Taiwan

Too Taiwan or not to Taiwan, that is the question in many peoples minds these days.

Taiwan is touted as the forgotten surf destination & there are some very nice pics & vids taken there to be sure, to be sure. But is it a viable option for us in Oz with awesome Indo on our doorstep. Read on & I'll attepmt to give you an insight with my huuuge 2 weeks of experience in the country. Some of that time was even spent on the beach!!! ; D

Ok so yeah the missus & I were in Taiwan from the 14th to 28th of April (last month). I've heard the surf season is Nov - Mar when typhoons pass offshore sending swell to the East coast of Taiwan. So we were just outside of the end of the season.

Personally I'm not sure what I heard was totally correct & I found this when I was researching surfing Taiwan. There's a bit of conflicting info or stuff you might take differently from your own point of view. Mainly that Taiwan is serviced by the same typhoon swells as Japan & from my expeience they start earlier & finish earlier in Japan. Maybe Taiwan being a bit South of Japan is slightly different but I personally think the best time would be August to October for the bigger swells. But do they mean Nov to Mar is just the greatest frequency of chance to get out there in warmer water & surf when you have pre booked your holidays from work & don't have the privilage of watching the worldwide weather & thinking, oh the conditions are looking great for that country over there next week, better book a flight. Ha one powerball & hellz yeah. I'm thinking maybe its a combination of best winds, water/air temps & waves has formulated this opnion. So yeah I think this requires more research. Personally I prefer larger swells & a cross/onshore wind over clean small waves & I doubt the coldest Taiwan day would ever be too much concern in a springy or steamer. I was recomended at least a springy by few sources & a the wetsuit vest I wore a couple of times had me sweating. Teipei did get a bit cool in the late avro/evening, 1/2 way down Taiwan seemed a lot warmer but that could just have been those days. You know, like I said we were only there for 14 days. Weather was beautiful, 25c not humid like Bali & the water temp the same. You could hike & barely sweat & swim & feel fully refreshed & not cold. They call it spring, it was perfect.

We flew with Malindo who were great at transferring my 6 foot Hypto Krypto rippoff board protected by a 6 foot dayrunner inside a 6'4 dayrunner there & back undamaged. Just not so great at serving beers which were either unavailable or like...I asked for a beer when my meal was served, the nice lady said as soon as the meals were served which took about an hour, we were at the front. They finished, I went down to the toilet & asked them if I could grab a beer when I got out. The lady said of course, I am chilling it for you now LMAO...1/2 an hour later (90 mins total) I got a beer slightly cooler than room temp. Malindo are great for carrying your boards & have a 30kg luggage allowance. If they are heaps cheaper to reach your destination for you as they were for us to go to Taiwan, just make sure you eat first & have some duty free alcohol is you like a drink while flying. The flight home from Taiwan to Malaysia did not have inflight entertainment either, so make sure your prepared with a book or laptop just in case the plane randomly has no inflight entertainment. I would fly with them again no probs armed with that info.

Flying through Malaysia with Malindo you can stay at the Sama Sama (airside hotel) allowing you to break up your flight time & get some rest without having to leave the airport & go through customs. We did this & caught an early flight in the morning after some burger king brekky (hungry jacks). Makes it really easy.

Arriving Taoyuan airport we got a bloke to pick us up from the airport to drive us to a hotel in Teipei. The missus was interested in stuff in Teipei. The food was awesome & I picked up a new gaming mouse for $20 that retails for $59 cheapest rate on staticice. Hard to not have a good time just about anywhere when your on holiday, although a surfer will always be frothing for a glimpse of the ocean within a few days. Roast duck/pork on rice with stuff for like $2.80 was epic, but yeah was stoked to leave the city. Like Tokyo, I get really toey after 3 or 4 days & it felt like Tokyo.

www.vipcar.com.tw/ dropped a Nissan Livina off to us free of charge & we paid about $40 for them to pick it up from a hotel near Taoyuan airport, it was about $580au for 10 days. Good people, I would recommend them if your starting at the international airport & finishing at the international airport.

Now lets get more onto surfing haha, finally you might say if you managaed to read this far ; )...farks given = 0 I would reply ; D

So you have some time off & your thinking of a place to go. Is Taiwan a good destination for you...actually I might be getting a little aahead of myself here...sorry I'll get to surfing soon, I think : D

We got our wheels, a Nissan Livina that fit a 6 foot surfboard in diagnally with the back seats down. 2 suitcases, bags n sh1t. Cruisy light steering car with no cruise control & poor overtake acceleration. Petrol consuption was very light, we drove round Taiwan for a surprising $68.

The bulk of the above information is relevent to you if you or your partner feels a need to see the capital city of Taiwan. Most surfers will not be drawn to Teipei. Teipei allows you to check out some really nice places to eat & shop. Not usually top of a surfers priority list, yet you can put it into your calculation of to do or not based on you & your possible travel partners desires. My highlight was "Jiufen", which inspired "Spirited Away" by famous Japananese dude Hayao Miyazaki who made a number of cool animated cartoons. Taiwan has a Japanese colonial history I feel has had a positive effect on the country.

Ok OK so your chasing waves, is Taiwan the go?

Personally I had a great time. I love Chinese/Japanese food & even when you go to poplular places its very cheap by Oz standards. Beers are cheap & nice like $1.60 for a 600ml. Even Guiness Draught is about $2.60...In fact I would go as far as saying quality beer & food is cheaper than Bali...

Wave focussed...I'd recommend getting a domestic flight into Hualien or Taitung based on the best deal for a rent-a-car plus flight cost. If similar Taitung would be the go, but make sure you check out Taroko gorge just North of Hualien, its really nice. Swell was like 0.8 to 1.2 while I was on the coast with a really low swell period. Tide was high about 10am & low about 2pm. Jinzun seemed to like lows, otherwise I don't know. Wind was generally light in the morning & most days shifted cross shore Northerly by mid day. But then it was still light & there were so many protected places it wasn't an issue.

There were so many empty waves between Hualian & Taitung. Only semi crowded by my definition was Jinzun on the weekend. The place we ate dinner at in Donghe ther surfers B&B said 20 Japanese were staying. I belive they were the JInzun instacrowd, easy weekend wave away from Japan for them. But yeah, just driving down the coast I could see there are heaps of alternitive empty options.

Its just that Taiwan could have epic waves or just some small fun waves. You can see the possibilities no matter what swell, the coastline has endless possibilities. Its a place for gamblers & explorers with a high chance of payout with little risk. I will be back : )

Will add some pics later on...cheers

Hey Mick great write up / footage have looked at Twain a few times for something different just never pulled the trigger

Cheers guys....& finally here are some pics I said I'd upload & I will edit a longboard video from the Jinzun footage we took. Majority of people are surfing longboards in Taiwan from my extremely limited experience & like most places all like surfing the same spots. Although If you were on a surf focussed trip you'd score at least uncrowded or waves to yourself with a little exploring.

The coast roads cruisy as, great condition, wide, although extremely bendy & heaps of speeding cameras. Highways tell you one is coming up & the permanent boxes are easy to spot. The East coast speed cameras are typically just before/after a town & also easily spotted with a cop car in front of them. It seems like everyone speeds over 20km/h & we typically went with the flow. I was pulled over once over taking doig 50km/h in a 40km/h of 4 lanes with really wide sides (like 6 lanes) & the cops let us off. Seems like a genuine safety operation over revenue raising we have here in the West.

I got carsick driving from Taitung to Kenting, highly recommend not doing that run. You wanna focus on Hualien to Taitung & leave places outside as secret spots...not that the coast would be short of them if you wanna go a little harder chasing them. But at this time there is no point. My concern would be the inclusion of surfing in the Olympics, I predict this will be the turning point of Taiwan becoming crowded with Korean's/Chinese/Japanese. Recommend a visit before 2020 basically & unless you ride a longboard, although a great place. Given our geographic position here from Australia I doubt it would be a place you would return again & again if it got any busier than it is now, the attraction (value) is the cost of food/beer & uncrowded small fun waves with possibility of better waves. Apparently some are already saying the place is crowded & I'd agree if you felt compelled to surf the handfull of places on the surfing map.

But anyway if your missus is getting a little tired of Bali or you yourself feel like somewhere different albeit nice n warm with good food, nice people & most importantly cheap beer (from my pov haha) with a good chance of scoring a few waves Taiwan may well be for you.

I can't see the point of uploading too many more surf pics coz I've already uploaded a video that gives a good honest depiction of the kind of waves I had while I was there. ie small/fun

True funny/sad story though in regard to surfing video/photos. Over the 4 days I surfed within the 14 days we were there, 2 days/ 2 sessions, 6 surfs total...my missus would wander down to somewhere less wavey for a swim & had a great time scouring the beach for interesting rocks. I got into this as well. Taiwan has awesome looking rocks along the shore, especially where a river meets the ocean. We had an epic collection of round green jade, white marble, red whatever it was, grey black, other colours & rocks crisscrossed with contrasting colours. All located next to each other. Kenting was mostly greys, but Hualien to Taitung was really interesting to collect rocks along the beach. A geologists wet dream, we had a great time collecting rocks & narrowed our collection down to the best shape & colour...then when we boarded our flight we were informed our epic rock collection had been confiscated by customs. We were spew'n. I just can't help but wonder what happened to those rocks, did they end up in a tourist shop selling beautiful stones or did they dump them back on the beaches we'd removed them from, hopefully they didnt become landfill.

Anywayz heres a few piccys


The Taiwan wheat beers were my fave, but I like to contrast my drinks. Typically a guiness, then Taiwan gold or 18 days, dark beer, then light/dark etc...heaps better than Japanese beers which seem to have too many preservatives for a happy ending the next morning.

Like Japan they have these prefab concrete blocks to constcuct their groynes that make great seating for a post surf beer

The Lux place to stay in Donghe, worth the extra bucks...maybe just ask them if you can move brekky to lunch if the low tides later coz the brekky is like a 6 course meal wtf (awesome people btw) lol
room
2 or 3 peaks out front with a bigger swell


Nice to go right for a change
Although I did get a couple of lefts

Was cool to park right up on the action...the trusty Livina with my trusty 6'0 Hypto rip


No one out when we first arrived at Jinzun 1330, but yeah small...improved late arvo with low tide.

Just South of Hualien

You see way more fishermen than surfers in Taiwan





$2.80 each Roast Duck/Pork, we had this for 3 dinners & a lunch...so good


Jiufen which inspired "Spirited Away"


Jade & Marble are plentiful in Taiwan


That building is all marble



Not such a good example of the variety of rocks, but shows the random criss cross of contrasting colours.



Jinzun

Great Mick looks pretty cool place to travel thanks for taking the time to post the pics

LOL