Blogust & Everything After

My two weeks as a tour guide is over. Scott flew out to Sydney today. It was great to see him and we had a super time. We checked all the local attractions (temples, markets, monuments etc.) and we also went on a road trip this past weekend. We went to Taroko Gorge, Taiwan's most beautiful scenic place. It was gorgeous, huge mountains covered in jungle. We made our way across a rope bridge, we walked for hours, we took a dip in some freezing water, we hitchhiked and then we headed to the hot springs. The highlight of the trip however came after the hotsprings. We had no ride back to this small mountain town where we needed to catch a bus. It left in about forty five minutes and we had about 3 km of mountain walking to do. Walking was pretty much out of the question. We tried to get a cab but there was no driver in the one cab that was parked outside the springs, then we tried to hitchhike but no one would have us, then we thought we'd ask some locals to drive us but that was too scary.......then we saw our hope in a tour bus. We walked up to a tour bus and asked if we could get a ride to this small town. To our surprise they responded in English. They said yes. They asked why we were in a hurry to get back. We told them we had a bus to catch to the city of Hualien. Then they said, "We are going to Hualien, would you like to come with us?" "Sure" and we had a ride. We sat down and immediately got bombarded with a hundred thousand questions from anyone who could speak English. Then they said that the only rule was that we had to introduce ourselves up front at the mic. So we headed up to the front and introed ourselves. Then we fielded several questions from all over the bus. Mostly dealing with Scott being single. Then I made the mistake of saying " We love KTV (Karaoke)" So then they wanted us to sing. After confering we decided to sing "O Canada" It was very patriotic, but possibly the worst sounding randition of our national anthem ever. We sat down after that and answered questions all the way to Hualien, 1hr 30 mins. (We even stopped on the way and had Chinese supper with them) It was a crazy experience and I thought it was worth sharing with you.