The story of how I visited a beautiful national park in Taiwan and nearly died for The Grams. In early 2019, after a pleasant stay in Taipei, I took the train down the east coast of Taiwan to Hualien County. Rugged mountains! Pebbly beaches! The roughcast cliffs and crashing waves! My destination: Taroko National Park, where the Liwu River carves its way through a spectacular marble gorge. After a night in Hualien City, I hired a bicycle in the early morning and cycled deep into Taroko National Park. It is an extraordinary place, unlike anything I’d ever seen before, where the river is a deep blue-upon-blue, the rock formations and mountainous terrain are reminiscent of an ancient and serene Chinese landscape painting, and the water seems to weep mysteriously from the walls of the gorge. Highlights include the Eternal Spring Shrine, which commemorates the workers who died building the Central Cross-Island Highway that runs through the national park, the Swallow Grotto, where the nearby river walls contain caves that spring swallows nest in, and the marvellous and marblelous Taroko Gorge itself, obviously. But a word of advice, don’t cycle into Taroko National Park the way I did: Pedalling in the rain on the narrow, winding highway with giant tour buses roaring past you! And don’t conclude your bicycle tour the way I did either: With a downhill crash that banged up both my knees, cut up my hands and bloodied my right forearm. Thankfully, I was able to get some first aid from the park staff and the guy I was cycling with (who I just met him during my ride) revealed he was a doctor. What luck! So I got some quick medical tips off him and was on my way. That was an extremely unfortunate accident and, to this day, I still have a nasty-looking scar on my right elbow as proof of my misadventures. Once I returned to the township and I had fixed myself up with some more bandages and gauze from the local convenience store, I quaffed down some Taiwan Beer to dull the pain and crawled into bed, wounded but alive... Of course, the fun didn't stop there. The next day, I returned to the gorge and did a tour of the infamous Zhuilu Old Road. This is a narrow footpath winding along the edge of a sheer cliff, hundreds of metres above Taroko Gorge. Many parts have no handrails and a permit is required in advance, with less than 100 people allowed on the trail per day. It is an epic walk and, as my photos can attest, absolutely not suitable for anyone with even a hint of vertigo. The hike to the top was fine (ignoring the fact that I was still bleeding from the bicycle crash the day before) and the mountain mist helped suppress my fear of heights. But on the way back down, the weather cleared up and -- boom! -- I was hit with a dizzying fear of heights and shaky knees. While I returned to the ground intact, I definitely needed another Taiwan Beer after that second misadventure. Aside from mildly hazardous visits to the national park, I also had the opportunity to meet up with some fellow backpackers from Taipei and check out Hualien City as well. It is a small but interesting place, well worth a visit. For example, the Taiwanese indigenous peoples are much more visible here, certainly more so than in other major urban centres on the island. Because the city is close to a major air force base, you can constantly hear the thundering screams of fighter jets performing military drills overhead. And because the county is the heart of Taiwan's marble industry, many of the city streets are themselves paved with marble. I ate an array of delicious snacks at the local night market, admired the respectable array of imported whiskeys available at unassuming convenience stores (the Taiwanese love their whiskeys, it seems), and even tried chewing on a betel nut, or areca nut, which is a highly popular but problematic psychoactive substance consumed in this part of the world. Betel nuts can become addictive and give heavy users blood-stained teeth and even oral cancer. Also, it tastes disgusting. Post-script, or rather, a weird anecdote: On my final morning in Hualien, I swung by my friends’ hostel and had the honour of meeting "Obama", the hostel owner's dog who, despite his namesake, was apparently very racist. And while he barked angrily at the, ahem, white guests, Obama-the-dog took an immediate liking to me. Yikes. What should we infer from this? How far can we take these allegations? What did you do, Obama? Why are you like this??
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AuthorMing is an economist, traveller, and creative writer from Melbourne, Australia. He’s a nebulous collection of particles on the lookout for a good corner to sit with a book and a cup of coffee. Archives
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