Climbing on rocks at Xiaoyeliu
Before anything else, today I caused a breakfast incident. My hotel includes breakfast, they generally do in Taiwan, and since it seemed to be a really nice hotel restaurant, I thought I would try my free breakfast.
So I go in and they greet me and show me a table etc. and point me to the buffet. Over I go and make myself a platter of fruits, vegetables, breads and happily consume that, then out comes my breakfast. Wait, I didnt ask for that, or know it was coming.
Very proudly, the chef and the manager of the restaurant area wheeled over a trolley with enough food on it for 5 people, and exclaimed with great pride 'western breakfast!'. On the trolley was everything you could possibly fry, scrambled eggs, french toast, bacon, two kinds of sausage, hash browns, baked beans. I felt ill looking at how orange it all was.
Since I had already eaten too much, this was quite the dilemma, I declined the western breakfast as politely as I could, but they looked dejected, I apologised some more and left. Fast forward to later today and I return to the hotel and a different manager questioned me about my breakfast preferences, am I vegetarian, gluten intolerant, this manager spoke great English, I feel as though she was tasked to wait all day for me to return.
I think I was able to explain to her that I thought the buffet was the breakfast, and all that fried stuff was too much food, and all too orange.
Anyway, time for the next challenge, following the breakfast incident, time to try and work out the bus drama. The internet says the bus service is useless. And I fully agree.
I got a map from their official site, theres 2 routes, a loop around the main part of the city that is easy enough to walk, and another line that goes from the train station to the airport, transferring to the loop line at a random point in the middle of nowhere.
According to the timetable, these 2 services do not match up for transfers. According to the internet, these timetables are completely meaningless. I will note however that all buses stop for 2 hours at lunch, just like in Hualien. Weird.
Anyway, I was studying this map and headed out on foot to the random transfer point so I could get the bus that either went to the airport or the train station. Then things got really confusing.
The map printed on the sign is a mirror image of the one on the website. So the direction of travel on the web was clockwise, but anticlockwise on the sign, but they had flipped the stops, so they still both went from a to b to c to d.
Then to top it off, the times printed on the website are wrong, and they have stuck another set of times over the sign, which are now almost invisible due to being rained on. My only hope was to stand at the spot until a bus came.
43 minutes later, a bus comes, the sign on the bus says train station - this is something you have to check cause theres only a stop on one side of the road and all the buses approach it up the same street from the same direction.
There is no one on this bus. I dont think anyone ever goes on the bus. I think the bus exists just so they can say the city of Taitung proudly offers a bus service.
I get on and ask the driver, in Chinese, if hes going to the train station, no he is not, he then changes his sign LED control whilst I am standing there looking amazed. Instead hes going to the fishing village, not a stop on the sign at all. I decided just to go to the fishing village.
That was long and confusing.
On my way to the bus I passed the Obama cake shop, due to be closed down and remodelled.
I also passed numerous temples, more on temple activities later.
After getting off at the fishing village, I walked away from it to a beach area with famous rock formations and camping ground, see below. Heres the gift shop area.
And as I promised, some rocks!
The rocks didnt hold my attention for long, so I went and checked out this awesome truck.
Then I spotted a huge ship in a field, I think someone lives on it, they climb up those ropes to get inside. Then 2 fighter jets took off inches above my head, I was standing right at the end of a runway.
I have discovered that the air force bases do not appear on google maps. There are a lot of air force bases.
I headed back to the fishing village, its where the ferries to green island depart. This color of blue paint is very cheap in Taiwan.
No ferries today! None. I think you can go by plane. It is definitely off season for Green Island.
Since I couldnt go on a boat ride I climbed back up a hill to take a look at all the ferries berthed in the harbour.
Apparently this tree is very special. The leaves grow directly out of the trunk. I had never seen anything like it before.
I headed back down to the rocks and found the perfect spot. I did not get washed out to sea by a freak wave. Lots of Chinese tourists wanted to stand on the very edge of these rocks.
On average, once a week in Sydney, a rock fisherman generally of Chinese or Korean origin, gets washed off the rocks and dies.
I was getting ready to start the 10km jog back into town, when I saw a bus, so I ran and got on it, it took me to the train station, where I bought my ticket out of here for Thursday.
Then I tried to climb this lookout, but its shut. The same bus was still there after purchasing and lookout failure so I got back on it, the sign on the bus now said airport, ok I will go to the airport!
No it went back to town instead, the other passenger onboard wanted to go to the airport, the guy changed his sign again and left the airport bound passenger on the side of the road to get a taxi.
Back in the city it was time to buy an ice cream from BaBoo Beluga. Too bad, shut.
Not to worry, theres a temple on a hill nearby. Hill climbing time, nice view.
A bit more view, I can see my hotel.
The poor people side of town. Turns out the hill is right in the middle of the city geographically speaking. How do you actually speak geographical? I talk rivers and mountains.
I zoomed in to take this and sharpened a lot, look in the centre of this, and you can see the air force base runway. I was at the far end of this earlier today near the ship that was on land.
It is a very up hill runway!
The paths on this hill were numerous, and the trees were all protected spooky looking large trees of religious significance. Unfortuantely many of them had fallen over, recently by the looks of it.
Back in the main temple area, and its time for an old person karaoke battle! Competing clans of grandmas have p.a. systems going full blast belting out distorted karaoke. Meanwhile dogs are howling. And to top it all off, an army of little old men with leaf blowers are blowing the same leaf around for hours.
I enjoyed the pagoda in amongst the deafening temple ambience.
Finally, I went into Carrefour to get some lunch, which did not include frozen hello kitty fish snacks.
Eating Shabu Shabu in Taitung
Fast forward towards the end of the evening, and imagine my surprise when my phone rings, my phone with a Taiwanese SIM card in it, I dont even know what the number is, I only use it for data.
So I answered, and the guy on the other end starts yelling really fast, I listened for a while then spoke, explained what I thought was the Chinese words for wrong number, my name, and that I am from Au-Da-Li-Ya.
Oh, HELLO! SORRY! HELLO! why you in Taiwan? I love Audaliya! So me and Zhou, possibly Joe if thats his chosen English name had a 5 minute chat. Joe is from Hsinchu, a city near Taipei. He has never been to Taitung, he hears its boring. Joe insists Hsinchu is the best place in Taiwan, very good fish balls.
For dinner, I actually had somewhere I wanted to go, but its shut on Tuesdays, so maybe tomorrow, instead I just set out in a random direction. I think the direction was chosen by the general flow of scooters at a street crossing.
I think lots of places close Tuesdays, many roller doors were shut, I had choices of lots of pizza places, and lots of pasta places, and surprisingly steak restaurants. Not just the Japanese style hot grill plate cook your own with an egg steak places, but fancy expensive choose your cut of meat places.
The average salary in Taipei is about $25k USD, which isnt too bad actually, I imagine its quite a bit lower in Taitung, but these steak meals were all more than $30 each and the places were full. Too expensive for me.
So instead I had a poor person dinner, and because it was almost free of calories, I could have dessert. Now I am full of cake.
Just for variation, tonight we are starting with the dinner photo rather than ending with it. It is a neighbourhood shabu shabu place. The soup stock is just water, nothing else!
We negotiated on the type of meat I wanted, you get a couple of slivers only, and then a selection of mushrooms. Thats all I thought was going to be in my ingredient pot.
Except underneath the stuff on top there was a selection of strange processed foods, including rabbit ears here. It would have been hilarious if a hello kitty appeared.
There was also a seafood stick, a cube of pigs blood jelly, and some other small sausage shaped processed fish things, as well as a couple of fish balls.
With chilli oil added, it was ok, largely completely flavourless.
On my loop back to the main part of town I passed yet another huge cake shop, I bypassed this one though.
Then I hung out with some wooden natives. None as wooden in their performance as me.
Note my jumper / sweater (american translation). I believe I have been wearing this on trips for the last 5 years. Lets hope it can make it to the next trip!
This photo exists only because it was so colorful. All the Taiwanese candy tastes like durian.
And because of poor person dinner, heres the cake. Its actually very small, but it was delicious. Inside was fresh mango and mandarin slices between layers of sponge cake and cheesecake. This came from the big 'Donutes' store I photographed last night, as far as I can tell they do not sell donuts.