Last month, my Aussie friend Alf and I went up to Yang Ming Shan for a mountain hike. But there was a problem upon our arrival to the bus stop. There were no more buses coming. It's a solid 8K walk back to the train and no taxis...so Alf suggests hitchhiking. I thought at first it was a joke, but it started to sound...necessary. We went out to the road, stuck our thumbs out and within one minute we're in a car with a friendly Taiwanese couple headed to the metro station. We talked on the train about hitchhiking in the US and Australia and how it doesn't happen often because you can't be too careful with people nowadays. It's unfortunate! However, feeling inspired, Alf mentions the possibility of hitchhiking all the way around Taiwan. A few weeks passed, and we realized since we had this Friday off, this would be the best time to try if we're ever going to.
We met up at 5 pm and started on the outskirts of Taipei, near the entrance to Highway 3 in Nanggang. Earlier that day, I made a sign out of a brown paper bag that said "Going South" in Chinese characters. We thought it'd be "hao ke ai" (overused phrase meaning cute) to have a sign, and give us a better chance of being picked up. It took about 20 minutes for a car to stop, but it's much more difficult starting in the city. He said he was going to Taichung, which is on the opposite end of the island from where we wanted to go. He criticized our sign because where we wanted to go, Hualien, wasn't exactly south, more like south east. We were set on doing the East coast first but after about 5 minutes, we thought 'we probably should have gone with that guy to Taichung.' I should have made an adjustment and went with the flow, "south." If the general direction is right, take it.
Just as we were about to give up hope and head back to the train station to catch a train to Hualien, we get a guy in a little white Toyota pulling over. All it takes is a little patience. He said he was going to a place in between Taipei and Taichung, so this time we went with the flow, and hopped in. A Hui couldn't have been a nicer guy, and we had a good time heading down to his town of Ping Zhen. But since it was dark by the time we got to our destination, we had to cheat and take a train to Taichung. We said our goodbye to our gracious driver, and he wished us luck on our trip. We took an hour and a half train ride to Taichun,, where Spencer picked us up and is letting us crash at his place for the night.
Hopefully we'll get to Kaohsiung tomorrow, and with any luck Kenting, at the most southern tip of Taiwan. It's been a fun first day out on the journey. Only have one pic from today of Alf getting some rest in on the train. Many more to come.
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