Eight Elephants Hostel Taipei!

I've just arrived home from spending a month in Taipei in Taiwan. I'd planned to try and see a lot more in Taiwan than just Taipei but after a few days i realised that Taipei is huge and i would need most of the month to see everything there. 

In Taipei i stayed in a hostel called Eight Elephants hostel, this is probably the best hostel i've stayed in in the last 8 months of travelling. Everything about the hostel was awesome, especially the staff and people staying there. The hostel had a great atmosphere and i spent many days and nights just chilling there having a few beers with whoever was there at the time.

Even though i was staying in Taipei by myself, i rarely went sightseeing or on nights out by myself. On the first night for example, i was the only person in the hostel but when the staff working finished there shift they took me out to a karaoke bar with some of there friends. The only problem with this was that, on a good day i am a terrible singer, and after a 14 hour flight i was even worse; they on the other had were all awesome at singing.

As well as being amazing at singing, the staff at the hostel we also really friendly and outgoing. When i arrived in Taipei, they helped me to find some Chinese lessons, suggested places i could go and see and always let me in when i forgot my key (this happened quite often, sorry guys!). If you ever needed an address they'd always help you find it, even if you wanted a pizza ordering to the hostel they'd do it for you. It was as though they were also guests at the hostel, they'd always be down it the lounge with us and were easy to get along with and would even come with us on the occasional night out.

Anyone going to Taipei has to stay here, you'll regret it if you don't! 

The last night at the hostel was one of the best nights i had in Taipei, after a few beers at the hostel we decided to go to karaoke again. I had to leave for the airport at about 6am and didn't want to go to sleep that night because i knew i wouldn't be able to wake up in the morning. Everyone was awesome and stayed up with me, we stayed at karaoke for about 5 hours and got a train back to the hostel at about 6.30am (a little later than expected but i still made it to the airport on time). Once again my singing was awful but i came to the conclusion that it got better with the more beers i drank! It was a night to remember.

Thanks to everyone who worked, stayed at Eight Elephants and came out with us, you made my trip awesome!

I'll be back for sure! 

Siaoyoukang & Yehlie Geopark, Taiwan

It's been raining in Taipei constantly for the last 3 days, and the day i went to Siaoyoukang was no different, in fact i think it rained the more that day than the last 2 combined. Siaoyoukang is a national park about an hour north of Taipei. Apparently there are large areas of hot springs due to the volcanic activity below. Unfortunaley i wasn't able to see much of it due to the thick fog that only allowed you to see a few feet in front of you. The picture below is what we went to see, the second is us standing about 5 metres in front of it... 

Even though we didn't see the main feature of the area, we still saw some small hot springs bubbling away. I was even able to warm my hand us on some of the surrounding rocks.

After attempting to see the springs, we headed further north and went to the Yehlie Geopark. This a beach full of weirdly shaped rock formations, supposedly one shaped like the queens head. Its an iconic symbol in Taiwan. We spent a fair amount of time walking around the area before going to a restaurant to try some of the famous sea food. 

The Queens Head

The Princesses head, when the Queen neck errodes/ collapses, the princess will be the new Queen to keep the tourism going! 

When we had refuelled and dried slightly, we ventured back out into the pouring rain and down the cost to an old gold mining area that used to be run by the Japanese. We we able to go in some old restored Japanese houses and i even touched a bar of gold worth over 3 hundred million Taiwanese dollars. 

When we'd finished drooling over the gold bar, we headed back to Taipei for a steak, i hadn't had a steak in over a month so it went down a treat!

The waterfall above flowed over an old gold mining area, where the river met the sea you could the colour difference between sea water and the fresh water due to the yellow sediment from the hills.

Wulai, Taipei

The other day was the hottest day i've had in Taiwan so far, it was 35 degrees with 70% humidity! So stupidly i decided to go to Wulai and walk 16km in this heat. Wulai is a small town in Taipei famous for its hot springs and aboriginal culture. Most people go to Wulai to visit the hot spring or the Wulai waterfall, we saw these things within the first hour of being there so decided to explore some more, what was going to be a 1 hour walk up the river turned into a 4 hour hike! We also gave the hot spring a miss because it was a little too warm.

Before jumping in at the deep end, we decided to get some food to build up our energy for the day ahead. We'd heard that Wulai was famous for its fresh vegetables and wild bore. We found a restaurant and ordered a bunch of stuff and were sure we ordered some wild bore but i'm not convinced that we actually had any. Nether the less the food was pretty enjoyable.

After refuelling, we set off on our hike. However, we felt a little bloated so instead of walking the first part of the journey we took a little train about 2km up the valley. This took us to the Wulai waterfall and a few aboriginal shops. From here we walked about 4km to a woodland area with another waterfall and some walking tracks up one of the mountains. The waterfall was quite beautiful but we did not expect the walk that was to come. Once again we set off without a map and just followed our noses (this turned out to be a bad idea, we took one track for 2km up the mountain, when we go to the end of the track there was nothing there, not even a view, so we had to turn back and walk all the way back down.

We saw  a fair amount of wildlife that day including lizards and frogs, i was more interested in seeing snakes but that day it seemed that it wasn't meant to be!