Taiwan for the 5th time - April and May 2023 - Page 6

First I caught the BRT to the MRT. This is me driving the MRT. It is driverless, so I assumed command. I made all the noises.

After the aforementioned bus saga, I was at the trailhead for Dakeng trail #2, the most popular route.

Wait a minute, this is not the trail I remember?

Ahh yes, miles of stepping on a steep log course ahead. With the odd broken log for you to ponder how it broke, and if you would break any and therefore break a leg.

No view today, easily the worst pollution so far. All farmers smoke!

I was going quite fast, but you will see in the next few pics that those girls stayed ahead of me, in their casual clothes with a handbag, impressive.

There they are again on a brief downhill bit.

And again, they never stopped at all.

Now at the top of trail 2, and those 2 girls collapsed on the ground, looked like they might vomit, and were as red as beetroot. I told them they were very fast, using condescending man half assed Chinese. And the response from one of them was, I VERY SICK! OMG! So I felt a bit better about not catching and passing them. I do not know why they went up so fast, perhaps they were frightened of me? Generally the locals are really slow to avoid all sweating, apart from the strange men who go up barefoot with no shirt at full speed and then do pull ups whenever they pass a suitable branch.

Time to carry on along trail #5, which goes along the ridge at the top. There are quite a few pavilions with old folks hanging out, there is a road up the back of the mountain they may have used, but plenty climb up, then climb down backwards. Parts of the trail at the top seem to be gardens of sorts.

Trail #5 still has ladders to go up and down though, lots of them.

Some of these trees look like eucalyptus trees. I was trying to spot a koala. This is a rare section with steps instead of log ladders.

The best pic of the day I guess, very nice bit of the trail.

Yep, still smoky. And it drizzled rain a bit just as I finished, so some of this is mist too.

Redundant view photo.

Time to head down trail #4. Thankfully not as steep down as trail #2 was up.

The logs were sometimes closer together, but not always.

I think at least some of the flowers are wild.

Here is one of the hang out spots. As you can see, people dry their clothes. Some people were singing, possibly drunk.

Almost back at the bottom, here is a view back up trail #4.

When I crossed this bridge, I think I realised last time I went up trail #4, and possibly down #3, which I bypassed today to do a longer route. But who knows, last time I walked a long way to the start of the trail and got a bus back by accident.

The bus situation meant it was just me, and a long lonely road, back to town. That's all for now, my Achilles tendons survived.

First up, by special request, the outside of my hotel. They should put an airliner on the roof.

First on my journey towards old Taichung, the Taichung 2nd market. Old and dilapidated. Near where I stayed last time, which is clearly the old centre of town with lots of old stuff. It is a morning market but there are other shops inside, some are quite nice despite external appearances.

This afternoons overpass shot, more to come in the future I am sure.

Now for an early night market shot. It is shots like this where I am glad to have a zoom lense, scene compression.

This is not Coco curry. It is omurice, but it came from a food court near Coco curry. Because once again I was turned away from Coco curry for being on my own. They hate me all across Taiwan. From Yilan to Taichung, the word is out, keep this guy out of our stores! Anyway, my omurice was ok, and cheaper than it would have been at Coco. I feel as though I must now try and get turned away from every branch I see, no matter the time or place.

Here is the Chungyo department store, and it is truly massive. I vaguely remember catching a bus from here last time I was here, and checking it out briefly. If you look closely there are 3 towers, and underground across 4 basement levels, it is all one giant area with about 50 places to eat.

And finally, now that it was dark, I went back through the Yizhong street night market, which was surprisingly not too busy, and then successfully caught a bus back to my hotel along Taiwan Boulevard. There is another much larger night market for tomorrow.

The general vibe of the coin laundry. It has no doors, so it is truly open 24 hours. I am standing in the street to take this shot.

Someone thought it would be a quick way to clean their dog and or cat, so now there is a sticker on everything telling you to not do that.

Next up, the natural history museum botanic gardens (that is a mouthful). A nice place for a stroll, many locals were strolling here with a Beijing taxi singlet, which is where you fold your shirt up under your armpits so your fat guts gets aired.

Cool trees.

What is this magnificent building with a giant butterfly guarding it?

Well, it is a tropical rain forest conservatory. Do they need that here? Under it, there is a learning centre, but first, I had to judge the orchid competition, as a special foreign guest judge.

The conservatory has a waterfall, a small pond, and instead of gold fish, these awesome prehistoric dinosaur fish. They are big, I think the big one here is probably 5 feet long.

Hmm, crap pic of the waterfall inside the tropical conservatory.

I thought I would be able to climb up this tower and leap off the diving board into the fish filled world below, but alas, no, no public access.

Across the road is the actual natural history museum, $4 entry fee. After entering, this is the very first exhibit. Interesting, turns out it is a period shaming exhibit, like we have in all Australian supermarkets now.

The building is not as grand as I expected, because the museum is huge, but like a lot of things in Taiwan, a lot of it is underground. Here is the forecourt, around the outside are stalactites pulled out of caves. I thought they must be fake, but no, inside they have a video of them removing them from a cave somewhere.

After the history of the shame of menstruation, the next exhibit was, the history of the history museum. I was thinking I wanted my $4 back at this point.

Now for the most controversial exhibit. Taiwan is the cradle of all civilization in the world. This map proves it. Taiwan has the oldest date, everything else followed. The arrow to Australia is the most recent. I expect a new 42 dash line soon.

The history of Chinese scientific discoveries. 99% of the museum focuses on Chinese achievements, and Taiwan definitely presents itself as part of China here. There is one small section on the native Taiwanese culture, but it is mixed in with Hawaii, Papua New Guinea etc. Japan does not get any kind of mention.

Apparently we all evolved from this ancient Taiwanese pig like bacteria, with flippers.

Over 90% of visitors seem to have only bothered going to the animatronic dinosaur part of the museum.

And now another amazing thing. Giant bugs once roamed the earth. Larger than any dinosaur. Elephant for scale. Overall the museum is good for at least 2 hours. Now to try on my clothes and suspect they all shrunk in the wash.

I have no idea what's going on here. They do not appear to be selling anything.

Long time readers, that is readers from last year, will remember my constant raving about open sewer parks in Korea. Well here is one in Taiwan. This one is not up to Korean standard, you cannot descend down into the sewer and walk along it.

The healthy dinner. Poke I guess, but I get chicken, and kind of make it into a burrito bowl. Delicious, especially the pineapple. I will probably have similar again at some point.

Approaching Feng Chia. All the roads leading to the area are footpath free.

Not a petrol station, an ice tea station. I suspect they converted an actual petrol pump, it is the same colour and looks the same as the pumps in the main CPC petrol stations. I hope they rinsed it out properly first.

There are lot of shops like this in and around the night market area, which is of course, also a major university. And where there are university students, there is a need to spend hundreds of dollars on giant Godzilla models.

Example of, walking along the road with traffic. Made all the more dangerous when you take photos of it.

Time for a couple of night market shots now that it is actually night.

Here is another.

The claw machine shops are everywhere, all without any customers.

Last shot tonight, another busy road back to where I can hop on the rapid bus back to my hotel. I managed to not get run over.

I caught the MRT to Songzhu station where I changed to the slow train to Tai'an, this seemed quicker than taking the BRT to Taichung main station. Here is Songzhu station on the outskirts of Taichung.

Tai'an station is in the literal middle of nowhere. There is a train park with a cafe but no convenience store. I will show the train park on my way back. The nearest convenience store is on the nearby highway, and it is a very good one, larger than the ones in the city.

My journey to the start of the hike went through various small farms, this one growing cherry tomatoes.

Of course there is also rice, and that is my mountain in the background. You can see the eroded cliffs it is famous for.

I had to cross over a long bridge over some flood control areas, there is no footpath! But not too much traffic. Here is the view from the bridge.

Map for reference, I did the full loop including the green bit at the top.

This may have been the old permit checking station, if permits were ever truly required.

No actual stairs today, but some rocky stairs like this. Not at all slippery.

But also bits of the path like this. Reminds me of Australia.

First view of the cliffs, that look like flames, hence the name.

More cliffs, not a quarry, natural erosion.

I ended up missing the main view spot, because there is a rock stair case like this just back from the edge, and many signs telling you to not go near the edge. Wherever those signs are, is where the good views are!

Not at the top yet.

This is the best kind of path. There were a few other people at the start of the hike today, but they mostly stopped at the view spot (that I missed) and went back down again.

2nd to last grand canyon view.

This is the best I got of Taiwan's grand canyon. I should have done a better job of finding a spot around to the right, I have seen some photos that look directly down the valley.

View from the top, or a top anyway. At this point I realised I had missed the view spot, because now it was green in all directions.

Here are the farmlands I walked through to get to the hike. Very flat. This is what farms in Taiwan look like, small, green, with buildings everywhere.

As far as distance goes, this little spot is the half way point. But it is probably more than half way as far as time goes as it is mostly flat and down hill from here. I think you can take a shortcut along the blue bit of the map from here, I took the green bit to the actual highest point of the trail.

Apparently, the highest point, at only 602m. No view.

Some nice parts of the trail along the ridge.

I was really enjoying the natural trail today. Long sections were like this.

The path down became a bit more of a forest. Lots of noisy birds and no other people.

No pavilion style rest spots today, someone carried up some seats from out of a plane.

Right at the end of the hike, here is a guy selling hiking equipment. This is the end of the hike, everyone follows the clockwork course. So I guess the idea is you buy gear here because whatever you used today was useless?

On my 4km walk back to the train, I thought I might go over the flood control area on this water pipe rather than the bridge you can see to the right that has no footpaths. I pondered briefly then decided against it. It definitely would have been safer!

As promised here is the train park cafe area at Tai'an station. It appeared to be open for lunch. You cant see it here, but there are actual train carriages instead of buildings.

And since I had 20 minutes to kill until the train. The stance. I look fat?! Especially my face. Tonight will probably be a shorter outing.

I was bloody starving. First I tried to go for fancy ramen in Japanese food street, but that was a 60 minute wait! at 6pm! So I went back to the food court for pork and beef double steak surprise. It was great.

Here is a new apartment building. Joined at the top.

There are of course malls in this area, I think I ate at this one in 2014, when it was on the edge of town.

This is the Taichung national theatre, a very impressive building.

Example of modern architecture, no scooters anywhere.

I realised my previous shot was the back of the theatre, here is the front.

Very nice clean modern street. Door men look at me with disdain as I went past.

Back close to city hall now, here are some more decorative commercial buildings, the previous ones were mainly apartments, at least on the upper levels, there are always shops at the bottom.

One last architecture shot for this evening. These were all taken hand held, under exposed, and heavily edited to find something viewable. Tomorrow is a rest day. I have no plan!