Taiwan - Jennifer

CFO Slash Tour Guide
We're in Taiwan because of Jennifer, the CFO of the Taiwan office, who invites Dodo to their holiday party every year.  The party is a pretext for her to work her second job: Taiwan tour guide.  She's a passionate advocate for her homeland, she is the one who took us on a tour of Hualian, a year ago.  Her passion for Taiwan can boil over at times.  She says things like "Korea is boring, nothing to do like here in Taiwan" and "the best pizza in the world outside of Italy is found in Taiwan."  Since she was paying for my hotel room I agreed with everything she said.

Taiwan is a mountain sticking out of the ocean.  A 12,000 foot spine separates the east and west coasts and forces you to travel up and over the mountains, through them or around the edges.  We were headed from Taipei to a small town on the East coast called Yilan (from the left arrow to the right arrow.)  We chose to drive through the mountains, at one point passing through an eight mile tunnel, the longest in Taiwan.  The "Snow Mountain" tunnel opened in 2006 and cut the travel time from 2.5 hrs to just 40 minutes.

Yilan sits a mile from the coast against steep, forested mountains. It's previous claim to fame was rice production and there are still many rice paddies between the town and the shore.

Now, however, tourism is the main driver.  Their volcanic hot springs attract those who like to sit in boiling water, a popular pastime in Asia.

If I were a generous man I'd describe the mountain peaks as being blanketed with a peaceful mist.  Sadly, the pollution reminded me of Los Angeles twenty years ago.  China gets the blame for it, of course, but I don't buy it.  We're on the eastern coast on the other side of a wall of mountains.

If Solvay were drowned by a few years of rain it would look very much like Yilan.  It's an ugly industrial stew, even the new buildings looked tired and old.

The hotel room was top notch.  While Dodo was off jabbering at a meeting, I filled the giant tub for eight with hot spring water and watched sumo on television.

We were to be in Yilan for one night only, the next day we planned to drive to the north coast.  I skipped the party and thought of taking a train 20 kilometers south to a famous night market.  However, as is often the case, my laziness and procrastination entwined.  I wasted my one Yilan night channel surfing inside my room.