Death by Paint

Today I headed to Nehui for paint balling, it's fair to say it was pretty wet weather when we arrived and we almost didn't have anyone to shoot at as the other Taiwanese teams were not too keen about getting wet and muddy. But then the weather cleared up and we were on for a few actioned packed hours of shooting.

















Do you feel lucky punk!

I had a really mixed team of international guns but mostly made up of French guys, we managed to all get along, sort off. The might of been a few friendly fire incidents!














Jungle gorillas.















I'll take blue thanks you.

I've got to say I had great fun and I think we won most of our matches. The paint balling place is located in Nehui address, not exactly sure how to get there as I was on the back of a scooter taking a lift, but it's probably about a 10 minuet taxi ride from Huzhou MRT station, definitely worth a go especially as it's much cooler now and not so hot too run around.














Stick'em up.

Danshui Cycling

After having a rather lazy start to the day I thought I would try and do some type of activity so my weekend was not a complete blur. I decided that a trip up to Danshui was in order as I had not been there for a while and you can cycle for a few hours and then head off to have a drink along the rivers edge as the sun goes down








Dabshui harbour.

It's a pretty nice cycle route along the rivers edge, and you can rent bikes really easily, in fact I recommend that you get of at a few stop before Danshui it's less crowded on weekends and you can normally find a bike rental shop very close by.













Lobster anyone?

Train to Fulong

Today I though I would finally visit the beach at Fulong, it's one of the nicest beaches north of Taipei and really easy to get too. I took the train from Taipei Main Station, I think my ticket was about 100NT. The journey is about one and half hours and it's pretty interesting to look out the train window and see how the landscape changes as you leave Taipei. But if you're short on conversation a book or an iPod are recommended. I think the is the option of taking a faster train which gets you there in about an hour.







Fulong in perspective.

It's very easy to know when you have arrived at Fulong practically everybody gets off at that spot. Once you're there it's about a five minuets walk to the beach and you just have to buy a ticket for about 90NT and then you're in.














Slightly overcast but still nice and warm.

The beach was pretty nice and not very crowded when I went, the sand is pretty white and the sea was warm, the is a shallow reef so you can actually walkout quite far. You can surf at Fulong but I think the waves are better for body boarding.

All in all it was a great trip and I well try and visit there again when it starts to get warmer.















Entrance to the beach.














Leaving after watching the sunset.

Beaching Danshui

Ah it's been a great weekend visiting the beach on Friday, Hiking Saturday and then the beach again on Sunday, simply great, then I'm jetting of to California for a few weeks.











I was amazed that they had life guards even though none of them were actually face the sea while chatting away with each other.

Yesterday Matt had told us about a beach just a 10 minuet drive from Danshui, so we went too find it this morning.
















I could see two kids trying to making a sandcastle near the shoreline, so I thought I would have a go at a contemporary one.

ShiTing Moutain Hike

Today the hiking guru Matt organized for us to go on a six hour hike around ShiTing which apparently means Stone/Rock. Actually I think the trip was more for Georg to try and get fit for his Napole mountain challenge which happens in two weeks from now.

Hiking team.

The first part of the climb was a mega lung buster it’s was practically vertical the whole way up and very steep and we all arrived at the top like a bunch of sweating dogs! This was probably the most challenging part of the hike.

We had wanted to reach 600 meters but I think this was the highest we were able to get!

We were following the route from a book written by Robert Scott Kelly who had a hiking blog called Pashan. The book we had only had words and no pictures so we had to read along as we went to make sure we took the correct way, so the hike had quite a nice theme to it as we would stop along the way to check to see if we were on the right heading, it was almost like treasure hunting.

Matt reading the way we should go.

Top of the rock.

Laid back.

Georg taking in the views.

Simply beautiful, you can just about see the 101 tower in the background.

This was probably one of the best hiking trips I have been on so far and I defiantly plan to do more the views where amazing and it’s such a great way to get out of the city and take in the fresh air and explore the sights.

Nearly home.

Hot Spring Heaven Taiwan

After about 5 hours of waling around Yangmingshan Mountain and feeling slightly cold and completely drenched from the rainfall. Georg final treat was to take us to a hidden secret hot spring which a friend of his called Lars had found 7 years ago.

Rather nice engraving on stone.

The decent to the hot spring was really cool, because the was so much steam from the hot spring it created a very nice atmosphere.

The decent.

Jonny behind the foliage in the red jacket taking a photo, he slogged this huge Digital SLR Canon around with him all day and then proceeded to only take handle of shots, quite funny and he is on the way to becoming a full Taiwanese holiday maker. But you can see his photos here.

Really nice water full which was cold water and a great way to cool of after a bit of hot spring bathing.

Exfoliating.

Model looks.

I was told that the hot spring had been expanded by the locals, unfortunately they had uses bags filled with sand rather than natural stone and plastic pipes, which I felt was a shame as we were surround by forest of bamboo!

Lovely.

The were about 4-5 hot spring pools all at different temperatures and about the size of Ping Pong tables so quite big for a few people. The photo below should is actually quite close to where the hot spring is.

Last of the geysers.

The Geysers From Yangmingshan Mountain

I didn't know Taiwan had Geysers but then it's only recently I've been spending most of my weekends trying to get out of Taipei city and head out towards the various mountains for hiking which surround Taipei.

I love the colour of the bright  yellow sulphur on the ground.

Actually it's the fist time I've seen Geysers before, and the intoxicating smell of sulphur is really strong and slightly stings your eyes, or a least that happened with me. Mind you it was still will worth a visit.

 

Letting of steam.

A lovely combination of fog and sulphur.

In the photo above if you look at the right you can see a pile of rusty old pipes, apparently a Taiwanese company had wanted to extract the sulphur for commercialise use. But the steel structure of pipes they built was corroded by the sulphur so the gave up on the refinement.

Team photo.

The geysers are located quite close to Chingtiangang grasslands, you should be able to find your way just from the smell! 

Corina and Andreas.

Hiking Around Yangmingshan

This weekend I got up very early to go hiking with George and freinds as he had oganiseed a special trip for Oni and Zou to see geisers and also visit the hidden hot springs.

We all had to meet at JianTan station at around 9am which is not massivley early, but when your not home from the office untile 3am it's not a vast amount of sleep you get. I smiled though my teeth as every body pitched up 30 minutest later.

Apart from that it was a tottaly awsome hiking trip. I think we were heading towards Chingtiangang grasslands ?

Oni, programing our route with the infamous battery eating GPS device.

Fog on the lens.

When we arrived it was very foggy and rainy, and I did wonder if my shell top trainers with holes in them was going to be a problem. But at least I had a good jacket and my body core was kepted warm which is the most imporant part.

Just double checking our route.

Enter the mist as you can see it was very foggy and raining when we set off, but kind of exciting as I love this weather almost give a spooky feeling to the trip.

A very muddy track and my foot wear did'nt stand up to well!

Slightly lost but just checking are route and altitude?

Found again as we headed of to the geisures and the weather had started to clear up.

Rather nice old bridge we crossed as we headed towards the hot springs.

Georg fully kitted out!

Some of the local vegetation, not sure what these are called but the leaves are huge.

The joys of modern technology in the rain.

The photo below should in large if you click on it. Photo taken somewhere around Chingtiangang area.

Sunday Spiders (Last of the Summer Sun)

Georg had arranged for all the designers to go and have a BBQ up near Gugong, located here as Asus had two new designers who had recently just joined their ID team.

The two new guys, John from France and Ashley from New Zealand, they are both far right, Ash is the one with the curly mop! Rita helping out with the BBQ. Andreas is the tall blond from Switzerland, Veterans, Jeroen who is the Dutch man, and Peter in the lower right from England.

Norbit and Georg.

I really like this photo above because I think it shows why Germans are good at organising things! It was the efficiency of their BBQ, and having everything neatly packed. The rest of us Europeans just turned up with simple disposable BBQ's as you can just about see in the first photo.

Rita looking beautiful.

Which one should we throw?

This one!

This place was really beautiful and lovely definitely worth another visit as it was simply great to spend Sunday afternoon relaxing in the sun.