This is the Life: Eat, Sleep, Repack, Sightsee, Repeat

In an effort to keep this at a readable length, here's episode two of three of Taiwan: days three and four.

After sleeping in and almost oversleeping checkout time, we hustled to get ourselves together and ready for some sightseeing. We left our freshly repacked bags with the nice gentleman who ran the hotel and we made our way to the subway to check train times heading east on the island, to the less developed part of the country. Then conveniently enough, we stumbled upon rentable bikes just outside the subway station as we were about to make our walking trek to the Lotus Pond, so we rented a couple of bikes (complete with bells and baskets!) and we took the leisurely jaunt through a park and some city streets until we reached the "pond". I use quotations because this pond is HUGE! More like a small lake, really. It has at least seven temples/statues/pagodas along its shoreline. It was very impressive.

Our rented bikes

Dragon and Tiger "temples" or towers

temple across the street from the pond 

Buddhist warrior god shrine

another pagoda and dragon

Buddha temple 

It actually took us much longer than planned to ride around the pond and stop to see all the monuments, so after having the bikes for a few hours, we decided it was time to head back, pick up our bags, eat something, and catch a train heading east and north. By the time we got back to the hotel, the night market was already up and running, so we went back in and got a few treats, then grabbed our bags and we were off to the train station and an evening train to Taitung (tah-tongue). A very nice man helped us get our tickets (as the man selling tickets spoke no English) and we were on our way.

Funny thing about the trains in Taiwan: no matter the time, distance, or duration, the lights never go off. This makes for some difficult sleeping, especially since the lights are very bright. But we made it to Taitung right at midnight and took a cab into the city (the train station is located on the very outskirts of the city). We asked our taxi driver (or rather, a helpful young man who spoke some English told our taxi driver) to take us to the closest hotel in town that was also cheap, and he did. It wasn't as cheap as we had hoped for, but it would work for the night. The woman working the night shift spoke no English (are you beginning to see a reoccurring theme here on the eastern coast?) but we got ourselves a room and headed to bed.

After catching a few hours of sleep, we packed our bags again, left them with the woman at the front desk (different woman who DID speak English--what a relief, we were beginning to think we had made a bit of a mistake journeying over to the other side of the island) and when in search of food. We also decided to go back to the train station and see about renting ourselves a scooter. Unfortunately, it turns out you must have a Taiwanese drivers license in order to rent a scooter...but a car on the other hand, that is just fine to rent with an international license. So, we settled on renting a car and taking a night train to Taipei the following night (to counterbalance the cost of the car by not having to pay for a room for the night). 

At about 5:30pm we had rental car keys in hand, 10:30pm train tickets pre-purchased for the next night and were ready to roll! The weather was beautiful, so first things first, a drive about the place with all the windows down. Then it was off to find some food. After eating a somewhat hodge-podge of a dinner (chow mein, sashimi, and tubules, which is just very small squid and boy were there a lot of them!) at a traditional aboriginal restaurant (just means they dress up and do dances really...) we hit the road again. We were in search of some hot springs.

We stopped at a few different hotels to check for rooms and prices but quickly found ourselves back in the car as the rooms were either all full or nearly 300USD a night! A little more than we'd bargained for. But we kept at it. Finally, around 9:30pm we found a little place that seemed quaint enough. We asked price (about 50USD/night) and then asked to see the room. It was simple yet nice, but the kicker was when he walked us through to the back patio and our own, private hot spring spa. Sold. We'll take it! 

So after bringing in our bags, we immediately began pumping the pipping hot, sulfur smelling water into the tub so we could get in! We sat in the spa for nearly two hours that night, just enjoying the sound of the cicadas and the water. Now this is the life. 

Sunset on our drive along the coast