Taroko Gorge

I just got back from a 10 day trip to Taiwan. Originally, I'd planned to go to Borneo, Malaysia, but I found a really cheap flight to Taipei and decided to give it a shot.
My first day I just headed from the airport into Taipei to get some sleep before my early train to Hualien, the main gateway to Taroko Gorge. Taroko is considered one of the must-see natural attractions in Taiwan. Originally, I had planned to save it for another trip, but due to Typhoon Morakot which just passed through Taiwan a couple of weeks ago, I had to change my plans.
From Hualien, I had to take a bus up into the National Park, so I finally got there and started hiking about 1 in the afternoon. I had to catch another train south the next day at lunch time, so I had about 24 hours to cram as much hiking in as I could.
As it was a summer Saturday, I was expecting the park to be overrun with tourists, but it actually wasn't too busy at all. I ended up doing several short hikes, most of them only about 30 minutes to 2-3 hours long.
The water looked unbelievably refreshing and inviting, especially considering the sweltering heat and humidity, but there were signs everywhere prohibiting swimming, or even entering the area next to the river. So I didn't want to be the lone foreigner getting fined by the park rangers.
Along one of the trails I saw several of these huge spiders. This picture doesn't do it justice - that sucker's bigger than my hand.
After a long day of hiking and getting nailed with a rain-shower near the end, I made it to a hostel just outside the park gate. They'd lost my reservation, but fortunately they weren't full so I ended up in a dorm for 12 people all by myself.
It had AC so I was pretty happy. However you can see the "mattresses" which are only 3 or 4 cm thick. I ended up using 3 of them, but it still wasn't very soothing after a hard day of hiking.