Taiwan - Wujie / Taipei

We spent our last few days in Thailand being rained on in Krabi. Rock climbing turned out to be quite expensive and considering that the last time I went rock climbing I only managed to get about 1 metre off the ground before panicking, we opted for another snorkelling trip instead. Unfortunately, as Paul mentioned, we were rained on for most of the day and the trip ended up being cut short. We weren't too disappointed though - by the time the trip was over we had already seen enough to know that the snorkelling wasn't going to be anywhere near as good as either Ko Tao or Ko Phi Phi.

We flew out from Krabi to KL on the 13th and spent the night in a hotel right near the LCCT (low cost carrier terminal) which we were quite happy with as it meant we got to eat three meals in the airport food court - kind of like a last Malaysian supper. By now we have our packing down to a fine art and we lumped our bag onto the scale at check-in the next morning happy to see them come to exactly 30.0kg (the limit). There was another strange safety demo from Air Asia on the way to Taipei (referring to the plane as a "spaceship" throughout - they actually got applause at the end of the demo!). We surreptitiously ate the sandwiches we picked up from the airport foodcourt onboard (you are supposed to buy overpriced meals from the airline if you are hungry).

After four hours we touched down in Taipei. Paul decided to enter on his Taiwanese passport - 5 minutes later he was through immigration, leaving me in a line of foreigners snaking for what seemed like a kilometre being served by only four immigration officers. Almost an hour later I finally made it through....

Paul's mum and dad were waiting for us outside and they were very happy to see us. Their first words to Paul were to tell him how dark and skinny he had become - ha ha! We were whisked back to his Dad's home town of Wujie on the east coast, which only took about 90 mins thanks to a new highway which has been built since the last time we were here.

We spent a relaxing few days hanging around Wujie. The town is in Ilan county which is wedged in between the coast and a mountain chain that runs halfway down the length of the country. It is very pretty with lots of rice fields around the houses and the mountains rising up in the background. Wujie is about 5km from the sea and you can smell the sea breeze when you go outside. You can ride a bike through the rice fields and on a bike path by the river all the way to the sea. We caught the tail end of a typhoon while we were there so we didn't get to go all the way to the sea. We are heading back there after Taipei and I plan to make it to the sea then. We also spent a day cooling off at some cold springs at Suao. The springs are 22 degrees year round but it was too cold for me to go right in - I ended up just soaking my feet for most of the day!

In the traditional Taiwanese fashion, Paul's relatives in Wujie were all clamouring to take him out to banquets. We had banquets on three of the four nights we were there. My favourite one had about a gazillion course all coming one after the other - from a huge plate of fresh sashimi complete with an ice sculpture (!) to a plate of fresh lobster, chicken soup with a whole chicken, a whole steamed fish, crab and noodle soup with tonnes of crab in it, crab balls both braised and deep fried, plates of squid, plates of abalone - the courses went on and on and on. I think I have probably stacked on a few kilos over the four days and Paul has most likely gained nothing!

We have a few things that we need to sort out in Taipei to organise the next few months of the trip. Weighing most heavily on our mind at the moment is the fact that we don't have an onward ticket for China. We plan to take the train to Mongolia and then exit overland to Nepal so we won't have a flight booked. I doubt it will be a problem with Chinese immigration as we have the correct visa and it is difficult to get train tickets outside the country. But we have found that the problem is generally not with immigration but with actually getting to the country in the first place - Air Asia always asks to check you onward ticket where it is a technical requirement to have one. Hmmmmmm - so frustrating. At this stage we are looking at either getting a fully refundable ticket out of China and refunding it later, or getting a travel agency here to book us a ticket on the Trans-Mongolian so that we can show that (this is probably a good option as you need to book a bit in advance anyway). It all depends on the price...... This is the type of situation where you start wishing you were a package tourist (almost....)!