Work in Philippines

Sunset in Manila...

Nan-Ao

Me and Dave went on another trip this weekend. This time our destination is Nan-Ao, a small village by Su-Hua highway (蘇花公路) between Ilan and Hualien.

Why did we go there? Just because tina accidentally read about it in this month's 'Taiwan Mountain" magazine, talking about a secret beach in nan-ao and showing several pictures with fabulous scenries, then when dave asked her where to go for this weekend she provided him this suggestion. She even had no idea where it exactly located and what else it had except for this 'secret beach'.

Secret beach... what an attractive name, especially to this girl who one day might be killed by herself's curiosity! After checking out travel book tina was pretty sure nan-ao would be a fun and very natural place to visit. Yeah, purely natural, it's the way both her and dave like for their travelling, so they both were very excited until dropping off the train.

Walking out of the train station, there're nothing but a few half-closed food vendors by two sides of the street in their sights. She was expecting the signs of hotels or shops or resturants outside the station, at least like the street fulong has. But no, it's no way like fulong, and it's much more quiet then fulong. We started to doubt why we came all the way to this quiet town, and what we could do in such a place that chinese socalled 'birds don't lay, dogs don't shit' for the whole weekend. There's no hotel at all but only 2 guest houses in 500 meters away from train station. The guest houses are just inside local people's houses, rooms are comparted in wooden panels, with showers inside or without showers, and the rest space of the house is stacked with old furnitures, stocked housewares in plastic bags, wooden budda statue, pickle jars...etc, all with a layer of dust on the top. The interior of the rooms are just like every ordinary country family's rooms or rooms in cheap whore house in taiwan. The bed sheet and quilt are in flowery pattern, the tv set is put on a wooden desk in dark brown color, the bathroom is on the side of the room seperated by a 7 ft concret wall which doesn't fully reach the ceiling so the bathroom can share light from bedroom. The old landlady charged us NT$500 per room per night. Well then we couldn't complain it for such deal.

We didn't and couldn't get any transportation to rent there, and we got to know the beach and the mountain trail that we could go visit was in walking distance, so the places we actually went were all reached on foot. From the village to the beach it took 40 mins to get, and most of time we were walking on the field paths with water melon fields, rice fields, and other vege fields on the sides. The weather was nice, the air was fresh with country smell, the mountains were ranked in layers like a picture, the surroundings were quiet with only birds frogs and insects' singing. It was so enjoyable until passing by a lap of cemetery area. The graves were tightly spreaded in 500 sq. meter area right by the small path, even tho it's bright in late afternoon, i still feel stressful walking inside them. While that chinese-learning foreigner was just curious about what the tombstones said fearlessly and didn't care about this chinese girl's fearness to ghosts, so that girl finally decided to leave him alone with those tombs and started to run...

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The secret beach is all in black sands, and the waves are in 1-3 meter high and very strong so people don't swim or do any water spots there. We just watched waves flapping on the beach and leaving pretty splashes on it. Behind us there's a small mountain, where we went for hiking and the trail on it is very natural and nice to walk on. There are a few signs telling you the plants and insects that you can see on this trail. Very educational and fun. From the mountain the whole pacific ocean and the beauty of the coast can be all in the sight. Dave asked me if I'd like to live with him in such a pretty place in any chances, I didn't think any but only kept nodding my head and smiled to him.

The other side of nan-ao village is Coast Mountain. You can actually trace the river up to the hotspring spot. Pity that we didn't have time to do it this time. Oh well, next time.