I’ll be the first to toot my own horn and say that I’m good at traveling by myself. Several years ago I spent three weeks traveling through the UK and Ireland, and since then I’ve accompanied myself to Poland, Slovenia, Vietnam, and various locations in the Czech Republic and Taiwan. Despite language barriers, 95% of the time I have few problems. This trip to Yilan made that 5%. In fact, it might be the entirety of the 5%.
First, I misunderstood where to catch the bus in Taipei (simply a stupid mistake on my part) and ended up walking about half an hour in the hot sun to the Taipei Bus Station.
After making it onto the bus, I had an hour ride through hills, tunnels, and rice paddies. The outskirts of Yilan are all rice paddies, and I was fascinated by the way the roads and houses seem to have been built into them.
An hour later I arrived in Yilan and proceeded to walk in the opposite direction of my hostel (even after finding the hostel, I STILL don’t think the directions they sent make sense). Unfortunately, I was walking into the not-as-nice section of Yilan. It was a bit run-down and industrial looking, and I was getting discouraged. Luckily, once I realized that I just needed to turn around and walk in the other direction, things started looking nicer. There was lots of fun street art, cafes, and parks.
After checking into the hostel, I went to a gelato shop that I had passed earlier. Their flavors included tomato, sesame, and caramel banana. I opted for caramel (without banana) and rum-raisin.
I spent the rest of the day walking around the inner city looking for the places that the woman at the hostel had marked on the map. Unfortunately, the map showed them all as miniature fairy-tale castles, so I was never sure exactly what I was looking for and I’m not sure if I saw them or not. I did run across the Yilan Museum of Literature, which was hosting an exhibit about women breaking boundaries in writing (it had a catchier title, but I can’t remember it).
I also saw the Yilan Distillery, where a man was playing the saxophone in front of a wall of casks.
I stopped at a little coffee shop for a break.
That evening was the lunar eclipse.
Now, I definitely can’t read Chinese, but even a map completely in Chinese is useful, because I can compare the street names on the map to the street signs and at least figure out where I am. But, the characters are all very diverse and, to an English speaker, visually complex. So, I’d look at the map, and I would have to immediately come up with a description of the character to remember it in the split-second that it took to look up at the sign. My inner monologue of character descriptions included “side-swept,” “very horizontal,” “complex with lots of x’s,” and my favorite, “this one’s just wonky-looking.” Navigational problems abounded on this trip, but none of them were due to my Chinese-map-reading abilities.
For dinner I went to the nearby night market, where I actually enjoyed myself quite a bit. Night markets can be either fun or torture, depending on my mood. I had a blast walking around and seeing all of the random stuff for sale. I bought a sausage, sweet potato balls, and a watermelon smoothie, plus a new pair of shoes, for a total expenditure of less than $10 USD.
I decided that the next day I would go to the beach before heading home later that afternoon or evening. Yilan City is technically on the coast, but it’s very sprawling, and the center of town is set back a way from the water. My plan was to take the train to Wai-ao Beach, a 20 minute journey north, for about $1.50 USD. I managed to buy the ticket, but all of the signs in the station were in Chinese. The ticket-man told me to go to platform 1, where I saw there were two trains coming in the next hour. I couldn’t read the destination, but I could tell from comparing the characters that they were both going to the same place. No one had mentioned, or mimed, anything about a long wait, so I got on the first train that came. About five minutes into the ride, the conductor came by to check the tickets, and promptly informed me, “you’re on the wrong train.” Coincidentally, and luckily, the next stop, an hour away, was Taipei. So, my mini-vacation was aborted, and I arrived home around 11am.
The end of my fun but not most successful traveling adventure.
Going Out Your Door 