Holiday
I’m on 7 on the business scale from 1 to 10 (with 10 being the busiest) lately. Weekends are almost fully packed (except that of last week’s) from a choir workshop in Taipei the weekend before last to a short trip to the RueiSuei township south of Hualien this week. It was for our Tzu Chi Humanities assignment - to introduce a piece of Hualien you find the most interesting.
I got into this all-boys group and we initially planned to cycle to RueiSuei, which was 80km away on the middle of May. We’ll do some rafting there and indulge in the warmth of the hot springs, which is also another specialty of RueiSuei. I was certainly very excited about the trip, as my idea of a perfect nature outing was never the one to go to museums or watch animals hobbling about in the zoo. I was to arrange for transport and assist in accommodation, though at the end it was our godly leader who did everything.
On Saturday we departed at 9am. It was a torrential downpour in Taiwanese standards, and my feet was half-soaked before we reached the railway station. We took the train to GuangFu, a town in between Hualien and RueiSuei, famed for ice cream. The journey was uneventful but we did manage to plan how we’d present our reports one week after this. We had ice cream amidst the cold and 23 degrees temperature, walk around the ice cream factory, and spent fortunes on the clip-a-bunny machines. My friend, after listless attempts on trying to clip the Doraemon soft toy up, was devastated after he found out the next direct player managed to do it in one try. Eventually we have to kill time by doing some boring shots (we brought DVs) around the factory.
After lunch we continued our journey to RueiSuei. Upon arrival we went straight to a go-kart circuit to give miniature F1 racing a try. My friend fantasized about it for such a long time it was useless trying to distract him from anything else. Anyway, it was a huge dollar magnet. After negotiating we manage to get 10 minutes for NT$220 (that’s RM22). Being a licensed driver in Malaysia as well as having being on the wheel for at least 50 hours by now, I spun round the circuit trying to grasp the euphoria of high-speed driving. The wet roads enhanced the experience further. It was fun, and 10 minutes seemed like eternity. Needless to say I end up first (Taiwanese aren’t allowed to drive until they’re at least 18).
Leaving behind the roar of engines we head for RueiSuei Farm on the opposite side of town. My mind imagined Fernleaf advertisement images when they say it is a ‘milk farm’. However, aside wide turfs of green and spots of black and white made from mosaic tiles, it wasn’t anyhow interesting, aside the spotting of ostriches in the same turf as cows. The food weren’t much of anything either, but then that may be because we were tired after the excitement of driving. All the way we were coming up with insane ideas for the report. We literally exploited the DV until the battery weaned.
Next we proceed to check-in our baggages in a hostel. Try placing beds and young people together, and you’ll get 8 dead loafs laying haphazardly on the bed. We slept through 6 o’clock in the hostel and by 6.30 we were hungry enough to gather the initiative to walk to our BBQ site, which was just 10 steps away from the hot spring pools. I was never a BBQ fan so I won’t describe how much free radicals we consumed in one single night, but the hot spring was…hot. It was literally cooking us, and we still managed to film several valuable footages under the cascading boiling water. I finally realized too why winter (or rainy days) and hot springs are best friends.
After filming another crazy footage about our hostel, all of is (8 altogether) hop on the free bicycles in search of a 7-11 for supper, which according to the security guard is just 3 minutes away. We cycled downhill for nearly 15 minutes before encountering a street with traffic lights. Along the way we saw less than 3 cars coming and going and the whole town was exactly dead, dead silence. Well, we did break the silence by our bicycle squeaking and constant loud chats.
The next day we woke up as if from a hangover, not knowing who slept beside us or what we did exactly last night. Scrambling for everything, 6 of us who signed up for rafting left right away. Rafting - what you saw on television is only 5% true. Aside turbulent and hysterical rapids (which only occur once or twice in our 4-hour journey), most of it is calm rivers or rapids so small you won’t even notice when your boat bumps straight into it. The water was icy cold though. Nonetheless, my rafting experience today will remain as one of my best moments in my life. It was something between taking a roller coaster ride and swimming in the arctic.
Worn out after that, we went back on the earliest possible train, to find ourselves even more motivated to do another footage on the train. While I was constantly worried over how other passengers on the train would find these bunch of hyperactive bunnies, I was very much amazed by their creativity and sense of humour.
As the train approaches Hualien and I scrambled to find all 8 train tickets to be stamped when we check-out later, I wonder when again do we have the opportunity to be together again re-living the last two days, minus some of the extreme insanity though.
