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We had decided to head to Northern Thailand and Laos for the Christmas and New Year season in order to avoid the crowds on the Thai islands. What a fortunate decision that turns out to have been! I will be writing about our experiences in Thailand in the next update, but in order to maintain the chronological order of events this is our travel update on Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. <br />

Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan

Odv
2006-04-13 20:03:23

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it will soon be overtaken as an even taller building is being built in Shanghai.

On our return trip we planned to visit Taroko Gorge but got hit by a typhoon yet again, this time by typhoon Nanmadol after it had wreaked havoc and claimed many lives in the Philippines! We got stuck in the town of Hualien, where we spent the rainy days in Internet Cafes. This gave us time to write our previous travel update.

When we thought the weather was finally getting better, we tried to visit the gorge, only to find out that the roads were blocked by boulders and rock slides caused by the heavy rainfall.

We had to wait another day for the roads to be cleared in order to be able to visit the gorge, before hurrying back to Taipei to catch our flight to Bangkok.

There was once a plan to build a hydroelectric power plant in Taroko Gorge that would have destroyed the gorge (much like what happened with the Three Gorges in China), but this plan was fortunately defeated. After all the Taiwanese government, unlike its Chinese counterpart, does need to take account of public opinion.

The gorge itself is of marble and granite. Not surprisingly Hualien is a mayor export center for this kind of stone. In fact marble seems to be so cheap here that many sidewalks are made of the stuff!

During our last evening in Taipei, we visited the Hwashi Night Market, also known as Snake Alley. It was rather gruesome as we first saw a video of someone skinning a snake. It was was still alive while a cord was tied to its head with which it was then hung from the ceiling. Then an incision was made below the head from where its skin was pulled off. The snake twisted from what must have been agonizing pain! A little later scissors were used to make incisions in the veins for the snake's blood to flow out into a jar. Supposedly snake blood is an aphrodisiac. They seriously thought that we might buy some after seeing that video! ...