Hotel Taroko 太魯閣旅店, Taroko village 太魯閣, Taiwan

Taroko village 太魯閣 is the entrance of Taroko National Park 太魯閣國家公園, but we found that it is a scary and deserted place at night: gangs of 12 years old holding sticks roving at night (we only survived those when we said we were Canadians), mean dogs on leashes that jump at you to push you off the sidewalks, a 7 Eleven kept at freezing temperature and a series of abandoned and probably haunted houses that dot its main street.

The hotel Taroko 太魯閣旅店 staff is unwelcoming this late at night, almost requiring torture to extract tidbits of information while a dog keeps barking menacingly outside.

Our inquiries about using the bicycles are met with veiled threats that we will be run over on the pathless streets of Taroko. We discovered later that this isn't strictly true; there are some bike paths.

We took the most expensive room and ended up with a bed with the firmness of plywood. The shower is so badly designed that the hook to hold the shower head is aligned with and two feets from the sink.

A little sign in the shower warns that we have to let the water run for 5 minutes to get hot water. In actuality, this is more like 15 minutes - I had time enough to brush my teeth and take a full (cold) shower including an hair shampoo before the hot water came on, wasting probably the equivalent of an Olympic size pool. I can assume that the environment won't be an hot issue during the next political elections. Min Lin in the meantime was trying to get the issue resolved with the front desk but only got accusations that we didn't let the water run for long enough...

The restaurant across the street has a good wild (and by wild they mean farm raised) boar dish. However they probably couldn't serve a vegetarian dish if their life depended on it as they gave Min Lin noodles with bits of meat in it.

The next day is a different story. We must admit it is still a good, new, clean hotel well located next to a national park with a view on the nearby river and mountains. And the front desk woman finally cracks a smile while the manager gets up and is actually helpful. Sadly, they still give us misinformation and we end up too early at the visitor center as we were told it opened at 7:30 instead of 8:30.