My world walk blog - Taiwan #14

To read this blog in order please start reading up from Taiwan #1 to here on this 14 blog posting! Thank you NB these updates have been edited from my Facebook posts and there may be some tense errors as they were edited in a raoid manner

Thanks to Scott Richards for posting. 

To read this blog in order please start reading up from Taiwan #1 to here on this 14 blog posting! Thank you NB these updates have been edited from my Facebook posts and there may be some tense errors as they were edited in a raoid manner

Thanks to Scott Richards for posting. 

My world walk blog - Taiwan #14

Massive thanks to a man called Koali Chang who drove an hour and a half each way just to meet me for a chat! How thoughtful was that? We went out for breakfast and when he told the owner about my walk the nice owner of the Kiwi restaurant didn't even charge. What wonderful people the Taiwan people are.

That day I took a beachside rest day and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The next day I walked the final thirteen kilometres to the most southern point in the country. 

Taiwan has been walked.

Massive thanks to a man called Koali Chang who drove an hour and a half each way just to meet me for a chat! How thoughtful was that? We went out for breakfast and when he told the owner about my walk the nice owner of the Kiwi restaurant didn't even charge. What wonderful people the Taiwan people are.

That day I took a beachside rest day and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The next day I walked the final thirteen kilometres to the most southern point in the country. 

Taiwan has been walked.

My world walk blog - Taiwan #13

My world walk blog - Taiwan #13

Taiwan has been walked!

That short day was just 15 kilometres from my backpacker's hostel in Checheng to another one called the Gold hostel near the Nanwan Recreation Area. It was a nice stroll despite a blustery headwind. The slate-grey sky threatened to crack open and pour with rain. Somehow it didn't. The Nanwan area and surrounding beaches were busy with swimmers surfers and lovers. I was told its a famous surfing area in Taiwan.

With my beachside hostel which charged me only seven Euro, a night was certainly a hidden gem. Those last few days of my walk and with a return bus journey costing just three Euro I commuted back and forth from my route to my accommodation. And as always that meant I didn't have to carry my backpack, always a joy. The buses run frequently and on average my journeys took about a half hour; time spent answering my emails.  

A few days ago I was stopped by a funny woman called Paige to see if I was okay. She addressed me as Cute Sir (lol ) and said she met a Taiwan walker on the road and mentioned it would be great if we met as we are walking in opposite directions and towards each other. As luck would have it I just happened to be sitting on the right side of the bus when I looked out of the window and spotted him. There was no mistake as he wears a big sign on his back with the number of days since his walk began. Had I been sitting on the opposite side or not looking out the window I wouldn't have noticed him. So I got out three kilometres early and walked with him to Checheng.

Called Jarvis Cai, he is 25-years-old, speaks very good English and is walking around Taiwan. He said he needed a challenge after he finished his military service (which I'm told is compulsory for men.) He mostly camps or sleeps in temples or in peoples homes. He walks with a sign on his back asking for a bed and reports a lot of success. I joked and said his sign should just say "LADIES ONLY NEED APPLY!" on his sign lol  

Anyway, as we were near my hostel I suggested he stop there for the night. As people have been so good to me on this walk it was a rare opportunity for me to give back and I was delighted to sponsor his bed. Back at the hostel, I was surprised to meet another walker. Also from Taiwan 60-year-old Chiou doesn't speak English and he told us he is also walking around the country but wants to do more inland trail walking. The three of us went out to a restaurant that specialises in duck and astonishingly the kind owner insisted on sponsoring our dinners

My world walk blog - Taiwan #12

My world walk blog - Taiwan #12

As I approached the end of my Taiwan north to south walk I made an instinctive decision. I'm going to take my Irish friend Francis Cosgrave up on a long-standing invitation to visit him and his family in the Philippines. They live on the island of Cebu. It's about fifty or sixty kilometres across the island and I'm going to walk it with him. I will have just have six days there between 24/31 January. Then I will return to Taiwan and pick up Karma and make my way to Taipei Port for the ferry back to Pingtan, on mainland China

My world walk blog - Taiwan #11

My world walk blog - Taiwan #11

Then an easy 15-kilometre day and it was time to celebrate a new record claim!

It was in southern Taiwan near Checheng at kilometre post marker #9 on route 26 where I clocked up kilometre 27,501 of this world walk. That distance combined with the 50,000 kilometres (and not a metre more) on my world run between 2010/2014 has given me a total of 77,501 expedition kilometres (circa (48,500 miles) on foot.


This breaks the tough world record of Masahito Yoshida, my Japanese world walker friend for the most known and verified expedition kilometres on foot! A record like this is just a nice distraction. The most important thing for me has always been the 'smiles in the miles' And OMG have I had a lot and so many fantastic memories too Not to mention meeting so many wonderful people and making so many good friends.

Thanks to everyone over the years for all of your help. Whether you just stopped to offer me encouragement, water, a snack, a bed, shelter, a meal. Thanks so much for any other help and you may think some of your help was insignificant but please it never was.. All of your super-duper help and effort you have expended was all part of this team effort and was so vital

Thanks a million to those of you have supported me, believed in me and sponsored me especially Richard Donovan. Thanks so much to Michael Gillan for his self-less kind and fantastic crew help on both of my Australia crossings. Thanks to my fabulous sister Ann Salmon for her valuable help with many issues back in Ireland. Thanks to Scott Richards my long-suffering webmaster of myworldwalk.com. Massive thanks to Tina King-Garde aka Tee Kay Gee for her kind help. My thanks to the wonderful  Benjamin Kniebe, who is my map man and great helper with some research. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to each and every one of you my great supporters and followers for your support. I love you all I am so lucky to have you. But most of all thanks to everyone who has taken my cancer awareness message advice: Life is precious and early cancer screening saves lives.