Taiwan was an unplanned stop for me on this trip. Honestly I’ve never really thought about going there. I really prefer traveling in the developing world; I enjoy the craziness, the problem solving, the culture shock. I like being somewhere completely different from what I’m used to. Similar to Japan and South Korea, Taiwan is a very advanced country off the coast of China. Technically it is claimed by China, but they have separate governments, militaries, etc. Taiwan is a democracy, and is not subject to the government censorship like China. I met a lot of people on this trip but my Taiwanese friends I made in Tonsai were some of my favorites. They were so open and friendly and interesting and just genuinely fun to be around. When I found out tickets to Taipei, Taiwan were only $60 from Bangkok I knew I had to make one last stop.
I only had one week to spend in Taiwan before my flight home, but it was a good amount of time to see Taipei and get a couple days of climbing in the Dragon’s Cave, aka Long Dong. Taiwan is a small country about half the size of Illinois. Taipei, it’s largest city has roughly 3 million people, with 24 million total people in the country. Upon arriving I used the metro train to get around, which couldn’t be easier to use. I walked around most of the day, attempting to take advantage of the nice weather. I knew when I booked my flight that it was still their winter, which consists mostly of rain. Between that and COVID-19, there weren’t many tourists coming to Taiwan at the moment. I walked down the streets of Dadaochen, filled with vendors selling food, herbs, tea and other traditional items. I hiked elephant mountain/Xiangshan trail for some views of the city. Then I got some dumplings at the local night market on my way to meet some of my friends at the local climbing gym. The next couple days I spent with my friend who wasn’t working at the moment. She showed me a small local climbing area, introduced me to some traditional food, and took me to an amazing natural hot spring.
Downtown Taipei from Elephant Mountain. Taipei 101 was the tallest building in the world before the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Huaxi night market for all your culinary desires. The steamy Eight Smoke hot springs. The ethereal path through Yangmingshan National Park.
The food in Taiwan is incredible-not something I expected! Taiwan’s nickname is “The Fruit Kingdom,” and there are fruit stands everywhere with colorful, mysterious fruit I’ve never seen before. I bought a bag full of fruits I had never seen which ended up being wax apples (taste very different from normal apples), a giant type of pear and some kind of small nectarines. Street food is common throughout Taiwan, with dumplings, soup and meat/veggie kebabs being the staples. Soup is commonly served at every meal, something I might try to incorporate this into my life when I get back.
Traditional ginger duck soup with all the fixings: blood cake, heart, tofu, bamboo shoots, mushrooms and dumplings. Yum. Except the blood cake. A very nice Taiwanese breakfast.
After a few days of exploring around Taipei, it was time to go to Long Dong for the weekend. We booked a house and had a great crew of seven people staying there. Situated on the east coast of Taiwan, Long Dong is a large expanse of quartz cliffs dramatically set against the pounding waves of the East China Sea. The area boasts hundreds of climbs, many of which are “traditional,” meaning you have to place your own protection in the form of cams and nuts. It has a very unique style of climbing and is a lot different from anywhere else I’ve climbed before. The scenery was stunning but the best part for me was hanging out with everyone, enjoying the climbs and the sun and the view and dinner that night.
Seaside climbing. Climbing the first pitch of “Wedding Route.”Dinner with the crew!
The Taiwan portion of my trip was over before I knew it, but it was a perfect last stop. It helped bridge the gap between Southeast Asia and the United States. Being in such an advanced country, yet still in Asia, made for an ideal transition. The stressors of the developing world were gone, but the great food and rich culture remained. There aren’t many countries I visit that I know I will return to, but I will definitely be back to Taiwan ASAP.
But for now it is time to return home. As I write this I am sitting in the Taipei airport, decompressing after a few drinks of Khao Liang, the local alcohol made from sorghum. I’m excited to return to Bend and see Sierra and my friends and (of course) to climb at Smith Rock. This trip has been incredible, the best one I’ve ever done. I packed years of intense, amazing experiences into two months, and it feels good to be ready to leave.
After my time in northern Thailand, I flew to eastern Thailand to the town of Nakhon Phanom, on the Laos border. There’s not much reason to come to this part of Laos, aside from climbing and the popular motorbike loop known as the Thakhek Loop.
On the quick flight from Bangkok I sized up the only other westerners on the flight. Tall, strong and sporting large backpacks from popular outdoor brands—they were definitely climbers. I went up to the two groups-a solo traveler from the UK and a couple from Quebec-and asked if they wanted to navigate the border crossing together and split a taxi to our new home. We were all happy to have some company for the trip.
As we got to chatting, it turned out the couple knew my climbing partner from Tonsai the week prior, and we were all planning to meet with him that night. Small world. Like the wildlife biology community, the international climbing community is quite small. I’m constantly running into people I’ve climbed with or have chatted with at crags around the world. As the four of us negotiated our way across the confusing bridge over the Mekong River separating Thailand and Laos, it became apparent to me that I had already found my group of friends for the next couple weeks.
Our crew on a successful hitchhiking mission!
Green climbers home (GCH) was purchased by a German couple 15 years ago when they discovered the massive potential for climbing in the limestone karsts that dominate the landscape of central Laos. They began to bolt routes and built a camp, and then another. Different owners have taken over the past year but the general vibe is the same. You are in a fairly remote valley, surrounded by cliffs and mountains. There are no shops or bars around other than the kitchen at Green Climber’s Home. You can hitchhike or taxi into town if you’re in need of a change of pace, but many spend their entire time at GCH. They have everything you could need—food, beer, whiskey, climbing gear, accommodation, and most importantly, easy access to over 500 quality climbing routes.
Camp 1 at Green Climbers Home
The dining/lounge area
If Tonsai is a climber’s paradise, Green Climbers Home is a climber’s summer camp. Due to the relative dearth of non-climbing activities, everyone is focused on climbing. People go to bed early and use the training areas to train, stretch and warm up. Everything is focused on climbing. The atmosphere here is intimate-you are interacting with everyone there on a daily basis. With around 150 at maximum capacity, it never feels too busy. The staff is made up of fun, local Laos people and volunteer climbers who work 30 hours a week in exchange for food and accommodation. The food is great and the community is even better. And the climbing is extraordinary.
Similar to Tonsai, the climbing here is on limestone cliffs and lends itself to steep, overhanging routes. There are over 40 “crags,” or different areas to climb, all with their own characteristics. You can hike out 20 minutes to a slot canyon or you can walk 10 feet from the dorms and climb right there.
Again, I’ll try to spare all you non-climbers (muggles?) the details about the actual climbing, but needless to say, it was excellent. I managed to continue climbing stronger and stronger, progressing in a way I thought was reserved for new climbers just understanding their potential. Among my favorite climbs were Zen Symphony, Acid Therapy, Work-Life Balance, Go Bananas, Sharknado, Mon General, and the hardest climb I’ve done to date, Konterbier.
Making power on the classic “Work-Life Balance.” And yes that’s a man bun.
The days went fast, and followed a similar pattern. Coffee in the morning, climbing until lunch, climbing until dark, beers, dinner, beers, cards. Sometimes second dinner. And sometimes more beers. Afterward I would retire to my tent, waking around 6:30am to the same bird that sings 30 minutes before the others, a high pitched song that sounded like a bald eagle with the syrinx of a vireo. For all you non-birders (muggles?), imagine an instrument composed of squeaky wheels.
You can actually see my tent from the top of a 35 meter route. Look for the white speck.
As my time at GCH carried on, I felt I had to see some of the country I had been calling home for the past two weeks. So, with a heavy heart, a decided to rent a motorbike and do the famed Thakhek Loop for the last three days of my Laos trip. This loop is roughly 500 km, about 300 miles. It takes you through mountains, dry forest, caves and waterfalls. I decided to rent a fancier bike than the rattletrap I had rented during a rare rest day a week earlier. I got a brand new semi-automatic Honda Wave, which compared to my last couple scooters, seemed like a badass Harley. I climbed aboard after saying goodbye to all my new friends and climbing parters, and hit the road.
So fun.
Saying goodbye to people and places on this trip has been a constant struggle for me. I’ve met so many great people and stayed in so many great places that leaving them is almost painful. Part of the pain comes from the potential that I’ll never see these people or places again. But that’s also what makes these short term friendships so special. Leaving the Green Climbers Home in Laos was the most difficult goodbye I’ve had to say to a place on this trip. And I would end up doing it twice.
Due to a strange personality flaw, I put in a ton of miles the first day, over 100 in total which doesn’t seem like much, but it’s more than double what most people do and you really feel it on that bike seat. I stopped for a swim at a waterfall and took in a couple viewpoints. I had a lunch of ginger chicken stir fry and carried on to the town of Na Hin, near the highlight of the route, the Konglor Cave. I spent the night in Na Hin in a nice guest house with a legitimate bed and a room all to myself. While I had adjusted to spending two weeks sleeping on a thin mat in my tent at GCH, this was a luxury I was unprepared for. I slept so well, partly due to the second dinner I had. In the morning I met up with a couple who was also doing the loop and we drove the 20 miles to the cave, passing small villages and farms along the way.
The limestone forest overlook. Beautiful.
One of the many small villages on the loop.
The Konglor cave is about 5 miles long and has a river running through it. You can take a boat through the cave, come out the other end, and have lunch there before heading back in. The cave is massive and was unexplored until the 1920s. I can only imagine what the locals thought of that cave before the first of them explored it. Instead of entering the cave. People would walk through the mountains in order to link the villages in a journey that took days.
The mouth of the Konglor Cave. In one end…
…and out the other!
While in the dark cave, I had an epiphany: I needed to return to Green Climbers Home. I couldn’t spend my last day in Laos looking at caves. I had to climb. And in order to climb, I had to cover some serious ground. I decided to finish the loop that day, arriving at GCH by nightfall and spending two days and one night on the loop-a trip generally done in 5-6 days. This is what addiction looks like.
It’s views like this that make you think about what is really important in life: climbing.
After the impressive cave, I (cautiously) raced back to Thakhek, being careful to avoid the many cows, goats and dogs in the highway. I stopped only to refuel and give my butt a brief respite from the bike seat. After putting in nearly 200 miles, I pulled back into GCH just after dark. I greeted my friends again and explained my situation. I had bought a few Laobeer IPAs while in town (hard to find and surprisingly great!) and we all clinked glasses and caught up on the past two days.
I found the second goodbye even harder than the first. When I left a couple days ago, my body and my brain needed a break from climbing. Just two days was all it took to rekindle the fire, and the flame was burning bright. After a great last session of climbing, it was time to leave, for real this time. If I hadn’t already booked a flight I would have stayed for a few more days and probably a few more after that. As it turned out I climbed instead of double checking my ticket and missed my flight by three hours. This is what addiction looks like.
I’m hard-pressed to put into words my relationship with climbing. I’m not sure why it appeals to me so much, but it brings a peace and clarity to my mind that few (no) other things can. It’s the only way I can block out everything and focus completely on what’s in front of me. I love pushing myself physically and I love having a reason to train and eat healthy. Climbing is often called a moving meditation, and I think that’s pretty apt. The flow of moving on rock is indescribable, so much so that it has shaped my life the past six years.
My trip was winding down and I was looking into flying back to Oregon and settling back into normalcy (if that’s what you want to call my life). While looking at flights I noticed many flights had layovers in Taiwan, and there were cheap, direct flights to Taiwan from Bangkok. Without much thought about price or coronavirus (honestly I’m still not sure if I can enter the US afterward or not), I bought a ticket and made plans to see my Taiwanese friends and plans to climb in the famed “Dragon’s Cave,” hilariously translated to Long Dong.
So after buying a new flight to replace the one I had missed, I made my way to the beautiful island of Taiwan for one week before going back home.
Adam's Travel Adventures 