Taiwan for the 5th time - April and May 2023 - Page 4

Here is Jiaoxi station, it is 2 stops over from Yilan, about 10 minutes, the trains come regularly. But there is a problem, no matter how hard I tried, I could not stop my camera from fogging up! Hence the surreal like dreamy quality of this photo, people would pay money for a lightroom preset that does this.

No bus. And there are no early buses it seems. Weird on a Saturday, I know this will be an extremely popular hike.

Stage one was to walk through the really quite nice and unexpectedly large town of Jiaoxi, a hot spring town it seems. More pics on the way back. There are some big hotels and a golf course as you start to go up the hill.

This is a dam. There are signs everywhere telling you not to swim in the dam. Look closely though and of course, there is a woman swimming in the dam. In Taiwan, signs are suggestions at best.

The next stage of the hike takes you up a scooter accessible path to the Catholic Sanctuary of our Lady of Wufengqi. This has been constructed in a style to entice the local aborigine population to become Catholics. Yeah, that is probably a true fact.

A bit more of the cool church, you will see it again on the way back.

Here is my church. Not a lot of members lately.

The next stage takes you along a gravel track, without steps, to this point, the start of the Marian hiking trail, where a lot of steps will commence.

There are waterfalls.

And lots and lots of slippery steps. I was moist, everything was moist, my bag was dripping with moistness, so was my camera. It was kind of hard to take photos due to everything being slippery and wet, but at least my lense was not fogging up anymore.

After at least an hour of steps, if you go at full idiot speed like I do, you come out into the cloud and the low bamboo area.

This is where 99% of the crowd stops, for the shot of matcha mountain, see below. There is a toilet there I think, I sweated so much no one could tell if I had wet my pants anyway so I did not need to use the actual toilets.

Matcha mountain in all it's glory.

The alternate aspect of matcha mountain. White balance seems a bit warm.

Me, with dirt on my pronounced forehead.

The less matcha-er-ry bit of matcha mountain.

I ascended the little lookout bit, this is not the top, and not the end of the hike.

First I had to stare at this guy and contemplate why everyone aspires to be nailed to a cross as the ultimate achievement in human history. I imagine this perplexes the locals more than it does me.

I will now go up there to the actual top. I kind of had regrets about this, as the path became ankle deep mud. I had to put my camera into my bag properly as if I fell over it would get mud-logged.

There were 1000 groups of people who went to the Matcha view, there were maybe me and 2 other groups that went to the top of Sanjiaolunshan. They had machetes! This is the summit, not a lot to see. I was a bit concerned about snakes as I could not see my feet due to face high grasses, but also ticks, do they have lime disease here? It seems to be a USA only disease for some reason.

For the treacherous journey back down through ankle deep mud, the fog rolled in.

Nice cloud, nice view, fog still on it's way.

Behold, fog. Thankfully it arrived after I was out of face high grass and ankle deep mud.

I stopped for a muddy shoe shot. I just spent an hour in the hotel shower cleaning them. I am glad I opted for my water proof hiking shoes for this trip. They make my feet hot, but its better than squishing mud between my toes for 10km on the way back down.

It was now hot, and foggy, but no rain at all.

I arrived back at the jungle foresty area, with the slippery steps. Still lots of people.

So green, lots and lots of people.

I forgot to show the trail marker on the way up, so here it is on the way down. Kind of looks like an inverted crucifix. Interesting.

Here is some more of the church, On the right edge there is a fake cave made out of concrete. You can never really fully take Taiwan out of any situation.

There is no one at all inside the actual church, just me and my muddy shoes.

Behold, the view back down to... somewhere between Jiaoxi and Yilan.

As I exited the hiking area, a lot of vendors had since set up their stalls for the day, mainly selling fruit, which I never really understand, it would be fruit puree by the time you get to the top.

Instead of some questionable fruit, I headed to the convenience store, and had an ice cream. This dog lives in the store. A rare kind of dog in that he did not immediately attack me.

And now, for my last shots from a long day, a couple of shots of Jiaoxi.

The busy street here looks much like the rest of Taiwan, convenience stores as far as the eye can see.

This is the street leading away from Luodong station, but it is about a km away from the centre of town, the streets get busier than this.

Here is the station, it has a couple of restaurants inside it. The Yilan station has a giraffe sticking out of it, so it's a toss up as to which is better. I will take a shot of the giraffe as I leave Yilan in a couple of days time.

!!!!, !!!!!, Why the hell am I not staying in this hotel? That is a little train at the bottom that is also the hotel restaurant.

This is the only thing that can be called a mall in Luodong (I think). It has no food court. Now what?

Now for the obligatory night market shots. Let me see if I am using obligatory correctly, sometimes I make up words, OK, obligatory is the word is was looking for, quite cromulent.

The lions club have provided this excellent, train?

OK, more night market. It seems to go for many busy streets full of people. I actually avoided some of the busier bits.

People live for sitting outside with thousands of people filing past, as they try not to get hot oil poured over them, or stab the back of their throat with a stick that has a squid on it.

No food court, so I found a healthy restaurant, and had fish. And it was actually pretty great. The purple chunk is beetroot (possibly), and the white vegetable at the top right is some kind of translucent over boiled potato derivative. Today was a 40,000+ step day, how many will there be tomorrow? Do not worry though Korea5 trip from last year, my all time monthly step record is not in danger! That is all for now.

Fulong station, there is a convenience store here and even a Starbucks, this is important info for later, there is nothing at Dali!

I walked along the highway, then made one turn up another road that goes over the train track. Great skies! Still no rain today despite the threatening skies.

The road up to the hike was very peaceful, I expected a lot of traffic consisting of people going to the hike, there was none.

Nice farmland, I am going up over that bit in the fog. I did not want there to be fog today, oh well.

Incense burner.

The trail follows a river for much of its journey, which helps keep everything damp, mossy and very slippery.

These steps look fine, but I cannot figure out how they are so slippery!

The journey up was like walking through a forest garden. There were zero other people for a couple of hours.

Here is the fist of the road markers, evidently, the inscription says, 'boldly quell the wild mists'. Is this truly an ancient rock inscription or a re-creation?

This pavilion marks about the half way point. There are toilets here, but since I had not seen another soul, I decided to just do an open air sprinkler, complete with sound effects.

I popped out of the forest, and into dense fog. It is near here that you are supposed to get the view of the coast. Not for me today!

The second ancient roadside marker, this one just says tiger. I am yet to see a tiger in Taiwan. Last year I had a guy tell me his father was eaten by a tiger on a hiking trail in Korea.

Some way down the non slippery more developed side, I saw a sign pointing to 'ancient inn ruins', which as you can see was along a very mossy path. I guess this is the ruins.

This is the best I could do for a view, more than half way down, and still half in fog.

Nearly back at the bottom, and there is a cafe, which I think is also the ranger station.

I saw another signpost, nature trail to lookout. The steps were of the non rocky non slippery kind, so up I went.

Here is the view. Cut the damn trees down! Even standing on the seats I could not get a view.

I was almost back at the bottom, I could smell burning rubbish, this means only one thing, a giant temple ahead!

Behold, the Dali temple, that seems to actually be it's name.

All the way out there, with cloud on it, is Turtle Island. It is a very popular spot to go to by boat, but hard to casually arrange, you kind of need to book a day long tour that takes in meals and bus transfers and jade shopping.

Have a bit more temple, it is massive.

Under the temple is a food court! Stinky tofu time!

Last shot of the temple.

Over the road, or on the road itself, is a religious procession about to start. A guy at the back blows a whistle as trucks approach at speed, that will protect them! It could actually be a funeral, but I do not see any trucks full of strippers hanging off poles (that is a real thing, look it up!).

To get to the train station, you go under the road. Cool.

This allowed me to get a view along the coast, those are the small mountains I came over today, still in fog.

I walked along the coast a bit to go to Dali old street, that is the train station on the left.

And here is Dali old street, and a very old sad looking cat, and not much else. No shops, not even a convenience store, not even a vending machine.

Dali station, the end of my hike for today. A very small station, only the slowest of slow local trains stop here, but it is still only about 30 minutes back to Yilan.

Final pic, I just missed a fast train going past, so just the tracks, and a mesh fence.

I set off on a long loop around what seems to be the main ring road around the old market in the city centre. This is a morning market, it appears to be very large, I might go investigate tomorrow morning before I take my train to Keelung, but I digress. My journey took me past this very grey sort of a temple.

Here is a street scene near the university. The university was large and modern, a lot of sport was being played. I describe it and yet, no picture.

Bubble tea is serious business, I have no idea how so many stores survive in Melbourne, I especially have no idea how many stores survive in Taiwan. Some of them are very elaborate, this one has medium levels of elaborancy (new word alert).

Crap pic, but this is part one of tonight's title, a lizard. Or actually, a dragon!

Requests were made to show more pics of crumbling old houses. Well here is a demolition site and a view into the rear of some houses.

And this is more your typical Taiwanese style non high rise apartment house. Covered in tiny tiles. They will happily tile a 40 level building also. In an earthquake they rain down into the street. Also that green plastic car port that is actually a scooter port, that is the colour of all plastic in Taiwan.

Someone has a garden full of sheep. I would not have been surprised if they were real sheep, but alas, they are not, stay tuned.

Here is my dinner that is not Coco curry, but a nearby Osaka something branded restaurant that is on the 4th floor restaurant floor and not in the basement food court. It was a pretty decent omurice, which for those who are wondering if this is a chocolate sauce covered pancake, it is fried rice, with an egg on top and curry sauce. Japanese junk food... in Taiwan.

I then went on more of my loop around town, here is a night street scene.

A very common site is the helmet shop. They are everywhere. I think girls collect helmets like they collect handbags. I do not think helmets were actually mandatory the first time I came here, they very much are now.

Now for some scenes of the nearby to my hotel night market that I already showed some photos of. Here is the general vibe of the place, less busy on a Sunday.

This guy has no customers.

Large wok's full of boiling oil.

Stick world!

And finally for the final pic of this evening, the other part of tonight's title, ducks. Out the front of a cosmetics shop. They appear to have a tiktok page. Either that or you scan that tiktok QR code to bid on them / pay to keep them alive.

It may be raining, but I still got up early and went in search of the day market in Yilan. Not a lot was going on.

People were still opening up, but it was just too wet. I was concerned I would destroy YET ANOTHER expensive camera.

Last shot of Yilan day market area.

I promised a photo of a giraffe poking out of the roof of the station, here it is. I have no idea why it is there, but a promise is a promise.

Here comes my train. The max speed on this line is only 100kmph, and the local trains go at that speed as well, but they still felt the need to make the express trains look bullet trainy.

My snack today is lotus biscuits. A lot of lotus biscuits. 8 x 2 packs. I am still eating them now.

This is where I changed trains at Badu. This is all just a boring matter of fact re telling of how to catch a train, but it was raining so it is all I can do.

And now for some rainy pics of Keelung. The problem with a 1 hour train journey is you will be many hours too early to check in to your next hotel. Which is annoying when it is raining. I dropped my bags off and set out to get wet. Here is a view across the road from my hotel while I ponder what to do.

A rainy street scene. Keelung is surrounded by hills. I have actually been here for a day trip previously, on my first ever trip to Taiwan.

This is the main pic you will find on the internet when you lookup Keelung, the Hollywood style sign. A lot of cruise ships stop here, you can see that view from the cruise ships in port. There are none here now, just big white fishing boats that are really navy ships.

Here is a canal. It is not too far.

Some more old buildings, some with little tiles missing that have no doubt fallen on the road.

Behind these guys is the new bus station, which is right next to the train station (not pictured). The new bus station is not quite open, I walked through it to stay out of the rain thinking it was open, and some guys laying tiny little tiles yelled at me.

A fluffy temple gate.

Rain check. Still raining.

Requests were made to see the outside of my hotel, here it is. This is an expensive hotel, I paid $100 a night to spend the minimum amount to activate my travel insurance that my fancy credit card gives me. It is cheaper than buying travel insurance separately, and is one of the only insurances that covers cancellation due to contracting COVID. It is a bit of a complex explanation, but to do this I paid extra to book the room through Virgin travel, who take the full payment in advance, unlike booking.com who take $0 in advance. Virgin actually use a subsidiary of booking.com so the choices are the same, but they cost slightly more as you get points. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IM GOING ON ABOUT.

Here is my room. It is huge. Photos don't do it justice. That is a king size bed. There is a long hallway and dressing area before getting to the part of the room pictured. Now I just need it to stop raining for my evening stroll around the night markets looking for something not deep fried for dinner.

Night market, pre night. This is about 30m from the door of my hotel.

More pre-night night market. If you look up Keelung and don't see the Hollywood sign, this is what you will see.

The night market temple has a dude on a golden horse. People bow to him.

Tonight's strange animal encounter, a cocky, at a bank. It's deposit cocky. We had an argument in broken Chinese.

Further footpath explanation was requested. I found a bit with not many people. You can walk along here and it is undercover. You can see how each store maintains their own bit, and there are steps between each shop even though the road if flat, just because of how they designed their shop - to annoy people in a wheelchair. What is not pictured is when someone decided to erect a wall here, in the middle of the tunnel of shopfronts, just to be even more annoying so you have to walk on the road.

Random street scene. Wide angle distortion.

Tonight's about to fall down at any moment now buildings.

This is kind of the main road down to the port, that is not an elevated highway.

My alternate alternate dinner option was a westernised pasta restaurant. I chose this pasta dish because it had HEALTHY!!!, 3 thumbs up, and a 10 star rating all printed on it. There is chicken, which I guess is the healthy bit. The menu picture had a lot more vegetables. It was also pretty oily, and at $10, not cheap.

There is the Keelung sign. The letters change colour. This was a very under exposed photo I bumped up in lightroom, hence all the noise if you pixel peep. It is +3.17 stops and +98 shadows.

You can see the sign for my hotel in this photo, just before the 7-eleven. I do not have to go far for night market food.

Everything is orange, so I don't know what shes smiling about.

And for the last shot tonight, the same place as before. I expected those lanterns to be lit up!