3 May 2023
Possibly the only rest day?
Longshan temple and Taipei Botanical Gardens
I have been looking at my schedule. There are 3 types of days on my trips, hiking days, travel days and rest days. Today might be the only rest day? My plans are densely packed for the next 2 cities. I guess travel days are basically rest days as the travel part is short.
Today I decided to go to the oldest most revered temple in all of Taiwan, the Longshan temple. I took a photo that explains it all, but the USA managed to bomb it, by 'accident', so it is not as old as is proclaimed, although miraculously, by divine intervention, the Buddha was not even damaged.
After inappropriately chanting 'Kali ma shakti de!' I got strange looks from everyone and decided I had better move on. BTW, that is the 2nd Indiana Jones reference I made, guess what I watched on the plane?
Next up was a new old street, with a couple of interesting tidbits (fun fact: my spell checker wants to change tidbits to titbits, I guess you could carry a few titbits in your fanny pack?) in an otherwise abandoned freshly minted old street, I will explain better in the pics.
For my final stop on a very hot morning, I headed to the botanical gardens, which are small, and a bit underwhelming, but full of people with huge enormous cameras taking photos of tree stumps.
Not many photos today.
This is the presidential palace. They do not call it that, but I think it is the administrative building for the office of the President. When I was here once before it was occupied by a student uprising and all the streets around it were blocked off. That all resulted in, nothing much.
I was on my way to the oldest most important temple in Taiwan. This is not it.
This is it! It is quite a small compound.
The surrounding gardens are full of golden dragons. Just as Buddha would want.
There is also a series of fake waterfall's with giant goldfish acting coy.
BINGO! The incense burner appears.
Filming seems to be fine inside Taiwanese temples, even during the actual prayer lead by satanic looking monks in black robes and pope hats who are inside that main part of the temple.
A starving cat appeared in the rafters. Quite the useless cat, there were food offerings everywhere!
Here is the sign that explains the bombing, and also explains that they don't burn incense anymore? I call bullshit, cause I could see it burning.
The next stop is the new old street. There are signs all over it declaring administrative neutrality.
It is a nice enough looking setup, owned by the city, some of the interiors have little museum style setups about not much, but most of them are currently empty, apart from the ubiquitous bubble tea shops.
The largest exhibition is the COVID museum. At first I thought it was a testing location and got ready to flee, but no, it is a couple of plastic suits and some newspaper printouts.
My journey to the botanical gardens took me past a giant French Taiwanese supermarket. I did a lap to enjoy the air conditioning. The top floor had a pretty good food court, food for future thought.
Now to observe people observing a tree trunk. I am guessing they are waiting for a bird to appear.
The lotus pond has only one flower. A guy was taking a photo of it with a lense about 3 metres long. I stood in front of him.
There is a zen garden. Small and understated. Nice drain in the foreground.
Overall, the gardens are small and compared to a few nearby parks that are not the official botanical gardens, rather disappointing. Now I will have a 2nd coffee and a pineapple cake.