The flight was at 1500 so I thought it prudent to start early because surprisingly for a world city, Taoyuan Airport still relies on a bus connection from downtown. (This will change when the MTR reaches it in late 2015.) The bus meandered through several suburbs, picking up more passengers. Taiwanese highways are impressive, many sections stand on tall concrete supports going deep into bedrock, probably due to the land being prone to floods and earthquake.
There is a gallery at the airport with very attractive high dynamic range (HDR) pictures of Taiwan scenes.
I found the scenery understated and not as dramatic as other countries due to the moisture in the air. And it's a crowded country. Some of the best landscapes were in the mountains.
The Taiwanese were unfailingly polite and helpful. The only people who gave me anything resembling hassle were taxi drivers and that's expected from them.
There were excellent meals and snacks but I find it hard to pick a Taiwanese dish that I find outstanding; the island has been a palimpsest of many cultures due to migrations. I do wish they wouldn't put so much sauce on food. Spicy or not? was a question I was often asked when buying street food. I also missed enough fruit in the diet.
At HK the customs officials were brusquely efficient. I had time to have a bowl of congee with left over HK dollars before boarding the second leg. After an uneventful flight, I was home and settling back into normal life.
I'm not a big fan of museums but the National Palace Museum holds treasures of Chinese civilisation the like of which can only be seen in the Palace Museum in Beijing. The antiquities in both were originally from the same collection. It's a long story which might be entitled A Tale of Two Museums. Besides if I didn't go, later people would ask: you what!?
Originally I had planned to visit in the morning, but travel blogs persuaded me that late afternoon was when tour bus crowds, mostly comprising mainland Chinese tourists, thinned out. In the event it was still crowded.
I decided to move to my hotel early in the morning before the day got too humid and leave my backpack with reception. First I got coffee and a waffle at a nearby café. They weren't as good as coffee and bagels the day before. Then I dropped the keys in the return box; nobody was at reception that early.
The hotel was actually just outside Ningxia Night Market, but a 10 minute walk from the nearest train station, which might have made it a little less popular, meaning better value for me. I paid the balance in cash to reduce my holdings.
The picture on the right was actually taken later in the day from one of the elevated stations of the Taipei MTR. Not all stations are underground. Parts of some lines are above ground.
I decided to visit the main Eslite store. Maybe they might have a better selection of CDs to spend money on. While it was as neat as the other one it actually had a poorer selection of goods. So I decided to go back to the City Hall store.
While I was emerging from the building, some marchers in a rally for the upcoming local elections tried to give me a pamphlet, but I told them I was not a local.
When I paid for my CDs the cashier asked if I was a tourist. They gave me a tax refund upon sighting my passport. That meant I had missed out on a tax refund on yesterday's purchases. Didn't amount to much though.
I found a good Vietnamese lunch in the basement food court of the City Hall Eslite store.
By this time it was afternoon and time to visit the museum. It's in the foothills of Shilin, a leafy residential suburb in the north of Taipei. To get there one had to transfer from Shilin station to a bus.
Photography is not allowed in the museum, and at every corner an attendant will be holding a placard stating so, so I have no pictures from there, but you can see many of the treasures on the museum website and elsewhere. Some of them are jaw-dropping such as the jadeite cabbage and the concentric ivory spheres. I particularly liked the porcelain collection.
Impressive as individual museum pieces may be, I realised that the greatest accomplishment of the Chinese has been to maintain an unbroken civilisation for many millennia. The museum seems to agree with this idea with a panel showing a timeline of world cultures. No doubt Confucianism and Taoism, and later Buddhism, have shaped a people and culture which have weathered change and flourished.
After having a couple of bagels, cream cheese, and coffee in the shopping centre it was time for retail therapy. Taiwan is the home of a several well-known computer manufacturers. Online forums mentioned Guanghua, a 5 storey building full of computer shops, but also said that most of the stuff you could get over the Internet and bargains were few. But I was curious so I went.
The ground floor held shops selling laptops and tablets. Higher floors had PC assemblers and parts shops. Pretty much what you'd expect in an Asian computer mart. Rather devoid of customers for a Saturday.
A friend of mine had asked me to look for cement for gluing the rubber onto table tennis bats. I happened upon a small sports store where a stream of customers flowed through to have their bat rubber replaced. As you might guess, table tennis is widely played in Taiwan.
The surrounding streets had computer stores too. I didn't buy anything there either. But I had seen a stall selling radish cake before entering the mart. But when I emerged, there were no more radish cakes. Must have been a breakfast thing. In Taiwan you have to grab the food when it's on offer. I consoled myself with a red bean paste waffle.
The top rated shopping attraction of Taipei on Tripadvisor was the City Hall branch of the Eslite book store. Imagine that, a book store at number 1. This I had to see.
It was indeed extraordinary; it had a large selection of books spread across 2 or 3 floors, mostly in Chinese, many of them translations. Lots of esoteric stuff. Psychobabble best sellers mingled with scholarly works like Piketty's Capital. This was evidence of a very literate populace.
And it was very civilised of Eslite to provide not just a few sofas but a whole room full of chairs for sampling the books before buying. This is what a bookshop should be, I thought. I came away with a couple of CDs.
Besides books they also sold stationery and upmarket items such as leather goods.
I didn't want to go up Taipei 101. It was expensive, $20 to go up the super-fast elevator, squirming in crowds at every stage. But I did get a glimpse of Taipei 101 from the back of the City Hall. A bit hazy due to the moisture in the air.
By this time it was way past lunchtime, so I headed for Wufenpu where there is a clothing market. I didn't need to worry about food stalls; in Taiwan where there's a market, there's bound to be food.
The shops in Wufenpu are wholesalers and traders from other markets come here to stock up. You can see bags and bags full of shirts or pants imported from China or Korea. They will sell retail but probably would like to see you buy a few.
Let's get the food out of the way first. I had a chives pancake with egg, then watermelon juice. Later on I encountered a hawker selling ice cream rice rolls. She put three balls of ice cream topped with crushed peanuts in a rice paper sheet and rolled it up. The interesting thing was you could have coriander as garnish if you wanted. Quite tasty.
I had hoped to get some jeans and shirts but practically all the clothing on offer was women's fashion. I found nothing, which meant I had more cash left to burn up before leaving.
I was glad to get out of the crowds. By this time it was nearly evening. I went back to the upmarket food court above Taipei train station and had a pork chop rice meal. There were lots of elderly tourists in the food court. Were they in Taipei for a weekend jaunt from the country?
I explored some of the octopus like underground passages radiating from the station and eventually called it a night. I packed before turning in as I was moving to a room in a hotel for my last night to finish the holiday in a bit of luxury.
When I tried to buy a ticket for the 0850 service from the vending machine at Hualien station, it said it could not complete the transaction. I went to the counter and the girl said the earliest service with an available seat was 1115. Grrr, why were so many people going to Taipei on a Friday? So I walked back to the hostel and whiled away the time checking travel information on my smartphone. Unfortunately I could not update the blog because the power cable to my netbook had developed a break.
No matter, I was not due at the hostel until 1500 anyway. When I got on the train I realised that I should have grabbed a snack or something as I wouldn't get into Taipei until 1320 with this Puyuma (another native name) service. The trolley girl came and only when she had gone past I realised that she had bento lunches in cardboard boxes. I had read about those, they are supposed to be tasty and good value. The next time she came past they were all sold and she was selling drinks. Grrr.
Anyway when I reached Taipei station I headed for the upmarket food court upstairs and had a belated but delicious lunch of a teppanyaki hamburger steak with egg and rice.
The underground passageways around the HSR, TRA and MTR Taipei stations are lined with shops. I bought an Easycard and loaded it with money to travel the MTR at will. Fares are reasonable, starting at about 60¢ for the shortest trip. The passageways are a veritable maze and I had to consult the wall maps often. Even the locals had to. I found it confusing that the maps had north every which way. Eventually I worked it out; the map was oriented to represent the viewer's current position, i.e. from you are here, down means backwards, and left and right mean those. That made sense in its own fashion.
I found the hostel after a bit of wandering and they checked me in. The dorm had air conditioning, essential due to the humidity. I rested a bit then went out for coffee and cake.
Taipei is a large metropolis with about 2.7 million and Greater Taipei has 7 million. The traffic would be far worse without public transport. But there was no way to avoid the large numbers of people. It was tiring to weave in and out of crowds.
In the evening I went to the Ningxia night market for dinner. It actually isn't that large a market, only one street about 200m long but it has every kind of food you might want.
Part of the market sells bric-a-brac and offers amusement games, as is normal for Taiwanese night markets. The other part sells food.
I started off with a bowl of Cantonese pork and preserved egg congee, eaten sitting at a shared table just next to the stall. It's not a native Taiwanese dish, so it was qualified with Cantonese. But it was like the comfort food I used to enjoy.
Next a couple of skewers of grilled smelly tofu with salad on top. It doesn't taste as bad as it sounds, the grilling tones down the fermented taste of the tofu.
After that a jelly drink to slake my thirst and then some steamed língjiǎo (water caltrops)
. They look like a buffalo's head or bat. I hadn't had those since I was a kid and I was trying to remember what they tasted like. Turned out to be floury since they are an edible seed. The hawker had helpfully scored the front of the caltrop to make it easy to extract the seed. That was a trip down memory lane. It's unlikely I'll get to eat water caltrop in Australia since it is classified as a weed.
I made my way back to the central stations. There is a large underground department store called Q Square. It was pandemonium with counters calling out bargains for the next 10 minutes or similar and customers rushing to examine whatever was offered. Most of the goods were ladies fashion.
I found a small cluster of food shops in the basement and had a bowl of premium ice cream. I opted for Founder's (of the ice-cream chain, not Taiwan) Choice. It was very good and half the price of the ice-cream back home. In general consumables were half price, except for global items like gourmet coffee.
And that was my first night in Taipei. I was glad that I had planned to end the holiday on a high note in Taipei. It would have been an anti-climax to end in a smaller city like Kaohsiung. For the next two days I had only the National Palace Museum and some shopping on my list, so I could relax.
Taroko Gorge is the feature in the national park that most people come to see and is listed as one of the top sights of Taiwan, which is why I was in Hualien. The name is of native origin. This is a commemorative statue at the national park centre representing the mother spirit.
The 0630 bus was too early for my taste but the 0750 suited me fine. I came down to find a simple breakfast of a triangular sandwich and DIY tea. The bus was actually also a service for the towns between Hualien and the park so there were many diversions from the main highway.
Another statue representing a warrior of the tribe. You begin to see the possibilities in the gorge in the distance.
The flood plain of the river that empties into the Pacific Ocean.
The bus was a hop-on hop-off affair. There were enough runs throughout the day that if you timed your stops correctly you could visit the attractions you wanted. The first stop was Shakadang, also naming the tunnel. The road and tunnels were built by demobbed soldiers of the nationalist army in the years after the war.
From here one could take a walk of a couple of km beside the the river bed. Notice the incredibly tortured rocks created by the geologic uplift. It is still active, rising about 0.5 cm per year.
Dig those strata!
The trail ended in this rest stop. Native tribal families still live in the area and use the trail for transport, usually in the off-peak hours, as a sign advised.
There is a service area at Bulowan. I had lunch here. There are several trails from this terraced area, one of which led back to the main road, not too far from the next attraction. I debated with myself whether to walk the trail and rejoin the bus at the next attraction. Before I could ask a park employee about this idea (they were at lunch), the next bus arrived so I hopped on.
Yanzikou (Swallow Grotto) was the peak attraction of my itinerary. You can see the milky turquoise of the rock flour suspended in the water.
A permit is required to walk across the suspension bridge.
The grotto starts here.
The grotto accommodates both a road and a walkway. Work is underway to create a separate tunnel for the vehicles so that the pedestrians don't have to watch out for them.
From openings in the grotto, one can see the stream and rock strata.
Nobody offered me a hard hat and I don't know where they were issued. Maybe they thought I was hard headed enough. But seriously it does indicate that rockfalls do occur though not with such frequency that anybody thought to bar me from entering.
A covered section.
They say that if you squint, you can make out the profile of a tribal warrior's head in the rock on the right side of the stream.
Can't see him? Here, have another go.
The grotto ended in a rest area serving food and drink. The road continues in this fashion. The upper tunnel is the newer one. The tunnels are sometimes destroyed by seismic activity and have to be rebuilt. Taiwan is both an earthquake and a typhoon zone so with beauty comes danger.
Looking back at where I had been.
Although the bus could have picked us up at the far end of the grotto, it didn't look like it was an official stop so I had to retrace my steps to the start of the grotto to catch the next run.
The next stop was one called Lushui. There is another rest area there. It's also the trailhead for some walks but it was mid-afternoon by now so I didn't have time for that. I did have a coffee here and enjoyed the cool air at a table for a while.
The last stop of the bus service is Tianxiang where there is a Buddhist temple. The road continues across the mountains. To really do Taroko NP justice one should cross the mountains at a leisurely pace. Many travel pages suggested hiring a driver so that you can view scenic spots at your own pace. If you can afford to, that's great.
There is another small night market in Hualien said to be incredibly crowded and where some stalls have queues waiting up to an hour. Madness. I was too tired after the day out. I even opted for a fast food dinner to avoid looking around (blush). And that was my peak day in Taiwan.
On arrival Hualien looked like a sleepy town; it was deserted a few streets away from the train station. I should have noted the location of the hostel while I still had Internet access. I wasted a few minutes looking for it.
The dorm bed was comfortable enough but other facilities had seen better days. But it was seviceable. That night I realised that the mosquito repellent vapouriser plugged into the power outlet was meant to be used. I didn't make the same mistake and get bitten the next night.
I rested, then asked where I could get an afternoon coffee. They told me to walk towards the centre until I saw the 85° shop. That chain also trades in Australia. I got a decent coffee and cake.
The picture was taken on my second outing, in the evening, to have dinner. By then I understood why it was quiet near the hostel. The train station is a couple of km out. So the hostel is handy for going to Taroko Gorge National Park by bus but not so much for the city's attractions. Can't have it both ways.
A blog had mentioned a takeaway that was famous for dumplings, both the dry and juicy varieties. A crowd was lined up to buy, as described. The line moved fast and soon I had a bag of each type for dinner for a very reasonable price.
I ate my dinner in this plaza, which has old tracks and an antique railway carriage from the era when Hualien's port was bustling.
An interesting note is that Hualien City offered free WiFi access in the plaza and I used it to check the location of the night market.
People were out strolling in the night air. It was cooler than down south, maybe a couple of degrees, but still a bit humid.
Oh, the dumplings? They were excellent but not memorable, and the distribution of the reviews supported this. I guess fame by word of mouth has a way of feeding itself, and attracting customers.
According to the reviews on the Net there were two nght markets in Hualien. One is the Rainbow Night Market to the east before reaching the ocean. This fountain is just outside the night markets.
It comprised two rows of stalls across a wide passage. Also tables behind one row. Half the shops were offering arcade games. the other half selling food and drink. There was a shorter lane at right angles to the first.
I bought a watermelon juice. In Taiwan when you buy a drink, say pearl tea, in a plastic cup, they seal the top with plastic film, using a dedicated machine. You drink through a straw that pierces the film. It's actually practical; it keeps dirt out of the drink as you carry it around and prevents spillage.
I decided not to try to reach the ocean. I guessed that the beach would probably not be attractive. I was lucky I didn't because it started raining not long after I regained the hostel.
I asked the staff about the Taroko Gorge tour advertised on their notice board. He said I could do it on my own since I understood Chinese, and gave me the departure times of the public bus from the outside of the railway station.
