Features

Competition heats up for ‘world’s best trip’

(From top left clockwise) Tea Master Lai Shuei-cheng and Director Lee Sheng pose with Lin Ching-yu and Benjamin Van Boxtel of “world’s best trip” team “West meets East” at Wenshan Tea Farm in Taipei County July 29.(Courtesy of Tourism Bureau)

• Publication Date：08/28/2009
• By  Jean Brisebois

A Japanese duo went looking for “heart and soul.” One U.S.-based husband-and-wife team set about tracking down the finest cup of tea. And a host of other groups did their best to explore Taiwan and uncover the island’s hidden charms.

Desperate to win what is being billed as the “Best Trip in the World,” 1,123 teams from across the globe submitted travel proposals and introduction videos to the Tourism Bureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications as part of its 2008-2009 Tour Taiwan Years campaign.

Selecting the teams for the second stage of the trip was a daunting task, said Liou Si-lin, director of the bureau’s International Affairs Division Aug. 19. “Our committee looked for publicity-savvy entries and assessed them in terms of their creativity and value for the tourism dollar.

The 52 teams are made up of members from 18 countries and territories, including Australia, Costa Rica, Germany, Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines, South Africa and South Korea. With each group completing their self-designed four-day tours of the island by Aug. 31, competition for the grand prize of NT$1 million (US$30,000) to fund one month’s travel in Taiwan is hotter than a Kenting summer.

In return for a bureau-paid allowance of NT$28,000, the teams must post videos and written accounts of their travels on a daily blog. “There certainly have been some entertaining submissions showcasing many of Taiwan’s best tourist attractions,” Liou said. “What matters now is how many times netizens vote for the teams and view their blogs.”

The director explained that the most popular Chinese, English and Japanese-language teams will be selected on the basis of online voting and the number of hits each blog attracts. The top groups in each category receive a four-day and three-night accommodation and flight package for two to Taiwan.

“This is where the judging gets really difficult,” Liou said. “The remaining teams will be very close and all deserving of the grand prize.”

A bureau-appointed committee will select the best team, with the trip’s winner announced Nov. 15. This decision is based on each itinerary’s creativity and cost-consciousness, feasibility, quality of audiovisual uploads, and frequency of being linked to or mentioned by other Web sites and popularity with blog readers.

“Taiwan’s tourism industry is having a tough time at the moment,” Liou said. “The promotion aims to generate as much worldwide interest and passion for the island as possible.”

Yuka Aoki, a Taiwan-based Japanese travel writer and TV presenter, is serving as a trip committee member and ambassador. She believes the bureau’s promotion is a “special opportunity” for people from overseas to learn more about the people of Taiwan and their everyday lives and culture.

“I came here on an off chance six years ago and have never looked back,” she said July 22.

Aoki revealed that the secret to winning the trip is designing a travel theme that touches the heart. “Where the teams go and what they do doesn’t really matter,” she said. “They don’t need to spend a lot of money either, just as long as they appear to be having fun and connecting with the locals.”

If there is one thing that teams must include in their itineraries, the lover of wanderlust said, it is the chance to interact with the island’s people. “Their warmth and passion for life has to be seen to be believed.”

The Japanese travel expert’s advice did not fall on deaf ears. Two of her compatriots, writer Kimiko Takagi and photographer Mayumi Arikawa, entered the competition as the “Strolling Flyingfish Duo” and ventured to southern Taiwan’s Pingtung County in search of the nation’s “heart and soul.”

“This is not our first visit to the island and each time we return, fresh experiences abound,” Arikawa said on the final day of the pair’s tour July 24. “There are always new perspectives, even though it might be the second time to visit a particular destination.”

Arikawa and Takagi said as members of the Japan Travel Writer’s Association, they have toured the world and understand the intrinsic benefits travel brings both the individual and society at large. Visiting new destinations is always exciting, but the real joy and value comes from interacting with the citizenry, they stressed.

During their stay in Pingtung, Takagi said the Flyingfish never ceased to be amazed by the county’s towering mountains and idyllic beaches. However, it was the easygoing style of the southerners that made the biggest mark on the pair.

“Wherever we went, the friendliness of the people was plain to see. During a dinner of homemade noodles at our motel, elderly members of the owners’ family kept coming to our table to propose toasts,” she laughed.

Another example of this openness, Takagi offered, was a wedding banquet the couple observed one night in Hengchun Township. “Revelers spilled into the street and continued partying until sunup. From our perspective, this unbridled celebration reflects the strong sense of kinship that is part and parcel of big families in the south.”

For Takagi, though, the tour’s most moving experience was talking with aboriginal grandmothers who sang Japanese songs to the pair and told stories of life under Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945). “Taiwan has an incredibly rich history that deserves to be more widely known by outsiders.”

Echoing Takagi’s sentiments, Arikawa said she enjoyed listening to tales of the island’s past because they stirred strong feelings of familiarity with the local culture. “Out of the more than 30 countries I have visited, Taiwan’s culture is the closest to Japan’s.”

Growing up in Japan’s Kagoshima Prefecture, Arikawa believes that the people of her southern hometown and those in Pingtung are much alike. “They are both easy to approach and even easier to get along with. Visiting a place that correlates with your daily life can be just as enjoyable as experiencing something completely upside down.”

Another team equally smitten with Taiwan and its people is “West meets East.” Comprising Benjamin Van Boxtel and his Taiwan-born wife Lin Ching-yu, the newlyweds met in the United States and describe themselves as “poor” medical students who are “fond of traveling.”

The couple explained that inspiration for their travel plan came from Van Boxtel’s time as an English teacher in Japan, where he studied the centuries-old Japanese tea ceremony. Aware that Taiwan is world-renowned for its oolong teas grown on vertiginous slopes, the couple decided to go in search of the island’s best cuppa.

Van Boxtel and Lin’s tour took them to a host of tea-growing regions, where they encountered Taiwan’s Hakka and aboriginal cultures, as well as an assortment of colorful characters associated with the local tea industry.

At Wenshan Tea Farm in Xindian City, Taipei County, the couple met Tea Master Lai Shuei-cheng who told them that tea is not just a drink, but a way of life. “One needs tea to accompany good food and to help develop a personal philosophy on life,” he said July 29.

After enjoying a veritable smorgasbord of mouthwatering dishes cooked with tea leaves and various tea oils, Lai “invited” Van Boxtel and Lin to join him in the summer sun and get down to the serious business of harvesting tea by hand. With wicker baskets strapped to their backs, the trio picked leaves from bushes planted over slopes ranging from 200 to 600 meters above sea level.

Following the backbreaking work, Van Boxtel was in a philosophical state of mind as he reflected on his cathartic experience at the farm.

“You know,” he said while lifting a steaming cup of Wenshan’s finest to his lips, “tea warms the body and awakens the senses, but this truism also applies to the people of Taiwan. My impression of the locals is that they are warm, down to earth and willing to bend over backward to help a visiting stranger. This country truly is one of Asia’s best kept secrets.”

For more information on the teams and their true-life travel adventures in Taiwan, visit http://www.taiwanbesttrip.net.

Write to Jean Brisebois at ttonline@mail.gio.gov.tw