Life update | 5 DAY ROAD TRIP in Northern Taiwan

Life update | 5 DAY ROAD TRIP in Northern Taiwan

Welcome back to Tales From
Our Pocket. We’re back in one of our favorite
places in the world, hoping our favorite place
will jumpstart the healing process. This video
is personal. The last year and a half has been the
toughest period of our lives. We didn’t even have
the energy or the words to be able to update
everybody with what was going on. For the next five
days we are going to be on a road trip in very
northern Taiwan. So very far north. This might be
like the busiest thing that we’ve ever done anywhere
in Taiwan I’m thinking. And I’m so excited
to finally be here. Taiwan keeps surprising us.
There’s always more to see, always more to do,
always more to eat. We’re starting our journey here
in Tamsui. This is where we’re picking up our
rental car for the next five days. We thought
we better take a look around the city before we leave.
This is one of the places that we wanted
to come when we were here two years ago and we didn’t
make it. So we are really excited to kick off our road
trip right here in Tamsui. [Day 1] Is it possible we came back
just to Taiwan for one of these? Maybe? Who
says that ice cream doesn’t heal? This was one of my favorite desserts when we were in Taiwan
two years ago. And they have it here. Do I get any?
No. Typical. I’m the ice cream connoisseur. Just
as good as I remember. We are starting our visit
on what Google Maps calls Tamsui’s historic street
or old street. It looks pretty new to us.
It has a lot of shops, sort of a carnival-like
atmosphere, some food stalls, we hope,
because we’re always hungry. It’s like a never-ending
hungry. And in Taiwan, the food is always excellent.
It’s a lot of fun. This is really happening.
It’s a Saturday. It’s really lively. There’s tons of people
here, including a bike tour. I’m from Malaysia. You are? That was unexpected. We just met people who shipped their bikes
here and biked all of Taiwan on their folding bikes.
Wow. It took them 19 days to make the entire
lap of the island. So apparently we need to come back and bike
the island. What do you think, Bill? It sounds pretty ambitious.
There’s a lot of hills, a lot of mountains.
You bike around the outside where it’s flatter. I’m in. I’m
in. I think we should do it. Well, we managed to find
our way out of the scramble that was Old Town
and haven’t made our way to Fort San Domingo.
This is one I was personally looking forward
to visiting, maybe the most, because its nickname
is the “red-haired fort” or “the fort of red hair”, which
is kind of amazing. This is normally where I tell
you all about the fort’s history, how so many
countries have managed this fort, everyone from
the Spanish to the Dutch to the British, Aussies,
and even Americans. Except while researching
the origin of the red-haired fort nickname, we
learned that red hair, or ang mo in Chinese, actually doesn’t
refer to people with red hair at all, but is instead slang and refers
more generally to just white people. It also
was not necessarily a positive term. So let’s just keep this between us because the red-haired
girl in the video is so excited about the name
of the fort, okay? Well, we just left the fort
and we’ve popped out into a delightful courtyard
that’s actually part of Taiwan’s oldest university
and somehow has a connection to Oxford College.
I don’t think that’s the same one as the one
in England. Okay, I had to look up the Oxford connection
and it turns out that the founder named
it Oxford College because it has a connection
to Oxford Canada. It has nothing to do with the Oxford in England. I mean, it could have
been possible since the Brits were here, like they
have been pretty much everywhere in the world. We kind
of find the Oxford connection interesting because
Bill’s dad went to Oxford University in England
and so it has a special connection for our
family. So to find it here is kind of cool even though
it’s not the same Oxford. First stamp of the new trip!
Well, the fort was pretty cool and the best part
about it is that when you buy a ticket to it,
you actually get a ticket to a second fort that’s
nearby. Hopefully it’s going to be completely different. It
is called Hobe Fort or Fort Hobe. You make me nervous how close
we got to the camera there. Really? You gave me more
things to stress about. Hobe Fort dates back to 1888. It’s in marvelous condition. Of course,
it never saw any actual fighting so it was never under
fire either. Still, it looks pretty good for being
over 135 years old. I guess that’s the size of the artillery?
That is massive! We’re back out on the main street.
I’m pretty glad that Hobe Fort was included with the cost of
the first one because the first one was my favorite. Not that I’m biased. We’re going to head back to the car now and
start the real adventure. Let’s go! Well, we are making a special
stop on our way out of town. Just a quick stop,
but a crowded stop. It’s a popular place on a Saturday. It has to
do with the time of year that we’re here, which is mid-March. Any guesses? That’s right. It is cherry blossom season again in Taiwan. It is a total
coincidence that we are here two years later after we saw
our first cherry blossoms ever anywhere in the
world, and we’re seeing them here again. There’s a temple
just outside of Tamsui that is beautiful for
its cherry blossoms. We are here, I think, at
the perfect time. I’ll be honest, I had forgotten
how ornate the temples are in Taiwan.
They’re so beautiful and colorful. I completely forgotten about
this. It’s so cool to see it again. So this is Wuji Tianyuan Temple,
just outside of Tamsui. Maybe like a 10-minute
drive, not far. So although we happen to be here during cherry
blossoms, I have to admit that the pagoda that you can see behind
me looks pretty cool only on its own. I saw
some reviews online that said, “Don’t come if the flowers aren’t in season.” I don’t
know. It looks pretty spectacular to me. It looks
like we maybe can go up there and take a look around
the main level, so we should probably go do that. When I was researching this
trip and learned that cherry blossoms might be
blooming yet again, I also learned that they
are symbolic of new beginnings or rebirth or
turning over a new chapter. Isn’t it wonderful
that we’re here seeing cherry blossoms on
day number one of jump-starting our healing journey here
in Taiwan? Seems kind of perfect. [Day 2] Good morning, friends. Welcome
to day two of our epic road trip in very
northern Taiwan. We stayed last night at a quirky,
fun hotel that looks like a boat. The things
you find in Taiwan. It was complete with all kinds of fun roadside-type attractions like
a Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty, and
they’ve got a wedding chapel. And included as your
guests will be three heads from Easter Island. We’re already married, so we didn’t do that.
Now we’re heading to a nearby attraction that, fingers
crossed, works out for us. A couple months each
year in very northern Taiwan, there’s a phenomenon
that occurs that only takes place at low tide. And
it is a natural thing and it’s like green mossy stuff
on some coral, I guess. And so that’s where we’re
walking starting out this day to see if luck
is on our side and to see if the green stuff
is visible. It looks super pretty from the photos, so fingers crossed. Well, we’ve just come
around the corner and way off in the distance there are a bunch of people and it looks like it’s
green. So I think luck is indeed on our side today. I make it sound like it’s luck that
we’re here at this time with the waves dramatically
popping behind me. But actually I did check the
tide charts online to make sure that we came
here at low tide. And remember that this green
algae is only visible a couple of months of the year. And we just happened to be here
during the right time. So that part is luck. Being here during low tide,
that was planning. That was really cool. And the camera is safe, don’t worry. Heather got the shot. Aren’t you worried you’re gonna get wet? It took a lot of work and risk. Now we’re headed to another nearby point that we had to get on just because
it’s so close. That’s where we’re headed now. And I’m keeping you in suspense. We made it. Get in here and celebrate. We both made it. This is great. We think this is the northern-
most point in Taiwan. It’s not clearly marked, but it’s, I guess, one of these
rocks behind us. This is about as close as we can get to the northern-most point in Taiwan. We’re pretty sure the actual northern
most point is this, but you can see there’s no path. So this is it. We were so close to it that
we had to come by. Feels like triumph. So I don’t know, other things
have felt like triumph in Taiwan, we’re gonna count it. Yeah. If you decide to come here, learn
from our mistakes. We moved our car and we didn’t have to. There is a parking lot that
Google Maps has marked in English as the “five minute
walk parking spot”. It’s a five minute walk
to the green algae natural formations and a 15 minute walk to the northern-most point in Taiwan. And we would recommend parking there and not having to move your car. And there’s no cost to it at all. Also there are a lot of tour
groups coming in now like by bus loads. I’m glad we got started when we did. It’s late morning. Not too bad. Lastly, we’ve been cracking
up on this walk because there is a bird, this tiny bird
that we’ve not been able to film. But it sounds just
like the sound of our Japanese camper van shutting down, which is very unexpected. And if you haven’t seen that video, click the link over here. Over there. Or here, one or the other. We’re now taking a bit of a
detour headed inland about 15 minutes to some what
looks like rice paddy, plantation type things, similar to what we have seen on
the East coast of Taiwan. So we’re so close that we decided
we better make that journey too before we
continue on our way. Well, there’s no parking up here, but we managed to find a little
pull out spot from a road that doesn’t look like
it’s used very often. So that should be okay for
the couple of minutes that we’re here. Also that’s our rental for
the next five days. It’s a little Toyota. It’s cute. We’re gonna name it Ghosty. Charlie. Snowflake? Charlie? Why Charlie? I don’t know. No, we’re gonna call it Ghosty because we’re really bad
at naming things. Even though there is no parking spot, there is a little observation
lookout that actually is even signed. So this is like an official stop. This isn’t something that we made off. Oh, it looks like even there’s
a nature walk with signs. Do we have time for that? I don’t know. Maybe not. It was really pretty here though. The helpful sign on the observation
deck says that this is the largest stone-
walled rice paddy terrace in Northern Taiwan. I believe it is pretty large. The community has been working together
to restore this land which had been laid bare and hadn’t
been used for anything. It is nice to see it coming back to life and being used for rice now. That was not the way he was
supposed to turn. You wanna ride? Yeah, we’re going the other way. Oops. Blooper! Try again? This shadow looks like Sherlock Holmes. It does. Well, it is lunchtime. So we’re headed to a nearby town that looks like it has a
street food market. And that is certainly one of the things that we fell in love with when we were in Taiwan last time. So I think it could be hopping. It’s Sunday, it’s lunchtime. I bet the vibes there are gonna be cool. We’ll tell you the name of the city when we figure out how to pronounce it. We have safely stored our
car in this town that is named this. [Jinshan] So we’re gonna go ahead to
their street market. It’s daytime on a Sunday. And judging by the amount of
cars that are here, it is going to be packed. I think we might’ve underestimated how many people are gonna be here. We are not to the
street food yet, but we found street food on the
way to the street food. And this is something that
we’re stopping for because I have dreamed about these
for the past two years when we first had them in Fenqihu,
I think it was. And I am not going to preamble
it anymore. This is some kind of a wicked,
fabulous donut. It is not quite as good as the
original ones we had, but it’s pretty damn good. It’s sort of like a croissant and a donut if they got married and had a baby. That’s what this is, and it’s amazing. [Jinbaoli Old Street] It’s beyond packed here. I’m not sure we’re gonna be able to
walk this multiple times. We might have to get things as we go. So busy. Yes. Oh yeah, we’re definitely gonna
start with those. What do you got there, Bill? So it wasn’t at all what I expected, but it’s a whole bag of things for NT$120. Well, we’ll snack on those later.
-Yeah. Ice cream is not lunch. Okay, that might be happening. Is that happening? That maybe is the first thing. I mean, other than the other first thing. And she also suddenly forgot
about the cronut. Usually where we’re from, you have the sweet thing at
the end of the meal. Nobody likes a fact checker, Bill. We have to two of something. Oh, it’s a roll. Ooh, sauce got dumped on it. Yes! All right, the kind proprietor
has a little table for us to try these. Only one stick, so I guess I’ll go first. She always goes first. Oh, it’s jiggly. How do I get this out? This is gonna be so amazing. Mm. What is it? This is sort of like a spring roll. It has a soft wrapper on the
outside with a sauce that’s a little bit sweet and sour-y. The inside seems to be maybe
like a ground pork mixed with green onions and
definitely garlic, maybe a little bit ginger, a
tiniest bit of spice, and some shrimp. It’s absolutely delicious. And it is very difficult to eat. The best street food, I feel like, is kind of difficult to eat. This is amazing. It’s really good. Provided I can actually eat it. I ate all of mine really fast, so we have to wait for Bill to eat
his so we can film it. That was strategic on my part. I’m very hungry. Do you see? It’s slippery! I thought it would be hard
like an egg roll. Oh dear. It’s slightly spicy too. Yeah. It’s like a chicken sausage
in the middle. Heather thought shrimp. I’m thinking it’s just chicken. I thought shrimp and pork. That was really good. This is very promising. Thank you. Don’t cut stuff off. That’s the best bits. We’ve definitely had Taiwanese
sausages before, usually in the form of a hot dog, but this just looks so good. I had to have it. It’s really hot, I need to wait. (laughing) Three days later. It’s just so good and so different than the hot dogs we have at home. It’s a little bit sweet and salty
at the same time. it’s just delicious. Save some for me! I really want the record to state that the next thing that we’re getting was not my idea for once. Bill? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is Bill in line for a donut? Yes, he is. He really, really is. Apparently the sausage counts as lunch and now we need like a sweet intermission before we go back to having
something savory. I don’t know, I don’t pick up the rules. Ooh, it gets powdered sugar on it. Or something that looks like
powdered sugar. Thank you very much. This might be Bill’s idea, but I’m the donut expert. So don’t you guys think that I
should try this first? Bill? It’s not funny. I can feel your guys’ support
through the internet and all of you voted that I
should try it first. So thank you for that. Bill’s very disappointed. All right, so this is a crispy
donut honey glaze with like a powdered sugar
thing on the outside. Bill’s donut, here goes. Oh. It’s crispy. I’m getting a close up of the powdered sugar. The powdered sugar went everywhere. That is super crispy and
it is really good. I think I prefer the croissant
donut that we had first, but this is also really high up there. The donuts that we have in Taiwan
are absolutely fantastic and this is no exception. Okay, you may eat your
donut now, Bill. How much powdered sugar am I
gonna get on my face? Heather’s still got some on
hers, by the way. (laughing) You should really
clean that off. That’s excellent and completely different
than the last one. So you’ve got a totally different
flavor to the dough and it’s got a crispy texture
on the outside. It’s really good. Two donuts. Shame on us. I don’t actually regret it though. Maybe like a tiniest bit, but not really. Donuts are healing, right? There was this lady making
sweet potato pancakes and we had to have one. It just looked really good. Here goes. So it’s fried, it’s not as sweet
as I was expecting. It’s nice and toasted on
the top and bottom from the frying and it’s really good. Well, I’m not saying that was like
the healthiest lunch that we’ve had and it was really
more a bunch of snacks, but what are you gonna do in
a Taiwanese food market like that? You’re just gonna snack. I feel like it’s the thing to do. We need to go onward because we
still have one more thing that we wanna do today and it’s getting
on in the afternoon. Man, that was such a good food scene. That was fun. I’m glad
that we stopped there. We are at our next stop, which
is Yehliu Geopark. And apparently you have to get tickets to enjoy the nature here. So we’re gonna go sort that
and be on our way. Yehliu? Yehliu? Yehliu. Yehliu. Thank you. Thank you. And we’re in. I admit I didn’t really realize
this was like the Disney of rock formations. I kind of have high expectations now. This is quite the buildup. There’s a few people here. This might be like the busiest thing that we’ve ever done anywhere
in Taiwan, I’m thinking. Oh yeah, definitely. It’s bonkers. I don’t know if it’s because
it’s a Sunday or like it’s late in the afternoon. So there’s like nice light. I don’t know how to explain this. This is by far the most people we’ve seen at anything we’ve done anywhere
in Taiwan. And we’ve done a lot of things. We have done an awful lot of things. Cherry blossoms are pretty, but Jasmine smells amazing. And it is blooming and just so fragrant. Coral formations here all have names. I call this one giant mushroom. This one is giant-er mushroom. Actually this one kind of looks
like a fish tail. Giant-er mushroom. If you watch our videos for
learning English, giant-er is not an English word. Here we have baby mushrooms on log. Have we mentioned that we are really
bad at naming things? [Day 3] Welcome back to day three
of our pretty epic, very Northern Taiwan road trip. We’ve made our way to Yangmingshan
National Park. Did I say that right, Yangmingshan? I think you said it right. And what are we doing today, Bill? We’re going on a hike. Where?
– To the tallest peak in the area, which I also can’t remember the name of. Mount Qixing. We’re gonna hike up to Mount
Qixing today and it is a spectacular day in March. It rains so much in the winter in Taiwan. We are really blessed to have
a sunny day today. And I think this is the perfect way to wake up our legs and our bodies. So let’s hit it. Today is also the day where
we hope to find a little bit of peace and quiet somewhere and fill you in on what’s been
going on in our lives for the last year and a half. We intended to do it yesterday, but it was just way too crazy of a day. So it will be today instead.
This is a lot of what we’re gonna be doing today. Stairs, stairs, stairs. Already setting layers? Going straight up we’ll do that to you. It gets the heart going. We arrived to Menghuan pond and have our first view of
where we’re headed. That peak up there is where we’re
gonna continue climbing to, Mount Qixing. It’s kind of nice to have a quiet
break here at the pond before continuing on because
we’ve already done a fair amount of stairs. I just saw how high up it looks
like we’re going. People look so small up there. What a dumb idea are these hikes? They’re just these little specks.
Gosh. Before we started this hike, we stopped by the visitor center’s very helpful rangers. They gave us a description of
how the park works and all this stuff, all the
volcanic activity. What they also said was at
the top of the peak that we’re hiking to, you can see
all of Northern Taiwan from Taipei right around to, I can’t remember the city
on the east side. Jinshan. Jinshan. It’s basically almost the entire
route of our road trip. We’ll be able to see from one
point on this mountain. Assuming it’s clear, which so far it is. One kilometer, it will probably
be straight up! It turns out today is just
a little bit hazy. And surprisingly, we are part
way up on our climb and we’ve emerged to a view of Taipei, as though Taipei is right there at the base of the mountain
that we’re climbing. We didn’t really realize how close
we were to Taipei, but in fact, I can even see Taipei
101 off in the distance. It is shocking. It’s sort of just like a hazy
outline of Taipei 101 but there’s no mistaking that
that is Taipei 101. I just can’t believe that Taipei
is right there. We’re trying to get out of the city. What happened here? We found our way back accidentally. There is an abundance of snakes
in the Yangmingshan area. Snakes. We’ve only seen like a little
lizard gecko things, but not snakes. No snakes. It is well-documented. No snakes. Okay, this is pretty amazing. We’re going through like a
young bamboo grove and it just sort of carves out
the walkway in between it and it’s delightful. Another thing that’s well-documented
about us is that we love the bamboo groves. They don’t grow in Minnesota. We love running into them in the wild. This is pretty cool. The watch says we’ve got only 5,570 steps. Really? How is that possible? And we’ve been walking for an hour and we’ve gone up 58 flights
of stairs so far. We’re wondering if this is the
largest number of stairs we’ve ever climbed to get up a mountain. It’s not, we have done more. Really? What was that? We used to travel and not film things. Weird. And in Italy, we climbed over a
hundred flights of stairs. We’re not done yet. We think we’re almost to the top and it turns out that now
we are the bugs. We can see the pond that we
started at down below. We’re almost there. We can see one of the peaks and then the other one is just
on the other side. We hope. Well, we made it to the top where there is a really nice breeze
that is nice for us. but not so great for the audio. But we made it to the East peak. We still have to hit the main
peak of Mount Qixing. It still feels like a little
bit of triumph on the way to bigger triumph. We think we’re there. All right. It’s the final push to the top. It’s all downhill from here. Oh wow, the view got even better. Proof. We made it. Don’t you think it’s less
hazy than it was? I can see Taipei 101 more
clearly, can you? It’s cause we’re so tall now. Oh, maybe, I don’t know. We started the day way down
there, way back there. It seems like forever ago, so
many stairs ago. So very many stairs. We’re gonna be in such good
shape after this. It’s gonna be amazing. All right, we’re headed back down. There is a site toward the bottom and that’s where we’re gonna pick you up. I think maybe there’s some, oh God,
tourist falls or a death. Bad tourist, bad tourist, bad tourist. I’m so ashamed. Bad tourist. Heading back down, there’s a
site toward the bottom that has some sulfur coming
out of the ground. So that’s where we’ll pick you up. Okay, good. Okay. Perfect. Cool. Okay. We made it, we are back down
at the visitor center where we started our day. It took us two hours to go up and one hour to come back down. And boy, our our legs jiggly,
like jello jiggly. Very, very tiring. But the views up there were
absolutely fantastic. And when you come down on this side, you’re greeted with the sulfur
coming out of the earth because we are on one of the fault lines that runs across northern Taiwan. A lot of the time, it sounds like
a jet engine running. Very strange. Thankfully, it’s not super active
in a dangerous way. It’s active in like a low-key way, which is how we like our volcanoes. We still have other things we want to do in Yangmingshan National Park
before we leave. So I’m glad that we still have a
few hours of daylight left. We made it to our second destination. We are at Bamboo Lake. Maybe there’s a bunch of flowers
in bloom here. That’s why we’re here to find out. It seems awfully busy. So I think our luck might be holding out. It’s awfully busy. It’s really tricky to get
in your actually. There’s kind of a traffic jam. There’s a lot of hustling for parking, but we managed to find one on the
street, which is great. LEt’s go take a look, see if we
can find this place. The fact that there’s so many people here usually means good things. Well, this is really pretty, but so far we’re not finding
like the flower fields that you can see on Google Maps anyhow. I’m not sure where the flower fields are. It’s kind of nice to walk around
on something flat. I think we’re headed the right way. Good things are coming. We found the fields. I did not know that this kind of lily grew in water like this. I had no idea. They’re so pretty. Anytime you mass plant something,
it’s gorgeous. Even if it’s grass, but if it’s flowers, it’s that much better. This was a fun stop. You could pay a little bit extra
to go into the gardens and even pick some of the flowers. But the free version that we did
was also really nice. It was really nice. And basically just wandering through
the community gardens, with a bunch of tiny businesses
running these beautiful flower fields. It’s great. I love the enterprising flower farmers. Try saying that five times fast. Enterprising farmer flowers,
flower farmers. Do you even tell me that we
drove half an hour making wrong turns and made a
whole nother lap to see this? The flower clock doesn’t
have any flowers, but it has music. The park itself is lovely. There’s all sorts of flowers blooming. What are you complaining about? As we were walking in, she said, no, no, no, no, no, you have to
save all the camera work for the main event. The flower clock. It turns out it’s just a clock. It’s just a clock. It’s a giant clock. Surrounded by gardens that are beautiful. Yeah, so now I’m gonna film the crap out of the other flowers, which
actually are fun. That’s fair. That’s fair. All right, I’ve managed to find
a little bit of peace and quiet away from everyone while
Bill films the crap out of these beautiful gardens
that we’re at. The angle on this is not quite perfect, but I kind of feel like that’s life. So maybe it is perfect time after all to do our life update. When we began the video, we said
that we’ve been through the hardest year and a half of our lives and it might’ve felt overly
dramatic for YouTube, but it actually is exactly the truth. We had been filming in Japan and we were returning home
a year and a half ago and we learned right when we landed that our sister-in-law was
on life support. She had suffered an allergic reaction
to some medicine that she was given at the start
of routine surgery and unfortunately passed away. Not long after that, my dad’s
health began failing. He had had cancer for seven years and had been responding well to chemotherapy until he stopped responding
well to chemotherapy. And that happened at the
beginning of 2024 and his health just steadily declined
throughout the year and we managed to make another
return trip to Japan and then we were filming
in Northern Europe when we got the call to come home, which we did immediately and six
weeks later he passed away. It wasn’t even a year in between
my sister-in-law passing and my dad passing. So during that time after my dad passed, after we got home from Northern Europe, we decided that we needed to
take time for ourselves and we sort of went dark for
about five months. We didn’t even have the energy
or the words to be able to update everybody
with what was going on and found that we needed to
focus on our families rather than our business and travel. And we just hunkered down at home
and spent time with them and worked through the grief
with both families. The truth was we weren’t
ready to travel yet until this year. Picking up the camera and talking
about what you’re doing and having the energy and the enthusiasm to share what you love to do is something that is difficult to do while you’re
managing your grief from loved ones passing away. We weren’t ready yet and now we felt
that the time was right, with a little bit more distance, between both
of their deaths until now. And that’s why we’re back in Taiwan and going on this journey of healing and finding our way back
to being creators. So if you have been watching
us for a while and you’re still watching us,
thank you so much. We really appreciate your
continued support as we find our way back. Things might feel a little
bit different now as we continue to navigate our grief while we’re filming and that’s just life while you
do what we do, I guess. And if you’re new here, sorry for the little bit of a downer in the middle of our video, but we really wanted to share
what had been going on behind the scenes to our fans that have been watching us for a while. Please stick around because we
normally like to showcase the destinations that we visit. That is our passion. We’re finding our way back to it. And I would say that we have a little
bit of YOLO right now. You only live once, given that the deaths were from somebody who was really young and somebody
who had lived a full life. We’re asking ourselves, where
do we need to go? Where do we feel that is calling to us? For here it was Taiwan. This is the beginning. We have so many destinations that
we still wanna go to when we can’t wait to continue
sharing them with you. But first, we still have a
lot to see of Taiwan. Thank you again for sticking
around for us and for all your support. [Day 4] Good morning friends. It is day… What day are we on? It’s been so many days we’ve
been on this trip. I think it’s day four. Okay. And it might be looking like
we’re starting the day with a walk on the beach. And I guess we sort of are. But we are headed to what I’m possibly singly most excited about
on this road trip. It’s something we did not get to
do last time we were here and I really wanted to. And maybe we’ll keep you on suspense
just a little bit. It’s walking just from our hotel. I’m so excited. This building is abandoned and
seems to be coming down, which is too bad because it looks
like it was super cool. Also, does Taiwan have a lot of abandoned
buildings like that? Ah, that’s a hint of where
we’re walking to. We’re here. These are Taiwan’s arguably
famous UFO houses, flying saucer houses. These are the Futuro houses. This was originally built as a community, a little seaside escape here in Taiwan that was mysteriously abandoned. And you can go inside some of the houses that are not lived in and
are not barricaded. So we are wearing our tennis shoes. We’re gonna be safe about this,
but I’m so excited. I’ve been wanting to go in these
for several years and I’m so excited to finally be here. That’s a little bit nerdy. That’s what it is. I cannot believe I am here. This has been on my bucket list forever. This is such a mysterious place. You can sort of feel the weird energy. I could feel what is happening. Oh my gosh, what just happened? Where am I? Oh, I’m back. I have got to post this to social media. Do I have a signal? Of course I have a signal. I have Ubigi eSIM on my phone and they connect me no matter
where I am in this world and possibly beyond. If you want to use Ubigi as well, we have a special discount
just for our viewers down in the description below. Stay connected wherever you
are on this world and maybe somewhere else too. Okay, we’re not sure we’re going
to go in the first one. The door seems to have fallen off. So you can see most of what
you need to see just by looking in the front door. There’s a bedroom in the back. It looks like a living room seating
area in the front and maybe a kitchen in the middle. I don’t know where the bathroom is, but it’s all just falling apart. These look so cool. If this had been an option to
stay in as a hotel room, I absolutely would have stayed
here last night. Somebody should redevelop these
for the tourists. I would do it. There’s even some platforms
where it’s clear some of the houses used to be
and they’re not anymore. How does an entire house disappear? This one is much more ruin-y
than the last one. What happened here? What the heck? It’s totally destroyed on the inside,
but not the outside. What? I’m so confused by what I’m seeing. How does the inside of something
end up in splinters, but the outside is completely
intact like this, except for the glass windows? We’re not really sure what the rules are on being able to go in these versus
the ones that you can’t. I know that some of them are
still being lived in and so obviously we wanna be
careful and respectful. There’s one of them that does not
look lived in at all. It has broken windows and stuff, but the stairwell is barricaded. What does that mean? Are we gonna regret not going in that? Do we come this way but once? Maybe the community had to leave because like a storm blew in. There are boats here though. Why would you leave your home and not bring your boat with you? I guess maybe if you don’t have
somewhere to store it? There’s like a lot of boats
here that are inland. It’s such a mystery. Such a mystery. Some of them look a little bit less like our idea of a flying saucer. This one is sort of still super
futuristic looking and there’s more of these in fact than the flying saucer kind. This is just so mysterious. These are a time capsule. Look at the television and
the washing machine. And there’s still dishes on the sink. Somebody didn’t do the dishes. Like how quickly do these people
have to leave? This one here is just storing
somebody’s surfboards. This one’s empty. This one’s ready for company. What is this, an old game console? I wonder what game it was. What is that in the corner? I had to come and see what was up
with the NASA spacesuit because it seems like somebody has a really good sense of humor. Whoever you are, if you watch
this, I like your style. Area 51 is a popular UFO conspiracy
theory place in the United States or maybe it’s
truth, I don’t know. We have some pyramids, the moon, you know who knows. I like this. There’s also a bedroom back here
with the sheets still made. I don’t know who did this. [nerd] I love it. This is pretty wild. I am glad that we came. If you are watching this and you
have more information about what happened here and why all
the places are abandoned and furniture and boats and
stuff are left behind, can you let me know down in the comments because I did look online and wasn’t
able to really find a concrete answer. And that might be because my searches
were all in English. Maybe you have better information
than we do. Bill also doesn’t believe my
otherworldly adventure. I can’t say that it didn’t happen, but I can’t say that it did. I would totally rent one of these
here on vacation. It’s amazing. The property, it looks incredible. Somebody restore these! We are at our next place for today. B2 Cape. We’re not sure how to say that. It’s almost like it’s Beethoven
Hot Springs, but it’s missing a letter or two. Anyhow, this hike looks beautiful. We’re here in mid-afternoon and I think the timing could be perfect. There’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s gorgeous. It’s not like our legs have recovered
from yesterday. Maybe there’s no stairs in this one. There’s probably stairs. There’s probably stairs. Right here, the first part of the trail, we’re overlooking Bitou’s elementary school. They have an amazing view. My elementary school didn’t look
anything like this. It’s a pineapple tree, we think. We’ve decided those are probably
not actually pineapples, but they look like them. We have no idea what fruit that is. One of the many reasons we hike, you get to smell the flowers. This is Jasmine. There’s a butterfly. There’s a butterfly. Anyway, we don’t get Jasmine growing
naturally at home. You can have it as a home plant, but it’s just too cold where we live. And this is just great because
it’s growing wild. It’s been lining the path for the
last few hundred meters. It’s lovely. Oh, that’s gorgeous. The view from up here is mighty fine. It’s so nice, it’s beautiful. How do you choose what to video? I know. It’s really tough. We have ocean on this side. We have a spectacular landscape
if we look inland. It’s just absolutely beautiful. Oh, that’s Teapot Mountain. We can see Teapot off in the distance. Is that close? Yeah, it’s right there. We climbed that and Mount Banping and that was also a spectacular hike. And we’re just gonna link
that right up here. That’s really how we got introduced to this rugged coastline here. And two years ago, we looked
at it and we said, “This is amazing, we have to come back.” And here we are. And here we are. We were first in Taiwan two years ago for five and a half weeks. In five and a half weeks, we
saw a lot of Taiwan. You might say you should be able
to see all of Taiwan. The answer is no, absolutely you can’t. Taiwan keeps surprising us. There’s always more to see,
always more to do, always more to eat. We could keep coming back here again
and again and again. That’s kind of our channel’s
motto, isn’t it? Pretty much. There’s always more of everything. These views are just ridiculous. They’re just in every direction. You can see the undulations
of the mountains. And then to have the water in frame
also is just so, ah, gorgeous, just so gorgeous. It really is just so beautiful. And then there go the trucks
doing their business, reminding you that life down there
just continues on, despite the stunning landscape
surrounding it. Every direction, this is just
such a beautiful hike. Wow. The hike’s actually pretty easy, aside from the steps we had
to go up again. You sound out of breath.
What do you mean easy? Well, relatively speaking. The path is really smooth. Everything’s well maintained. This is actually probably the smoothest
trail we’ve done since we’ve been here in
Taiwan this week. And it’s honestly the least effort
with the most payoff. I think so far.
– I agree. Well, that hike was relatively
short and sweet with fantastic views and not at all
like our hike yesterday with 97 flights of stairs. And you may be asking yourself, well, weren’t 97 flights
of stairs enough? In our mind, yeah, that was
actually plenty. Yeah, it was. It really was. That was a lot. But doing this hike we got a
completely different view of a different little part of Taiwan. And we’re really glad we did it. And this is why we keep going
hiking different places. It really lets us see a different
perspective wherever we travel and you never know what you’re gonna see or what
you’re gonna smell if you stop and smell the flowers. Or the fish in the fishing village. It really is the ultimate
form of slow travel, which is something we aspire to. Even if we’re not quite perfect at yet, we’re still working on it. Yeah, we’re Americans, so we’re
hardwired to rush around. We’re working on it.
It’s a process. Now we’re going to go check into
our hotel for the night. And tomorrow we are going
to go to not one, but two incredibly popular destinations
in Northern Taiwan that we missed when we were
here last time. So don’t go anywhere. [Day 5] Good morning friends. Good morning. Welcome to day five of our road trip. Something that we haven’t done
yet on this trip in Taiwan was something that we
absolutely fell in love with last time we were here. And that is all sorts of varieties
of bicycle rentals. And behind me, you can see
that we have stumbled across some U-bikes. There are some tunnels near here, and that is where we’re headed
first today. Before we go to the two super-touristy, very popular locations that we
have in mind for today that we are excited about, but first we want to go for a bike ride. We switched to our action cam today for our bicycle ride heading
to some tunnels that look pretty cool. And this is really a peaceful
part of Ruifang. I’m not positive how
you pronounce that. Ruifang, Ruifang. Anyhow, we’re excited to get
on some bicycles. Now we gotta figure out
where we’re going. Where are we going? Why are you so short? I don’t know, let’s fix that. There we go. It looks like we’re already here. That was not far, not bad. I’m kind of a train nerd
and I’ll admit it. Heather’s also a train nerd,
but she won’t admit it. I am not a train nerd. I am nerdy about many things. Trains are not one of them. Well, believe it or not, that
was short and sweet. We wanted to go through the tunnels. We’ve been through the tunnels. We saw a train on the other side. There’s a river on the opposite
side of the trains. And I guess we’re gonna head
back short and sweet for our little bike ride today before we head on to other things. Aw, look at our bikes. Aren’t they so cute together? They are. Well, it took us a little bit longer
than it should have because Bill is too friendly. Bill’s making some friends. If you see us and we’re out filming, he is the one you wanna talk to. We’re headed back to our car now and on to our next destination today. Bill?
– Yes? Well, we are at our next destination
for today. This destination is a little bit
about healing for Bill because we are at Houtung. This is a city in Taiwan where the
number of cat residents, outnumber, the number of
human residents. So we are here to say hi to the cats, see if maybe there’s some cat-
themed food we can find. You want cat food for lunch? No. Yuck. Maybe the cats eat really well. Anyhow, this was something that
we weren’t able to go to when we were here two years ago and we’re making up for it today. So today, a little bit of
cat-themed healing. I know we’ve only been here
for you a few minutes, but these are the only cats
we’ve seen so far. Bill is eagerly awaiting his
chance with the cats. Yeah, there’s more of a dog person. I like dogs too, but I’m more
of a cat person. Dogs all the way. I don’t know how we’re married. A giant bag of cat food just went by. I guess the cats are well fed. I’m not sure if he’s into it. Hi kitty. Nope. Bye, Kitty. Well, we just finished lunch. It was really tasty. There’s sort of this restaurant row
at the very top of town. So we chose one of those. Yeah, we had some sandwiches,
Heather had a smoothie. I really like the milk teas here. Every chance I can get, I’m having one. Taiwan’s the source, right? And now we’re looking for the cats. We’re thinking maybe they had a cat nap while we were eating lunch and maybe there are more that’ll
come out to play now because we’ve honestly hardly seen any. It’s very surprising. So we are gonna go on a cat hunt now. We’ve only seen about three so far. Let’s go look for some more. Do you know where the cats are? Hey, do you know where the cats are? You can’t find them. He doesn’t know either. Never fear, we found a few. Okay. Heather, you have a friend. Oh, hi. He’s a big boy. A friendly guy. Oh, another one. Hi, kitty. Bye, kitty. I think she’s calling this one. What? I don’t have anything for you? I think they’re well fed. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Did you see it? Oh! You’re blooping, kitty. It’s a hot cat. Meow. Bill can’t resist ice cream. So I had to get this. It’s Okinawa black sugar pearl, and I just had to try it. It’s really good. It tastes exactly like the
little boba pearls that you sometimes get at the
bottom of milk teas. Delicious. You’re gonna lose one. You
had better eat it! Well, between the ice cream and the cats, Bill might not come home with me. He might just stay here in Taiwan. Are you ready? Can’t I pet just one more cat? No. Haven’t you petted enough? No. I love a good theme, but what, what, what are these? Are these reindeer? Are they, and what is this? None of these are cats. That especially is not a cat. I don’t know what to make of that. Now the lollipop over here with
the flowers is kinda cute. But again, what is that? A giant jelly bean? I don’t know. It is sort of wearing like Christmas
lights as antlers. So maybe it’s a Christmas thing. I don’t know. I don’t recognize it. I don’t know what it is. It’s not a cat. That’s
all I know. Bill didn’t even want me to film this one because it makes him sad. It’s a melted upside down ice cream cone. Well, there weren’t quite as many cats as I was expecting to be honest, but it was still a fun stop. Do you feel like you got a little
bit cat therapy, Bill? That was nice. We think that there are
normally more cats that are around and out walking about, but it’s a pretty hot day, so we think they’re just hiding
and sleeping in the shade. On to our next destination. Where are we going? I guess you’ll find out in the car. We are at our next spot. This might be the most touristy
thing we’ve done anywhere in Taiwan. There are one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 12 buses. Just in this parking lot. Just in the parking lot that our car is in. There are 12 giant tour buses. If you’ve watched our Taiwan videos and you know where we haven’t been, maybe you have a guess at
where we are now. If you haven’t guessed it,
we are in Shifen. This is a very touristy town
known for three things. It’s waterfall, the train that
runs through the old town, and lanterns that get let
off into the sky. We’re doing all three. The number of tourists here are
just really something else. Maybe more than Juifen? I bet this is on the same tour as Juifen. It’s so close. We have a whole video about
how we missed seeing the Merlion in Singapore. And then we missed it a second time. It’s here. This is unbelievably bad luck. Unbelievably bad luck. Closes at 16:30. If you’re wondering what time
it is, it is 16:35. Somewhere in there is a waterfall. But not one that we’re gonna see. You can’t see it from there, Bill. This we teased a waterfall Here is some spectacular drone
footage of a waterfall that was near our hotel this morning. Bill really wanted to be able to use it. Here you go! Well, we hope that you enjoyed
the waterfall that this section of the
video started with because we have even more footage
of that waterfall. And we’re just gonna drop that here because Bill was disappointed that we had to cut some of it. YouTube, when things don’t go as planned. So here we are in Shiffon. It is very popular for two things, two remaining things, the train and the lanterns and a waterfall that we don’t get to see. Yeah. Well, we got to see a tiny bit of it. Here, I’ll show you the tiny bit of it. Yeah, there’s a tiny waterfall. It’s not the main event. It’s too bad. Here we are in Shifen. Shifen’s great! Ah, nuts. Yes, we are in Shifen. Home to the rail line that goes
through the middle of Old street, home to a waterfall, and home to lanterns that get
sent up into the sky. This is really sort of nuts, honestly. I didn’t know what to expect, but this is just crazier than
I expected, I guess, with all the lanterns
and the people. And one didn’t take off all the
way and came back down, but people were staying by
with a watering can, so they were able to put it out. The sellers of these lanterns, they run this thing like a
well-oiled machine. Wow. They’re very good. And the people are already
back in the tracks. Just like that. That train came through faster
than I expected. I kind of thought it would
barely move along, but it actually came through
at a pretty good clip. I actually thought that they were
going to clear people several minutes before the train
came through, but no. 30 seconds ahead of time. All of a sudden, the lady
comes by and quickly ushers Heather out of the way, and about 10 seconds later,
the train came. Yep, true story. The truth is, letting all those
lanterns go into the sky, they have to come down somewhere, and it’s horrible for the environment. But there is one shop that has a method that they’ve developed that is
environmentally friendly, and it completely burns up in the sky, and doesn’t come down as trash that the locals then don’t have to deal with. The shop owner here is super nice, too. He’s gonna help us with some photos, and he also gave me a little lantern, and obviously we thanked him so much. He’s just super, super nice. So if you come here and you
want to put a lantern into the sky, please do the environmentally-
friendly one. Please, please, it costs
a little bit more. The Earth is worth it. So if we’re gonna do this, we’re
gonna do it right. We’re going environmentally friendly. [Tales From Our Pocket] [Better Times Ahead] [Resilience, Courage, Strength] [Dad, Erin, Rick] [Rest in peace] Mine doesn’t look as nice as yours. It looks fine. [Seek joy always] Okay. So we are sending this
off in memory of my dad, our sister-in-law, and my
best friend’s dad who passed away two months after my dad. Oh, I hope we don’t– Oh, okay. Okay? Okay. Okay? Oh, it’s getting warm. Yeah. Oh, it’s getting warm. Okay. Go! There it goes. They’re just constantly going
out around us. Well, we feel like that is a fitting end to a video about healing. Our journey’s not done yet. We have some great destinations
that we’re gonna go to. So if you haven’t already,
please subscribe, hit that bell icon so you’re notified
of any new videos. And we’ll see you next time. We’re out here just like the lanterns.
Bye. Thanks for watching.
Bye. [Heather’s dad]

We traveled in (very) northern Taiwan by car for 5 nights and saw some amazing things! We also share a life update and why we stopped making videos for 5 months at the end of 2024. If you’re just looking for the Life Update, look for that chapter (but also, there are many great moments in this video, so you’re missing out if that’s all you watch!).

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In case you like skipping around:
00:00 Back in Taiwan!

DAY 1
00:37 Tamsui
02:00 Tamsui Old Street
03:36 Fort San Domingo
06:30 Hobe Fort
08:46 Wuji Tianyuan Temple

DAY 2
12:25 Laomei Green Reef
15:58 Northernmost point of Taiwan
PARKING LOT: https://maps.app.goo.gl/uaEMyN26ThYABKnT8?g_st=am
18:16 Shimen Songshan Terraced Fields
21:35 Jinbaoli Old Street
30:24 Yehliu Geopark

DAY 3
34:05 Yangmingshan National Park
36:25 Mt Qixing Trail
45:23 Bamboo Lake
48:44 Flower Clock
50:23 LIFE UPDATE

DAY 4
54:52 Wanli Futuro Houses (!!!)
01:01:42 Heather explores
01:03:40 Bitou Cape Trail

DAY 5
01:11:34 Biking Old Houtong Tunnels
01:15:50 Houtong Cat Village
01:18:40 Bill & cat therapy
01:23:45 Shifen
01:25:05 Shifen waterfall
01:27:38 Central Shifen
01:29:42 Environment Friendly lanterns
01:30:28 Releasing grief

LANTERN SHOP: https://maps.app.goo.gl/H6tEn4erJxTazZgE8

#taiwan #taiwantravel #tamsui #台灣
#taiwantravel #taiwanvlog
#yangmingshan #wanli #shifen #houtong

**Filmed in March, 2025**