Categories
North America United States

What Happens in Vegas

Sometimes, advertising works. Like when my mom came across packages to go see The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere and spun up an entire vision of staying in the Vegas resorts that she had always wanted to try and making a proper weekend of it. So we did!

Landing in Vegas is an intense sensory overload. It was an overwhelming experience even at the airport, with the slot machines starting as soon as I got off the plane. My parents had me stop at a liquor store in the airport so that we could get wine, because of course there’s a whole liquor store adjacent to baggage claim. Then I got a ride to the hotel from the craziest taxi queue I’ve ever seen, with people wall-to-wall and five or six different lanes of where the cars could pull up.

We started in the Bellagio! While they’re famous for their fountain, they also have an indoor botanical garden that is apparently redecorated every season, and that was pretty spectacular. They have Chihuly glass on the ceilings and a sprawling mall with designer stores around every corner. I spent a lot of time thinking about just how much money was flowing through the casinos when walking around Vegas and taking in all the things that gambling has built.

I did a tiny bit of gambling myself, taking $50 to the roulette wheel and then doubling it and immediately cashing out. It was a little terrifying how fast each turn of the wheel went. We also went to a Cirque du Soleil show at the Bellagio, which had been on my bucket list for ages! It was such a cool experience – the performers’ level of talent was spectacular.

Something that I was deeply impressed about in Vegas was the level of food and drinks that we had while we were there. On the strip, everyone staying there is a captive audience, trapped in these endless indoor malls where they’re essentially herded from their rooms to the casino and back again, with restaurant offerings basically steps from the slot machines. So they could easily be phoning it in with mediocre offerings, and yet they’re not. I had some incredible meals, and not a single one was bad.

We headed to the Venetian for the second part of the trip! There is something deeply uncanny about the Venetian. They’ve nailed the architecture so well, except you’re also aware that you’re walking around inside a mall with a fake ceiling that’s designed to look like the sky. The strangest moment was when we were getting gelato and the “sun” set. The street lamps turned on and the blue skies faded to black and we were still sitting inside the entire time.

The lobby looks more like Vatican City but close enough to Venice I guess

The uncanny valley feeling of being a mall that is also Venice was also kind of amazing, though. Of the two, the Bellagio and the Venetian, I preferred the Venetian – the theming made it really fun to walk around and explore the different areas, and we felt as though the rooms were more modern as well. It still routed you through the casino, obviously, but it also felt as though you could get away from that a bit.

The room also had a view of the Sphere, which I loved! It’s so cool to see all the designs that they put on it. Especially its little smiley face. And the next day, we had the event we came to Vegas for: The Wizard of Oz!

It was so much fun. I think the idea of doing a movie like that in such an immersive theater was really cool, and the “4D” effects were impressive. In particular, the tornado sequence was incredible. It actually felt as though we were in a windstorm. The parts that felt a little clumsy were the integration of the older pieces of the movie with the new remastered and extended set design, but it wasn’t that noticeable and I think doing this with any newer movie would make that irrelevant. We were trying to come up with other movies that would be fun in this particular setting. Star Wars would be up there, and my personal preference would be Jurassic Park!

All in all, a good weekend. I am glad I’ve done a proper trip to Vegas and stayed at the famous hotels that I’ve always heard about, but I don’t think I would need to go back anytime soon. It’s great people watching, and I had a lot of fun, but it’s a place that’s best in small doses in my opinion.

Categories
Fiji Oceania

Relaxing in Fiji

Between leaving Taipei and landing in Nadi, I took ten flights across five countries and a US territory. It was a great trip across some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, but it was also a lot of places that have little to no tourist infrastructure. So it was nice landing in Nadi and having more development all around.

The first night, we went out for dinner and drinks, and tried kava, which is a cultural tradition in Fiji. I thought it was slightly better than everyone had told me it was, but I wouldn’t necessarily seek it out again.

The next day, I went exploring with a few friends! We took a cab out to the Sri Siva Subramaniya Temple, which is the largest Hindu temple in the Pacific. It was beautiful. They were in the process of repainting it, which was interesting to see. The difference in color of the new painting compared to the section that had faded was very stark. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the interior, but I would definitely recommend a visit if you’re in Nadi.

They had us borrow extra garments to ensure our knees were covered, which did lead to one of my favorite signs of the trip asking us to maintain a “descent” dress code. From the temple, we walked into town to go to the local handicraft market and get lunch. There isn’t a lot to do for tourists in Nadi, as most people who come to Fiji are coming for the resorts and the beaches, but it was enough to keep us occupied for the day.

After our time in the town, it was time for a hotel splurge! I was staying at the Crowne Plaza in Nadi. I had paid a little extra to have pool access from my room, which was an amazing experience.

It was so relaxing to spend a couple days sleeping in, swimming in the pool, and walking along the beach. I completely understand why Fiji is so popular as a vacation destination – I could see myself doing this exact same stopover if I end up transiting through Fiji in the future!

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Kiribati Oceania

Long Walks in Kiribati

Fun fact, Kiribati is actually pronounced Kiribass, in case you’re like me and have been pronouncing it incorrectly for your whole life. It is also the only country in the world to span all the hemispheres, but it does have its own unified time zone. If you’ve ever looked up the international date line and wondered why it gets so squiggly, it’s mostly because of Kiribati.

Spotted napping

After breakfast at a very nice café in Tarawa, we headed out to our hotel, which was a collection of the traditional-style villas. It was pretty relaxing to be in the villa, under the mosquito netting, with the breeze coming in through the windows. But after a short rest, we headed back out to explore a little more of Kiribati!

We were walking to a beach near the broken bridge, and it ended up being a very long walk. It ended up being about six miles round trip. To be honest, it was a longer and hotter walk than I was hoping for, especially coming off a long hot walk in Nauru the day before, but it was cool to see the villages and a lot of the local kids joined us at the beach. Kiribati is beautiful. So many lush palm trees and the water was such a nice shade of turquoise!

Another Pacific country, another spectacular island sunset!

An interesting aspect of our hotel was that it was separated from the island with the airport by the water. On the way there, they had us take a tiny boat across, because it was high tide. On the way out, however, it was low tide. So we all walked across with our luggage. I was glad I had packed light.

Kiribati was pleasant, although I might have enjoyed it more if the weather had been a touch cooler while we were there! Our next stop was Fiji, and it was a nice change of pace to be somewhere with a bit more infrastructure.

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Nauru Oceania

Nauru: Walking Around an Entire Country

Two more flights and we landed in Nauru! Nauru is the world’s third smallest country, and it has a rather curious history. For a long time, it was rich in resources. It had phosphate deposits, and it was temporarily wealthy as the phosphate was systematically mined away. But at some point, the phosphate ran out, and the process of mining it had damaged Nauru’s environment so thoroughly that by the mid 60s, they thought it would be uninhabitable by 1990.

It isn’t uninhabitable, but it also isn’t doing great either. Its environment is still pretty wrecked, so the Nauruans can’t turn to agriculture either. They’ve acted as a tax haven, and tried to be more like Oceania’s answer to Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, and they’ve also offered land to Australia for an immigration detention center. The detention center has been used on and off since 2001, occasionally coming under fire for human rights issues. It is an interesting question – what can a country do if they don’t have any resources or pathways to make money? How does the country sustain itself?

Side note, loving their tourism slogan of “A Pleasant Surprise.” There’s something very charming about that. I love seeing the tourism campaigns from the places that really need tourism campaigns – my favorites, of course, are Nebraska’s “Honestly, it’s not for everyone,” and Lithuania’s “G-Spot of Europe” (“no one knows where it is, but when you find it, it’s amazing”). But Nauru, with its remote location and lack of tourist infrastructure, is a hard sell. “A Pleasant Surprise” is probably fair because most people will have low expectations going into their trip there.

Our next day, we did the quintessential Nauru tourist thing (which is a bit of an oxymoron) and we walked around the entire country! It’s a little over 18 km or 11 miles walking along the road that hugs the coast.

One annoying quirk of the timing of our trip – this big walk happened on a Sunday. Which meant that a lot of things were closed. The majority of restaurants were closed. There were little shops similar to a bodega-style convenience store that could at least sell us water or a cold drink or a snack on the way. But no other shops, no alcohol sales, and generally a lot fewer people out and about. Not quite as conducive to getting an experience of Nauru.

The convenience store shops all had great names, too. It reminded me of the shop names in West Africa, which were medleys of seemingly-random adjectives and nouns. We did find an arcade that was open, and Lucy and I played a couple quick games of air hockey as a fun break! It was nice to have some time in the air conditioning, since it had gotten pretty hot outside during our walk.

As we got closer to the airport, it started to get a little more built up. Thankfully, we finally found a working ATM. The one at the airport hadn’t worked and they didn’t have any cash exchange. Then the one at our hotel didn’t work either. I didn’t need a lot, I just wanted to have some Australian dollars in cash for Nauru and Kiribati because you can’t always assume that they’ll be able to take credit cards in this region.

You can see the ruins of the phosphate mining equipment in the distance

The airport itself was a bit of a wild experience – it’s rare that you can be that close to a runway. Most of the time, the airport is fenced off with barbed wire and with tons of fields surrounding it. This one just had a normal chain link fence and an intensely aggressive warning about not standing too close when planes take off and land.

We took a break near the airport so that we could watch the sunset from a beach! And one of the women on my trip had managed to find a local who was willing to sell us some beer and some ice, so we had a really nice time.

Once the sun set, though, it was time to finish up our walk. We powered through the rest of it in the dark, and made it back to the hotel for a last dinner in Nauru. We had officially made it around the whole country!

And that’s a wrap on Nauru! Walking around the whole country was a lot of fun, although I think more than the one day would get pretty boring if you’re here for tourism. We headed out very early the next morning for a quick flight to Kiribati.

Categories
Marshall Islands Oceania

Welcome to the Marshall Islands

My friend Emmy’s aunt worked in the Marshall Islands for a couple years. When she told her aunt that I was planning a visit, her aunt responded, “Why? There’s absolutely nothing for tourists there.” My dad responded in a similar fashion. “Didn’t the US test nuclear weapons there?”

First of all, yes, the US did indeed test nuclear weapons there. 67 tests over about a decade and a half, in the Bikini Atoll and Enewetak Atoll. Radiation levels remain high in some areas of the islands and it has had other environmental ripple effects across the country. And Emmy’s aunt is right, there aren’t many tourist sites in the Marshall Islands, but that has never stopped me before.

The journey from Micronesia to the Marshall Islands was a series of three flights on the United Island Hopper. It felt like a long day – each flight individually was not really long enough to settle in or nap, but then we would land, the lights would turn on, customers would get on and off, they would make us get our bags out of the overhead bin to check them, and we would have the whole safety video spiel again. We had one other stop in Micronesia, Pohnpei, where at least they let us get off, stretch our legs, and get snacks if we wanted. Our first stop in the Marshall Islands was a military base. We weren’t allowed to take pictures or get off the plane at that one. Finally, we made it Majuro!

While we were in the Marshall Islands, Wander rented out a private island! We had two big villas, one for the men and one for the women, where we all slept, but most of the time we spent by the beach or in on the docks. We cooked our own food as well. This meant that we got to do one of my favorite things to do in any country, which was go to the local grocery store.

Making a grilled cheese

One of the things that most surprised me about this region was the lack of fresh produce. When I think about tropical destinations, I typically imagine pineapples and mangoes and all of those classical fruits, and so I expected some of that while we were here. But apparently, the Marshall Islands (and broadly across the whole region) have very salty soil, and so produce doesn’t grow well here. All of it has to be imported. The produce section of the grocery store was inordinately expensive for pretty bad quality. It’s a big problem across the region – they have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and other related health issues because of the difficulty of getting healthy food on these islands.

We didn’t spend the whole time on our private island, though. We also headed out to Arno Atoll for a beach day. It’s an atoll one over from where the capital, Majuro, is located.

This isn’t my best picture but look at this incredible shade of turquoise!

It was gorgeous – it had some of the bluest water I’ve ever seen as we pulled up, and the beach itself was deserted. We didn’t see any other tourists, and only a couple locals. The only sad part is that there was quite a bit of trash nearby, just steps from where the sand began.

One of the cool things about being so far away from major population centers was how clear the stars were each night. As long as it wasn’t cloudy, we could see a large part of the Milky Way each night. One of the guys in the group, Matt, had recently gotten interested in astronomy, and he was excited to share his knowledge (and amazing photos) with the rest of us.

One of the days we were in the Marshall Islands, we threw a party on our dock, and danced and sang late into the night. It was so much fun!

I can see why Emmy’s aunt asked about what I would be doing here – there did not seem to be much tourist infrastructure or areas that would be particularly interesting for a visitor. And given how remote it is, it’s understandable that most people wouldn’t think the tradeoffs are worth it to get here. It’s not really a place I would say that you should go out of your way to visit, given that there are plenty of nice beaches that aren’t quite so remote in this region. Still, I always find it interesting to go to the places that most people don’t. The people were friendly and the beaches were great, and it was a very enjoyable part of this trip.

I had a lovely time in the Marshall Islands. When I think back on it, I think about eating grilled cheese and singing on the dock and drinking beer in the ocean. It was a nice, relaxing few days, and then we were back on a plane and headed to our next destination: Nauru!

Categories
Micronesia Oceania

Paradise in Micronesia

When you imagine a tropical paradise, you’re imagining Micronesia. It had some of the most picture perfect beaches and reefs I’ve ever seen. After a red eye, a stop in Guam, and a second flight that was too short to properly nap, it was amazing to get to our beautiful hotel right next to the beach.

A quick note about the naming conventions – Micronesia can refer to either the country, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), as I’m doing here, or it can refer to one of the subregions of the Pacific islands. There are three main regions. (1) Melanesia, which includes Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji; (2) Micronesia, which includes Palau, the Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Nauru; and (3) Polynesia, which includes New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Hawaii, and Easter Island. We were primarily in traveling across the region of Micronesia across this whole trip, but when I say Micronesia in this post, I am referring to the country and not the region.

I will say my first impression of Micronesia, from our drive from the airport to the hotel, was that there was less infrastructure than in Palau or Guam. The roads were in poorer condition and there were broken down cars all over the island. It’s the kind of place that has the natural beauty to be a top tier tourist destination but definitely not the development needed to support that at this time.

After lunch and a nap, I woke up in time to enjoy the afternoon and sunset on the beach with the group! The next morning, we headed out for a full day of snorkeling, exploring the reefs, and spending time on the beaches of Micronesia.

Sitting in the shade and still getting sunburned

My GoPro is not as good at pictures as it is at video, so I’ve opted to just screenshot from the videos I got in an attempt to show how amazing the snorkeling was. I will also say I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of my GoPro pictures and video! I was traveling with people who had much newer GoPros – I bought mine back when I went to Belize and the Galapagos, in 2021, and it had clearer video than some of the newer models.

Micronesia has some fantastic wreck dives, and there’s even a few wrecks you can see from snorkeling depth. In particular, we went to one that was a Japanese war plane that had crashed, which was really cool – it’s at such a shallow depth that you can see it clearly even from the surface.

We saw turtles and even a few sharks, although I didn’t get good videos of any of those on this particular trip. There was one area where they thought we might be able to see dolphins but unfortunately that didn’t pan out. That is one of the species that I haven’t managed to swim with yet!

After an amazing day on the boat, we had another nice sunset back at our hotel. We were lucky to have perfect weather during our time in Micronesia – it sounds like the Wander Expeditions group that went a few weeks before us ended up getting rain and grey skies, which didn’t give it the same “paradise” vibes that we got to enjoy.

All in all, I had great time in Micronesia. The remote nature of it and lack of tourist infrastructure makes sense for why it isn’t a huge destination for many travelers (outside of divers, who definitely have it on their radar), but I found it worth the trip.

The next day, we had our longest travel day of the whole trip! Outside of the two times I had to fly over the Pacific Ocean, that is. More on that next time.

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Oceania United States

A Layover in Guam

The best way to get between a lot of these small Pacific islands is the United Island Hopper route, which starts in Guam and finishes in Honolulu. We took it from Guam to Chuuk, Micronesia, and then again from Chuuk to Majuro in the Marshall Islands. For people who are super interested in weird plane routes, it is one of the ones that’s on a lot of bucket lists. It was an interesting experience – the timing of the flights was often not ideal, and it was hard constantly stopping and having people get on and off the plane, because it meant that it was harder to sleep on the flights. But the views landing and departing from the various islands were pretty spectacular, and I’m glad the routes exist because it definitely made it easier to traverse the Pacific on this trip!

In order to start our United Island Hopper journey, we had to get to Guam. You may remember from my last post in Palau that we had gone straight to the airport after dinner for a late night (early morning?) flight. We were all a little loopy by the time we finally boarded, a little after 1 am. Two hours later, we landed in Guam! We didn’t have an incredibly long layover, but there was enough time to leave the airport and get a taste of the island.

Watching the sun rise

Guam is a US territory. This was the first overseas US territory that I’ve been to, although hopefully not the last! The others, for those of you following along at home, are Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. It was so strange to have American passport control, Global Entry, and TSA at this airport in the middle of an international trip like this. The airport infrastructure was really nice – outside of probably Taipei, it was far and away the nicest airport we flew through during the trip.

Guam has a large US military base, and according to Wikipedia, about 30% of its land is reserved for the military. A friend of mine grew up here because her dad was stationed at the base. There were signs in support of the military practically everywhere we looked. In general, there is a lot of US military infrastructure in the Pacific, for strategic reasons during WW2. When we were on the Island Hopper, there was a stop in the Marshall Islands where they noted that we couldn’t take pictures out the window because it was a US military base.

We headed into Hagåtña, which is officially the capital of Guam. We went to Plaza de España, which is a square with a lot of monuments and Spanish colonial buildings around. Given that it was so early that most shops would be closed, it was the best option for us to see something of Guam!

First impressions – I could definitely see a difference in the level of development between Guam and the other Pacific islands we visited later in the trip. It felt as though they had stronger infrastructure compared to Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Nauru. From the airport to the roads to some of the very new restaurants and shops, it seemed to be doing fairly well.

Guam, like Puerto Rico, has expressed interest in US statehood. As a fellow resident of a place in the US that would like to be a state, the District of Columbia, I hope they are able to get more self-determination and more political representation moving forward!

All in all, I didn’t get to see much of Guam, but I am glad I got a chance to leave the airport and see a little of the island. As I’ve been on my journey to finish all 50 states, a logical next step would be to visit the overseas territories as well to see another dimension of the US. It isn’t the top priority for me right now, but it is certainly another consideration for travel!

Categories
Oceania Palau

Spectacular Palau

From Taiwan, it was on to the next adventure! This was the beginning of a trip across the Pacific with Wander Expeditions. It took two flights for me to get to Taiwan and it would be 13 more before I made it back home. The first of the 13 was an easy four hour flight from Taipei to our first island destination, Palau.

Beautiful from the very first look

Of all the places I visited on this trip, Palau is the one that impressed me the most! Going into this, I had the highest expectations for Taiwan and Fiji, both of which delivered, but I didn’t know what to expect for the rest. As best I can tell, 4 of them are in the bottom 15 countries in the world for tourist visits per year. It makes sense – they are far from pretty much everywhere, with infrequent and not always reliable flights. Palau, though, had quite a bit more tourist infrastructure than the rest and was absolutely stunning.

The first night, we had dinner and drinks at a local bar near our hotel. As the night got later, more and more locals showed up for karaoke, and they did a fantastic job. It was so fun watching them absolutely crush it at Elvis songs and serenade each other in duets. It definitely felt as though it was the place to be in Koror!

The next morning, we headed out for a scenic flight over Palau! I was so nervous that the weather was going to be bad and this would get cancelled. I had been in some absolutely pouring rain in Taiwan and this was really the only weather-dependent item on our itinerary. Luckily, though, the weather was perfect! It did get gloomy on us a little later in the day but that was fine.

It was such an incredible experience. I’ve never done a scenic flight like this. The smallest plane I was in before this one was a domestic flight in Costa Rica, and this was significantly smaller than that one. I guess the closest experience I’ve had to this was a hot air balloon in Cappadocia, but going by plane was drastically different from a hot air balloon. This covered a lot more ground and felt more exhilarating, whereas the hot air balloon was much more peaceful as we drifted through the landscape. It was a great way to see Palau, which is beautiful from both the land and sky!

One more thing from our scenic flight. If you’ve heard of Palau before, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of it because of Jellyfish Lake. Those photos of swimming with the golden jellyfish went viral and drew in a lot of tourism to Palau. That said, as of this writing, the lake has gotten too hot for the jellyfish and you can’t really see or swim with them the same way that you used to. We did get to see the lake from the air, which is in that photo above! And we did swim with jellyfish while we were there, just with a different species and in a different lake.

Once we returned to the ground, we headed out for a boat tour! Our first stop was the Milky Way Lagoon. It is full of limestone mud, which the locals recommend you smear on your skin to make you appear younger. We swam in the lagoon as well, which was full of these translucent jellyfish. If you think it’s disconcerting having something brush up against your legs while you’re swimming, multiply that by having that something be both gelatinous and invisible!

Not my best picture but you can see a turtle!

We also went snorkeling. Throughout this trip, we saw some of the most incredible, vibrant reefs I’ve ever seen. To be honest, my GoPro is better at video than photos, so know that the images here are a pale imitation of how cool it actually was under water. While Micronesia was probably the best, Palau was also really good.

After all our snorkeling stops and sight-seeing around Palau, we headed back to Koror for a final dinner and then went straight to the airport! Our next flight was a red eye, or rather, a series of flights that started with a red eye. And while I can’t necessarily recommend taking a flight that leaves at 1:50 am, I can absolutely recommend Palau as a great Pacific destination.

Categories
Asia Taiwan

Journey to Kaohsiung

Kaohsiung was my most ambitious day trip from Taipei – it’s basically on the other side of the country! It would be about a four hour drive, but the bullet train cuts it down to about an hour and a half. I was also looking forward to taking a bullet train in Taiwan. I’ve taken them before in China and Japan, and I’ve always been impressed at the pinnacle of what train travel can be.

The train itself is beautiful and clean, with seats that remind me of a domestic first class plane experience. The scenery out the window was really cool – the majority of the cities in towns in Taiwan fall on the same spine in the west, and we passed right by Taichung and Tainan, among smaller towns and cities.

My first stop was one of the most famous sites in Taiwan: the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas! It was about a half hour walk from the high speed train station, Zuoying. It was a nice enough walk but it was very hot and humid, and the final part goes over a giant road (although thankfully they built an overpass).

Still, I was relieved to make it to the temples! They’re on the shore of Lotus Pond, which has several beautiful temple complexes nearby. It made for a nice morning to explore the various buildings and statues nearby.

It’s free to enter the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas and you can climb to the top, which I did. It was a nice view. And more importantly, there was a breeze at the top!

Once I had my fill of the temples, I called an Uber to get to my next destination. I didn’t need Uber very often while I was in Taiwan, since the public transit was so good, but it was nice to have it when I was out late at night or the routes that didn’t have great connections!

I headed off to Pier 2 Art, the arts district in Kaohsiung! It was a great area to walk around and explore. It’s full of art installations, restaurants, and museums, so it was where I spent the rest of my time in Kaohsiung until I headed back to the train station to make it back to Taipei for the evening.

I spent some time in the Taiwan Railway Museum, which was a fantastic break from the heat, with the best air conditioning I experienced all day, and had a very charming diorama representing the trains across Taiwan. There were some interesting relics showing the history of the train as well, although I spent most of my time in the miniatures room.

From there, I did a little more exploring and found a local brewery to try, which was a real highlight of the afternoon!

I made one more stop on the way back to the Zuoying high speed rail station to see the world’s largest glass art installation! The Dome of Light, at the Kaohsiung metro station, shows Taiwan’s history alongside the stars and the broader history of humanity. It was a pretty easy detour while I was already in the Kaohsiung metro station, and definitely worth a stop. It’s absolutely stunning. It’s probably the most beautiful metro station I’ve ever seen.

I’m glad I made it out to Kaohsiung! If I’d been more strategic going into this week, I could have spent a night or two down in the southern part of Taiwan, and maybe made it out to Tainan as well, but that would have required a lot more planning than I did for this leg of the trip. Even with just a day, though, I felt like I got a chance to see some of Kaohsiung and a lot more of Taiwan from the train’s window, which definitely made it worth it. It was a pretty great week in Taiwan overall!

Categories
Asia Taiwan

Day Trips in Northern Taiwan

With how well connected Taiwan is, it was really easy to explore other parts of the country! I visited a couple other areas near Taipei. Some of these might even technically count as the Taipei metro area, but they did still feel distinct enough that I wanted to include them here instead of my main summary of Taipei.

Jiufen

This is the first day trip to come up on almost any list of recommendations. It’s about 45 minutes to an hour east of Taipei. I was absolutely delighted to find that there was a bus that picked up about five minutes from my hotel and went directly there, so it was the first place I went outside of the city!

Jiufen was originally a gold rush town! There is a museum there about this time period, but I wasn’t able to go because it was closed while I was there. When Taiwan was occupied by the Japanese, their time in Jiufen made a big impact on the architecture as well.

The mine shut down in 1971 and the town fell into decline, as so many old mining towns do. However, it was revitalized because it was a filming location for a Taiwanese film, A City of Sadness. The tourism boom from that movie led to a lot of development there, including the cafés and teahouses that remain popular today.

It is also known for its resemblance to the town in the Ghibli movie Spirited Away. While Miyazaki has denied that Jiufen was any sort of inspiration for the town in the movie, it’s still a popular destination for the many fans of Ghibli’s films.

I had a really nice day in Jiufen. I loved the teahouses and ended up waiting out a massive rainstorm at one of them – it had such a beautiful view from the patio when it wasn’t pouring rain! There are a ton of souvenir shops, as well as a lot of paths to walk around the city and see the views over the valley. It definitely has enough to stay busy for a day. I imagine the lanterns would look beautiful at night as well.

Beitou

This was even easier to get to, as it is on the red line of the metro. Beitou is known for its hot springs, which smell very strongly of sulfur.

Wikipedia informs me that Beitou has one of the largest concentrations of hot springs in the entire world! What was fascinating to me was how accessible they are. From the metro, it was a short walk to a public park that went right into the Thermal Valley area.

I also visited the library while I was there, which was beautiful and peaceful, and had a really delicious lunch at a local restaurant. It was one of those where I walked in right after it started pouring rain and I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed at figuring out what I wanted to eat, and they were so kind and made sure I got an English copy of the menu and knew where I was supposed to go to get service.

I didn’t go to any of the actual spas, which I think would have been fun, but there are always trade offs in travel and I paired Beitou with Tamsui, which was just a little farther along on the red line.

Tamsui

Tamsui sits at the mouth of the river where it meets the sea, and the Old Town is primarily located alongside the water.

Tamsui was one of my favorite areas to walk around – I found it very charming, and it also felt a lot more walkable than some of the other areas where I was. Most of the Old Town was closed to cars and the areas right next to the river functioned more like a boardwalk.

One other fun note – I love the instinct in East Asia to make these kind of charming, personified characters out of everyday objects. This one was the best that I saw on this trip!

Tamsui was a solid half day, although there is probably enough for a full day if you keep going to the fort or end up having a leisurely lunch along the river. It also was rainy while I was there, so my walk could’ve been longer if I hadn’t been trying to beat another potential downpour.

All of these were so convenient from Taipei and I would say they were all worth it. You could give Beitou and Tamsui their own full days, but I do think it was sufficient to do a half day for each due to their proximity if you’re short on time, like I always feel like I am. That said, I feel like I got a good sample of a few different areas in the north!