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A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow of a travel blog to Hualien, Taiwan by TravelPod blogger Robjstaples titled “Rockin Rollin Ridin out along the Pacific” Robjstaples’s travel blog entry: “Taiwan reminds me of an island in a children’s TV story. There’s a railway line down the west coast and the South China sea, and another on the west east along the Pacific Ocean, so buying a ticket from Taipei is easy. I was heading east, and the ride down the coast to the port town of Hualien seemed to take forever, stopping every 10 or 20 minutes. Even the people seemed to get on and off in slow motion. The scenery though was spectacular, squeezing down the narrow gap left between mountains and ocean as we were. Tremendous swathes of green reached up above us and a vast expanse of blue stretched out beyond empty beaches on the other side. Many of the beaches were so bleak After the huge, grandiose, awesome scenery I’d just passed through, the station at Hualien had me thinking I was back in toy town. It wasn’t antiquated or tatty, just incredibly low key. I managed to get the bus out of there looking for the hostel I’d phoned the previous day. The bus driver had an electric guitar on the shelf above his head – I liked this place already. The low key attitude got a bit much though when I was dropped outside a closed summer theme park and pointed across the road. Of the hostel, there was no sign. A bit of wandering found me exactly what I needed – the police! White faces wandering around …
