Hello, everybody! Welcome to Travel in Taiwan!
This time we are going to the
East Rift Valley. The East Rift Valley
is located in
eastern Taiwan and it's a very
very beautiful place. Let me show you on the map.
This is Taiwan, you can see the central mountains in the middle
and the East Coast is here on the
right side. Let's go a bit closer.
You see Taipei is up here. From there we took the train
down the East Coast to Yilan,
Su'ao and then further down to
Hualien.
This is the train we took, the Puyuma Express. Between Su'ao and
Hualien, there is a very nice highway,
but if you take the train you cannot see much of
the scenery because it's all tunnels. There you have Taroko Gorge,
for me the best
place in Taiwan.
And in Hualien we rented a car, this one
a Mitsubishi Colt. Then we went on to
Liyu Lake, on to Fenglin, Lintianshan,
an old logging town (village) and then
to Ruisui where we spent the night,
On the second day
we visited a farm there in Ruisui, had some
hot pot for lunch
and then we went down the road to
Yuli where we did some
trainspotting, then we went further down
to the Walami Trail, a very beautiful trail
into the central mountains
and then we spent some time at the Antong
hot spring resort, and
back to Yuli, we spent the second
night at Yuli. On the third day we went to Sixty Stone Mountain,
very beautiful place and then further down to
Chishang, a town famous for
rice production. This is as far
south as we got. You can see Taitung
own there. We didn't go south as far south.
If you go further you can see
Green Island and Lanyu.
Those two places we will visit in a few
weeks time. Can't wait for it. Then we went all the way back up to Hualien,
returned the car there and
took the train back to Taipei.
So it was
a 3-day trip
and it was a good one.
The train we took was a Puyuma Express.
We took the one at 9:50 and it took two hours
to Hualien and it costs 440 bucks,
NT dollar. You can see the train was full, you have to make reservations early
to get a seat.
And there in Hualien we rented this car,
a Mitsubishi Colt for 1500 NT dollars a day
and for gas we spent 1000 NT dollars
for three days. Then we went straight down the road
from Hualien to Liyu Lake. But before we got to the lake we went to this shop.
This is a knife maker. And it's a bit difficult
to find, so I show you on Google, Google Map.
Here you go down the Highway 9 (9 Bing)
and then there's a bridge over the river, and
shortly after that there's a small road
to the right.
And let me show you on Google Street View.
Then it's all clear. So you come down there
and then there's
a small road on the right side.
And then you have to drive about
one kilometer.
You come to
a bend there in the road.
And then you can
this nice
little shop. And the reason, why you should go there is because they have
very nice knives,
hunting knives,
used by the aboriginal people in Taiwan.
They are very heavy and very nice,
very useful.
They also have small knives
as souvenirs and the sheaths they do, have nice
pattern. There you can see the knife is very nice in the hand.
You feel like a warrior immediately,
but be careful. Then we went to the Liyu Lake. It's a very beautiful lake,
southwest of Hualien (City). And at the time
we went there, they had the black
rubber duck sitting there, floating on the water.
I'm not sure if it's still there.
It's black, not like the yellow ducks, you could see elsewhere
in Taiwan, earlier in the year, and
people like to make pictures there.
You can see the lake is surrounded by mountains,
and you can rent pedal boats,
and even without the duck, it's
a very nice place. You also can rent bicycles,
there is a visitor center there, and very lovely scenery there.
I'm not sure why they have chosen black for the duck, I think
they say, black ducks are common in Hualien.
I'm not sure about that.
It's not a bad duck, as ducks go.
We went a little bit up the hill to see it from above,
and down there you have a love sign,
people like to make photos,
selfies. And that's the last picture of Liyu Lake. A very nice place.
If you are in the Hualien area, check it out. From Liyu Lake we went down the Highway 9 to
a town called Fenglin, and there we
saw this interesting building. Its a
tobacco building, used to store
tobacco leaves, during the time when they had tobacco
tobacco production in the area.
For me it looks a bit like
it could be in England, but I am not sure if England has this kind of
houses. You cannot go inside
They have stored some stuff in there.
Just an interesting building to see,
cause it is not common in Taiwan.
And a 50 meters or so down the road they have another
similar building. This one is actually a guesthouse
and you can go inside and drink coffee, but
interestingly we didn't see anyone there. This is inside, you can sit there.
And from Fenglin we went down the highway to another
place called Lintianshan, an old
logging town and they have old
trains there, old railway, you can go inside and have
fun, and
Lintianshan, a small place with
houses made of wood and
they have these old railway tracks
for logging, narrow-gauge tracks.
And you can go
inside and take some photos.
There's also a waggon
behind the locomotive, you can go inside as well.
Then you can see, they have these wooden buildings,
looks a bit like a train station, but it's actually
an office building of sorts.
We did make some photos there as well for the magazine.
And they also have a little
tower up the hill there.
A little tower from where you can see the railway tracks
and the village.
Very clean and quiet.
Mountains behind and there is a river behind the houses.
A lovely place. We liked it.
And if you go up these stairs, on the right side, there is a cafe.
And you can go down to the tracks
and have fun, fooling around a bit.
We did make
some photos there as well. And then we went further down
the valley to... Ah, no,
we went to this, this is close to Lintianshan.
This restaurant, which is known for pork (pig)
trotters and they also have
vegetables and
sausages and chicken. And these
these pork (pig) trotters are said to be very
good. I'm not sure, I'm not a big fan of pork.
And then we went down the highway to
the town Ruisui where we would spend the night.
And we spent the night at
this place, the Sunshine Hot Spring B&B.
By the way I will post all the information about the
places where we stayed and ate in the description under this
video, so you can check it out.
And this guesthouse has a hot-spring area
in the back.
It's very simple, basic, but nice.
It's hot, the water is really hot and they even have
a little waterfall behind there.
And there was no one
else there, so we could play around a bit.
And it was really hot.
You cannot see it on this picture. It was hot.
And we had fun
as usual, and in color it
looks even better.
But like I said it's very basic and
then it was time to rest and we stayed in
this room, very clean and very simple.
And the next morning was great weather,
the sun was coming out and we had
breakfast, very simple breakfast,
sandwiches and coffee. Prepared by
this man. It's the owner of the guesthouse, a very friendly man.
And they also have tatami-style rooms,
Japanese-style rooms.
Then we went on.
We went east of Ruisui to the rafting center there.
And behind the rafting center is this
dairy farm, called J. J. Valley Farm.
And they have farm animals, like
ostriches and
ponies,
lovely ponies. And the ponies had breakfast
as well. And right beside the farm is the Xiuguluan River
This river is very famous for white-water rafting
trips. And they start at the rafting center we saw earlier.
At the time we were there
there was not much water, but you can raft throughout the year.
Then we saw some cows. They had breakfast too.
Busy eating.
And what else, ah you can rent a bike there.
The bikes are not
in very good shape, but it's a nice place to go
for a bike ride.
The farm is nothing special if you are used to farms,
but if you haven't been close to cows, it might be something for you.
They also have water buffalo.
Then we went back to Ruisui, to the
railway station, and just beside the railway the station is
a restaurant, this one. The Bamboo Village
Japanese Cuisine. And there we had
hot pot.
Milk hot pot, because Ruisui is famous
for milk.
This restaurant also in Ruisui and serves milk hot pot
as well. It's a specialty you have to
try when
visiting Ruisui.
Here you can see the hot pot.
Then we went back on the road
and we took the County Road 193.
And there we saw some farmers planting rice,
interesting,
planting rice with this
kind of machine.
And you will see
lot of rice fields in the valley,
its part of the scenery,
and a beautiful part as well.
We saw this farmer planting rice. So we went there early in
March, rice-planting
time. We also saw a lady doing it by hand,
much more tiring I would assume.
You can see the mountains of the Central Mountain Range in the background.
Then further down to the town of Yuli.
A very lovely town. There, south of Yuli we went
to a bridge, a railway bridge, which is
well-known among local photographers,
cause it's so lovely red. You can see
trains coming. We waited for 40 minutes or so
to see this one-waggon train,
one-carriage train.
It wasn't actually so fast,
much slower. Then,
another train came back from the north, this one,
this train was headed for Taitung.
This one was a little bit longer.
So this is a famous spot for taking photographs.
The train and the fields and the
mountains in the background.
We also saw some
farmers there harvesting cabbage.
The bridge there.
We also saw fields of corn.
And the nice thing about when there is water in the fields,
the rice is still
tiny, then you can see the reflection
on the water. Very nice. Then we went on
Highway 30 down to
this place, the Lakulaku River.
A very beautiful valley.
And in the same spot is the
Nan'an Waterfall, , a lovely waterfall,
very close to the highway. And this is on the way to the Walami Trail.
The trailhead is
at the end of the highway and it's a very beautiful
area, and the trail is very easy to walk
for the first kilometers. But because it was already
late afternoon we only had time to go to this bridge, about
one kilometer from the trailhead.
A very lovely bridge, high up over the valley. We had fun,
as usual, and checked out the scenery.
And the bridge
is actually quite high, about, I would guess,
30 meters above the mountain stream there.
And unfortunately we didn't have time to go further up the mountain.
Very nice trail, there are more
bridges up there and also waterfalls.
The scenery is very lovely. We took photos
there, of the bridge.
And then it was back on the highway to
the Yushan National Park Visitor Center and
right outside the center was this lovely
rice field. I like how the rice plants are in line there.
And then further
back to Yuli, and we did stop again at the bridge there,
because the sun was setting and there
were nice flower fields, garden cosmos.
There you can see the bridge again,
and we did make some more photos
there,
and the sun was setting, very nice, and you can see
the clouds. It was cloudy already. The next day would bring rain.
So we were happy that we had some
sunshine left for the day.
And that's how it looks in the East Rift Valley. Very lovely.
Then we went to Antong, this is a hot spring
town (village). They have a very old hot-spring
resort place, which looks very
nice on pictures, but its actually not very
well maintained, to be honest.
Then we went to this
hot-spring pool area. Looks like cold water, but it's actually very hot,
and there you can relax
and get a water massage, water
jet massage, hot water,
and I really recommend taking
hot-spring baths whenever you can on
trips in Taiwan,
so relaxing. Then we went back to Yuli
because we wanted to stay at the Wisdom Garden guesthouse.
This is a bit difficult to find, so
I show you on Google again.
So there is Yuli and this is the highway No. 9,
the main highway. There you have to go north of Yuli
until you come to a small road on the left side.
I will show you on
Street View.
So it's very clear where it is. There is no big sign or anything,
so it's easy to miss. So you come
down this highway and you have to take this
little road across the railway line
and then you come to the Wisdom Garden,
which is a very nice guesthouse.
It's almost like a private home and
the owner had prepared this nice breakfast the next day for us,
and the rooms are very,
look like private house rooms, and since
the owner is an artist, there are a lot of artworks
and you can stay in this kind of room.
This is the owner and she showed us
some of here Chinese paintings.
Very nice.
From there we went down the Highway 9 to
the Sixty Stone Mountain, which is a very beautiful place in Taiwan.
But unfortunately, as I said
it was raining this day, and we couldn't see much.
It was all mist and fog.
But we did take some photos,
with the help of flashlight.
It was raining, it was cold,
but still we could imagine how nice it is
when the sun is shining.
There where very few people there.
These are the daylily fields,
which are very nice
in July and August. Then we went further down to the town of
Chishang, which is famous for rice
production. There we went to the Ta Ti Hotel,
and they sell local rice,
and there we had
the Chishang rice
lunchbox, which is well known.
We had chicken and pork chop, we also had
tofu and
some vegetables.
And for dessert we had sponge cake
made with Chishang rice and ice cream
also made with Chishang rice. From there, we went further down
to a place called "Bolang Dadao", which means
"Brown Avenue". This has become
a famous tourist attraction because
two commercials where shot there, one for Mr Brown
coffee and one for EVA
Airways. And this has become a very popular
place. It's just basically a small road across
the plain with rice fields on both sides,
and there is
a lovely solitary tree there
which is...
where you can make
photos, and,
as you can see, it was raining,
there is our car, it was cold
and windy. It was very unpleasant weather.
But, we didn't mind.
It was still a very lovely place.
There you can see how strong the wind was.
Freshly planted rice.
And there you can see
the clouds over the mountains
There were some
other people as well
so even during this type of weather, there were tourist there.
It was a weekday,
a Wednesday, in March and still they had
tourists coming.
This was already our last stop on the trip.
Typical scenes of
the East Rift Valley. At the
entrance to the street they have this kind of public artwork where you can make photos,
and the weather was bad, but
there were still people riding bicycles.
These young ladies had fun there, and we had fun too.
Then we had to go back to Hualien. We took the car all the way back
to Hualien, returned the car and
took the train back to Taipei. And that was our trip.
Thanks for watching!
I hope you got the idea
of what the East Rift Valley is like.
I can really recommend going there.
Hopefully we'll go there again when the weather is better.
If you want to read more about
the East Rift Valley you can read our magazine online,
or you can download the iPad app,
which is very nice if you have an iPad.
And if you like this video, you can Like it.
And if you want to see more you can subscribe (to this channel). Thanks again for watching
and hope to see you soon again!