Taiwan for the 5th time - April and May 2023 - Page 3

This is the presidential palace. They do not call it that, but I think it is the administrative building for the office of the President. When I was here once before it was occupied by a student uprising and all the streets around it were blocked off. That all resulted in, nothing much.

I was on my way to the oldest most important temple in Taiwan. This is not it.

This is it! It is quite a small compound.

The surrounding gardens are full of golden dragons. Just as Buddha would want.

There is also a series of fake waterfall's with giant goldfish acting coy.

BINGO! The incense burner appears.

Filming seems to be fine inside Taiwanese temples, even during the actual prayer lead by satanic looking monks in black robes and pope hats who are inside that main part of the temple.

A starving cat appeared in the rafters. Quite the useless cat, there were food offerings everywhere!

Here is the sign that explains the bombing, and also explains that they don't burn incense anymore? I call bullshit, cause I could see it burning.

The next stop is the new old street. There are signs all over it declaring administrative neutrality.

It is a nice enough looking setup, owned by the city, some of the interiors have little museum style setups about not much, but most of them are currently empty, apart from the ubiquitous bubble tea shops.

The largest exhibition is the COVID museum. At first I thought it was a testing location and got ready to flee, but no, it is a couple of plastic suits and some newspaper printouts.

My journey to the botanical gardens took me past a giant French Taiwanese supermarket. I did a lap to enjoy the air conditioning. The top floor had a pretty good food court, food for future thought.

Now to observe people observing a tree trunk. I am guessing they are waiting for a bird to appear.

The lotus pond has only one flower. A guy was taking a photo of it with a lense about 3 metres long. I stood in front of him.

There is a zen garden. Small and understated. Nice drain in the foreground.

Overall, the gardens are small and compared to a few nearby parks that are not the official botanical gardens, rather disappointing. Now I will have a 2nd coffee and a pineapple cake.

The main show. If you go to the top you get to see the counterweight wobbling.

Just part of the extensive food court discussed extensively above.

Taipei 101 itself also has a high end mall. The type of place with shops and no customers, but rope sashes for forming a queue.

I descended to street level, here are some food vans. Nice trees.

This part of the walk to city hall was here previously. It is mainly cinemas. The 4 building Shin Kong Mitsukoshi is all new since I was last here, so I did not photograph it properly.

I got asked to leave.

Almost looks rendered. These are apartment buildings that often get proposed but never built. Here is one that got built.

Nice sunset!

OK, one more of the iconic phallic monument.

Another building under construction. Great sunset.

When you think of stock photo that they use on news stories about finance, you think of this. So I took one. Although it would need men in suits carrying briefcases (which no longer actually exist as a concept) for it to be used as a news story stock photo.

Tonight's dinner, a Taiwanese style meal of braised fatty pork on rice. Delicious.

And for my final shot this evening, proof that I stayed out until it got dark, just. Today I was up early, had lunch early, had dinner early, and I guess I will go to bed early. Tomorrow is a hiking day, in the heat. Additional research on the bus to take to the remote starting point is still required, so I will do that now.

The bus stop area at Beitou. It is a bit tricky, there are 2 signs near each other for bus S6 (Xiao 6). One of those stops is just where it stops to let people off, which is different from where it stops to let people on.

Here is the brave mini bus that hauled me all the way up the hill, also, incense burner!

The village below was the start point of the hike, already quite foggy.

Fully paved path in a nice forest. I read reports of snakes, wild boars, angry cattle, I saw none of these, just huge fat round bumblebees.

For possibly the first time on this trip, an actual hiking trail that is not a developed path, just wait though.

A wild mossy root filled path. Very exciting. Very steep in places. It was a bit concerning that I had to break a few spider webs, which indicated I was the first person on the trail today.

Lots of ropey sections. Usual disclaimer here, this is too steep to navigate without the rope, but photos never make anything steep look steep.

My completely soaked from head to toe head shot at the first peak.

A foggy view of the next Datun peak over.

THE STANCE. As requested by thousands. I look like I am wearing a wet suit. I am not. That is all sweat baby! Zoom in to check out my right nipple, my left one always stays in. I might get surgery to fix that.

OMG someone else on my trail! This bit was also very steep.

Another lonely section, this time in dense fog. There are numerous points to take detours to avoid the actual peaks, but what would be the fun of that?

A view from another peak. Not much of a view due to fog. Dehazed a bit in lightroom to reveal the detail in the city below.

My next and final peak.

But before then, a peak marker. All the peaks were only between 950m and 1100m, slightly lower than the Qixing peak from a couple of days prior. All in all I did about 1200m vertical ascending today, but a lot of that was mud and ropes so it took a while.

A more developed section on the butterfly trail. There were actually hundreds of butterflies, but they do not photograph well.

View from the last peak of the day of the previous peaks of the day.

Just a tv transmission tower I think, I do not see military bases on mountain tops here like in Korea.

You can drive to this bit, and so here is some kind of club who hated the fact I was taking a photo. Perhaps they are beaming secret info to the mainland?

One more view shot from here.

First some non mossy steps down the mountain, so far so good.

A view down the valley, but I am not going that way.

One last view shot.

It became clear I was getting to my destination when the path became wheelchair friendly instead of a moss covered death trap. I think it actually joins up 2 car parks.

And for the final pic of the day, here is where I took a heap of photos 3 days ago, enjoy it again today, with fog added to the volcanic sulphur.

Sogo #1, the old Sogo. Bonus points for the train going past.

Taipei 101 is never really far away. If it fell over it would be wider than the city. I accurately measured the city and the building so this is definitely true.

I was feeling a bit shaky from my lack of stress after my deep breathing, so I descended into the old Sogo for something Japanese from the leftover from Japanese occupation department store - spicy miso ramen. It was red, but not particularly spicy.

Diagonally across the street is new Sogo, I will call it, Sogo #2.

I like taking photos under the elevated subway. Look closely and you can see the train again in this one. It goes above the road, but under the freeway overpass. Earthquake bait.

Now for the Liaoning Street night market, nowhere near as big as many of the other night markets, but notable because you sit in the traffic trying to eat your stinky tofu. This adds to the experience.

A bit more night market, as usual, I probably should have taken more shots.

And for my final photo tonight, a re-creation of an old city gate. This is quite near the main Taipei station. I just remembered I will have to go there early tomorrow and collect all my train tickets, for both the normal trains and the high speed trains, I almost forgot!

My train was not until 2pm! I had the whole day to waste, so of course I went out at 6am to walk around, here is the view from a conveniently placed overpass.

Today's incense burner, conveniently located on the roadside so you can do drive by burning of your rubbish.

This is shoe street. Hence the shoe. Umbrella street is elsewhere, so all those umbrellas are false advertising.

I had time to head to a park to try and centre myself for a geometrically perfect shot, failed.

In the park is this setup declaring that the President should step down and Taiwan should be returned to the aboriginal people of Taiwan.

A rare thing, I ate a normal lunch! Well, as in I ate a sit down meal for lunch instead of a muesli bar while hiking. I braved the sneeze buffet and assembled a mushroom dense vegan meal.

Now for a really bad shot of the inside of my first class train carriage. I am on the side of the aisle with only 1 seat. Very spacious.

Here is my meal kit with 2 small cakes. Strangely they are not both pineapple cakes (the Taiwanese traditional cake), one of them is an apple cake.

This is the slow train I was on. It looks like a bullet train, but it is not, the rails on this side of the island cannot accommodate fast trains, much of the line is very slow.

And here is my hotel room. Everything about it is better than the last one, but as discussed above, primarily the fact that the internet works properly!

This is my 'hotel'. I am selling it a bit short as it does extend back a bit, there are 4 rooms on each of the 2 hotel levels. I do not often stay in boutique hotels like this one, but apparently Yilan is a very popular holiday getaway spot for Taipei folks, and I am here over the weekend. The bigger hotels were $1000 a night or sold out, I am paying $60 a night here and the actual room is of a simialr quality to a Japanese business hotel, and a bit bigger too.

A typical Yilan street scene, much like the rest of Taiwan, there are always a lot of chemists that are really cosmetics shops.

I presume this is the morning food market, all closed now.

Here is the local mega mall, Luna plaza, the crowning achievement of Yilan.

I immediately descended to find the food court, it has one! Good times.

For tonight's beef noodle soup, I opted for the tomato version. It looks crap, but was decent enough for my $6. They leave the skin on the beef, which is fine, you don't even notice, there are plenty of places in Australia that do this also, but it might look unusual to people used to a typical cut of steak.

Inside the mega mall is a Tom's world. These are in most parts of Taiwan, they teach kids to gamble. Most of the regular games are now pay money to win a prize machines. I wandered around pointing my camera at peoples kids until the mall cop turned up on his segway.

I had visited luna mall, so here is la lune itself, in its full glory, red tinged. Also, taking a photo of the moon with anything less than about 600mm zoom is pretty much useless, behold, a bright dot!

And now, the flying train. Masterfully constructed in a way that makes it hard to take a photo of it in any sort of cohesive manner.

Near the train station there are a lot of old buildings, genuine ones I think. This one is a kind of community bookshop, meeting hall, souvenir stand. Inside a guy was giving a speech about some old photos.

Part of the inside of the shop.

Now for the night market. They are also hard to photograph as they are tight alleyways. This one has a road bridge over it that I thought about walking up to take a photo of the night market from above, but alas, no pedestrian access allowed.

A bit more night market under the bridge for my final photo of the evening.