Tag Temple
It is Moon Festival in Taiwan which means we have five days off. Except for going back to Erlin to celebrate with Yini’s family, we planned to go out to the coast for a few days. However, the weather gods didn’t seem to like our plans because they sent not one, but two typhoons our way. The first one caused floods and lots of chaos down in the south and east parts of the island but Erlin, which is in the middle, was fine and we had two nice days with the family, barbecuing and shooting fireworks in the evening. The second … Read the rest
There are a few more islands that belong to the Matsu archipelago but we never managed to arrange a good schedule for going there. However we still had a day left and had already seen most of the two main islands so we decided to take it easy. We slept till fairly late in the morning then went out and rode around leisurely checking various minor tourist attractions.
The giant Matsu statue 
vegetable gardens in the center of a small village 
A post warning you not to stray from the path because there are still landmines in the area.
Eventually … Read the rest
A while back, me and Yini rode our motorbike from Tainan on the south west coast, round Taiwans south tip, then up along the east coast to Yilan in the north. I wrote about it here. We also made one trip from Taoyuan in the west, across the mountains to Yilan, then around the northern tip back to Taoyuan, see this post.
Though a bit further inland than those two trips, we have also been between Hsinchu and Taoyuan (both in the north west) several times, and a few weeks ago, we rode from Hsinchu to Erlin in … Read the rest
Having spent most of Wednesday at the beach, we decided to do something a bit different on Thursday. Looking over the possible tourist spots we had two options, one was an old fortress up in the mountains, the other a temple by the sea. As the day was hot, we opted for the sea hoping for a cool breeze.
I think the temple was a bit odd, though located in a beautiful place atop jagged cliffs sloping down towards turquoise water. Except for the scenery it was not much to see or do there, and to be Frank, the small … 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