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

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.

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.

Keelung port, on a very bright, blue day. I learnt today that that there are a lot of military bases around here, with fairly weak security, you can look at the tanks through the fence for example. There were cameras everywhere so I did not take a photo.

The park entrance has an 'ancient engine'. In Taiwan they had trains in ancient times, such an advanced civilization.

A giant cock and a rooster statue.

Here is a small part of the lake, it winds around a bit.

Sadly, the best I could do for a turtle shot. I can go eat one later. Also grass jelly is made from turtle shells.

A very bouncy suspension bridge. A lady doing Tai Chi here was keen to tell me about how she had visited America to see her sister. Thanks for that.

Onto the mountain trail. That is an island. There is an island here somewhere you can take a day trip to. I do not know if that is the one. Either way, I won't be taking a day trip to an island.

Down there is a tourist beach, according to the map. Only tourists allowed?

Lovers tower. I went up there on my own, to jinx it.

A view from lovers tower, with a ship and the little island, and a lot of green.

The paths today around the lake and up to the fort were all top quality old person friendly.

From the fort entrance, you can see... a lot of green, and a bit of lovers tower.

Danwulun fort. It is not clear when it was built or who built it. The signs say it was mainly an ammunition warehouse. The brick bits in this shot look new to me.

This bit is old though.

I suspect it used to be more of an underground labyrinth but has been closed off with stones.

Next I spotted the path down to the sea, the haixing trail to be precise. A slightly less developed trail, but of the non slippery kind.

At the bottom I saw a collection of dog thrashing sticks, refer to yesterdays hike for details.

The view back up is.. all green.

I could have gone around there to the tourist beach, but I decided to head back to Keelung in the opposite direction. I think it is probably easier to find a bus if you go towards the beach, or go back over the hill to the lake even.

It is a long way around the coast back to Keelung, but there is a footpath, so that was refreshing.

I went through both Santorini and Mykonos.

And then I arrived at a tank farm, and nearby, a giant power station. Excellent.

Despite this being a very industrial area, there is an open sea pool for old folks to strip off and strut about. A couple are swimming in it though, including a snorkeler beyond the sea wall. It is well known that in general, Taiwanese people are terrified of water, and most cannot swim, this might be from something called the Ghost Festival - 'People should avoid swimming, and bodies of water, so that evil spirits cannot drown the living, and gain a second chance at life'. I just looked up Taiwan fear of swimming and there seems to be scholarly articles about the topic, with the suggestion being that they have the lowest percentage of people able to swim in the world, and when they tried to introduce it to schools, there were protests.

Instead of swimming, you can cross the road and hang your washing out in the street. This was a feature for much of my long walk back to Keelung. Time for a cake for lunch!

Very good light as I set out on my late afternoon stroll. I better head up the hill for the view then.

Here is the Zhupu altar. It is currently closed for repairs. However I snuck around the construction site anyway.

Great views already, that orange bridge thing on the left is under construction... I guess I will wander out along it.

Fantastic view from the orange gantry.

More view including all the cranes from the port.

Clouds, really nice clouds.

Proof that I walked out along the under construction orange viewing platform.

Next up, the big Buddha, just up the road from Zhupu altar. Not under construction / repair.

Last view shot! I got carried away.

I descended down the front of the hill along many stairways such as this.

A rather dystopian view of the Buddhist theme park viewing platform experience for the people who now live under it.

As mentioned, I decided on made in the street noodles for dinner. Many places have a few indoor seats, but generally the food itself is made just outside the shop, so the steam / smoke / oil / heat can just become part of the street rather than part of the shop. The wontons are allegedly vegetarian, hence green, but the soup has pork in it. Not a bad meal for $3.

Next I discovered that the canal near my hotel goes around a 45 degree bend and keeps going for miles. This became a newer part of the city, with a few nicer high rise apartment buildings. I probably should have investigated on another night, looks like where the rich people live.

Tonight's store dog. He's chained up, but gets a heap of attention.

FINAL shot of Keelung night market. Even busier than Tuesday on a Wednesday. As mentioned, tomorrow, I go to Taichung, a much bigger city.

This is standard class on the slow TRA train, looks the same as first class, but 4 seats instead of 3.

Here are the very familiar to me, and quite old high speed trains, waiting to start their journey at Nangang. There were 4 in the station in total.

The inside of the business class carriage, looking a bit tired.

But I did get a snack, lots of nice tiny cookies.

Arriving in Taichung, on what is surely the most boring day of all photos, here is the view from the high speed rail station, which is far outside of the actual city.

The HSR station is very modern with many nice restaurants. I remembered that from when I visited here briefly on my previous Taiwan trip before transferring to a bus to go up into the mountains to Puli.

My hotel is attached to a Sogo department store, and over the road is another department store. They are linked by this under road walkway, full of political protest messages. There was a section dedicated to Hong Kong protests.

Now for FOUR hotel room pictures. My big boy plane themed bed.

Plane themed furniture. THE ROOM HAS CARPET! (capitals to prevent my mother from phoning me to tell me that the room has carpet).

And now the huge bathroom, just like on a plane? A bath.

And an enormous shower. I will be here for 5 nights, so I am glad the room seems good.

First up, bonus hotel pic. The hallways are lined with plane windows, with embedded video screens showing footage shot out of a plane window.

Modern tree lined streets. Actually it is a bit of a grey polluted day, I doubt that will change any time soon.

Here is a funky cafe street, where everyone has added plants to the footpath, but they have at least left a bit wide enough for pedestrians.

I stopped to do some kung fu. I lost to stick man.

Yeah, it's just another temple, but wait, who is that creepy golden dude perched on the top? Also the horse on the right has a detailed pink asshole painted on. Nice work.

Here is the above ground subway the crane fell on that I rode on earlier. It is a driverless system.

Running down the main road is the former BRT (bus rapid transport). The middle lanes used to be only for buses. There was talk of making every intersection an overpass but it never happened. Originally there were very long 3 section bendy buses, now it is just normal buses. They still come very often, but most intersections have count down timers for a minimum of 90 seconds, so it is not a particularly rapid bus transit system. I rode on it back to my hotel to practice for tomorrow when I need to ride it to get to my hiking trail.

I stood in this spot last time I was here, at that time Taichung city hall was still under construction.

The best I could do for for a photo of this branch of Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, I did not eat my dinner here, I went to a nearby larger shopping mall, but Shin Kong had the usual basement food court options.

The upper levels have a Japan themed eating street. Might be worth a visit on another night for some ramen.

However, I went to Food Republic, the greatest Republic of all. Lots of choices and lots of spare seats.

Beef noodle! I was in two minds, but the plate full of spinach I saw them serving up swayed me. My food safety tip, whenever you get soup and other things with it, put everything in the soup to kill anything living in it. The fatty bits in the meat are the best bits.

Here is the best I could do to show how Taichung looks like a mainland Chinese city. The tops of the buildings in particular.

The rainbow lighting building is where I had my dinner. I think it is called Top City.

I love road overpasses, not only can I take photos from them, here I can take photos of them, thanks to some purple LED lights.

Back near my hotel, this is a more typical Taiwan street, only wider.

And for my final pic tonight, A themed 7-eleven, snoopy themed. Both Taiwan and China love snoopy for some reason, I read about why once but forgot the reason.