From Houtong to Jiufen on foot
No, not raining cats and dogs, there is no rain, but actual cats and dogs. Today I walked from the Houtong cat village (popular with tourists), past an abandoned temple filled with wild dogs (infamous with hikers) to Jiufen (#1 tourist spot in all of Taiwan and setting of famous anime 'spirited away').
I had been to both Houtong and Jiufen before on previous trips, although my previous visit to Houtong was in a torrential all day downpour. Having said that, today I was at Houtong very early, so there were cats, but none of the cat related shops were open. Oh well. Then I took a surprisingly short not even 2 hour hike over a couple of hills up a mystery staircase after fighting off wild dogs, let me explain.
Every person that has been on the the Dacukeng trail talks about the dog situation. I am afraid of all dogs, even the little white fluffy ones, so the thought of a pack of wild dogs got the heart racing more than the hike. So infamous is this location, that people tell tales of an old man that hands out sticks to fight off the dogs as you go past. I saw no old man, but I did see a pile of sticks! And so I took one, and put it back in the similar pile of sticks just past the temple for those coming in the opposite direction.
The dogs did charge me, they did go crazy barking, there were 5 of them, but they were pretty small, and after about a minute of presumably laughing at me from afar, an old man emerged from the not really abandoned temple and yelled at the dogs who retreated. I waved my stick about at them anyway, but I do not think it was really needed.
Also, surprisingly, I saw zero other people on this hike. Even the trails above Jiufen that are more like an urban park with a great view. And on that note, 37 pics, so I better get onto it.
Houtong station. Everything is cat themed. Last time I was here it was raining so this bit was full of cats. None today.
Here are a couple of cats.
Plastic cats, and rabbits, it is the year of the rabbit.
A cat.
Houtong station. There are probably 10 cats in this photo. OK enough of Houtong, time to go fight dogs.
I headed in this direction. The people living in the places on the right have a lot of confidence in flood levels.
The correct path is to go up alongside this flood control waterfall setup.
There really are cats everywhere. This little one followed me for a while, so a photo for effort. There is cat food left for them EVERYWHERE.
I suspect that is Teapot Mountain in the distance, which is around a bit from Jiufen. I climbed Teapot Mountain on a previous visit, on a hilariously windy day.
I was surprised at the quality of the path today. This section is labelled the stairway to heaven.
There are many old abandoned places like this, I think the whole area was gold and then coal mining.
The dogs live here! Grab a stick.
OK, so I knew this is where the dogs are, and yet no dogs. So I took a photo, it was not my plan to hang about and take a photo. As soon as I took the photo and looked at the screen on my camera, the dogs came out and charged me! But it really was not as bad as others have mentioned. Perhaps everyone else exaggerates more than I do? I did however decide it was unwise to attempt to take a photo of the dogs while waving my stick about, and growling at them. One review of the hike mentioned that a blonde coloured dog took a particular dislike to the black person in their hiking group. Dogs are no different to humans. Also, incense burner.
Next up, the bizarre stairway to the stars. A very grand stairway in the literal middle of nowhere.
Great view from the top though!
Not sweaty today, in fact it was a bit chilly up here. My head looks particularly huge (physically).
I was already over the top and looking down the other side to the ocean. Short hike today, only 2 hours, most people say it takes 3 to 4 hours, not sure how, I was going slower than normal too.
Jiufen, You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Here is population decline in effect. Taiwan's population is shrinking the equal fastest in the world with Korea. The websites I read about this hike show this school as being operational. It is now abandoned.
Perhaps it is abandoned because 2020 generation kids refuse to walk up a few hundred stairs to get to school?
I have never had a truly clear day when visiting Jiufen.
Anime fans, get excited now. Also I climbed that mountain on a previous trip, on a very hot day.
Another cat, on his red carpet. They just laze about as tourists take photos, waiting to be photographed.
The spot.
My shot from the spot.
I was tempted to AI remove those power poles.
Now for a look at Jiufen old street. I was early so it was not busy, and most places were not even open yet. Despite that, still a lot of tourists. Also, a store dog.
Another view of a previous mountain. Blue sky? Come this way please.
A bit more twisted alleyway streets straight out of a tourist brochure.
There are no photo signs on most shops. They take this seriously, I saw others getting yelled at severely. I do not understand this, the entire place exists only because of photos. It is an exclusively for the purpose of taking money from tourists town. That is a police scooter, read on...
More cats, porcelain variety.
Be warned, there were hippy looking people wanting to talk to me complete with 9 backpacks each, and also a gang of who I will very stereotypically assume were South Americans (that is like saying Orientals!) that I am pretty sure were pick pockets, who the police were observing closely. Apparently tourism to Taiwan is less than 10% of what it was pre covid still, so pickings are slim. A bunch of backpackers also tried to chat to me on the bus on the way back, I told them I was working, that did not stop them asking me if I wanted to go to lunch with them. They were taken aback when my answer was 'absolutely not!'.
Here are some shops, and an old white couple!
I have never done a great job of photographing Jiufen ancient shopping tourist street. But there you go.
One last pic of Jiufen, another catholic church.
To get back to Taipei, or in my case Keelung, you first take a bus to Ruifang. There is no train station at Jiufen. Ruifang is the biggest actual town / city inland in the mountains. There were a lot of roadworks going on.
And finally, here is Ruifang station, old and new, in one shot. That was a lot of photos.
A short walk to Sankeng and then back to Keelung for dinner
Believe it or not, a very traditional Taiwanese meal is steak. It is often served in night markets on a hot plate, just as I had it tonight in an all you can eat restaurant. It also sometimes served in a bag after being blow torched from frozen, but that is a different experience.
Some of the night market places take various off cuts and hammer them together to form a 'steak', where as the sit down all you can eat places advertise their steak as coming from... New Zealand. It seems Taiwan follows the motherlands lead and mainly imports food from New Zealand instead of Australia.
BTW, closed on Monday often extends to Tuesday, so much like Australia, if restaurants close 2 nights a week it is Monday and Tuesday. Steak was my 2nd choice after a fancy vegetarian place, which was closed on Tuesday.
Before settling on steak, I went for a walk that was shorter than I expected to the next station up the line at Sankeng. I am starting to realise that Keelung is a smaller place than I first thought.
Not many pics this evening, too many earlier today.
There are level crossings! This seems like a really really bad idea. They make the same noise as level crossings in Tokyo.
I walked along a rather interesting path up the middle of the tracks, undercover, and seemingly linking a school with the main part of Keelung. Before very long at all, I arrived at Sankeng station. It is probably closer to my hotel than Keelung station, which is to say, not far.
I get the feeling those that live at Sankeng are on the lower rung of the property ladder.
On my way back to Keelung, I stopped at the outdoor hi-fi shop. These really are for sale, they really are left outside overnight.
Here is my steak. It was about $15 for this steak, plus all you can eat salad bar, dessert bar, soft drinks and soft serve ice cream. This is the equivalent of 2 x cremia ice creams (I still have not recovered from the cremia ice cream price shock...). I am confident this will be the most expensive meal of this trip. The steak was surprisingly large, and surprisingly rare. They are always served on top of spaghetti and and egg, no choice! I put the salad on the griddle once I made room, and mixed it with the spaghetti. Also, despite the picture menu having English, this is the first place where there was absolutely no English spoken, to the point where my Chinese was better than their English. I had to choose how I wanted my steak cooked (medium, it came out blue...) and the sauce I wanted (tomato mushroom, which was strangely sweet so I didn't eat it). A very formally dressed Taiwanese lady at a nearby table came and told me about how it is all you can eat and drink, I had a brief conversation with here in Chinglish about how I can speak mandarin well enough, but struggle to understand the waitress when she talks too fast etc. she went back to her table and her kids were thrilled that their mother spoke to the weird foreigner.
Now after talking shit about talking Chinese, time to check on the night market. Much busier on Tuesday than Monday. More people, more stalls. There were a few foreigners around too, I think a cruise ship had arrived during the day.
Not a great pic, but these are little tomatoes. I think they are glazed in a sweet sauce. It is common when you buy fruit salad in Taiwan, China etc. that you get pineapple, melon, and tomatoes. They are technically a fruit I suppose.
Final pic for the night, more night market.