Tag Abandoned buildings
A couple of weeks ago my friend told me he had found a bunch of abandoned buildings in central Hsinchu, not far from where I live. One Saturday when I had a bit of time for myself I grabbed my camera and my flashlight and went to check them out.
Since becoming interested in urban exploration I’ve been to all kinds of abandoned buildings; factories, hotels, amusement parks, police stations, military tunnels, temples and so on. This list of course includes ordinary houses but as I started to explore the first one, I soon realized this was more than just … Read the rest
Finding and exploring abandoned buildings is generally referred to as Urban Exploration (or Urbex for short). The ironic thing is, most of the urban exploration I’ve been doing has been out in the countryside; abandoned amusement parks or hotels up in the mountains, or old bunkers out by the coastline. Perhaps in my case calling it “exploring modern ruins” would be more accurate, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Urbex. Recently however, I’ve been doing some actual urban exploration.
Whenever I’m out and about, could be the morning commute, could be running some errands after … Read the rest
First I want to thank my wife for finding out about this place and sharing the information with me so we could arrange a trip. Now on to the post
Down in Jiayi (Sometimes also spelled Chiayi) in South Taiwan there’s a region with a lot of fish farms and oyster farms. In fact it’s so many that the GPS makes it look like the expressway is running on a bunch of islands and sandbanks out in the ocean, even though it’s actually on land. Over time the usage of these seafood farms has changed and some of the old … Read the rest
I’ve previously explored two abandoned hotels near Shimen Reservoir (read about them in Part 1 & Part 2). There is one more abandoned hotel near the reservoir that has been on my list of places to go explore but I haven’t been able to find the time. Last weekend, me and a friend decided to go to Buddha World which I have written about here. When we got there however, we discovered that the place was closed. Neither of us was really up for breaking in to a Buddhist temple, so we had to think of something else. … Read the rest
My favorite Taiwanese film is The Great Buddha + , and in it there is a scene where the main characters go to pray in a temple dedicated to former Taiwanese dictator Chiang Kai-shek. Apparently the scene was filmed in a real temple which has been (mostly) abandoned. Knowing that I like this kind of place, my wife found out where it is (thank you honey) and last weekend we decided to go check it out.
The temple is in rural Miaoli, close to a small village called Baishatun, and is actually marked on Google Maps. The place is … Read the rest
There is lots to see around keelung, but I had set my sights on an island close to the harbor opening called Peace Island. It is densely populated and not much different from the city, but a park out by the sea is famous for it’s beautiful landscape. We went there the first thing we did in the morning, and although the landscape was indeed beautiful, it was a little too small and too touristic for my taste. There was a walkway leading off towards some more secluded cliffs but sadly it had been damaged and was closed. I think … Read the rest
Doufeng (兜風) is chinese and translates to “to catch the wind” basically to go for a ride in the fresh air. My favourite way to do doufeng is random exploration by motorcycle.
Some weeks ago me and Yini passed by an abandoned house at the outskirts of the city. We had no chance to get in and explore then but today we drove up there, better prepared. I jumped the low wall and started looking around when all of a sudden some kind of alarm went off. I guess the place was less abandoned than I thought (despite being dark … Read the rest
I have driven up to the north coast of Taiwan several times the last few months, each time thinking to myself “wow, the coast road her is nice, I must drive it one day”. That one day turned into this weekend, and drive became ride a scooter. Starting Friday afternoon, I picked Yini up at Taoyuan train station. We rode through Taoyuan county, passing Anders street in the outskirts of Taipei and up into the mountains. Normally, it is pretty stressful to ride on the mountain road in the dark, but these were surprisingly easy. We stopped by in the … Read the rest
I have been reading a bit about several abandoned amusement parks in Taiwan, and I would dearly like to visit some. The most famous one, katoli world, was taken down some years ago but a place called Encore Gardens was rumored to still exist. Me and Yini managed to find it on the map so we took the car and headed out. We did eventually find the place, but it seemed the owners were planing to do something with it because there were some workers there preventing us from entering. Since we were in the area we decided to check … Read the rest
My brother has been studying in Hong Kong for a few months now and, having some time left by, he came to visit last weekend. Naturally me and Yini wanted to show him around a bit, so we went for a couple of rather long drives, both on Saturday and Sunday. During our little outings we kept stopping here and there to check out some interesting sights. We started with a gigantic Buddha statue by a lake in the Hsinchu mountains. The Buddha is part of the temple complex of a Buddhist organisation called Universal Family. We were shown around … Read the rest