Yilan

It’s been nearly a year since my last article, and I’m finally publishing a new one! During the 2016 Dragon Boat Festival holiday, I’m sure many friends from Taipei will choose Yilan as their first destination. Whether you drive or take a bus, if you go through the Xueshan Tunnel on National Freeway No. 5, it takes only about 40 minutes to reach Yilan if all goes well. Of course, everyone knows that during a holiday like this, things are rarely that smooth… Today I’m going to analyze the traffic patterns of the Xueshan Tunnel so you can avoid the crowds and get to Yilan smoothly! Below there will be a short technical explanation and the analysis process; if you’re not technically inclined, you can jump straight to the conclusion! By the way, I’m in Yilan today, and this article was actually written at the Brown Cafe Castle. ...

Early this morning my mom woke me up and said we were going to play at Taipingshan in Yilan. Originally we’d agreed to go on Saturday so we could stay overnight, but Saturday’s weather still wasn’t good enough = = it was drizzling a bit and the sun never came out, so we had no choice but to go for just one day on Sunday. Otherwise, besides staying a night, we could have seen the sea of clouds. My mom also said that if we were lucky, it would snow on Taipingshan. As it turned out, Taipingshan didn’t get any snow this year — it was Nanhu Mountain next door that had snow, but it’s too far away with mountains in between, so we couldn’t go @@ and I heard the traffic jam over there was really bad. But today’s weather was really nice too — the weather bureau finally got the forecast right XD. First time I’ve seen the sun since Chinese New Year. ...