A full lap of Taiwan in March 2017 - Page 7

Waiting for my train at Tainan, I spent some time reading the newspaper. Just like the parks in mainland China, they have pinned a copy up on a notice board so no one has to pay for their own.

Here is the main street in Chiayi. It was nice and wide, with a footpath. However not all the streets here were as pedestrian friendly.

The Chiayi station is being rebuilt. Nearly every station is being rebuilt. Is this the Taiwanese version of the school funding scheme we did in Australia to prevent a recession from being recorded?

Chiayi's favourite son is clearly a baseball player, immortalised in gold.

Nice tree.

This is the local tax collection office. Clearly they are good at their jobs.

The local temple is of a high quality, its next door to the tax office, it even has a glass lift attached to the side of it.

Across the road from the temple, things are not so good. I call this sad old man cyclist pedals past collapsing roof. Prints available, various sizes.

This building is across the road from a huge modern university. I presume its full of students living cheaply.

One of the trains you used to take up to the mountains. I recently also learned that there is now only one road across the mountains, the other one was due to be reopened after a billion dollars of repairs, but then a typhoon damaged it again, so the government has decided its closed forever.
Which means deep in the mountains there are basically brand new roads sealed off going over mountain passes and through tunnels more than 3000 metres high. Sounds like a challenge.

The Chiayi park has lots of paintings on show, of the park. I saw some people doing paintings too. Presumably at some point theres judging of which paintings get featured in the park.

The sun star sphere tower comes into view.

Nearby is a restored Shinto shrine, now the Chiayi historical literature society.

A bit more of the galaxy doom tower.

You can stand on the top and look down through glass. If the sun shone through the glass dome at this point its energy would focus through the parabolic lense and melt my shoes.

The top levels are an art gallery, and there was some kind of invite only launch going on with free cake. Perhaps the judging of the park paintings, except they werent of that.
I tried to pretend to be a New York Times art critic but they would not give me any free cake.

The view from the top is open air, no glass!

The baseball stadium where the gold statue above did his best work.

I was very appreciative of the open air tower.

Now it was time to descend over a cliff into some greenery, which was great.

Except there are huge spiders, seriously they are a foot in diameter!

The park was very nice, there were dirt, gravel, wood and concrete trails to test out. I think my feet liked wood the best.

In addition to spiders I saw squirrels, lizards, dogs of course, and this very unusual land bird. I dont think it was capable of flying. Later I might see one on a stick battered and deep fried.

Time to leave the park and start my journey back to Tainan.

I purchased some traffic shoes. No footpath here, just shoe stands in traffic.
Seriously, thats extending out into the road by metres. Trucks are swerving to avoid.

One last photo of Chiayi.

And as mentioned, no food at the station other than mister donut. So a stale mister donut it is. Not a very satisfying lunch.

Here are some new apartments, on the north side of Tainan, the south city of Taiwan. The northern south. BEI NAN.

After quite the walk, I am at the night market. Note the flags. I think you walk around the outside and spot the flag of where you want to go, then head that way.

Not too busy!

Tonights blow torch options include whole cuttle fish.

Plenty of seating at the steak houses. I think I have worked out the steak houses always have the seats cause you need to use a steak knife, and thats not easy to do whilst standing.

Where as eating these bugs can be done whilst wandering around. You can get them with chilli. I like chilli.

This Singapore laksa house is by far the most popular place. Taiwan is very popular with Singaporeans, half the time I research where to go its written by a girl from Singapore (always a girl). So I am wondering if all the people eating Singapore style laksa are from Singapore.

If you are going to eat east mountain duck heads, you might as well eat the best east mountain duck heads.

You can also make yourself up a bag of mixed lollies, now with added night market flavour.

Or you can have some fried bacon wrapped cheese. Good for the healthy.

I predictably ended up back at a steak house (plastic table), to enjoy somewhere to sit and eat.

Now it was time for a long looping walk back. Here is tonights night temple.

This almost looks like Singapore, except there are scooters. Its a kind of indoor / outdoor hawkers hall.

And here I am, enjoying a discount clothing warehouse that goes nearly as far as the eye can see.

Last photo for tonight comes to you courtesy of a convenient overpass. Enjoy a bit more neon.

Leg 1 of the journey, the local train from Tainan to Tainan high speed rail station which is nowhere near Tainan.

The high speed rail station however, is excellent. Like an airport, lots of places to shop and eat.

There is even a small food court. I am quite fond of food courts.

Here comes my train. They sit on 300kmph. I have been on these in Taiwan at least 3 times previously, its old hat now.

A bit more view of the Tainan high speed rail station and immediate surrounds.

Leg 2 of 3, inside the high speed train. Very quiet and comfortable apart from tremendous snoring. My ride was not even 45 minutes.

I had to transfer to the bus at the Taichung (Taizhong) high speed rail station. Astute readers will remember on my last Taiwan trip I spent a few days in Taizhong.
The terminal here is even more like an airport, a large airport. The trains come about every 20 minutes.

Underneath I quickly found my bus stop to Puli. Well signposted.

Leg number 3 of 3, the bus ride, which was very comfortable, not very long, cheap and the view was amazing towards the end, when not in a tunnel.

Some bus view, now to see what Puli looks like.

Here is Puli, it is much more city like than I imagined it would be. I expected farmers herding dogs and ducks.
Thats a nice mountain in the background!

My hotel room is ridiculously large. The hotel is kind of old but huge. I guess it survived the earthquake. Actually I think all modern buildings did, and the only village part of Puli village was destroyed.
Note to self - stay out of old village housing.

Bathroom shot, here for my mother, she has some kind of thing about bathrooms.

My hotel has a wrap around balcony. I can keep an eye on this roundabout, one of many in down town Puli. Its where you can watch scooter roulette unfold, and wonder why adults have helmets and small chidren and babies just hang on and hope without a helmet.
Also, some poodles have helmets. Just not children.

A bit more view from my balcony. More mountains. Mountains in every direction. I have no idea if its possible to climb them. Information is very hard to come by!

It was still early, so I did a lap of the city, mostly looking at the mountains, studying the map. I looked for a hiking gear shop to ask advice, couldnt find one.

This is the buddhist luxury hotel for visiting monks (I think?). The foyer has a large solid gold buddha, 500 small solid gold buddhas, an no admission to peoople like me, there are guards.
That thing on the roof thats like a satellite dish, and it may well be one, but I think its also some kind of moon beam shooting thing to communicate with the dalai lama or the other rich monks, or possibly scientologists cause this is all just a bit too sketchy for my liking.

I returned to my hotel, and they must have worked out I was staying here, because a parade of some sort is being set up.

I was now shaking from starvation, so another balanced meal of cow piss soda, banana and peas in chilli cracker form.

This might be the geographical centre of Taiwan. But stay tuned as there is another contender for those not as lazy. Note this one is at the top of just a few stairs, in front of a cliff.

Then there were a lot of stairs. So many stairs. I was surprised by the number of stairs, but I do like to climb stairs.
There are probably 10x as many stairs in total compared to the number of stairs shown in this photo.

Once at the top of the stairs, its time to enjoy the excellent view! So orange.

And here we have another contender for the geographical centre of Taiwan. I am not sure how they even measure that, because I read recently the coast line moves up to half a metre a year due to earthquakes, and somewhere in their territory new islands are forming due to volcanic activity.
Regardless of the meaninglessness of this monument, a man has sacrificed his dog and is yelling at the structures pointing directly to the centre of the universe.

The road loops around a few times, and gives you lots of opportunity to enjoy the view. So I did. Whilst running up hill. I was so happy to be running!

The whole of the city. A bit less orange at this point.

Push her.

View from the cliff.

Heres the best I could do. Enjoy my sweaty head.

Back in town now, and I had less reason to do neon photos tonight because I had already done view photos. So here is a bonus neon photo anyway.

A very Taiwanese thing to do, is to group everything similar next to each other. You will see more evidence of this below, and it happens with everything you can think of. This is obviously take away pizza shop designated zone.

This entire street is selling nothing but garden tools.

Now I am at the buffet restaurant. I was sceptical, but rewarded! EVERYTHING INCLUDE! Vegetable bar, tofu buffet, make your own instant noodles with all the extras, dessert bar, ice cream sundae station, fruit bowl, drinks, tea, coffee, chocolate fondue fountain.
I had to restrain myself.

I chose the fat free pork leg steaks as my main course. This place is like sizzler, but $9 and EVERYTHING INCLUDE!

The photo everyone wanted, my dessert! 3 scoops of different flavoured ice cream, I am guessing the purple is taro but I have no idea about the others.
Then I added peanuts, some kind of mystery sauce, and the best part, half cooked chocolate chip smashed cookies.
I might go back tomorrow.

Before finding the defining path of the day, I had to hike out of the city to the mountain area. About 5km. This took me past the old people exercise park and its well cared for trees.

I should have stolen this and driven to the start of the mountain.

Heres my zoomed in shot of Puli street life for today.

A sure sign I am on the edge of town, the local discount TV warehouse.

Its still a long way to the mountains!

Starting to look promising, the ridge nearest to the left of this photo was where a path was shown on my fancy mapping app.
I asked some bored old people sitting nearby yelling at clouds, and they laughed at me hysterically. I tried to find the path anyway, but it was just rubbish and big spiders.

Now I have found the logging trail. I felt relieved. Time to bound up the trail as fast as I could.

It didnt take long for the view to get great. Rain was forecast, it didnt rain all day. The cloud seems to settle in the valleys, the various peaks were less cloudy. Thats my cloud update for now.

The first part was the steepest, then there was a lot of looping around over different peaks. The mountain has no name, the range has the knife character in the name and some other traditional Chinese character hieroglyphic outdated nonsense I cant read.

Interestingly, ok mildly interesting at best, this is the top of the path that I failed to find when laughed at by old people. So it does exist. Oh well, not today!

The scenery changed a number of times. I was never sure if the trees were natural or old plantations.

I could have stopped at this point, but no, lets see how far this path goes!

The trees here look very much like those on Japanese mountains. There was lots of wildlife, these black and white peacock looking things, a deer, monkeys and some very large birds. All managed to escape my camera lense.

Cheap accommodation. This really was the only sign of other humans between the bottom and the temple. There was no sign anyone had been here for a long time.

And then out of nowhere, there was a temple. I dont know how you get to it other than the way I had. Surely people must come up here and look after it often, it was spotless.
I always question how these things get built.

It looks brand new to me. There is no one here that I could find, and I looked everywhere they might be. I could have done whatever I wanted with only gold statues watching. Instead I pushed on!

Out behind the temple theres this flat picnic area, and a view of where I still had to get to.

I think I had been walking up through all those as far as the eye could see.

And then the ridge goes up and around a bit, and its the end of the path. You can see a bit of Puli below.

Time for the pose. Not one of my best, legs too close together.

I briefly considered trying to descend another way, there was a logging trail grown over. It gave a better view of the city below but I had not guarantee it actually ever went back down. I didnt have enought light left in the day to find out so I retreated back the way I had came.

The light kept changing, it was an eerie twilight for a while but it hasnt translated into the photo too well.

Almost back down now, I was enjoying these strange trees with their big leaves, and the cliffs.

I am finally back to civilization! Enjoy these pink blossoms and a gate.

Back at my hotel, they had heard about how many steps I had done today, so the celebration tent singers are going full blast. I am the only person in the audience.

First photo of the evening is my dinner, cause I was starving.
The soup is very plain but has hand made noodles. The dumplings are pork and leek and are delicious, boiled of course, for the healthy. And to bolster the good for healthy, kim chi, if you dont eat kim chi every day and you have Korean DNA, you will die.

The most common stores in Taiwan are no doubt tea shops of every kind, second would have to be hairdressers, then scooter repair shops, and close behind is scooter helmet shops.
You can collect the entire hello kitty helmet collection to match each outfit.
With the reliance on scooter repair and helmet stores, Taiwan can never abolish scooters.

I returned to my hotel to find the singers had put on black robes and are now staging some kind of ritual sacrifice around a mobile fire trailer, directly under my balcony window.
After considering all possible reasons why, only one reason remains so it must therefore be true.
Earlier when they honored me with song, as the mythical creature of the long walk up a lonely mountain path, I largely ignored them, despite being the only person nearby.
They were deeply offended by this, and are now pulling some kind of voodoo ritual trying to kill me with carbon monoxide fumes going into my air conditioner.

Here it is, the final count, 60,315 steps. 48.9km apparently, I should have done that extra 1.1km.

And heres the graph that shows I did not stop all day. Let me explain the dips in the graph.
The first one was getting ready to leave and putting my shoes on.
Soon after there are a couple of very minor dips, thats when I went into 2 convenience stores to buy supplies. Then we get a couple of blips where I took photos, and then a bigger one just before 2pm (count the dots to the right of 12). Thats where I was on the summit and I stopped to take my angry selfie.
Then I raced all the way back down, and theres another big dip just before 5pm, thats when I bought a drink at a petrol station once I was back in civilization, I was there no more than 5 minutes cause I stood around and drank the whole thing so I could put the empty bottle in the bin.
Then theres the big dip down to nothing at around 6:30pm, which is when I returned to the hotel and did the earlier update to this website, followed by immediately going out again and walking to dinner, sitting and eating it (the last blip/dip) and walking back to my hotel.
Thats a pretty detailed explanation of how to get over 60k steps in a day, just dont stop walking.