Hello Kitty

Hello Kitty
Taipei, Taiwan

Taipei, Taiwan

Thankfully with the trains and buses all running we made it back to our Taipei and back to the comfort of one of our favourite hostels around the world. Eight Elephants and Dreaming Dragon is definitely up there with the most comfortable and friendly hostels around the globe and just to prove it the door of the hostel came with a welcome note from the lovely staff!

We had just two places to visit on our return to Taipei, the cable car that had been closed due to weather on our first trip and a little town called Houtong.

With bad weather reported we decided to save the cable car for our last day and so we set off on the train to Houtong.

Houtong was once a rich small mining village During its prosperous years, the area produced around 220,000 tons of coal, the largest amount of coal produced in a single area in Taiwan This used to attract many immigrants to the area which further spurred the town growth as many as 900 households and with a population of more than 6,000 people. The last facility built in the area was a coal purification factory, built in 1920.

As the coal mining industry began to decline in the 1990s, development in the area worsened. Young residents started to emigrate to look for other opportunities and only few hundred residents remained. The mining industry eventually died out.

In 2008 a new life was brought to Houtong by a cat lover who started an online campaign taking photos of the cats and posting them online. Soon people were travelling from far and wide to come and see the cat village and the locals began to take care of the feline residents providing food, veterinary care, building cat housing in the streets and even proving a cat friendly walkway so that the cats could get safely across the railway tracks to greet visitors arriving on the trains.

The new life that the cats have brought to the town has enabled locals to cash in on tourism with cafes, gift shops selling every cat related accessory you can think of and cat shaped treats for both humans and cats readily available.

I am pretty sure that this is the coolest town in the world, I have never seen to many cats in one place. It was lovely to see that they were all well fed and in good condition and were not just a big collection of strays fighting to survive, which I am pretty sure they were just a few years ago. Sadly with the light fading and the clouds rolling in we had to bid a fond farewell to our furry friends and head back to the bright lights of the big city.

The following day we finally made it to the Meokong Gondola, a cable car which forms part of the metro system of Taipei and takes you up into the hills of Meokong to provide views over the city. We were a little bit rushed on this tour as we had to be back at our hostel to check out so whilst it was the same price to get a glass bottomed gondola we opted for the shorter queue of the normal cabins. Aside from being red hot in the midday sun, the cable car was awesome and as it is just a standard part of the metro system the 20 minute ride is only £1 each, bargain. Whilst there are some pretty temples to visit on the cable car route we didn’t have time to explore and so had a quick walk around upstairs and headed back down thankfully not having to share a cable car so we could make Tim’s mum a birthday photo with views over the city.

Our return trip to Taipei went way too quickly but it was a perfect end to our visit and left us feeling happy that we had visited Taiwan.

From Taiwan we were headed back to KL for a few days to enjoy a hotel stay that Tim won in Air Asia’s inflight magazine and what made this journey even better was the free upgrade to flatbed seats thanks to our application to Optiontown. I could get used to this way of travelling!!!

Farewell Taiwan!