A full lap of Taiwan in March 2017 - Page 3

Part one of my beach walk featured concrete tsunami (or possibly Peoples Liberation Army) defences. Hey, I havent been overusing brackets lately.

There are actually lots of nice parts of this walk, but I found them less interesting to photograph.
There are skateboard ramps, beach volleyball courts, the usual beach fare.
Hualien is actually very tropical, palm trees everywhere.

The path was of a high quality the whole way, no trucks or scooters blocking the way or trying to run me down.

Then you go through the port area, a very large port indeed. I climbed up the control tower and explained to the local operators how to efficiently run a port.
High on their list of efficiencies, ensure there are no ships in port.

Along the wharves are a number of cafes and art galleries. This seems to be the case with port areas globally.

The coastguard ships here are numerous, they have guns on them too. There were signs saying not to take photos of military vessels, I took photos anyway. Coastguard is the pretend military.

Now we head into cement factory world. The exciting part of the tour.

A brief excursion along an abandoned train track ensured a fun time was had. Also theres a pipe.

Then I was back at the ocean, still grey. The water is actually very turquoise and tropical looking, on a sunny day. Sand is black, and its mostly rocky. I think its being mined nearer the city centre to turn into cement.

Next up was the highlight for me, the rubbish dump! It is listed as an environmental park, and also recycling centre. I think they were right, because there was no smell at all, and not very many birds. So probably only clean recyclables, piled up waiting to be burnt because there is no market to sell them. Thats my expert opinion anyway.
Please review the news on Australian recycling centres full of unsellable recovered recyclables burning down in the last month.

The path continued on through tropical mangrove things.

And then, my destination appeared, in the distance, shrouded by ocean spray.

There were still challenges ahead. The path was washed away in a number of places.

Some people were determined to enjoy the beach. Generally it involves standing near the edge of the water then screaming and running away.

The town square, called star view gallery (not today!) has many food carts, and competing drumming buskers.

This drumming busker was the best, but he was completely drowned out by a guy in a heavily modified wheelchair including diesel generator with an electronic kit and a P.A. system. I did not photograph him because I had to dodge the rain and then he rolled off with his kit going with him.

A bit further along the coast is the Hualien airport which is also an air force base. These are the landing lights, they extend into the sea. No planes came.

It was here yesterday where from the bus I saw F16's turn to take off right on the edge of the road. A few were doing circuits over my head earlier in the day, but none were flying whilst I was here to watch.

I had walked all the way around the top of that cliff. A cliff with rubbish on top of it at the dump.

This is the famous view. If you google image search Hualien you will see lots of shots of this view at dusk.

Thats where they keep the air force jets. There were plenty of guys on observation towers with rifles, but no jets.

To celebrate my long journey to not see any jets taking off, I had a small piece of cake and a great coffee from 85C. Really good coffee actually, but the only food they have of any kind is cake.
From now on, having cake for breakfast.

Shop dog has eaten shop cat and replaced him in this shop.

Here it is, in all its glory, the Hualien branch of the Far Eastern department store. It is deceivingly large, a big L shape behind it, and features H&M, Uniqlo, Muji and others, but no food court.

My dinner from somewhere with no picture menu, no English, and no English speaking of any kind. No problem, I got through on broken Chinese. I dont recall encountering such a total lack of English before, after ordering I said thank you, in English, and this caused another round of confusion as I explained that it is the English way of saying xie xie, which resulted in laughter from the two ladies helping me.
I kind of wish more places were like this, everywhere else I go they insist on speaking English.
My dinner was however delicious, and I stopped feeling faint by the time I got up to leave.

Chinese, I mean, Taiwanese Walmart. China actually has Walmart. Where as Taiwan has A-mart.

You can buy girl incubators here. Stick a girl in a heated tent until she comes out done.
I genuinely dont know what these things are, they have them in stock and one assembled on the shop floor, so its not just a joke.

Not many pictures due to the rain, but I really do enjoy Family Mart burnt caramel popcorn. It is much more burnt than the kind you would get in Australia. I am a fan of burnt flavour.

Blue sky. I dont think it has rained in town all day, just on the mountain. I had to go under the train tracks to get to my mountain, taking me to the wrong side of the tracks.

There was a local bird flu market, lacking in birds as they have all been killed off to reduce bird flu to epidemic levels rather than pandemic.

So blue. A highway overpass is always a welcome adventure for me to take a photo of one of the 2 starbucks outlets in Hualien. This one is located in a very strange place, far from any real action.

I climbed into one of the 3 baseball stadiums, the main one has a roof. This one is under reconstruction as you can probably see, although with my blurry photos its possible no one can see anything at all.

I made a quick detour to the local mega temple which had about 50 buses parked at it.

Then I found myself at stonehenge. Along here as far as the eye can see is baseball grounds / pitches / mounds / parks. I dont know what you call a place where you play an organised game of baseball.

I however, was going to ascend the mountain into the cloud.

At the start of the trail is what I presume was parking for the mining equipment. Long since abandoned.

I thought the birds in the trees sounded quite large. Turns out there were monkeys, lots and lots of monkeys.

Some view from the lowest viewing place.

A bit more view from a higher viewing place. I dont know why I didnt take a better photo of the 2 runways. They are joined together by a very long taxiway that cuts through the middle of the city.
If you open the full size photo here you can see the start of the closer runway in between the wooden slats, and the long taxiway to the other runway from the left side of the photo.
Thats a long explanation about the layout of an airport.

Going into cloud now, no more view!

The view from the top, definitely in cloud now.

There are some cherry blossom trees at the top to remind everyone about the former Japanese name of the trail.

RETURN OF THE COAT. That reminds me I need to take it out of its plastic bag and dry it.

I am very happy with my new boots. Feet have remained dry at all times. Good boots are the most important thing.
I did read a translated web page about people who tried to cut a path over the back of this mountain getting badly attacked by leeches, and the sharp leaves of a plant giving them leg infections. Probably a good idea to stick to the path.

Back down and here is a bonsai farm.

And just one of the many bed and breakfast places. Quite a few had signs written in German.

I was starving by now, 30k steps without a break, so I stopped for a bread and butter caramel muffin bake thing. Yes more cake. I always put on weight on holidays despite walking 30km a day minimum, much of it up mountains!

There are a lot of people upset that the Taiwan tourism board slogan this year is Taiwan - touch your heart. With good reason I guess, it kind of means Taiwan - very sad.
However this is nothing compared to my old home state of South Australia, where after a year of committee deliberations, they came up with, SA - Going all the way!

I had to stop and buy some more tape for my toes, preventative paper tape I appply daily. So I went into a mega chemist, this one is multi level and has a huge section dedicated to junk food.
Presumably this helps them make people need more medicines.

Google Analytics tells me people prefer photos of junk food to mountains, so heres another.

Here is my local street this Sunday evening, note how dry it is.

Every corner of Taiwan seems to have about a thousand bakeries per square mile. They all seem great. I want that thing to the right of the black thing with the caramel icing. Too bad its dinner time and not time for another cake breakfast.

The local vegetable market. No, its a trick. Tiny miniature vegetables. I thought these were amazing.

The local fish market. Its still a trick! I enjoyed minature scenery so much I took 2 photos. Also its colorful.
Both of the above photos are of scenes no more than 30cm across.

I went and hung out on my own in the Industrial and Cultural Society Liberty Square. Now feeling liberated and industrious, and even more cultural than ever. Also I am a square.

The main train station is actually a long way from the city proper. There is a satellite city of sorts there for tourists who only want to spend the night before going to the gorge early in the morning.
Not many good food options to be found, lots of shops selling pineapple cakes and jade bracelets.

Near the station you can even find Pachinko parlours, presumably to cater to the Japanese. I have not seen any of these in Taipei ever.

And if you are brave enough to stick your head into a Korean karaoke bar in Australia you will see these. Electronic dart boards. I presume these are here to cater for the Korean tourists.

I selected Tiger Pasta for dinner. A funky placy for young people with shipping crates for tables. Young people and also me. Not young anymore. Now I am sad.

The place was called Tiger Pasta and one of the dishes on their menu was Tiger Pasta, so thats what I had. And it was good. But it was $10, which is expensive for Taiwan. The price you pay for an actual table to sit at and shipping crate decor.
It did have big chunks of great quality beef, egg, real parmesan, and you cant see it but cherry tomatoes and brocolli. I enjoyed it a lot. I presume the black pasta is squid ink, they love squid here.

Final picture for the evening, another random street with many scooters. So dry. I might have to moisturize due to the total dryness.

The fighter jets were particularly active in Hualien this morning. My ability to photograph them was not great, here is the best I could do. A fantastic blurry sillouhuhouhethehtte.
You can watch them land with the mountian as a backdrop which was quite cool, but did not translate to a decent photo.
I think I hear them around Taitung as well. Taunting me. Taunted in Tauitung Two - The Tauntening.

I had time for a morning wander around Hualien one last time to enjoy the mountains. And with a break in the cloud I discovered that there are bigger mountains behind the mountains. Back there some distance are peaks higher than Fuji in Japan.

Yep, more mountains.

I then took a tour of the local markets.

Followed by go sit on a cactus.

Then I did a bird flu inspection. Marginal pass. Apparently they no longer butcher animals in the local markets in Taiwan. Instead they hide that from view of tourists with cameras like we do in Australia.

I saw this guy riding around like a maniac last night.

The inside of the inadequate Hualien station. It is being majorly upgraded. As is Taitung station for that matter. So many upgrades. At least the airport subway is done!

My old diesel loco.

The inside of my train has some nice silver archways to enjoy.

As previuosly mentioned, I find taking photos from a moving train mostly futile, but the scenery of the East rift valley was awesome. This is the best photo of about 30 tries.

And here I am in Taitung, outside the station. Excellent.

It really was a long way with a big suitcase and my backpack, walking down the roads. Notice its quite smokey, I found out why below.

Everyone, every single store or business, is burning bits of paper in the streets, and has a small table with food on it, mainly fruit but also chocolate, boxes of cereal, squid flavoured pringles. An offering of some kind, I helped myself to some pringles.
I asked in the hotel what it was for, they had their own fire going, and they couldnt explain it to me. I have googled, nothing. I am clueless. I fear there was some kind of incident or massacre I am not aware of that it being commemerated.
However I am covered in ash because of it.

My hotel is really really nice. The reception is nice, it has a 5 star looking restaurant, the room seems fantastic. Thats almost a kitchen area except its a bathroom and toilet, separate areas with glass doors.

And a picture window from the bathroom/kitchen to the bed which is enormous and luxurious. I also have a great view. All for about $60 a night.

General street scene. The footpaths under the buildings are clear and ready for walking!

Some interesting looking youths in black clothes with hair like peacocks went down these stairs and into the apple bar, which was busy playing Linkin Park or Creed or similar at window rattling volume.

Carrefour is here. They have them in Taipei also. Excellent multi level underground supermarket. Actually I first saw these in mainland China, before seeing them in France where they come from.

The aforementioned Sheraton hotel. It did not come up in my results when I searched hotels which tells me its out of my price range, which is very low. I am notoriously cheap. Well, lots of people stay in hostels, but im not a 19 year old girl, despite the rumors.

This is some kind of railway art park. The train used to come to here. Now it stops many miles away and you have to walk. Why does it not come here anymore? Stupidity.

They have left some old trains out in the park. This is highly unusual. The doors are open on the carriages you can go right in, yet they are pristine, no graffiti inside or out.

The small mall, it has a uniqlo, in case I need more plain clothes, which I do.

Nearby was an excellent looking multi level bakery. I wanted to go in but had not yet had my dinner had I had it or had then had. Maybe they will be open before 10AM for breakfast? Unlikely, before 10 the only things open are Mcdonalds and Starbucks, and they only open at 8. Taiwanese people sleep in.

This is the outside of my hotel, but it wasnt time to go to bed yet. It looks a lot like a Daiwa Roynet in Japan.

Toms world is all over mainland China, and Taiwan. Dont let the media convince you they hate each other. One China is more real than not real. Theres talk of building a tunnel again... a mere 300km.

Dinner tonight is kind of Japanese, kind of Korean, it is ginger pork with every kind of side dish. The most confusing thing is the cup with corn on top on the right.
I thought this was a soup or a drink, but after the bit of oil on top, its a custard. They provided a small spoon, so I thought it was dessert of some kind. But no, it is a savoury custard, with chunks of squid in it, at least I think it was squid.

And finally, for my mother, a Mister Donut. Not tonight, I would rather go to the other place, and dinner was too large for donut dessert. I dont even like donuts.