Hong Kong - Japan - Taiwan - March 2014 - Page 5

I had remaining yen to burn. Starbucks is expensive, so it won out over the various local brands. Top tip, dont enter the departure area of Osaka Kansai airport too early! Its much more interesting before customs.

This is literally all there is after customs, and even this is only fleeting, as you are put into a shuttle truck train thing on guided tyres to a long corridor with public toilets.

Heres my plane. Im scanning for ACARS signals.

The Cathay Pacific lounge is still about as impressive as Karrathas Qantas lounge, only less food. They had cups with packets of noodles and a water boiler.

On my 4th visit to Taoyuan airport near Taipei, and they have finished the new terminal building! I wandered about to buy a sim card and find an ATM, its very nice, huge food court. I will be back early when I leave in 9 days to fully explore.
Yes I am that much of an airport nerd.

Next we go on a bus to the high speed rail. The entire aisle is filled with peoples bags. In the event of fire, everyone dies.

Its me on the high speed rail, in a non black t-shirt, a rarity. This rail unlike Osaka really is high speed, it goes to 305kmph and stays there until the next station.

The view of Taichung in the distance from the station is smog filled. I still have another train to catch!

The regular station seems to be a museum of sorts to Taiwanese railway. I will probably spend more time looking at that later also, because I also like trains, and planes, and automobiles.

The station for the regular train was old and confusing. The LED signs dont work, it seems to be an old platform reopened while they rebuild the new one.
After about 10 minutes this blue train came, I got on it. Had no idea if it was going where I wanted. Luckily I can read Taizhong central station in Chinese and knew thats the third stop. The inside of this train is very nice and modern with tv's giving lots of info.

And this is the view once I have arrived downtown. My hotel is about 50 metres behind me, a convenient underpass takes me from the station entry to the hotel front door.
The hotel is the City Inn Plus, and for $45 a night you get a modern big room, free minibar (soft drinks, chocolate), ridiculously fast internet, free breakfast, theres a lounge with a barista, and free on demand movies of which there are thousands. I suspect its a NAS and someones bittorrent collection.

These markets are literally, in the road. The road is not blocked off. People just wheel more and more crap out into the road and expect pedestrians and buses to play nice.

Sometimes the markets go around blind corners, with big woks of boiling oil precariously placed.

A random brightly lit street with no restaurants. In Taiwan, pedestrian crossings do not mean cross the road, they mean cross the road when nothings coming, cars and scooters just ignore them.

More scooters than the eye can see. At least here they left a path for pedestrians, often the entire footpath is taken up by parked scooters and you must walk on the road in the traffic.
As dangerous as this sounds, you just have to place faith in oncoming traffic to swerve to avoid you, like they do everyone else, most of the time.

There are many tiny little unattended shops like this, with these amusement games where you try and get something out of the glass case. I mean I saw 50 such places, all without a single customer.

Every neighbourhood has its own temple of some description. Usually with Neon, often with people playing the lottery, perhaps they take their scratchie lotto tickets to the temple for good luck.

I spotted these twin towers and decided there must be some sort of centre of commerce nearby.

Indeed there was, with quite a few new looking buildings.

And a giant ice cream, out the front of yet another upmarket cafe serving cake and bubble tea.

So I ended up with Japanese Omurice. Boring. But $2.
Unfortunately it came with all the fishy tasting things on it and in it and with it. These things taste better than they smell.

A typical Taichung street, out the front of my hotel. The hotel breakfast was interesting, the breakfast room is like a space station, and then the meals on offer are strange even for China/Taiwan. Yes you can have toast or cereal or even scrambled eggs, but there were a whole heap of strange combinations served in those little paper cup cake things.
Combinations like salami, raisins and egg salad. Or smoked salmon, tofu and salsa. Perhaps corn, preserved sausage and mashed potato.
Nobody seemed to be eating them. I think the hotel thinks they are very cool and are trying to invent new taste sensations.

This is the walkway to the natural science museum. It has marble dinosaur inlays. There really arent many trees in Taichung! This few hundred metres of greenery is listed as a top tourist spot to experience nature in the city.
The nature being of the inlayed in concrete variety as opposed to the deer in the main streets of Nara in Japan.

This is the natural science museum. It looks crap in photos, but its enormous and very high quality.
Lots of walkways are clear glass with projections under foot that change as you step on them.
There are 5 or 6 different interlinked buildigs, each with various exhibits, many interactive.

Theres at least 30 interactive stations where you can control microscopes or cameras such as this. The microscopes were great but hard to photograph. They seem to have an electron microscope hooked up to a projector showing cells on something.

I dont know what this is. There was also a water powered clock, and a section on Oceania below everything else with no one at all bothering to go down there.

Now heres a great job! You sit in a glass cube, stuffing and posing dead animals to be put on display whilst hundreds of people look at you and take flash photography.

The dinosaur exhibit was most popular with the many school groups. Theres also dinosaurs outside in the gardens. I snuck this sneaky photo of one of the color coordinated school groups charging around at top raspberry cordial speed.
Herding them all together for a photo was an impressive demonstration of whistle blowing.
Note they all have matching water bottles, I remember at the Taipei zoo years ago they also had matching hats, backpacks, torches and their own whistles. Basically an earthquake survival kit.

They also had a confronting exhibit on death, including the executed criminals that were finely sliced into thousands of pieces. But I enjoyed this cryogenic tank, one for whole body, one for head only. Which would you choose?

Across the road is the botanic gardens. My 30 cents also gets me in here, and damn it I need to get some value for my large outlay.
This is pretty much the entire garden in this shot.
However they manage to keep their biodome thing going, unlike Adelaide whos bicentennial conservatory gift to the people is now turned off, with some of the glass removed, so that everything inside can die.

A giant dragonfly, last night it was ice cream. Australia isnt the only place that does this.

Me and everyone else wanted to go up that platform near the top, but they dont let you!

Next up is the local temple, which this morning is staging some sort of karaoke contest for elderly stroke victims. I dont know but it sounded terrible, so bad that I made a video. Weird that they would have such huge P.A. systems to broadcast their terrible unaccomponied groaning across the city.

Now here we are, crossing a road in the new part of the city. The trees are very colorful.

This is the new city hall. It is absolutely enormous, and so very Chinese. I will need to go back and do a proper exploration, as I think theres 4 sides to it and an open square in the middle.
They have wisely left room to drive tanks into the square in case of a student uprising.

Heres a few of the department stores. Unlike the rest of Asia, China (and Taiwan which is more or less China) still leaves theirs unintegrated and stand alone. Each one tries to entrap you inside so you cant easily walk underground or across outside walkways linking them.
These 3 buildings in a row all feature about 10 floors of clothing, 2 basement floors of supermarket, 2 floors of restaurants near the top, and a cinema on the top floor.
It can take you about 30 minutes to get out of them if you go up to the top, they stop you from taking the stairs and I swear the lifts only go up.
The escalators are then arranged in such a way its very easy to go up, but to go down requires you to cross from one side of the floor to the other.

This is looking back towards where I had come from. I believe this street is one of only 2 main boulevardes through Taichung, that have proper footpaths and signage and underpasses at busy intersections.

On floor 16 of Top City, and they have decided to make it mini Japan town, again. I dont want anymore Japanese food!

Instead I had steak on top of noodles with an egg and vegetables and a bonus salad. I better find some proper beef noodle soup soon!

Heres the smog laden view from the cinema lobby on the top floor of one of the inescapable department stores.

Heading to find the bus, I couldnt resist a coconut Obun. Crispier outside than the ones in Adelaide, perhaps because they use some kind of oil spray that causes cancer.

If you want an LED tree, heres where you can get it. Classy.

One of many open drains in Taichung. They try and disguise them as parks, but they smell! I see random pipes of mystery liquid running into them.

Fengjia night market. I had read a website written by a German who was worried he would be trampled to death here. He was genuinely scared. Its not so busy tonight.

This puppy hates round eyes. I had to flee in terror.

The new taste sensation is, a block of frozen beef, part burnt with a blow torch, served in a paper bag.

More random streets around the night market. It was a cool place, it borders the biggest university, and caters for that crowd. However there were also lots of sit down restaurants on the streets nearby.

You can also buy strawberries.

Or shop for the latest fashions. So fashion.

Or, as always seems to happen to me, get attacked by the pedobear.

This place stuck out like a sore thumb, Tibetan cuisine.

I selected a place for dinner called Cha for Tea, for those that dont know, Cha means Tea in Chinese.
Anyway, I ordered 2 things, and was told no. I have to pick from a, b, c, and d, and then get a matching tea with each course.
I suggested this was too much money, I just want the 300NT ($10) thing I pointed at.
It was then explained to me that the deal described was $10.
So first up, and the pictures dont do it justice, some shredded celery and other things with a sesame and pureh tea sauce, and a wonton and green tea soup thing. Served with honey tea in a shot glass.

Next up is my entree and main, tofu in some kind of tea which was perhaps the highlight, so flavoursome! And stewed beef in some kind of tea soup.

I ate my dessert before photo, but it was a slice of cake with tea flavoured icing. The tea here though, in the little pot, was really delicious.
I think its brewed in the pot with the milk, but it tasted somehow different, a kind of malty flavour.
Thats enough about my awesome dinner. Taiwan cuisine > everything.

Walking back to the main bus road, and I found some new residential buildings. They are quite dark and mysterious.

Last one features me.
What you cant see is below me. I thought it was a hole for a building site as I walked past the other side.
Turns out its a big park with multiple levels of boardwalks, cafes and bizzarre LED lights suspended from trees. There were lots of people down there drinking bubble tea.

The bus I took goes nowhere near the start of the trail, I had to hike up little laneways up the mountain, poorly signposted. Probably 5km!
There is a minibus that drives a circle route, but it doesnt come often, so I just walked.
It was nice, but some better signs would be good!

I went past some very rural Chinese looking housing estates such as this. Gated compounds with guards. A long way from any kind of shop.

The walk to the start of the climb also went past various farming areas.
People going past me on scooters stopped to look at me from a safe distance, yes I was lost, but I didnt care. I knew how to re trace my steps if I decided I was too lost.

Presumably (turned out to be correct) I am heading up there. It still seems a long way away!

Eventually I got to this map. It even has an English you are here. Except even this was frustrating, the start of the trail was not where the map is, it was a few hundred metres up the road.
Before knowing that, I walked the perimeter of the car park where the map is twice looking for where the hell I should be.

And then apparently this is what I came here for. A bitumen road with scooters on it, littered with rubbish.

And a lot of chickens to give me bird flu.

After an uninspiring 20 minutes or so I got to this. And was excited. I thought this ladder thing would be used on and off where needed.
No, 95% of the entire walk, at least 3 hours, is this. It was hard work walking over this! Takes full concentration as described above.

Somewhere about half way up the route I took up to the ridge. A shame about the smog. I suspect the smog is permanent.

Part of the pine log ladder being replaced. The work team had water. I should have asked them for some!
Actually there were big plastic bottles of water left along the path, but I wasnt about to drink that unless I seriously was worried about dying. Who knows where it came from.

The view from the top is, hard to photograph with any kind of detail.

Across to one of the other ridges. It seems the far side of the mountain is less dramatically steep, with some kind of track and a few shelters.

More view.

This is one of the sections where the path was too dangerous to use. So instead you lower yourself on ropes and around it, in the jungle.

This is about the best I could do for a photo of me near the top.
Trademark stance failure.

I knew I was heading down, but I elected to choose a different track down. Good plan as it was better maintained, although still log ladder.
The only issue is I didnt know exactly where it went down to.

After an exhausting adventure, I made it to a swing bridge to freedom.
There were a few people at the top, but I suspect they came up from the other side. I only passed 4 people going up or down in the many hours I was climbing on ladders.

However, being off the trail and back on roads doesnt mean I am back on a bus yet.
First I passed a number of abandoned looking camping grounds, including this scout one.
My dream of a vending machine didnt materialize.
There were some public toilets with taps, but you arent supposed to drink Taiwan tap water!
The scout camp centre had a big hall thing, with painted murals of naked children frolicing with tigers, which was a little concerning. I couldnt get a decent photo through the window and some gardner guy was watching me from afar.

The mini bus came past as I was wandering back towards the village. Good timing. Once I got back to the village I raced into the Family Mart for pocari sweat, the best apple I ever ate, pre cut to be man friendly, and some Hello Panda.
I then bought a second drink.

Finally back on a regular bus back to Taichung. The mountain village has these paper windmills everywhere. Its a clue as to where to get off if you ever catch bus 1, 21 or 31 out of Taichung in hope of finding Dakeng.

My hotel is at the rear of the station. Until now I have always gone in front of the station. This mall is one street back.
It is very weird, it has this huge indoor atrium, yet the shops that go 15 floors up are very tiny. The atrium is much bigger than the floor space of the shops.
Theres little more than a corridor on each level with a couple of stools and a bench.

Under the mall though is this large food court, and for 2 levels under that is a 24 hours Carrefour mega supermarket thing.

My foodcourt dinner. I think its Thai food, I dont know! The ingredients suggest so, the flavours do not. However the lady that served me yelled at the chef, in Chinese, American, very small chilli.
I recognised this, and screamed at her in Chinese, VERY BIG CHILLI!
She was very embarassed, but also laughing, and then also screamed VERY VERY BIG CHILLI! at the chef.

I think theres 7 shops in this photo, 6 of them are bubble tea shops. I have no idea how they all stay in business.

Tonight motion blur long exposure from an overpass nearby rear of station.

This is your typical Taiwanese restaurant.
It is largely outdoors, the seating is where the footpath is for the stores surrounding it, making everyone walk on the road into traffic to get past.
This one has the kitchen in that area, but many have indoor/outdoor seating behind plastic blinds, and the kitchen on the footpath, with portable gas bottles and a trolley with burners.
Presumably this stops their indoor area filling with smoke.

Meet Fresh Taiwan, in Taiwan.
Unfortunately the waitress who took my order assumed I would take away, despite me sitting at a table. Or maybe she didnt want me at a table. Regardless, I sat in the store and ate my red bean soup with various taro and sweet potato balls, and drank my sickly QQ whatever tea.
There is a meet fresh on Hindley street in Adelaide now, if you want to sample Taiwanese dessert.
It might not be there for long, its in the wrong area and gets very little patronage.
Adelaide people can try Dessert story on Gouger street if you can get in. Its the same concept.