Huashan 1914 Creative Park and Daan Park
The hunt for the mouse was on. In the stifling heat. At 9:30am it was 34c, so I went for a coffee and the news told me today is the hottest day of the year in Taipei, with people advised to stay indoors. Good day for a rest day then.
My first destination, too early for anything to be open, was The Huashan 1914 Creative Park, which is generally filled with art displays and shops, but currently most are closed. There was a big anime fair setting up (anime of course, that is literally all there is these days), and also senior high school students were exhibiting their work for assessment, all of which was anime based. The area apparently was a Japanese Sake brewery, before the re-invasion by General Chang.
From there, I headed to a park, Daan forest park, which I really want to write as Da'an. This is a large park in the middle of the city, with a pond full of very large, very loud, white birds. Perhaps the Taiwanese cousin of the dreaded bin chicken. It was not cooler in the park at all! Also now it was windy, things were blowing into my eyeballs. Time for another hot coffee, that will help.
My final destination, Guanghua Digital plaza. This is where you go to buy a mouse. I could choose from 200 stores. The actual digital plaza is a 6 level mall with little stalls, mainly computer equipment, but also karaoke machines and speaker wire, just like you would find in any large Asian city. And yes, I did finally buy a mouse, details below.
I actually walked through Guanghua Digital Plaza first, way too early for things to be open. The actual plaza is the multicoloured smaller building behind the Panasonic building. Nice blue sky, damn hot.
Probably also full of little places selling computer parts. The top floors of the plaza had dedicated data recovery clinics for every brand of hard drive, with people sitting receiving a consultation like they were applying for a home loan. Quite strange.
The walls at street level are lined with toxic mother boards.
Here is the Huashan 1914 Creative Park, complete with brewery chimney. I guess the Sake made here was called flower mountain?
These halls had school students setting up their mainly multimedia artworks for assessment. I was not allowed in.
The red building area was setting up for an anime festival.
Now for Da'an park. Nice apartment building over the road, reminds me of one on Flinders street in Melbourne that I like.
Da'an park station is impressive.
Here is the pond with trees filled with giant birds, none of which you can see in the photo despite there being thousands of the bastards.
Pond scum life.
Not a lot of people sitting in the heat enjoying a show at the amphitheatre today.
Now to head back to Guanghua to end the mouse hunt. The streets around the area are entirely computer shops and nothing else.
Inside the Digital Plaza looks like this, on every level. I had over 100 stores from which to buy a mouse in the digital plaza building alone.
And here it is. A very rare thing. I hate buying things, I especially hate buying things when on holidays. I selected it purely on the basis that the packaging fit into my shorts pocket. I hate it. The ergonomics are crap. But for photo editing it is better than the touch pad on my laptop. I expect it to be raining and cooler later!
National Taiwan University area
As the worlds lead uneducated buffoon, it is my god sworn duty to go to the area surrounding the most prestigious University in each city I somehow end up in. In Taipei and Taiwan for that matter, that is the National Taiwan University. Very clever name.
This Uni is quite a distance from the centre of Taiwan, which means about a 15 minute subway journey. I got off a stop early to explore the area.
First there was the Hakka cultural garden, Hakka being the name of an earlier group of Han Chinese that fled northern China in the Qing dynasty, and named themselves after a dance invented by the New Zealand rugby team.
After performing the dance myself, I proceeded along the river, and through 2 different surprise sea of flower areas. Then it was up into an artist village, and then down into the bustling University area where I would not be able to get dinner, so I fled to... a food court!
Here is the Hakka cultural park. This is the nicest bit. Ancient incense burner.
Most of it was literally an overgrown vegetable garden.
The view from the bridge out of the park that leads down to the river was however, superb!
The first surprise sea of flowers. I did my best to get in the way of everyone's photos. Note you cannot see anyone in my photos, that is because I am standing in front of everyone else.
Second surprise sea of flowers. This walk along the river area was quite a bit longer than I thought. Lots of people.
Looks like I am getting to the end of the park area, time to head uphill.
This is very hard to photograph, but built into the side of a hill is a creative village, which is to say, artists who live and work in tiny shacks that are kind of open to the public.
Here is an example shot through a window, where a guy makes robot art, apparently.
I walked around a nice elevated trail at dusk, which came down here, at what used to be a historic train station.
Overpass time! The actual University is on the right, I dare not go in there though.
There is an old fashion indoor market complete with very cheap eating areas. It reminded me of the neighbourhood food markets in Hong Kong.
It quickly became apparent I would struggle to get into any sit down restaurant, they all had lines, and groups of people. I briefly thought about having one of these, but it is just dough and green onion slices. I am sure it is delicious though.
Bustling street area of Gongguan.
And so, I retreated to a food court for a late (for me) poke bowl, with surprise prawns. Pretty good, pretty healthy. Now... tomorrow is a hiking day. It is supposed to pour with rain, it is actually supposed to be raining now but it is not, it is still 34c. So it will all depend on what the weather is doing when I wake up tomorrow.