Walking along the beach from Hualien to Chishingtan
Today I walked along the beach to the next town over, Qixingtan, formerly Chishingtan. Cheetsingtchan is famous for its view of the beach with the mountains in the background, number 7 on top 13 Taiwan scenic spots!
Actually thats a Korean thing, where every thing is Number x of y of national z, e.g. NUMBER 3 of 14 national historical bus stop monuments!
The path to get to Shequingtian is heavily used by cyclists, the path quality was generally excellent apart from where the road was washed into the sea, but the scenery at times was not as I expected.
Whilst you basically stick to the coast, the approximately 14km journey takes you through a cement factory and a rubbish dump. Which I found exciting.
Then it ends at the very start of the air force base runway. I saw F16's powering up from the road yesterday when returning from Taroko on the bus, no such luck today.
The rain mostly held off, there was a brief shower at my destination, during which time me and everyone else hung out in the public toilets whilst a man in a diesel powered wheelchair played an electronic drumset under a tarp at ridiculously loud volumes. A great time was had by all.
Also due to overwhelming pressure from owners of fancy high pixel density screens, I have increased the size of the images and turned up the export quality. This means it will take longer to load the page, and you will have to scroll further to get past my crap photos. Enjoy!
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.
The Hualien Far Eastern department store
Imagine my lack of surprise when this evening I stepped out of my hotel room to find it was raining. It is not really a problem at night, and it didnt rain much during the day.
Imagine my further surprise when as I set off down the street a small girl came charging out of the hotel in heels furiously waving a free hotel umbrella at me. I was petrified. Was she going to kill me with it? The metal spike on it looked sharp.
After I regained my composure I was able to explain to her, whilst standing in the rain, that I prefer to get wet than carry an umbrella, she locked shocked and stood dumbfounded as I strode off.
Due to the rain, I had googled where to go to get out of the rain that wasnt just sitting in a cafe. There are no shopping malls in Hualien at all, but there is to my surprise a department store, the local branch of 'Far Eastern', complete with a multi level walmart clone in the basements, a starbucks and a mcdonalds. Hours of fun then.
So I headed there, and wandered around a lot looking at things, but then chose not to eat there. I was actually feeling a bit faint from my all cake and coffee diet, so I headed into the first proper Taiwanese looking family restaurant I could find. More on that below.
Once I had finished eating, I headed back into the basement walmart clone for a while, much like these stores in the rest of the world, they largely exist for poor people to hang out in at night and watch the wall of televisions or use the internet on the tablets and phones before they buy a crate of toilet paper and go home. But at least they bought something, cause I did exactly the same then bought nothing at all!
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.