3/5 Hong Kong to Taiwan

3/5/2013: Not an exciting day. In the morning I made my way to the Hong Kong International Airport, and caught a 12:05pm flight to Taipei in Taiwan. The flight was a little less than 2 hours, so we arrived around 2pm. I caught a bus to a train station, a bullet train to another train station, and then another train for 2.5 hours to Xincheng Station on the east coast of Taiwan a little north of Hualian. Until a few days ago, I knew nothing about Taiwan, but now I know that it has some pretty big peaks. It also has Taroko Gorge, which is my destination for March 6. I had found a blog online by a guy who traveled to Taroko Gorge and stayed a lodge owned by a guy named Rihang and said it was a blast, so I emailed Rihang and he said he'd pick me up at the train station in Xincheng. On the train I talked to the guy next to me for most of the ride. He didn't know much English, but enough to get by. I learned that he works for the Taiwanese government and that means he can't travel to mainland China until he retires. He lives in Zhungwa (or something like that, I'm going off of memory) around the mid-point of the west coast of Taiwan. He was traveling to Hualian, which is around the mid-point of the east coast, and he had to take a train north along the perimeter of Taiwan because there's no easy way to go straight across the island. He said it was snowy and the roads are rough.

Rihang easily found me in the train station - I was the only white guy. We had a good laugh though because he was going off of my gmail picture, which is just a photo I found on "mugshots.com" of a black guy with half-fro and half-cornrows. I think he was relieved. We got to his lodge around 8:15pm and I just caught up on emails and did some work. It was nice to have some reliable internet.