Travel Goals

Before I left Sydney in March I had a hope. It wasn’t a goal - that would be too scary and require commitment - it was a hope. It was a hope that at some point on the trip I would be confident enough to arrive in a destination without any accommodation reserved. I would just arrive and ask to stay. It was the type of thing I saw people do in movies, like leaving a bar during an argument without finishing your drink or going to a restaurant and getting dessert as well as an entree. Yes, at some point I hoped I would approach the reception area of a sleeping establishment and ask, without fear or falter, “do you have a vacancy?”

On my last morning in Taichung I left the hostel without a plan in place. I knew I wanted to get Sun Moon Lake, at the centre of Taiwan, but I wasn’t sure exactly where on the lake I’d stay. There seemed to be two main areas to stay, one on the north side of the lake and one on the south. From what I could tell, I could catch a bus from Taichung to the north side of the lake. So my first plan was to go to the north side.

My hostel in Taichung was conveniently across the road from the train station. I didn’t think to ask anyone if the buses left from the train station so the first part of my morning consisted of me aimlessly wandering around the train station until I was told that the buses didn’t leave from the train station. I walked for ten minutes into the downtown area and found a row of bus offices, the last one being the company which ran buses to the lake. The bus was sitting with its engine running, about to leave. The man at the office, conscious of the bus leaving on time, said I needed to wait for the next one. I protested, pressed some notes into his hand and he begrudgingly gave me a ticket. I threw my bags onto the bus and boarded as it pulled away.

After about and hour I was dropped at Shuishe, on the north side of the lake. It was a small, two-street town which primarily existed as a place to hire bikes to ride around the lake. There was an odd feel to the place. It felt very small and there weren’t many people around, maybe because it was midweek or maybe because of the typhoons passing through recently or maybe a bit of both. Despite the size of the town (town, to be honest, is a bit of an exaggeration), large hotels had been built to cater to tourists coming to visit the lake. There were only a couple of them but they were at least ten or fifteen storeys high and, against the serene lake, they were concrete eyesores.

I walked the few steps from the bus stop to a hostel I had marked on my map. It was lunchtime and no one was around. A sign in the hostel window indicated how early arrivals should go about contacting the owner. Considering the desolate surroundings, I changed plans. I wouldn’t ask to stay for the two nights I had initially thought. I would try one night and work out what was best from there. Using the nearby Starbucks’ wifi, I sent a WhatsApp message to the owner asking if they had availability (they definitely did). I waited a few minutes. No response. I started looking arouns. There was no one around. Sure, the lake was quite pretty but maybe even a night wasn’t that worth it. Maybe heading to the other, slightly-larger town on the other side of the lake would be a smarter idea.

I changed plans. I decided it would be better to head to the other side. With no response from the first hostel, I took a short stroll through the remainder of the town. I stopped by a 7-Eleven to get some change for the bus, spending ample time pondering the advantages and disadvantages of cheese vs seaweed flavoured Pringles and how this decision would have a lasting effect on my life. During this time, unbeknownst to me, the hourly local bus was leaving. I got to the bus stop two minutes after it left. I now had to wait an hour to travel the twenty ride to the south side of the lake.

I decided to get some lunch. There were a couple of restaurants open, but no one in them. Staff stared at me as I walked past, attempting to draw me in with their eyes. I wasn’t that hungry so I grabbed a bag of battered and fried pieces of king oyster mushroom from a street vendor. Pushing through ticket vendors trying to get me on a boat ride (there were more vendors than tourists), I sat eating my mushrooms at the ferry wharf overlooking the water.

Halfway through my feast of fried fungi I had a thought: Why not catch a boat across the water? They seemed to leave more often than the buses and it would be a nicer journey. I changed plans. I walked back to one of the vendors I had dismissed earlier and purchased a ticket for the next boat, which I was told was about to leave. I got out to the pier. I got on to the boat. The day was still overcast. Some other people got on too. As foreboding clouds began to form over the mountain range across the water, the boat captain said it would be five more minutes. We waited five minutes. “Five minutes.” The clouds had swiftly filled the air, visibility was suddenly much worse than it had been only minutes prior. “Five minutes.” It started raining. Raining heavily. It looked as if buckets of marbles were bouncing off of the lake’s surface. The boat’s engine started running. “Two minutes.” The boat pulled out of the dock.

I expected the regular ferry service to be a simple, quick boat ride transporting people from one side of the lake to the other. It turned out I had boarded a short lake tour. In Mandarin, the captain spoke with great glee, pointing out the many landmarks around the lake which were shrouded by a white cloak of invisibility. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying the lake tour, despite the fact that all we could see was the lake, rain and clouds. With no sun or moon around, Sun Moon Lake was only living up to one of its three nominal promises.

Despite the relatively small size of the lake, we made a stop at another dock and waited for a group of rain-sodden tourists to board the boat. Once the captain was sure he had picked up everyone he drove us, finally, to the dock at the south side of the lake.

I ran through the rainy streets of Ita Thao to another hostel I had marked down earlier that morning. Despite being double the size of the town on the north side - Ita Thao was a four-street town - I still managed to navigate it with ease. On the way I quickly learned, though, that my shoes were no longer waterproof.

The hostel was, once again, empty when I arrived. This one, though, was completely unlocked. I shouted “hello” in both English and Mandarin. No response. The only way to contact the owner was through a phone call, no WhatsApp. I couldn’t call him from my phone. I took the opportunity to have a quick look around the small hostel. It was early afternoon, it was pouring down with rain outside and there was no one around. I assumed this would be my experience if I stayed. It was a small, cheap hostel and, since I had no reservation, I could be waiting all afternoon for anyone to show up and check me in.

There was one more hostel I had marked down on my map. It was only a hundred metres away and was meant to be bigger so I knew if I went there I could get a bed straight away. I changed plans. In my soaked socks and shoes, I made my way to my third hostel for the day.

I arrived, walked up the steps and shoved my umbrella into the umbrella stand at the door. A young Taiwanese man was sitting behind a long reception desk. “Hello,” I uttered with water dripping down my forehead, “I do not have a reservation. Do you have a vacancy?”