A couple of the shorter trips I took are going to be rolled together into one post, for sake of time. First off: How Katie (my housemate) and I tried to go to Hong Kong.

My friend Wen, from Vassar, recently moved back to HK, and I thought it would be a lot of fun to go see her. Not to mention, although I had flown through mainland China, I had never stopped and visited. So we quickly planned a Friday-Sunday trip. Come Friday night, off to the airport we went. Although our plane was a few minutes late taking off, everything was fine. It only takes about an hour and a half to get to Hong Kong, and Wen was going to meet us at the airport when we got in.

However, as we approached our final destination, the pilot got on the loud speaker and said that there was some bad weather in Hong Kong, so we were going to have to circle for a little while. We circled and circled, and then finally closed in on Hong Kong. When it looked like we were just about to land, the pilot again got on the loud speaker and announced that, since the thunder storms in Hong Kong were so bad, we, in fact, were unable to land there AT ALL, and therefore would be returning to Taipei. So we flew the hour and a half trip back to Taipei.

Our joke of a flight pattern to Hong Kong and back.

The airline was going to put up all the passengers at local hotels and then fly them to Hong Kong the following afternoon. However, the thunder storms were supposed to last all weekend, and there was no guarantee when the plane would be arriving on Saturday. Since we were only staying until Sunday afternoon, we figured it wasn't really worth it to go for less than 24 hours. The airline nicely paid for a taxi from the airport back to our house. Our travel agent is working on our refund, but it will have some money deducted, because it wasn't the airline's fault, it was our decision to cancel. Not to mention, the refund will take 3-6 months to getback. It was, by far, the most expensive trip I didn't go on.

A trip that worked out better was the day trip Jenny and I took to Yingge and Sanxia. These small towns were about half an hour outside of Taipei. Yingge was an old pottery town, and had tons of stores selling anything pottery you could ever hope for. Sanxia was a nearby town which had, hands down, the coolest, most ornate temple I have ever seen. We almost missed it (to be fair, we were looking the other way AND there was a huge kid performance going on in the square AND it was kind of hidden behind some trees), but I'm so glad we saw it before we left.

Inside a vase in Yingge, the pottery town.


At the entrance to one of the old tunnel kilns.

The old street in Sanxia. This was before we found the temple.

Decorations at the temple.

Detail of the decorations.

The gods wait...

That afternoon, after arriving back in Taipei, we decided to go to the top of Taipei 101 (the not-anymore-tallest-building-in-the-world-thanks-Dubai!), since neither of us had been to the top. We went at sunset, which was an awesome time to go.

BIG Katie, little Taipei 101

The southern view. I was trying to find Yilan.

Posing with a "Damper baby." Oh, the marketing. The damper is the big thing in the middle of the building that keeps it from falling down during earthquakes.

Jenny and I also went on an adventure to Green Island, which is an Island off of Taitung in the south. We had planned to go Monday-Wednesday, since it takes a fair amount of time to get there (5 hour train ride, 40 minute ferry ride), but as our departure day approached, it became apparent that a typhoon was heading our way. A typhoon that capsized a ferry in the Philippines. Determined not to let weather spoil another one of my trips, we decided to shorten our adventure to one night, instead of two. Turns out, Green Island is pretty small, and we were able to get in all the things we wanted to do in a day and a half... we really didn't feel like we missed anything by not staying the whole three days. AND, the typhoon went way west, into China and we had beautiful, beautiful weather. We went snorkeling (first time I've ever driven a scooter in a wet suit) and saw some amazing fish. There weren't really beaches there, it was more rocky formations up to the water's edge. But the fish were gorgeous. Saw some medium sized green and bright purple striped and a HUGE bright turquoise one. I really liked the small ones that were all black with a white tail, too. They looked like they were wearing tuxedos.

After a BBQ dinner (Taiwan style...), we were going to go to the salt water hot springs by the ocean (1 of 3 in the world!), but we ended up falling asleep around 8:30. Blame the sun and the surf. We decided to wake up super early the next morning (4:45!) to get there before it got hot. Apparently, a good time to go is to see the sun rise, but we were a little late. They were still cool, though. In addition to the normal kind of tiled pools, there were also these pools down by the ocean. It was all very green and lush and incredible. Afterwards, we scootered around the island, which took about 40 minutes, and then caught the ferry home!

Hot springs