One of my favorite things to do in Taiwan is to ramble. I get on my scooter and simply drive around the mountains looking for small adventures. It’s surprising how many tiny roads you come across when you start looking for them. It’s even more surprising how many beautiful and interesting places those roads lead to.

On the last day of my Lanyu trip, I went for one of these rambles. I wasn’t on Lanyu anymore, unfortunately. My boat/train/plane connections wouldn’t come together properly, and I had to return to Taitung a day earlier than I’d have liked. However, the magic was still in the air, and I had a great day full of aimless rambling and exploring.

I easily rented a scooter from a place in Taitung. It cost NT$500 for a day and a half. The only potential problem there was that the scooter shop I went to required a Taiwanese driver’s license. I happened to have one, but I imagine a lot of people wouldn’t.

In the end, I decided to drive the scooter up the coast north of Taitung. I didn’t know what was there, but it stood to reason that there would be some nice scenery. The road follows right beside the ocean, and the mountains begin right on the other side. The scenery turned out to be very nice. It exceeded my expectations actually.

It was a great day full of aimless rambling and exploring. I saw a sign for some kind of archaeological site, and I turned down that road. It took me into the mountains to some very old stone monuments. I have no idea what era they dated from but they were clearly prehistoric, Neolithic, something like that.

Another stop revealed a huge, wild beach. On the cliffs of the beach, there was a rest stop with nice bathrooms and an outdoor coffee shop. I had an espresso smoothie and then climbed down several flights of wooden stairs to the beach. I took off my sandals and walked the length of the beach letting the waves wash over my lower legs.

The best random stop was at a geopark. I drove past it on my way north without even seeing it. I guess I saw the signs for it, but I didn’t know what the signs were about. Later on, I saw a reference to it on a map, and I pulled in there to check it out.

I timed my ride so that I got back to Taitung with a comfortable amount of time to take a shower, have something to eat, and then pack and take a taxi to the airport. I started to think that I could probably have stayed on Lanyu for one more day and that the 3:30 boat would have gotten me back in time for my 6:30 flight – particularly if the boat took only 2 hours. However, I ended up enjoying my day in Taitung and on the coast.

I say that I could have made the connection because the airport was so casual. It was less like an airport than a village train station. No line-ups, no delays, few formalities. I could have shown up minutes before the flight and made it comfortably.

This was my first domestic flight in Taiwan, and I enjoyed it very much. I found the speed of the flight to be very entertaining. It was just plain fun to get back to Taipei in 45 minutes when it took nearly six hours to go down. It made me think that flying might not be such a bad thing for traveling – domestic flights anyway. They’re expensive, but they sure save you a lot of time.

I was amused and not very surprised to find that rain was pouring down in Taipei. Good ol’ soaking wet Taipei. Domestic flights land at the domestic airport. It’s called Songshan and is right inside Taipei. (The international airport is thirty or forty kilometers away.) Last year, a new MRT line opened up with a stop right at the airport. Getting from the airport to the MRT station and then to my apartment meant a lot of walking through tunnels and up and down escalators, but it was still pretty convenient.

In a short time, I was back at Rooftop Paradise and really missing Lanyu and the feeling of being on the road. I don’t think my description of my time on Lanyu lives up in any way to what it was like to be there. This trip feels harder than most to capture in words. The pictures I took do it much better.

Tags: Lanyu Trip, scooter, Taipei, Taitung