The day was beginning to turn night yesterday when we left the Internet cafe, so we decided to stay in I-lan one more night. We met a middle school kid that said he'd help to ask if we could sleep at the middle school for the night. Excellent. We got permission from a teacher, and then after some reconsideration, the assistant principal gave us the "no." No worries. I understand.

As we were booted out, it began to rain. Bummer.

We got directions to the university in town and the security guard granted us permission to sleep in the basement of one of their buildings. In the morning, I woke up to sounds of what seemed like a night club. I walked out, and I saw some older folks doing morning exercises. I couldn't get back to sleep because of all the mosquitoes, so I walked around a bit. Further upstairs was partner dancing. It was 5am.

I finally got back to sleep and awoke to morning school bells and students walking through our sleeping quarters.

We met up with our middle school friend and shot some hoops in the rain, and after an hour of indecisiveness, we took off walking down towards Suou.

About 8 kilometers later, we met a man that had seen us further down the road and offered to buy us "bin-lang," a nut that is chewed quite often in Taiwan. It offers a little buzz, I think, probably the eqivalent of chewing tobacco. We went in for some tea and met some of his friends. They gambled around a 4-sided table, a game that involved dominoes.

Now an hour behind on schedule, we picked up our pace and went a little further, and ended up spending some more time at a Mazda dealership drinking coffee and chatting with a salesman.

Later, a man offered us a ride, first a little down the road, and then he said he'd take us to Suou.

We obliged and took his advice for a dip in the cold springs in town.

Gotta run for now. The train's a-comin'. Yeah, we're taking the train, so we can get to Taroko National Park tomorrow.

Will catch up later. For the time being, here's a link to an article written about us in The World Journal:

http://www.worldjournal.com/wj-wa-news.php?nt_seq_id=1648337

Yours in Travel,

Jeff