We soon found our way to Taitung and just a head's up: IT'S OUR FAAAAVOURITE CITY OF OUR ENTIRE TRIP!!
Here's the cat (Her/His name is Mumu) at our guesthouse and I ABSOLUTELY adored it!! Though it didn't seem to feel the same way for me...
More to come on my next post!

Getting to Shihtiping by public transport:
1) Hualien-Guanfu: Take the train
2) Guanfu-Fengbin: From the train station, walk out straight down the road for around 10 min and you will see a lamppost on your right with bus schedules pasted on it. There's a bus with 2 timings - one around 8am and one around 1pm. Take all the way to the last stop (Fengbin)
3) Fengbin-Shihtiping: At the same bus stop you've alighted, take another bus to Shihtiping. We took the second bus to Fengbin and it happened that the bus from Fengbin to Shihtiping came just 5 minutes after we alighted.

Campsite Charges:
- You probably had to book online during peak seasons or weekend, but we went on a Monday and only a few grounds were booked. The charges varied from NT800 to NT1000 depending on if it's Mon-Tue, Wed-Thur, Fri-Sun. Comfortable platform grounds and hot showers and toilets were provided. 

Tuesday 28 June 2016

You are what you like

Earlier during the weekend, it was the birthday of my love. And being the very-bad-at-gifts person that I am, I took so long to figure out what I should do to make the celebration more meaningful than just a nice date out for him.

I decided on accompanying him to do as many as possible the things that he was once –or still is– passionate about. He was made up by his interests, by his belief, by his mind. Even though he might have grown out from some of them (and I might have deprived him the time to continue with some too), I wanted him to feel how he felt back then – that person who liked himself so much cos he believed and enjoyed doing what he was doing. 


He is passionate about the law system. Call it family influence or not, his eyes never failed to light up whenever we discuss about its purpose, its power, and its shortcomings. So on his birthday morning, I brought him to the Singapore Supreme Court for hearings (Somebody please give me a ‘Coolest Girlfriend’ Award HAHA).

We found our way to the Appeal Court and it turned out to be such an experience. The part that hit us the most was watching a guy who didn’t even finish his primary school education representing himself in court against charges for drug trafficking in a language that was barely English, and subsequently failing the appeal (hardly with any surprise). It was, even to me, quite apparent that he was indeed the person who physically carried out the transaction. 

But it’s hard not to wonder what would actually change with his conviction. It definitely won’t stop thousands of other uneducated people from resorting to illegal activities for a livelihood, cos really, how else do we expect them to get a stable job in this society that merits certifications so much. Is it really their fault that they dropped out of school at 10? Do they not deserve to have a professional representing them to fight on a case that’s talking about life-or-death sentence just because they can’t afford the fees? It’s inevitable to equate the judge to a god-like figure when you witness for yourself the kind of power that he has over the life of a person. This person whom you barely met for 30 min, his words alone would determine if your life actually worth living.


********
To digress a little, it's not merely the judge that has this incomprehensible power. There was this iconic case called the ‘Buried Bodies Case’ that illustrates the power an attorney, though some may prefer to call it the occupational-ethics vs moral ethics debate. 


Give it a listen if you have an hour to spare (hello fellow bored people at work), if not, here’s the facts of the case:
  1. Attorney Frank Armani defended Robert Garrow, who was charged for murder.
  2. Garrow confessed to Armani that he was also the killer of another two girls whom the police thought was missing and was searching extensively for. He also revealed the locations of the buried bodies.
  3. Armani then went to the locations to see if the bodies were there and confirmed Garrow’s confession.
  4. He then used this piece of information as an leverage with the police to lessen Garrow’s sentence for the original charge (something like ‘I tell you this thing that you really want to know’ and ‘you have to give me what I want in return’).
  5. When the prosecutor rejected the bargain, Armani also refused to disclose the locations of the bodies despite public outcry and several pleas from girls' parents, citing attorney-client privilege
  6. There were some talks about disbarment initially, but it didn’t happen ultimately and Armani was even widely supported within the legal circle for remaining silent out of their duty of client confidentiality, aka occupational ethics. He even received some Distinguished Lawyer Award some years later.
Well, to me it’s just bullshit.
If we extend such logic to other industries, does it mean an accountant helping his employer in tax-evasion or falsifying accounts should not notify the authority, since them too, are bounded by the contract to not disclose confidential information of their clients? That ought to be the case usually, but not when your client has done something illegal, especially not when dead bodies are involved. Attorney’s ethics should not trumped over moral ethics in any case (it's like saying I am an attorney before I am a human being) and why is there even a conflict in the first place?! Safeguarding morals is one of the very fundamental reason for having a law system and now you are telling me there’s a clash between it and that of its executors’?! 
********

Sorry for the outburst. I just had to let it out

Yes this is the place. A place where too many fates have been sealed. But not guaranteed that it’s always with justice.


On another note, I brought the boy to donate some blood and I gloriously failed the criteria due to my low hemoglobin. Giving has always been a big part of his belief and so I wanted to arrange for some volunteering sessions initially. But there weren’t many last-minute opportunities in Singapore, so blood-donation it shalt be.

We stumbled upon this bar full of books and it was like an instant favourite hangout. We both felt guilty for not reading as much as we’d wish to, but really, it’s not that difficult once there’s no more screens around.

Dragged the boy to an underground bar (literally!) and being there made us realized that we should head out more often for a drink or two.

The night capped off by an intimate play on physical bodies and the beings carried in them. I barely had the habit of watching plays until I met Q, whom has always been very intrigued by theatre works despite always claiming that he has no artistic talents in him.


I like this person, who is assembled by all these likes of him and more. 
Thank you love for being you, this beautiful self of you. 

Tuesday 21 June 2016

I'm Just Saying You Could Do Better


A situation has recently presented itself abruptly, giving me a much needed reminder of the vulnerabilities that have always been shrouding my life - though they had seemed scanty at times but that's merely 'cos I've forgotten about them.


I'm not young enough to be completely reckless anymore. 
But, I'm also not old enough to settle and give in to fate willingly.


"There's always an opportunity in an adversity", I told myself.

In fact, regardless of all the bullshit that I wrote in my resume, it's really nothing but the hardest moments in my life that have formed the very basis of my character; and I’d would always take pride in my reaction to those times. The start is hardly any glamorous. I allow myself to see the absolute worst of myself – the fear, the hate, the self-torment – and to break completely under those weights. Till a point that something in me just snapped, and I would gather myself up and just face head-on whatever that’s in front of me.

When the peaceful days last too long, I become complacent, slipping into a state of comfort and forgetting the fight in me. You see, it’s a vicious cycle that one can get easily stuck in: I don’t fight anymore, I make myself vulnerable; I then realize that and clinch on to the status quo even tighter, in fear of putting up a fight that might cost me the comfort that I can have now. That mindset feeds on itself and kicks the cycle on and on and on…

This is when you need an adversity come crashing into your life, pushing you out of your orbit and making you relook at yourself.

I am writing very vaguely right now because sometimes, things can be sensitive or not ready to be shared. On most days I would be telling you about my misadventures and we all can have a good laugh together; but at the end of the day, we all are young adults facing adult problems and we can’t just skimp through life like this. The point of this post is, if you too, have been waiting for a reminder or a sign, then yes here it is. Get your butt off right now and start to get your life together. This is as much for me as it is meant for you.


So goodbye comfort, I’m now done with you. 

Friday 17 June 2016

Taiwan Trip (Part V): Where Lady Luck Left Us - Hualien

We had a very good time in Taroko Gorge, but it's time to move on to our second city of the trip - Hualien. And we sure weren't disappointed! In fact, we stayed in the city for 2 days cos really, nothing soothed us like the comforts of the city-life after all the traumas (ie. this & this). 

Hualien is just at my desired level of "cityness" - it has no skyscraper in the city center, but streets and streets of shops which open late into the night, and you can grab a quick bite/drink almost every other 5 minutes.


We stayed in an inexpensive but very comfortable hostel called 'Here and Now' (see here for list of accommodations and links to book), where we even had the whole place to ourselves for one night. 

We were just fooling around here, but I was so clearly upset and conscious of the horrendous mozzie bites that had now spread to my face after conquering my legs

We spent the first day stuffing food into our faces, exploring around & watching movies - fully submerging in the happiness of a city-life which we had so badly wanted to escape from just a while ago before the trip. It was, however, also intolerably hot - almost 40 degrees - where we had to escape indoors every 10 minutes of walking outside. 

We initially wanted to do a 150km biking journey (almost 3 days non-stop riding) from Hualien to Taitung, where one would be very visually rewarded by the scenery of the Great Rift Valley. It was made possible by the islandwide bicycle stores called Giant, where it allows cyclists to rent and return bikes inter-cities. But taking into consideration of the crazy weather -almost 40 degrees. We literally had to escape indoors every 10 minutes of walking- and our 10+kg of bag each, we decided NOT to subject ourselves to further torture and drop that idea entirely. Still, you can go over to this blog to see how beautifully it could have potentially be. 

The weather next day was no different -hot like cray crayyy-, but we decided to pull our arses out and just do something. We got ourselves some bikes and after nearly evaporating under the noon sun, found ourselves at the iconic Qixingtan Beach.


Qixingtan is this loooong stretch of beach that is weirdly covered with smooth pebbles instead of sand. It also marked the FIRST time I lay my eyes on the Pacific Ocean itself and I was so overwhelmed with awe. The pebbles felt very warm and comfy, having heated up by a day of sunlight. They had this magical calming effect that drove one into an instant deep deep sleep (evidently from the pictures) as we fooled around burying each other. 


This was on the way back and as the sun went down, the city lights gradually took over, changing the entire feeling of the place. We had to continued our journey southwards and decided to spend our night in an official campground (ie. the kind that's listed on gov websites and you have to pay a fee for the showers, platforms etc) which is located right beside a very touristy place called the 'Liyu Lake'. We fortunately managed to catch the last bus out of Hualien but little did we know that our blissful times in Hualien would also come to an end soon...

So, the story went like this.

The sky turned dark not long after we boarded the bus, and the lights vanished as we left the city and soon it was just pitch darkness lit by only the orange sodium-vapour lamp posts. We thought it's fine since the campsite was an official site, let alone just beside a tourist spot. Oh no no, we couldn't be more wrong.


We told the bus driver where we're going, and a while later he basically asked us to get down in the middle of NOWHERE - no buildings, no walkways, no houses, just unkempt bushes/forest along the roadside extending into darkness. I got a bad feeling about the campsite right away. Still, we got down and tried to psyched ourselves that everything would be alright. We then reached an entrance of what seemed like 'an abandoned and soon to be demolished theme park in the 70s'. There wasn't a single bulb lighting up the place and the some wordings were falling apart. If it's not for the open gates and a dim-lit lobby at the end of a long drive-in, no one would have even notice this place.   

We walked in slowly, shining our torchlight at the lobby to let the people inside know that we were coming in. Halfway in, a middle-aged man suddenly shot up and came to the door and asked, in an extremely uninviting and unhost-like tone, "What?! What is it that ya'll want??", while standing defensively at the door as if to stop us from going in. I got taken back by his rudeness -and basically the whole DUBIOUSNESS of this entire place- but still tried my best to contain my alertness and told him that we were looking for the Liyu Lake Campsite. 


How I hope for him to say no! Well, no he didn't. 



He gave us one more look and said he could bring us to see the campsite. He hastily went in to the lobby (where we could roughly see the shadow of a few men under the dim light) to take his torchlight and came out in seconds, as if afraid that we'd follow him in to the lobby and see -I don't know- maybe say the corpse that they were in the midst of dissecting COS THE WHOLE PLACE JUST SCREAMED ABSOLUTE DUBIOUSNESS!! 

Soon, we found ourselves following him into TOTAL DARKNESS at a forested area (it was so dark that I could see fireflies at the sides, but ain't nobody has got time for romance following this dubious guy into this unknown place). He flashed his torchlight at rows of wooden huts, which he said we were free to choose cos there's no other campers except us tonight. 

He said it like we had it lucky to be the only ones here in this secluded site with only their spooky lobby down the road. And as if assuring me, he walked forward and flashed towards the toilet that's in a distance and it just looked like a perfect shooting location for horror films. Since I was scared the moment I went into this place, I did not take a single photo the whole time. I found the following photo of that toilet on the internet and it still looked creepy as hell even in broad daylight.


I was practically resisting myself from shouting out loud at him "OH YEA?! I DON'T THINK IT'S JUST TONIGHT, I THINK YOU HAVENT SEE A SINGLE CAMPER HERE FOR THE WHOLE YEAR COS YOUR PLACE LOOKS FUCKING CREEPY AND YOU BEHAVE LIKE A FUCKING MURDERER!!'. 

To make things worse, while all I could think about was how to get out of this secluded place asap, he interrupted my thoughts and asked, 'Btw, you know about our charges right? We are charging NT1000 per night cos we are supplying showers and gonna leave the lights on for yall till 6am." 

I was momentarily speechless. 
This despicable person over here, probably already plotting our murders in his head, still scheming to overcharge us by 5 times when the price stated on the official website was only NT200. Besides, I won't even accept getting paid to stay this place in the first place! It's like when you are still thinking of how to reject an irritating guy, he comes around and starts listing to you his expectations of what you should do for him instead.

Though Q was with me the whole time, I felt really uneasy in the dark with this man and so tried to guide him back to where we came from as we talked. The man followed and as his torchlight turned, the light SUDDENLY stopped and A MAN APPEARED STANDING THERE IN THE DARK -Wait for it, that's not all- AND HE HAD ONLY ONE ARM.



MY HEART NEARLY STOPPED.

The man continued talking to me as if he didn't just see the handicapped guy and for that moment, I was just holding my breath not to scream and freak the hell out. Even with the above picture that I drew, I can't convey that level of creepiness at the scene. Then, of course, it turned out that the handicapped guy was the man's friend and he just came out to check on us. 

I tried to give him an acknowledging nod as I passed him but he just stared at us with a threatening expression. Normally, I would have flipped by now, but I didn't. Instead, I put on my best impression of a scared little girl and told the man that I won't want to stay here anymore cos I was afraid of the darkness. You must know that was very, very unusual of me, as I have a reputation of in-your-face confrontational attitude whenever necessary. But why not then? Well, I reckoned that I should play the soft card first as in this case, as a hard-on attitude would definitely invite troubles and we didn't even know how many of them there were. And to be surrounded within their campus in a forest would not be an advantage to us at all. The man and his handicapped friend stopped walking and just stood there, kept persuading us to stay, and at my other side I could feel Q about to lose his temper (he would have if he could understand Chinese, luckily he didn't). The tension was growing, but I kept to my (very cringeworthy) cutesy voice saying that I would be really scared to stay there, I won't dare to use the toilets, etc... Finally after quite a while, they started to walk back to the lobby place saying there's no more bus anymore and that there was no other accommodations nearby. 

At the lobby, the handicapped guy tried to talk us into staying again. As he balanced himself on whatever stump that was left of his right arm against the wall, I started noticing the scars on his face. He reminded me so much of the kind of gangster who did something wrong to the gang at one point and got his arm cut off as a punishment.

After we've finally 'escaped' the place, we walked down the street that were supposedly to be lined with shops and very touristy in the day but right now was just a ghost town with hardly anyone walking outside at 830pm. The houses along the street were all dark and quiet, and there's no more bus or taxi passing by with only a handful cars that didn't not stop for us when we stuck out our thumbs. Q said it's usually harder to get a ride at night and it's even harder in towns/cities. We spotted a container which we decided we shall tent at the back of it if we really couldn't find any place to stay. Yea, we were that desperate. I wanted to tent at least near the lake, but Q's concern was that it's a fairly visible place and now that the people at the murderous campsite knew we were just along the stretch with nowhere to stay, they could easy spot us if they came out to the lake.

As if to confirm his concerns, we suddenly saw the campsite guy riding a bicycle out and heading towards us. He rode right up to us and stopped very threateningly near to us. He then said, "See! I told you there's no place to stay right!

I just stammered back in disbelief that we would look for some minsu (Taiwan's way of calling B&Bs) nearby, if not we would call for the taxis. The guy was really one of a kind, I never met anybody who could be so shameless to chase after people so far out to try to scam them again. I felt braver here along the roadside, so I just ignored and stopped entertaining him at all as he continued talking. He gave us one last look and laughed to himself creepily as he slowly slowly cycled off. 

That was when we decided we're not gonna tent outside today with these creeps lurking nearby like this. God was kind to us at last, and we found a cosy little minsu barely 5 minutes down the road. 


As we had our long baths and ate our dinner in bed while watching TVs, we exclaimed at how different our lives would be if we actually stayed at that "campsite" (more like hello-I-am-here-to-be-murdered-place). Gawwwd, how things could change in an hour's time. 


The next day, we got our bikes from the minsu and cycled to a nearby place called the Mukumugi. It's actually a continuation of the Taroko Gorge but not within the national park boundary, so visitors are free to explore and swim in the waters. 

Look at the beauty of this place!
But no, like the title of this post suggests, we didn't manage to get there.


Just as I was expressing how romantic our parents' era of cycling-together-in-the-village-under-the-setting-sun relationships were, Q's tyre decided to give me a taste of reality and punctured itself halfway there. We then had to push our bikes through slopes and rain, reaching at the entrance (ie. the police station for entry permit application) and hoping to find some shops nearby to fix the bike.

But nope, of course we didn't find. After almost an hour plus trying to do everything we could (ie. pumping the tyre, getting tapes to tape up the tyre), we met a random passerby who offered to help us. He then asked us to follow him back to his place. He couldn't talk very properly but did not come across as creepy, so we did. Halfway there, he kept asking if we had earpieces with us and I was thinking to myself "oh oh, did we get ourselves into weird situations again..."

The moment we arrived there, he said he needed the pump that we just returned to the shopkeeper before we came over. So Q immediately offered to go back to get it and before I could say anything, he left. Seconds later, the friend of that guy happened to pass by and so stopped to watch us. As the guy went into his house to get his tools, the friend started chatting with me. 

Guy's friend: "So do you know what he does for a living?"
Me: "No, I don't."
Guy's friend: "He's the snake king of this place! He does nothing the whole day but going to mountains to catch snakes and sell them. He even catches the poisonous ones! He's crazy!"
Me: "Are you serious?!"
Guy's friend: "Ya! If you don't believe me you can go in to his house to see all his snakes!"


I was still pondering what kind of person would ever do that and the guy returned, suddenly took out several long knives and started hammering at the bikes. I looked at him, he looked back, and suddenly he asked me to go water his yams. When a Snake King asked you to water his yams, you jolly well do it. 

As I watered, I was starting to question my trip planning skill cos really, why the hell I had to fly over to this place, camping outside a garage on a foggy mountain, almost losing my life in the mountain, nearly getting trapped in a "murderous campsite", just to be here to water yams for a Snake King?!



Soon, Q returned and they started fixing the bikes. You could see the knife in the foreground, and the very watered yams (those yellow/green plants) at the background.

As we were fixing, a car drove passed and the driver shouted to us, "Don't get cheated by this guy y'all!" But he pretended not to hear and I did the same too. When we were done, it's already 4pm and the sky looked like it's gonna rain again. We told him we decided not to go in to Mukumugi anymore, but somehow he kept insisting that we should follow him in. It felt extra strange cos we were right outside the police station by then and he seemed very uneasy, as if kept wanting us to go away from there.

 I thanked him again and again for his help, before telling him firmly that we would be leaving soon. As I watched him leave, I wondered if he indeed had the intention of cheating us or that he's just a very misunderstood person who really just wanted to help us this time round. I felt a little sorry for him...


That emotion didn't last long cos barely 5 minutes of cycling later, the other tyre of Q's bike punctured again. By now, we weren't even exasperated anymore. We just laughed, laughed at the sheer amount of unluckiness that surfaced one after another. We even made it a joke, "YAYYY HERE COMES ANOTHER PROBLEM!!" And God has a good sense of humor cos moments later, it started raining so bad that we got completely drenched


That's our Liyu Lake story. We decided that we were really not fated with this place, so we packed up and headed to our next (mis)adventure.

And as for the lake itself, it's as boring as any puddle of water anywhere else. So please don't come here to waste your time.


On our way to the bus-stop, we passed by the places we went last night.
This was the "last resort" container that we intended to tent behind of in case we couldn't find anywhere else.

THIS was the place of your nightmare, aka Liyu Lake Campsite. 
Imagine this whole place at night without a single light. Only crazy people like us would even walk in.

At night, only this lobby-like place was lit up at the end of the long, dark driveway. And by lit up I meant like that, one could barely tell how many people there were inside. Just like the night before, there was a group of suspicious grown-up men sitting intensively in the lobby. Yeah right, I'm sure they are not some gang people plotting human/drug trafficking, they just discussing about their upcoming camping trip.

The bus-stop where we should have never alighted in the first place.

Directions: 
- DIDN'T I TELL YOU NOT TO GO TO THE LIYU LAKE?!
- Well, if you insist on searching for an epic adventure (in the bad way), make sure to take the last bus (around 630pm) from Hualien Main Bus Station and tell the driver you are alighting one stop after the Liyu Lake. And from there, I guarantee you a night of adrenaline (in the bad way).