J is for Jiaoshi (or Ch, Depending on Your Romanization Scheme)

So it was May 2nd and it was time to break out of Jubei. April was a month of new challenges and the prelude to a few more stress-filled months of teaching in Taiwan. After some deliberation during the week, Katie and I decided to pull out the old tour book in order to find a place we wanted to go that we had not been. To be honest, we have begun to feel that after being here for eight months and doing our best to travel over the island during that time, that there were few places in Taiwan left that we really had the urge to visit.

A friend at school told us about a beach on the north coast in a small town called Toucheng. It had no mention almost everywhere we looked, but she assured us that it was a beautiful black sand beach just waiting for our discovery. In fact on Friday (May 1st) she was planning a trip for herself and her husband for later on that month. So we thought, there has to be something up there...

We caught an early train out of Hsinchu on Saturday morning and almost four hours later we stepped off in the tiny Toucheng station. There wasn't much at the station (which was promising) and we saw the beach from the train as we pulled to a stop. So we crossed the street and began to make our way toward the water. After crossing a few streets, walking down some alleys we marched down a road with rice patties on either side. At the end of the road was a very small and newly built park showcasing this statue:
Yeah I don't know either.

But it definitely looks better with Katie next to it.
Moving on, we found our way to the beach. Now I am not sure if it was the weather (which had turned from sunny to very, very gray), or the construction (on most corners of town as well as most of the beach), or the wave-breakers/cement ugly things, or the garbage (which is an unfortunate fact in Taiwan beaches in general as well as other Asian countries--but it was particularly landfill-ish at this one), or if it was a sign of our overall disposition, but we were disappointed with what we found

Here is the best picture we took:
Now despite the statements above it wasn't that bad. But it was the coming to a head of several different factors at the same time. Basically, we were looking for something here that we didn't find: a new place. A place that we could explore and a place that we could relax.

We sat on the cement benches for a few minutes feeling like we had seen all the places that we had wanted to see and now we were just disappointed. Thankfully this feeling didn't linger long and we decided not to give up. We still had the whole weekend ahead of us and we weren't going to whine anymore (ironically, we discovered the next day that we had actually gone to the wrong beach and the one we wanted was one stop earlier...all well, save it for another day!).

We hopped on the next local train and took it down to the next town: Jiaoshi.

We had never heard of the place, but while eavesdropping earlier in the week about Toucheng we heard that Jiaoshi was known for its hot springs. We did some reading in our tour book (which was sparse at best) and discovered that there was quite the waterfall not far from town.

Without exagerating we were completely suprised.

As soon as we stepped out of the train station we saw a small communal hot spring pool for dipping your feet and streets of small shops, restaurants and hot spring hotels.

We made our way up the road and after looking into several different hotels we found one off the main strip and dropped our things off in the room (which had hot spring water piped directly into it).

After wandering back and forth on the same street trying to understand the map we walked up the road toward the waterfall. It was only 3.5 km from town and after a short while we came to the end of the road and followed a wooden path to Wufengchi Falls.

This is the first of several on the hike:
This is the second tier. Unfortunately (but not that unfortunate actually because we were pretty tired), the trail to the top of the falls was closed so this was the highest part we were able to get close to:

We found another path leading in a different direction so we followed it (hoping to find food) and wound up at a Chinese Catholic Church at the top of a mountain. It was one of the most picturesque places I have seen in Taiwan with views of the top of the waterfall from a distance and of Jiaoshi all the way to the cost:
After taking some pictures (but finding no food) we made the walk back into town. We explored a little on the way back to the hotel and after dinner we set out again to visit the hot spring park in the middle of town.

I want to preface this with saying that this was one of the places in Taiwan where we can genuinely say they really did a great job. The park was a great place to walk with open paths, vendors selling food and several covered outdoor cafes. All of these were built around a variety (varying both in size, style and set up) of public hot springs. These are pools of soothing mineral-filled water surrounded by benches for people to just hangout around and talk. It was a really cool, laid-back place. Naturally being the only white faces around we drew some attention, but after mustering up some courage we squeezed in with a group and sat with our aching feet soaking in the hot water.
We appreciated the communal feel of the place. Everyone just gathered around these various pools and talked. After sitting with this group for a while, we called it a night and made our way back to the hotel.

Here is Katie at the place we sat the longest:
Our hotel room was very nice and after a great rest we set off the next morning to try another coastal town: Fulong.

Here is the hot spring area at the train station. We sat here while we waited for our train to leave:
We knew very little about Fulong (including how to say the name as no one seemed to know what we were talking about), except that it had a beach and apparently it was a nice place to hang out. Admittedly we were skeptical and once again we were so happily suprised.

Fulong is a very small town right on the coast connected to several other towns via very well made and kept up bike paths. We walked down to the beach first since...well...that's what we do.

Here are a few pictures of the beach:
Next we rented bikes and made our way down the coast to see what we could find along the bike trail. The path went along the beach for a ways then over a suspension bridge:
Here is an old bunker built by the Taiwanese to watch for a Chinese invasion:
Here is a view from inside the bunker:
The trail ended at an Anti-Japanese Memorial. Random? Well, the Japanese occupied Taiwan for many years and they weren't very nice to the people here. Here is the memorial:
We wandered around the area and discovered they had a free "swimming pool" area next to the beach:
We made our way back to Fulong beach, took a few more pictures then jumped back on the train to head home:
A few hours later we made it back safe and completely refreshed. This trip was wonderful as it reminded us not to give up, but rather to keep heading out to find those nooks and crannies that really do make Taiwan a great place.