Hualien is a small city on the East coast of Taiwan. A scenic coastal train takes about four hours to go from Taipei to Hualien and runs between mountain and ocean. The city has a friendly, small town feel, beaches, mountains, and a unique Night Market with both aboriginal and Chinese cuisine. The main reason…
Tag: hiking
Cameron Highlands, Malaysia
After the heat and humidity of Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and, well, everywhere, the cool, fresh air in the mountainous Cameron Highlands region was more than welcome. I only spent two nights and one full day in the tiny, one-street town of Tanah Rata, but it was a very productive day. The day started out…
Sapa, Vietnam
Sapa is a small town in the Hoang Lien Son Mountains in northwestern Vietnam. I took a seven hour sleeper bus from Hanoi and arrived there at around 7pm. Little did I know it would be another two hours of driving on a (very unsafe seeming) cliff side dirt road and having to walk half…
Ob Khan National Park
Ob Khan National Park is located in the town of Hang Dong, about an hour drive southwest of the city of Chiang Mai, and about 27 kilometers north of my apartment in Sanpatong. I took a day trip to the park on my motorbike and, once I turned off the highway, it was a beautiful…
A Weekend in Nan, Thailand
This weekend my fellow foreign teachers and I ventured away from our home in San Pa Tong to Nan, Thailand’s Northeastern-most province, which borders Laos. Just a cozy 5-hour night-bus away from the city of Chiang Mai, Nan is a rural province that borders Laos and is known for its spectacular national parks, the most…
Last Table Mountain Hike
On Sunday I climbed Table Mountain for the last time (that is, at least until I somehow make my way back to Cape Town in the future). I used the Platteklip Gorge trail, which is the most direct way up the mountain, but is also basically a giant, stone stairmaster. It took me a grueling…
Echo Valley and Boomslang Cave
On Friday I headed to Boyes Drive just above the Kalk Bay train station for a 3 hour hike through Echo Valley. The Echo Valley trail leads up to Boomslang Cave, a cave that cuts right through the mountain. The hike to the cave was very steep and rocky, often requiring us to climb over…
Rock Climbing at Silvermine
On Friday morning I headed to my job for what I expected to be another normal workday. At about 9AM my boss informed me that he would be leaving to go rock climbing with a visiting supplier at around 10:30, and asked if I would like to join. Determined to be open to lots of…
Limpopo
Last week I had the exciting opportunity to travel outside of the Western Cape to work on a collaboration beer with a brewery in Limpopo, a province in northern South Africa. My coworkers and I took a two hour flight to Johannesburg, followed by a five hour drive to Haenertsburg, a small mountain town of…
Devil’s Peak
When looking at a postcard of the Cape Town skyline, the normal picture from left to right is that of Devil’s Peak, followed by Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, and then Signal Hill. On Saturday I climbed to the top of Devil’s Peak, the 1,000 meter mountain next to table mountain. In order to reach the…