A revisit to ximen hotpot all you can eat
I made a revisit to a hotpot place in ximen recently
Allot of vegetables
I started with the ice cream as usual...
And fruits...
...and then shrimps...
This was a new favorite...sesame oil and some cauliflower...
Strange bike road logic
I went on a taiwanese cycle path recently..
Suddenly it disapeared...and a bus stop apeared...
Then it started again...
With a bunch of tais blocking the path it is pretty tourble some to use it...
A visit to veggie grill
II visited a vegetarian grill recently
It was very close to taipei main station
It was very weird parking rules outside
Some could park, but not others...
I think this parking area tried to earn more customers...
The burger they had was a replacement of the meat parry with 2 mushrooms...
They else had some other sandwiched on their menu
I later went by bike south...
A visit to Robins
I paid a quick visit to Robins house recently..
He has some epic lego millenium falcon....
Pretty cool...I wonder if he plays around with it...
Totally open model...
He also had a lego batman plance...with a superman guy included...
Some other cool thing was a small painting and some small guys, saying "humble"....
He use to play golf sometimes...and showed me a driver...I wonder if this is bigger than biggest big bertha...maybe I can join him playing golf some day...
A hike on road 14
I made a toadtrip on road 14 recently
Starting from the heights of road 8...
It was a clear morning, but as usual in taiwan it gets often more foggy in the afternoon
And allot of reconstructions on the mountain roads, especially road 20, 8, 9, and 21
We also visited a mountain gas station...
The staff were very good in english...pretty impressive...
After hitting road 14, we were pretty close to the highest road on taiwan...here shotgun Kris just passed 3000m above sea level
Here one could see the north peak of mountian hehuan, it is higher than the main peak but takes some hour to climb...
Many local people like to wear full hiking gear even for small walks...
We chosed to park at the highest road...it is sometimes closed due to snow fall...or the police checks that each car has snow chains...
To save time, we made a shortcut from the parking to the main peak trail
It was rather steep path but we couldnt park near the trail entrance...one can see the east peak in the background
After some 15 minutes...we reached the peak...
It was a great view of the nearby area...but not as good as last times i went here...
It was acctually the first +3000 mountain i climbed in taiwan
...then it was better view...
and in particular I could then see Zhongyangjian shan (central range point), which is such a cool mountain)...
...but now robin was focusing on helping some locals to memorize this event...than to imagine the horizon...
We also had some peak time...
And also felt the high alltitude...
We also visited taiwans highest toilet...
Robing was enjoying the view...
They also have busses going up here...from Puli area
After continung cruising road 14...we reached the highest 7-11 in taiwan...
They boys wasnt sure it was that high...since we drove more than 1000 meters downhill to reach it...but it was more a good way to realize how high 3400 meters actually is...
....some posing, while suffering from high altitude...
All bags in here were all blown up due to the low air pressure...
...we later on continued passing Qingjing sheep farm
We also passeb by suiss and brittish architecutre on these mountain road....
But we were heading to a Seediq restaurant which I had seen some years ago....we had 2 options...
From our resturant we could see the old suiss houses and the sheep farm....
The seediq restaurant also had some indian interiors...
...im not sure if everything were purely seediq...
I asked for as indigenous food as posisble...and got omellete and some cabbage...
we also got rice and a chicken...
Later on when we paid...I used my 20nt coins...since they have Mona Rudao on them...he was a very famous seediq guy...
who was fighting the japanese long time ago...
its also the story plot of the fmous movie Seediq Bale
We didnt see any sediq chaise japanese..but atleast I tried some local food from here...I might try some other seediq restaurant next time i pass by here again...
Atleast they said they were aboriginal....
Some restaurant info...
We continued road 14 closer ot Puli...and found this very north european strucutre of a conveinent stopre + gas staion solution....
I remember this place, since they have a shower in their toilet...pretty useful when backpacking on taiwan...
And it is free...
After some other minutes the raod 14 road trip was over...
We headed back to northern taiwan...and dropped Kris....who knows where next adventure will take place...
Wenshan wild hotspring
On road 8, at the 166km mark, there is a wild hotspring, that is announced on lonely planet...
Road 8 has signs every 1km about its distance from est to east...
Coming from east, at this tunnel walk on the path to the right...
It is a pertty easy walk
With some cosy tunnels...
And some pridge...before it reaches at the bottom of the gorge...
Maximum 5 taiwanese people at a time...or 2 foreigners?
It use to be a much more commercial hotspring
With some warning sign, since the government does not maintain it anymore
One has to walk on some cliff to enter the stairs
The local people can show you how to reach the hotspring
The stairs then goes down to the wild hotspring
Pretty nice place...and very untouched
One can also see the road from here...
Many locals where chillin at the river bank
At the hottest pool it was easy to burn yourself
Some peopel took foot bath where the hot water reached the cold...
It is a perfect place for a 30 minutes break when visiting the Taroko Gorge
Mr Kris was combining filming and SPA
The stairs up were pretty narrow...but its easier to walk up than down
Some drone dirving around filming the Gorge were also spotted...
A trip to Hualien
I made a trip to hualien recently
Taking the car from Taipei towards Suao
After some tunnels, the longest were more than 13km, we ended up in suao...and some random restaurant
There werent manhy people there...so they had many places available
...Still they assigned us a table...
We had some fish, it said "sweet and sour sauce"....but was more or less tomato sauce...
We later took the caron raod 9 towards Hualien...
After checking in at a hostel...we tried a bar called "pub"....it was on the way to the central Mcdonalds, where i spotted some other bars before...
The beers were pretty expensive...for beeing hualien...atleast the taiwan beer...maybe thats why all the other people were drinking budweiser...
Some blur pic of the entrace...it was hard to say that it was a pub else...
Place no 2 were near this bar...some 500m more towards the city Mcdonalds....
I met up with Philipp there...who I use to chill with once in a while in taoyuan...
I also saw some drink bottles looking like perfume glasses...
I had a local yilan beer from Jim and Dads...
Philipp wre saying funny things...we also took some selfie
And went out for some serious conversations...
This was the name of the second bar
The bartender has a pic of himself on their logo
We also had some conversations with the locals...
Philipp were sitting inside with his german friend
They also had a book inside....
...about bars in taiwan...and hits place was in that book...pretty nice...ihe posed before we were headding closer to the city Mconalds
Omg....we also saw a pink car...very rare in taiwan, where all other cars are black, white or metallic...
Next stop was a KTV...but it looked like a strange bar from outside
Some local girls birhtday..
There were allot of aboriginals there...
Kristoffer were listening to many languages that he didnt understand
Robin wa posing with a birthday girl, she booked the whole place this night
Robin also insisted in singing KTV...
He picked mostly scandinavian songs...like Barbie Girl, Dancin Queen...etc
More drunk locals posing
After some hours we decided to leave...there is a day tomorrow to...and our time on this trip was pretty scarce...
Some final pose...
And we were on the road again...it was 4am, and we probably didnt even made it a forth of the distance to the city Mcdonalds...life sux when there are too many local bars on the way to the destination :(
The popular Bar where I met the intern was still open...but no intern inside
After some 5-6 hours we were on the road again...or atleast at the entrance of the hostel....Kristoffer had some private music session with the hostel host...
Robin was chillin at the entrance sipping coffee...
And off we were...heading west, on the cross country road 8...
Omg...my old favorite beer bar in Hualien which has shut down...it was yilan beer...sad...
Up on raod 8, we saw allot of reconstruction work...
Kristoffer took pics or the gorge...one of the rolds largest...
Pic no 2....or was he filming?
Robin was driving...pretty stable...I got the honour to pic songs...it was fun...
Some stop was made at the Zhuilu old trail and the swallow grotto...
Many tourists were he...
The entrance to the old trail...i was here some year ago...its pretty amazing...built by the japanese some 100 years ago
Some 10 up the gorge qe passed by some Taroko aboriginal village...with some cool temple...
We met some locals, I asked for local food but got mostly normal taiwanese food...
We also met some friends from the hostel here...
Rob n Kris eating Taroko food...
Omg...coolest image...some Taroko close with nintendo 8bit graphic...
Taiwan food in yonghe
I recnetly ate some taiwanese food in yonghe
It was some fried cabbage and random meat
I also got some sweet and sour sauce...pretty good...
All chambers happy hour in March
I went to an all chambers happy hour event recently
It was in a really small place near SYS memorial hall
They had canadian drinks
And very good smorgasbord
The place name was Va Va Voom...by some reason
They also had ArmandDe Brignac...with crystals...pretty fancy...
Football session near Shilin
I pl ayed football some time ago near shilin
I helped my friend out with his team
it was a rather warm and sunny day in the taiwanese winter
The final score was 4-2, lucky, I also made a goal...but i wasnt that matched with the team...
Also my friend Mao was there...
Sunday chill in march
Its about 15 degrees outside, still shorts weather, since it often goes over 20 temporary...
I found a Hagslöfs store in Shida
And a restaurant called Vegg out...maybe its vegetarian
Then I passed by this sign of the 7 summits distance from taipei
It name was cookout
They had some kind of camping theme
With german and belgian beers
Some potato side dish
And rice with salad
What did johan eat today? chicken and corn stick
And some flames marsmellow with chocolat...very sweet but also very good
Later I headed to Mods animals
We had snails and shrimps
Chillin with local people...it was fun...
