Throughout the ride, we were facing, right in front of us was this advertisement of this female celebrity, jas (also a travel host some of you might be familiar with) who was promoting some soup or drink. Every train we took (from the mid range to higher end trains such as the high speed rail) were all publicizing that same advertisement... geeze... That company must be really rich and she must be pretty well off after doing that advert. If you're someone who believes in subliminal advertising, I'm sure its gonna have at least some effect on the passengers.
We passed through mountains and mountains on one side, occasional fields and small towns, while the other side was more of the coastal view... the oceans and the horizon. It was mouth gaping at first... but after 3 hours or so looking at the "same" thing over and over again, I kinda lost interest. Yq was probably still appreciating the scenery even at the very last few minutes of the ride. She tried writing her diary while I took a short nappy and every now and then I would wake up and both of us would play a card game I bought in Singapore, Word Play. Pretty fun game that didn't require us to use too much brain power and we changed the rules a little after a while to make it more challenging.
Well... that was how we spent our 5.5 hours on board the train. When we finally did reach Hualien, we dropped by the visitor's centre just a few metres away from the train station to get a local map and any other useful information. When we got out of it, and was on our way to our hostel, that was when... we met... Mr... Tonny. He was a cab driver who approached us and offered to send us to our hostel. We told him we would be walking as it wasn't too far away and he made another offer to bring us around Taroko Gorge the next day. $2,000NT for the both of us, bao from morning till night and no restrictions or additional costs attached. Even showed us photos of another Singaporean couple he brought around on his handphone and explained why it would be better to go with him because tour buses around Taroko Gorge would leave out some of the beautiful places (he particularly mentioned "Shalangkang" and we would have to be at the time mercy of their scheduling.
I was sceptical of course... I rejected and told him we would check with our hostel first and asked for his name card. He said he didn't have it on with him and asked us if we were ok to wait for him while he ran back to his cab to get it. I let him do so and while waiting for him, another cab driver came up to us and told us that he was a trustworthy man.... That, was Tonny's first positive testimonial. When he did finally come back, he offered to direct us to the direction of our hostel and brought us to the corner of the main road... and that was when we were once again... hounded by an agent, or the boss of another hotel.
Couldn't bother to remember the other guy's name and that was when I got highly defensive. The first thing I thought about was that they were probably in cahoots and were pickpockets. I paid extra attention to our belongings while they were talking to us. The other guy said that his hotel would offer a better rate and probed where our hostel would be. He said his hotel offered privacy (prolly had some hidden cams mounted around) and it was cleaner (the exterior of it sure as hell didn't look quite as clean) and that we didn't have to endure the stinky or noisy backpackers in the same room (that was a little too much and what he said turned me off even more). I tried to be nice and rejected him once again by asking for his namecard and told them we would consider their offer.
It was also then that another lady.. god knows who she was, either a bypasser (didn't quite look like one though) or another cab driver just poked in to listen to our conversation. I got so paranoid and checked my stuff before moving on. Then, they called us back and Tonny offered to give us a free ride to our hostel since his place of residence was on the way home and he was about to get home. The other guy also vouched for Tonny's honesty, his 2nd testimonial... which I had to include because it did convince yq that Tonny was an honest man. ;p
I succumbed to the offer hoping to get them off our backs and while in the cab, he spoke to us in English. I tried probing the exact place that he was staying but the impression I got was that it wasn't that on the way as he had claimed. He mentioned he would take a shortcut to our hostel and said that if we were walking, it would take much longer. Well, knowing me, I'm the sceptical kinda guy... well, I didn't buy it. I've got to be objective though, yq thought he was an honest man, well, I thought he was pretty decent and credible but I felt he wasn't totally trustworthy.
Paid him $50NT for his "free" ride nonetheless and before leaving, he mentioned that he really hoped to have the rong xing to bring us around the next day (which I thought sounded sincere enough for me). He dropped us at the hostel and when we checked in, we met 2 ladies at the counter, the female boss by the name of Yu Chen (I think) and Penny. We asked about the Taroko tour and found out it would cost us $750NT per pax. We took some time to weigh the pros and cons, and to analyse both alternatives before finally deciding on just going with the Taroko tour. Needless to say... that was the last time we saw Tonny.
When I first stepped into our hostel room (for 6 pax), it was pretty decent. Fairly clean, quiet (since there were no one around, just 2 beds were taken), a little humid cos the air-conditioning wasn't on (centralised air-con which turned on only at night) and the beds looked comfy. There was even a garden which we could check out... which we did, but opening the door was a huge mistake. It was as if we welcome the mosquitoes into our room with open arms. That was... the start of the mosquito nightmare. From that day onwards.. all the way to Taipei, we were bitten and stung by the vicious commando mosquitoes. They were big, and merciless... but was also their downfall because that made them easy targets.
However, we soon came to realise the hostel wasn't that good after all. The shared toilet was dirty and the water pressure from the shower head was pathetic. Yes, PATHETIC. reminded me of my days in army. Even the temperature of the water flactuated... with majority of the time being icy cold water. We slept on double decker beds and I slept on the lower bed... which squeaked like a mouse on ecstacy through the night... had to sleep so motionlessly so I won't wake our other 2 tenants and my dear... I side tracked a little... jumped too much to the end of the day but yeah, wasn't a good experience. Will come back to it again later.
So we kinda unpacked our stuff... or more precisely organised our stuff around our beds and headed to the town centre. Got a map from the front desk and they provided us with a hand drawn personalised map of the region around where we stayed. Was impressive at first, but later found out that it wasn't all too practical because the information was too clustered and wasn't that informative after all (thankfully we got a more detailed map from the visitor's centre).
We walked around the area but there wasn't much cheap shopping or things to do around except to enjoy the "culture" and rusticness of Hualien town. Checked out an old railway track and after part 1 of our endless walking, we came back to the track... just that it was at the other end of it. We kinda got lost in Hualien, the roads were confusing due to the little streets that were mostly not included in the maps but after asking around, we did finally make our way to the night market. On our way there, we bought MSG powdered small-sized octopus balls from a roadside stall which was set up by a young lad and helped out by his gf and Fe21, a big shopping mall (in Hualien's context) where we took toilet relief. 
We also came across an oxymoron... a spelling mistake in one of the signages. And ironically, it was supposed to be a centre to learn english. Spelt "Sesame English" as "Sesame Englise". Anaywaz, when we did reach the night market, it was already quite late. We ordered this bbq fried gigantic squid and the kebab-looking pork stick. We had to take a queue number and once again... we had to wait for about 30 mins for our food. Received lotsa publicity with all the posters of TV stations and local newspapers promoting them so we decided to give it a try.
While waiting for our food, we played the basketball hop game which Singapore is also very famous for in our arcades but it cost half the price to play them over there. We checked out the other food stalls, ate oyster mee sua (tasted decent, similar to Singapore... and the taste was overwhelmed with chong) and leisurely strolled around the small night market several times before our bbq food was finally ready.
After getting our food we headed back to our hostel. It was yet again another long long walk back to our hostel. The bbq stuff wasn't as savoury as one would expect. They tasted ordinary, coated with seemingly japanese sweet sauce. Definitely not worth the wait. We got lost once again and after consulting many passers-by, we finally returned to our hostel to take a nice warm bath. Or that we hoped or thought we could have... Like I mentioned above, the bath experience was anything but rejuvenating.
I felt uncleaned after bathing but had to make do with it... that day.. and the day after.. grrrrr* We turned in for the night and it was when our 2 new female caucassian roommates checked in as well. Slept as still as a dracula that night.....zzzzzzzz..........
To sum it up:
Hualien Ratings: 2.5/5 (nothing much to do, not many nice dishes around)
- if you're travelling to Hualien, be prepared to walk a great deal, be prepared to get lost and walk even more
- roads are hard to navigate and hard to walk because it has the same problem with Kaohsiung... narrow walkways that are already clustered with shop stuff or motorbikes
- hard to find a bin and toilets... will have to once again settle for big malls
- mosquito infested... bring lotsa repellent because their bites are viciously there to stay
- the xiao long baos at the town centre makes it worth it to make a trip down and the "guan chai ban" (coffin bun) makes it worth it to go down to the night market (we ate it only the next day, details can be found in the next post)
Formosa Backpackers Hostel: 6bed/room, $450NT/pax
Value for money: 2/5 (though cheaper than the rest, everything else was 2 notches down, no breakfast served, no free water, no.. nothing... just a bed for you to sleep on; just a hit and run place, didn't look forward to going back to our hostel every night)Cleanliness: 2/5 (toilets lost lotsa points)
Location: 2.5/5 (would be a 3 if you just wanted to go to either the town centre or the night market... not advisable to choose both because it would turn out to be 2x the total distance)
Staff: 4/5 (made pretty good friends with Penny, which I will talk more about in my next post and the backpckers were also very friendly, cosy environment... especially if you have Sunny, the male dog going up to you and "hinting" to you it likes to be scratched "there", "there" and "there")
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