By Zhen-Kang —

Five hours on a disco bus (and 30 minutes of fireflies)

My half-day tour to the Namasia mountains…

Exterior of a high-deck Taiwanese tour bus.
The bus was unassuming on the outside. Photo: Zhen-Kang.

This past weekend, a friend invited me on an organized tour to see fireflies in the Namasia mountains of Kaohsiung.

I hadn’t seen fireflies before, nor the inside of a Taiwanese tour bus. Both experiences, as it turned out, were illuminating.

We met mid-afternoon at the Zuoying High Speed Rail Station, a 30-minute scooter ride from my apartment. It was a four-day weekend (for the Tomb Sweeping Festival), so the station was packed.

Dozens of people beneath an arrivals and departures board at Zuoying High Speed Rail Station in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Zuoying High Speed Rail Station (左營高鐵站) on Saturday afternoon.

On the street outside, we registered our attendance with the tour organizers. Tickets were NT$1,099 (NZ$55) each.

I had to provide the organizers with my full name, date of birth, Alien Residence Card number, phone number, and email.

(This kind of extreme data collection is common in Taiwan. If you’re an aspiring identity thief, I suggest learning Chinese and relocating here ASAP.)

We were directed to one of three queues next to the road. As we stood in the middle of Group C, one of the organizers handed me a green sign, took my photo, retrieved the sign, and left.

No one else had their photo taken with a green sign.

Exterior of a high-deck Taiwanese tour bus.
Soon enough, three matching tour buses arrived. Our bus was unassuming on the outside…
Daytime interior photo of a Taiwanese tour bus. The bus is decorated with rich blue curtains and valances, and dainty transparent plastic light fittings. The overall aesthetic is like something from the 1950s or 1960s.
…But the interior was another story. Apparently in Taiwan, retro decor comes standard. This is a completely normal aesthetic here: dainty ceiling lights, frilly curtains, and tasseled blue valances. In 2025.
A ceiling-mounted TV screen inside a Taiwanese tour bus. The screen is showing a safety video with Korean characters on the screen, and a sign language interpreter half-cropped out of the extreme right edge.
As we departed, airline-style safety videos played in Korean and Chinese. In both cases, the sign language interpreter’s left arm was cropped out of frame. When the videos finished, the tour guide led an impromptu quiz with questions (in Chinese) like “How many doors does this bus have?” and “Where are the emergency exits?”
Deep blue embossed padding around the speakers on a Taiwanese tour bus. The embossed patterns include a map of Taiwan and the words ‘TAIWAN GOOD L.H.’
The padding around the speakers and TVs was embossed with the words “TAIWAN GOOD L.H.” I asked my friend what this meant, but he had no idea. Neither did ChatGPT.

As we left the freeway and turned inland, our tour guide passed water bottles to the people in the front row, who handed them to the people behind them, and so on, all the way down the line. The person behind me said “thank you” in English.

At about 5:30pm, we arrived at Maya Village (瑪雅里) for dinner. We were given NT$100 (NZ$5) vouchers to use at the restaurants or food stalls.

I was eating vegetarian, but the smokey barbecues still smelt incredible.

Silhouette of a huge spider climbing downwards on a web between two trees in Maya Village, Namasia, Taiwan. A forested mountain is visible in the distance.
On the five-minute walk from the carpark to the village, we passed a bunch of large spiders. This one was about 15cm long.
Two forest-clad conical mountains, partially concealed by clouds, in the distance above the iron rooftops of Maya Village.
Maya Village sits beneath two conical mountains.
The main street of Maya Village. A series of one-storey shops and restaurants line the right-hand side. A bunch of stalls are present outside the shops in the distance.
Here’s the main street, where we bought dinner. Maya is home to two of Taiwan’s 16 officially-recognized indigenous peoples: Kanakanavu and Saaroa. In my limited and superficial experience, indigenous Taiwanese are often much more outgoing than other Taiwanese people. This seemed true in Maya as well. People made a point of greeting me, and one guy came up and excitedly told me his name, per the embroidered characters on his shirt.
Close-up of various meats on a charcoal barbecue. Two sealed pieces of bamboo are also being roasted, in between a whole fish and a pigeon.
I used my voucher to get some NT$70 (NZ$3.50) barbecued bamboo rice, seen here between the fish and the pigeon.
A cracked-open piece of roasted bamboo, with densely-stuffed rice inside. The rice is mixed with yellowish millet.
I’d had bamboo rice once before, at Sun Moon Lake. This version—with millet—was excellent. It’s normal to eat this with other dishes, but I’d had a hot sweet potato during the rest stop so wasn’t too hungry. (Also, the other dishes included fish and pigeon…)
A political billboard featuring a man and woman wearing traditional indigenous Taiwanese clothing.
At one end of the village, this billboard depicted politicians in indigenous attire.
A two-story mosaic on the wall of a school building. The mosaic depicts a group approximately eight people in indigenous clothes standing arm-in-arm in a circle, with the shape of a cresent moon silhouetted against a leaf in the background.
I liked this mosaic at the junior high school.

After buying a coffee and—like many others—making a bathroom stop at the junior high, we returned to the bus at 6:40pm.

Outside was dark.

Inside was disco:

Interior of a Taiwan tour bus at night time. The air vents are ringed by colorful LED lights which also reflect off the frilly curtains and tassled valances above the windows.
Party lighting had been activated while we were at dinner. Animated rings lit up the air vents, cycling through different party hues…
Zoomed photo of a large boombox-like speaker mounted next to a big-screen TV in front of the windshield at the front of the bus. The speaker is lit up in greenish-blue colors.
…Along with this speaker at the front. But the integrated karaoke system was only used for the tour guide’s commentary and pop quiz. No one sang.
An illuminated clear plastic light fitting on the ceiling of a Taiwanese tour bus. It is in the shape of a doily, but is glowing warm white due to embedded LED lights.
My friend confirmed disco grandma is the default nighttime aesthetic on Taiwanese long-distance buses. It was a vibe.

At 7:10pm, we finally arrived at the firefly viewing area. As our group of 100 climbed the path to the viewing space (which we were told not to leave, because of snakes), fireflies danced in the forest around us. If there had been 95 fewer people next to me, it would’ve been magical.

The crowd eventually started to thin, and my friend helped secure a spot in the front row. I set up my camera in the dark (no lights allowed), and got a couple of long exposures before we had to leave.

Then it was time for the two-and-a-half-hour ride home.

We didn’t have long in the forest but I’m extremely pleased I went. And pleased I saw something new.

After all, it’s not every day you get to experience five hours on a disco bus (and 30 minutes of fireflies).

A long exposure of fireflies in a forest in Namasia District, Kaohsiung.
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