day 2 (continued part 3) - taipei to hualien

after lunch, we took this public bus down the hill. see the part of the hill beside the lamp post on the left? the tiny structures there are tombstones (click on the picture to view it in its original, larger size). you can see tombstones scattered randomly along the roads and highways, some in fields and some on hills. their tombstones are rather cute, they look like the chinese tombstones here but with a tiny porch and a roof, like little houses.

view from the bus ride down. there are a lot of mountains in taiwan, and these pictures show the typical scenery you see when you travel around the mountainous areas of the island.



the water running down the hill contains some sediments which make the water orange and over time, the rocks get coloured as well.

heading down to the ying yang sea, so named because the sediment makes a part of the sea golden-orange, while the other part remains blue. i didn't take pictures of the sea because it wasn't a nice sight.

part of the northeast coast national scenic area, and all i remembered about it was an extremely long bus ride along some very pretty coastlines. my mom and aunt kept saying the coastlines look the same, but it was kinda nice just staring out of the window at miles and miles of blue. the coastlines were obviously nothing like singapore's dirty murky ones, so kristy and i snapped a lot of pictures of them.

after many butt-aching hours on the bus, we reached a train station. we were going to take a 2 hour long ride to hualien. i have no idea why we couldn't just take the tour bus, but i suppose the travel agency wanted us to truly experience taiwan's public transportation or something. it was a tiring, long, boring ride.

we reached the station too early, and the guide told us we had to wait for one whole freaking hour for the train. the station was old, mostly deserted and looked like something out of those japanese horror movies. after a while, my mom, luck-e, kimmy and liyan decided to explore the surroundings. i was too lazy to join them because it was very humid outside, and kristy stayed in the station to accompany me. the air conditioning was lousy, and when we found one air conditioner that actually worked and was blowing huge gusts of wind, we decided that it was cam whoring time with special wind effects.