Hualien- Thursday-Saturday, May 12th-14th

On Thursday morning we went to Hualien, a city close to the mountains on the east side of the island. It took us 6 hours to get there. One hour on a little train then 5 more hours on an express train. When we finally got there, we checked into our hostel, a little place that was $16 US Dollars per night for each person (pretty great) that was pretty much just a huge room with bunk beds. We all got to sleep in the same room so that was nice. We had free WiFi and clean showers and toilets so I wasn’t complaining. In fact, this is what we found over the toilets when we got there:

That night we went shopping in the shopping district which is pretty much a huge street market with clothes, food, souvenirs, etc. Alyssa and I ended up getting a TON of stuff actually. I spent more that night than I had the entire trip thus far. We also went to the Stone Market that was really close to the shopping district and I got a beautiful Jade bracelet! I am so happy about it!

After shopping, half the girls wanted to go to McDonalds for dinner but some of us didn’t so we found a cute little sushi bar with a conveyer belt of food! It was so good and so cheap!! J

The following day, we went up to Toroko Gorge where we had taxi drivers that took us everywhere we needed to go! They were so great! I’m not sure what everything is called that we went to but it was really fun! And absolutely beautiful!!

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We went back to the stone market that night to watch the aboriginal dances that some locals were putting on. It was really cool to see all the different styles they had!

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We still had one more day in Hualien on Saturday but there wasn’t much to do since we had seen the main attractions already. We took some walks and decided to go to a movie in the afternoon. It was pretty much just a very relaxing day (which I needed by then because we had been going non-stop for two weeks!) Our train left that night at 6pm and we didn’t get back to our dorm until 12:30! We were so tired!!