Exploring an Abandoned Forestry Bureau Building

While scrolling through Google Earth, I spotted an old road leading down to what looked like an abandoned Forestry Bureau workstation off the Shaxi Forest Road (沙溪林道) in Pingtung. The satellite imagery told an interesting story—before Typhoon Morakot hit in 2009, there was a clear road leading straight there. After the typhoon? A massive landslide wiped it out. The place has been sitting abandoned for at least 15 years now, maybe longer.

I wasn’t about to just drive down some questionable road and then get stuck picking my way through an old landslide, so I took a different approach. My plan was to park higher up and bushwhack my way down through the forest. What I found was way more than just the workstation—old aboriginal stone walls, hundreds of black planters scattered everywhere, remnants of what might have been coffee plantations, and some seriously sketchy terrain. Oh, and a monkey that was either really happy or really pissed off that I showed up. Either way, it was a blast getting down there and finally seeing what’s been hidden in those mountains all these years.

The video follows the whole adventure.