Will and Ted's Excellent Adventure part 1

My good friend from high school, Will Cottrell, is visiting me right now in Taipei. I've been having a great time showing him around and I think he's having a good time as well.

On Thursday I picked him up at the airport in the late evening. Since he got in pretty late, we didn't do much that night (other than a brief crash course on how Taipei works) and just caught up on our respective lives. Friday I took the day off of school and showed Will the area around my school and where I usually hang out. We ate some lunch (soup noodles, very Taiwanese) and played some volleyball with my classmates in the afternoon. Afterwards we headed back home and got ready for a night out. We went to Taiwan Beer Factory (a place I have mentioned a few times) for my friend Alex's going away party. Will got to meet a lot of my friends and we gave Alex a pretty good send-off.

The next day we spent the afternoon seeing Taipei 101 and Sun Yat Sen memorial hall. Afterwards we met two of my friends Cynthia and Rui and we took the high speed rail to Kaohsiung. In Kaohsiung we met one of Cynthia's friends who took us the rest of the way to Kenting. In Kenting we tried finding a hotel room but most of the places there were booked so we ended up renting a tent and camping out. After setting that up we took a midnight trip to Frog Rock. We were looking for a beach party that we heard about but ended up getting lost and on a rocky area of shore. We decided, "This is alright" and hung out there for the evening.

The next morning we rented scooters and went to Baishawan. Baishawan is a beach about 20 minutes away by scooter from the main city and is much quieter than the beaches near the city. The beach was beautiful and there were some good-sized waves. We had a great time swimming around and relaxing on the beach. That evening Rui had to head back to Taipei (she had a test on Tuesday) so Cynthia, Will, and I rented a hotel room for the night and hung out around Kenting for a while before going to bed rather early.

The next day we woke up early to catch a bus to Liaocheng, where we caught a train to Taidong then transferred to Hualien. In Hualien we were able to rent a car (Cynthia has a driver's license) and we drove to Taroko Gorge. We spent the rest of Monday and Tuesday morning checking out the various hiking trails around the Gorge. Taroko is amazingly gorgeous, and we got to see some great sights, including waterfalls, various insects, and giant marble rocks. Tuesday afternoon we headed back to Taipei.

Right now I'm showing Will around Taipei. There's a lot to see and we've barely tipped the iceberg so far. We're going to see Shilin night market tonight and probably going on a hike this weekend. More fun times ahead!