Here’s a description for those of you that might be interested in isiting Taiwan. (Brooklyn, this might help you a little bit. Living in a place like this would be so very different than visiting.) I’m going to use a question/answer format.
If I go on a package tour, will I experience Taiwan?
Taiwan is clogged with people in package tours, a lot of them from the People’s Republic of China (they’re required to be in a tour group). If you go in a tour group, you’ll always be standing at a distance from the people of Taiwan. If you go on your own, you will have to take some small risks, like being embarrassed when you do the wrong thing or being given food that isn’t what you thought you ordered. If you make a mistake, the Taiwanese will politely forgive you.
Are there sources of information on Taiwan travel?
We have Lonely Planet and Rough Guide and they’re both very useful although they are outdated. Because they’re outdated , you have to get current information when you arrive for things like train schedules. Both books are very useful although Rough Guide is much better for finding food.
Tripadvisor.com is a great web site for travelers but you need to dig into the forums to get really detailed information. I got the name of our Taroko tour guide from forum entries and she was great.
Is Taiwan expensive?
The airfare is the greatest expense. There is a wide range of hotel prices so use Tripadvisor.com and the books to get rating and then reserve online using hotels.com or agoda.com. We mostly had very good places to stay for about $90 or less a night. You can get cheaper rooms and much more expensive ones.
Everything else is very cheap as long as you don’t eat in hotel restaurants or buy ridiculously expensive souvenirs. Riding the subway never cost us more than $1 and taking the fancy high speed chain on a long trip up the west coast cost $45 each. You might spend $2 for dinner eating on the street and up to $5 for a good dinner in a typical restaurant.
Is Taiwan safe for travelers?
It’s very safe. I never used the security pouch I bought for carrying money safely—I honestly felt I didn’t need it. Of course you need to be watchful and not get yourself into bad situations, but we walked down some pretty dark streets and I wasn’t worried.
How hard is it to travel here if you don’t speak Chinese?
All major transit stations have signs in English and the trains and subways have station announcements in English while en route. The hotels that serve foreigners all have English speaking staff and tourist attractions have English speakers and signs in the interpretive centers. Bus drivers don’t seem to speak much English but the prices is usally marked.
What about everywhere else? If you’re buying things in store or even a stall the price will usually be clearly marked. If it isn’t marked, you can ask for a price using the handy phrase “Duoshao quian” (how much does this cost) and pantomime writing it down. You should learn the words for numbers, if possible.
Public transportation is great in Taipei not as good in other parts of the country. Cabs are cheap but cab drivers don’t usually speak English so if you need to take a cab, either have the card from your hotel with the name in Chinese (if you are returning there) or have the characters for the place you are going to written down or available in a book. Rough Guide has the names of places in Chinese in each section.
Where are the best places to visit?
Taiwan has a lot of beautiful natural wonders as well as interesting cities. Want to lay on tropical beaches, go south to Kenting. Like mountains, there’s Taroko National Park. the cross island highways, Alishan, or Yangmingshan. Hot springs are anywhere there are mountains. Want to learn about Buddhism or Taoism, it’s everywhere. The best part is that the island is small enough that you can do a lot of those things in a short period of time.
Is there tipping?
The general rule is no, there is no tipping. I guess some expat businesses and some high end hotels ask for or expect tips but we haven’t run into that.
Send me any more questions I need to answer.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
My Last Day - Sumup Is Coming Tomorrow
I'm at the airport waiting for the 11:20 p.m. flight to LA.
We spent my last day walking revisiting some old places and exploring some new areas.
We started by revisiting the beautiful Longshan temple so I could pay my final respects to Guanyin. The temple was very busy, particularly in the rear corner near the deities that represent excellence in literature. Young people, probably getting ready for exams, crowded into that area, bringing offerings of food and their sincere desire for their own success. The temple attendants were giving out Longshan pens and I was lucky enough to get two.
We wandered through the market area nearby and then window shopped at the row of Buddhist religious supply stores. We decided to walk north then to Ximending.
Ximending is where young people shop, watch movies, and perhaps party in Taipei. The action is centered on a series of streets that feed into a a three block pedestrian mall, a mall that actually didn't have motot scooters on it. It was Saturday afternoon when we were there and it was almost packed. We thought it would be packed later.
The sad things is that a great majority of the stores contain foreign designer brands, not Taiwanese or even Chinese brands, I looked at a few items and the foreign goods seem to go on sale for about 10% to 15% less than they sell for in the US. A $150 iPod was about $125--not enough to make me busy some for resale.
We hopped back on the MRT to head north to yet another neighborhood in Taipei. We walked a bit and got to Dihua Street, historically one of the famous shopping streets in Taipei. We walked south on Dihua (which was treacherous since there was no good sidewalk and lots of traffic) until we got to the City God Temple. Many of the neighborhoods that we've visited used to be villages, each with a City God temple. Those villages grew together to form modern Taipei, so now it's neighborhoods that have City God temples.
We walked two blocks from there to the museum of the Taipei puppet compnay. In a small but tall building they had collected examples of very old stick, string, and shadow puppets from China, Taiwan, and India and these really interesting water puppets from Vietnam. The also had an exhibit about how tthe Cultural Revolution in China affected puppetry there.
We went back to the hotel and I finished packing, then we went to have dinner in one of our neighborhood restaurants. In the first restaurant the servers were eating dinner and didn't really want to help us make sense of the menu. We left and went into another, always busy restaurant a block further from the hotel. They were very helpful and we successfully ordered a very good meal. We chose a fish that was on ice in the front of the restaurant and they cooked it in some delicious broth. It really melted in your mouth.
I took a bus to the airport that took an indirect route to the airport. I had to switch terminals and search for the departure area but I successfully made it to the gate.
We spent my last day walking revisiting some old places and exploring some new areas.
We started by revisiting the beautiful Longshan temple so I could pay my final respects to Guanyin. The temple was very busy, particularly in the rear corner near the deities that represent excellence in literature. Young people, probably getting ready for exams, crowded into that area, bringing offerings of food and their sincere desire for their own success. The temple attendants were giving out Longshan pens and I was lucky enough to get two.
We wandered through the market area nearby and then window shopped at the row of Buddhist religious supply stores. We decided to walk north then to Ximending.
Ximending is where young people shop, watch movies, and perhaps party in Taipei. The action is centered on a series of streets that feed into a a three block pedestrian mall, a mall that actually didn't have motot scooters on it. It was Saturday afternoon when we were there and it was almost packed. We thought it would be packed later.
The sad things is that a great majority of the stores contain foreign designer brands, not Taiwanese or even Chinese brands, I looked at a few items and the foreign goods seem to go on sale for about 10% to 15% less than they sell for in the US. A $150 iPod was about $125--not enough to make me busy some for resale.
We hopped back on the MRT to head north to yet another neighborhood in Taipei. We walked a bit and got to Dihua Street, historically one of the famous shopping streets in Taipei. We walked south on Dihua (which was treacherous since there was no good sidewalk and lots of traffic) until we got to the City God Temple. Many of the neighborhoods that we've visited used to be villages, each with a City God temple. Those villages grew together to form modern Taipei, so now it's neighborhoods that have City God temples.
We walked two blocks from there to the museum of the Taipei puppet compnay. In a small but tall building they had collected examples of very old stick, string, and shadow puppets from China, Taiwan, and India and these really interesting water puppets from Vietnam. The also had an exhibit about how tthe Cultural Revolution in China affected puppetry there.
We went back to the hotel and I finished packing, then we went to have dinner in one of our neighborhood restaurants. In the first restaurant the servers were eating dinner and didn't really want to help us make sense of the menu. We left and went into another, always busy restaurant a block further from the hotel. They were very helpful and we successfully ordered a very good meal. We chose a fish that was on ice in the front of the restaurant and they cooked it in some delicious broth. It really melted in your mouth.
I took a bus to the airport that took an indirect route to the airport. I had to switch terminals and search for the departure area but I successfully made it to the gate.
Friday, May 7, 2010
We left Tainan on the high speed train about noon. The special high speed station is beautiful but it takes an expensive cab ride to get there from downtown Tainan. The speed of the train is truly amazing--at one point the display showed the train was cruising at about 155 miles an hour. The train car is a bit nicer than the standard train car, comfortable but not too fancy, and the ride is very smooth. We need one of these from the Twin Cities to Chicago.
We checked back into our minimalist room in the Ambience then headed out for one of the key expeditions of the trip--exploring the neighborhood Sally lived in when she was ten. We walked south on Xinsheng Road, turned right onto Lane 150 and there was the block she lived on and the park she played in. In fact, there was a concrete playground slide in the park that was the exact same type of slide that she played on as a little girl. While the house she lived in is gone, things generally looked like the pictures Sally took when she lived there.
Sally will spend more time in that neighborhood after I leave and will take a lot of pictures. It was raining on and off the whole time we were in the area so it wasn't a great day to explore. Today we're having normal May weather, rainy and warm, although the Taipe temperature of 25 degrees C is much more comfortable than the heat and humidity in Tainan.
This was our first rain of the trip and it was easy to ignore as long as you had an umbrella. The rain was not easy for the people on motor scooters to ignore, however, so they were wearing a variety of ponchos and rain coats. It must be very uncomfortable for the scooter riders when monsoon rains start in late summer.
We wandered in a broader area for a while, then checked out the hotel Sally will move into on Sunday. It's called the Dandy and it's slogan, painted on the wall by its door, is "Simpleism, Simplistic, Simple, Dandy." I think the Dandy may even be more minimalist than the Ambience, which could be interesting or perhaps frightening. There was something that wasn't white in the Dandy lobby so I'm not sure they can beat the Ambience.
We had dinner at a famous Taipei restaurant that has branches all over the world (but not in Minnesota). It's called Ding Tai Feng and it's specialty is jiaodze (dumplings). They had a variety of jiaodze, xiaomai, and lots of other appetizers and dishes so we ordered a spread of jiaodze, pickles and vegetables and it was all delicious. This place had about six or seven college age people working our area, shuffling in food quickly and quietly while also making small talk in English so we felt comfortable. We probably were there for less than 30 minutes total but we didn't feel rushed.
We found the bus stop for my airport bus tomorrow night, got some fresh soybean milk and some old school cookie things, sat on a white couch in the hotel lobby, and watched the traffic go by on Changan Avenue.
Tomorrow is my last day in Taiwan! We're going to go back to the historic old district for a look at things we missed on our last trip to the area and then have dinner at one of the rowdy restaurants near the hotel that are always packed until 1 a.m. every night. Then out to the airport where the flight to LA begins at 11:30 p.m.
We checked back into our minimalist room in the Ambience then headed out for one of the key expeditions of the trip--exploring the neighborhood Sally lived in when she was ten. We walked south on Xinsheng Road, turned right onto Lane 150 and there was the block she lived on and the park she played in. In fact, there was a concrete playground slide in the park that was the exact same type of slide that she played on as a little girl. While the house she lived in is gone, things generally looked like the pictures Sally took when she lived there.
Sally will spend more time in that neighborhood after I leave and will take a lot of pictures. It was raining on and off the whole time we were in the area so it wasn't a great day to explore. Today we're having normal May weather, rainy and warm, although the Taipe temperature of 25 degrees C is much more comfortable than the heat and humidity in Tainan.
This was our first rain of the trip and it was easy to ignore as long as you had an umbrella. The rain was not easy for the people on motor scooters to ignore, however, so they were wearing a variety of ponchos and rain coats. It must be very uncomfortable for the scooter riders when monsoon rains start in late summer.
We wandered in a broader area for a while, then checked out the hotel Sally will move into on Sunday. It's called the Dandy and it's slogan, painted on the wall by its door, is "Simpleism, Simplistic, Simple, Dandy." I think the Dandy may even be more minimalist than the Ambience, which could be interesting or perhaps frightening. There was something that wasn't white in the Dandy lobby so I'm not sure they can beat the Ambience.
We had dinner at a famous Taipei restaurant that has branches all over the world (but not in Minnesota). It's called Ding Tai Feng and it's specialty is jiaodze (dumplings). They had a variety of jiaodze, xiaomai, and lots of other appetizers and dishes so we ordered a spread of jiaodze, pickles and vegetables and it was all delicious. This place had about six or seven college age people working our area, shuffling in food quickly and quietly while also making small talk in English so we felt comfortable. We probably were there for less than 30 minutes total but we didn't feel rushed.
We found the bus stop for my airport bus tomorrow night, got some fresh soybean milk and some old school cookie things, sat on a white couch in the hotel lobby, and watched the traffic go by on Changan Avenue.
Tomorrow is my last day in Taiwan! We're going to go back to the historic old district for a look at things we missed on our last trip to the area and then have dinner at one of the rowdy restaurants near the hotel that are always packed until 1 a.m. every night. Then out to the airport where the flight to LA begins at 11:30 p.m.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Thursday, May 6
Sally woke up early and got us tickets on the high speed train back to Taipei. This fast train takes less than two hours while the regular train takes more than four. The only problem with the high speed train is that this is a completely new rail system and the stations are outside of the cities, instead of in the center of the city like the normal train stations. It’s an expensive cab ride.
I like Tainan. This is a T-shirt and shorts town, not fashion conscious like Taipei. Things seem to be move a bit slower here, maybe because of the heat or because this isn’t a center of business or government like Taipei. People here are perhaps a bit less polite than the hyper-polite folks of Taipei, but they still are very friendly once you connect with them.
What I don’t like is the motor scooter driving here. There isn’t much public transportation, unlike Taipei, so it seems like every single person has a motor scooter and no one knows the traffic laws. People ride through red lights, drive the wrong way on streets, drive down every inch of sidewalk looking for parking spots, and cut across the places where pedestrians stand when they are waiting for a light.
Today we went to Anping, the first settlement on Taiwan in the 1660s. The Dutch built a fort there and some aborigines came and created a settlement next to it. We went to the remains of the fort and then walked down nearby Yangping Road, one of the original market streets on Taiwan.
What about temples, you ask? There are more temples in the relatively small Anping area than you could visit in a day. We did go to the most important temple, the first Matzu temple in Taiwan. Koxinga (the general who conquered the Dutch, remember?) brought Matzu statues with him from China and they build this temple to house them and as a place to pray for safety on the seas. The Japanese destroyed the temple when they gained control of Taiwan in the late 1800s but the temple was rebuilt in the 1960s and the original Matzu statues, which somehow survived the Japanese, were collected and put into the new temple.
It’s still the celebration of Matsu’s birthday so the temple area was full of people cooking, cleaning, setting things up, and preparing for performances. The area was also full of dozens of tables covered with offerings that worshippers brought. This included every time of food you could imagine as well as a couple of cases of Taiwan beer.
When we went into the temple, the atmosphere was more solemn. There was a temple attendant reading a prayer in the front of the hall and a group of monks chanting (using wireless microphones) in front of the main altar. There was a stream of people coming through the temple to worship but no buzz of people talking about preparations or other non-worship matters like in the Grand Matzu temple in downtown Tainan.
We left there and wandered until we ran across a very pretty Guanyin temple not far from Matsu’s temple. This wasn’t a large temple but the walls were beautifully carved with lines of text and depictions of what I presumed were important events. The door guardians were fifteen feet tall and very colorful.
As we looked for another landmark we wandered down some alleys into old style houses with little courtyards. Sally said that Taipei used to look like that which is hard for me to believe.
We did sample two famous Anping treats. We stopped at Chou’s and had shrimp rolls and coffin cakes. To make a coffin cake you cut of f the top, hollow it out so it looks like a coffin, add vegetables and a sauce and then put the lid back on. Both treats were very good.
It was hot and sticky so we took a cab back to the hotel and took a break. In the evening we walked down to our favorite vegetarian restaurant and had a wonderful meal. We walked back slowly, watched a Bruce Lee movie and that was the day.
BTW, the hotel is filling up. Tour buses are starting to disgorge large numbers of tourists into the hotel. Also we discovered that the amazing breakfast buffet is costing us $1000 NT ($30 US) every day—this compares to the free breakfasts at all the other hotels. We’re not doing that again.
Back to Taipei tomorrow
I like Tainan. This is a T-shirt and shorts town, not fashion conscious like Taipei. Things seem to be move a bit slower here, maybe because of the heat or because this isn’t a center of business or government like Taipei. People here are perhaps a bit less polite than the hyper-polite folks of Taipei, but they still are very friendly once you connect with them.
What I don’t like is the motor scooter driving here. There isn’t much public transportation, unlike Taipei, so it seems like every single person has a motor scooter and no one knows the traffic laws. People ride through red lights, drive the wrong way on streets, drive down every inch of sidewalk looking for parking spots, and cut across the places where pedestrians stand when they are waiting for a light.
Today we went to Anping, the first settlement on Taiwan in the 1660s. The Dutch built a fort there and some aborigines came and created a settlement next to it. We went to the remains of the fort and then walked down nearby Yangping Road, one of the original market streets on Taiwan.
What about temples, you ask? There are more temples in the relatively small Anping area than you could visit in a day. We did go to the most important temple, the first Matzu temple in Taiwan. Koxinga (the general who conquered the Dutch, remember?) brought Matzu statues with him from China and they build this temple to house them and as a place to pray for safety on the seas. The Japanese destroyed the temple when they gained control of Taiwan in the late 1800s but the temple was rebuilt in the 1960s and the original Matzu statues, which somehow survived the Japanese, were collected and put into the new temple.
It’s still the celebration of Matsu’s birthday so the temple area was full of people cooking, cleaning, setting things up, and preparing for performances. The area was also full of dozens of tables covered with offerings that worshippers brought. This included every time of food you could imagine as well as a couple of cases of Taiwan beer.
When we went into the temple, the atmosphere was more solemn. There was a temple attendant reading a prayer in the front of the hall and a group of monks chanting (using wireless microphones) in front of the main altar. There was a stream of people coming through the temple to worship but no buzz of people talking about preparations or other non-worship matters like in the Grand Matzu temple in downtown Tainan.
We left there and wandered until we ran across a very pretty Guanyin temple not far from Matsu’s temple. This wasn’t a large temple but the walls were beautifully carved with lines of text and depictions of what I presumed were important events. The door guardians were fifteen feet tall and very colorful.
As we looked for another landmark we wandered down some alleys into old style houses with little courtyards. Sally said that Taipei used to look like that which is hard for me to believe.
We did sample two famous Anping treats. We stopped at Chou’s and had shrimp rolls and coffin cakes. To make a coffin cake you cut of f the top, hollow it out so it looks like a coffin, add vegetables and a sauce and then put the lid back on. Both treats were very good.
It was hot and sticky so we took a cab back to the hotel and took a break. In the evening we walked down to our favorite vegetarian restaurant and had a wonderful meal. We walked back slowly, watched a Bruce Lee movie and that was the day.
BTW, the hotel is filling up. Tour buses are starting to disgorge large numbers of tourists into the hotel. Also we discovered that the amazing breakfast buffet is costing us $1000 NT ($30 US) every day—this compares to the free breakfasts at all the other hotels. We’re not doing that again.
Back to Taipei tomorrow
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
We visited all the Level 1 and some of the Level 2 shrines in central Tainan. There’s probably a dozen more places to visit in that area but the attractions close pretty early in Tainan and we were pretty hot, grubby and tired by 5:30 p.m. I couldn’t cover all we did today in detail so I’ll write some highlights.
The first place we went: We started at Chihkan Towers, buildings on the site where the Dutch surrendered to the famous Chinese general named Koxinga. Not real exciting except for a nice statue showing the surrender.
The last place: We ended at the Koxinga Shrine which was built in a different spot in the city. There was some interesting history here but it was not very moving.
The happiest, lightest place: The Lady Linshui temple is dedicated to women in childbirth. It’s incredibly ornate and very bright with beautiful murals of woman and children playing. We saw one pregnant woman sitting by the statues of the birth assistants for a month and a very pretty song and dance done by a temple attendant for another woman.
The darkest: Tie. The City God temple and the Dongyue temple. The City God is responsible for counting up your good and bad deeds during your life, information that will be used to decide if you’re going to hell or not. The City God temple is full of warnings, including large, scary figures holding chains and paddles, as well as a huge abacus he uses to count your deeds. In the front hall of the Dongyue temple, the Emperor of the East Mountains takes those numbers and determines which of the eighteen levels of hell you go to if you’re a sinner. The middle hall has murals depicting the horrors that bad people will go through in hell and the back hall is a gloomy, quiet place where a scary Fendu Da Di, emperor of Hell, glares down at you.
The spectacle: The grand Matzu temple was crowded with people parading, eating, worshipping, and standing in line for food being given out by the temple. We expected this since it’s around her birthday. The best moments occurred when the very large temple bell and drum began to sound and a line of temple attendants passed ritual items up to the altar and then back through the incense to a back altar.
The best statue: There is a beautify Guanyin statue at the back of the God of War temple that has Guanyin looking down with a compassionate but stern look on her face. It reminded me of the Guanyin that I learned about in the Journey to the West, a classic Chinese story. In that story Guanyin often saves the hero, Monkey King, from the predicaments he gets into, but also scolds him for being so mischievous and demands improvement in his behavior.
Best food: Tie. Lilly’s Fruit Shop serves shaved ice topped with fresh tropical fruit or a number of other mixtures—I had persimmon and Sally had honey-bean. Slack Season Dan Ti Noodles makes a delicious local dish called danzi mian that we both really liked.
Tomorrow we go to Anping, the other historical area in Tainan.
The first place we went: We started at Chihkan Towers, buildings on the site where the Dutch surrendered to the famous Chinese general named Koxinga. Not real exciting except for a nice statue showing the surrender.
The last place: We ended at the Koxinga Shrine which was built in a different spot in the city. There was some interesting history here but it was not very moving.
The happiest, lightest place: The Lady Linshui temple is dedicated to women in childbirth. It’s incredibly ornate and very bright with beautiful murals of woman and children playing. We saw one pregnant woman sitting by the statues of the birth assistants for a month and a very pretty song and dance done by a temple attendant for another woman.
The darkest: Tie. The City God temple and the Dongyue temple. The City God is responsible for counting up your good and bad deeds during your life, information that will be used to decide if you’re going to hell or not. The City God temple is full of warnings, including large, scary figures holding chains and paddles, as well as a huge abacus he uses to count your deeds. In the front hall of the Dongyue temple, the Emperor of the East Mountains takes those numbers and determines which of the eighteen levels of hell you go to if you’re a sinner. The middle hall has murals depicting the horrors that bad people will go through in hell and the back hall is a gloomy, quiet place where a scary Fendu Da Di, emperor of Hell, glares down at you.
The spectacle: The grand Matzu temple was crowded with people parading, eating, worshipping, and standing in line for food being given out by the temple. We expected this since it’s around her birthday. The best moments occurred when the very large temple bell and drum began to sound and a line of temple attendants passed ritual items up to the altar and then back through the incense to a back altar.
The best statue: There is a beautify Guanyin statue at the back of the God of War temple that has Guanyin looking down with a compassionate but stern look on her face. It reminded me of the Guanyin that I learned about in the Journey to the West, a classic Chinese story. In that story Guanyin often saves the hero, Monkey King, from the predicaments he gets into, but also scolds him for being so mischievous and demands improvement in his behavior.
Best food: Tie. Lilly’s Fruit Shop serves shaved ice topped with fresh tropical fruit or a number of other mixtures—I had persimmon and Sally had honey-bean. Slack Season Dan Ti Noodles makes a delicious local dish called danzi mian that we both really liked.
Tomorrow we go to Anping, the other historical area in Tainan.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Taiwanese Dogs
There are lots of dogs in Taiwan, just like in the US, but they seem to lead very different lives than American dogs.
Taiwanese dogs appear to be pretty independent and they are rarely tied up or leashed. It’s normal to walk ldown a Taiwanese street and see a dog lazily watching people pass by their storefront or apartment building. You also see the more active dogs doing a studious patrol of their own little area. You often see dogs walk down the street without a person nearby looking like a canine neighborhood watch when they walk in a group.
The dogs mostly ignore strangers. Sometimes they will make the effort to look a person over and almost always decide you’re not interesting. If they think you have food, of course they’re more interested but I’ve never seen a dog here act aggressively toward a person.
The dogs usually ignore other dogs in the area but I have seen a few squabbles, usually involving dogs on leashes. When another dog looks at you in a certain way, you just have to respond. You know what I mean.
Taiwanese dogs appear to be mostly mixed breeds. I have seen some pure breed dogs-- some Pugs, a Golden Retriever, and some Daschsunds--but these were exceptions. To me, they’re the kind of dog you look at and say “I wonder what kind of dog that is.”
The funniest/scariest thing is watching Taiwanese dogs ride with their people on motor scooters, sometimes on the back and sometimes down by the pedals. I saw a very small leashed dog hop off the scooter at a red light, run around the scooter, and then hop back on.
There is a restaurant down the street from the Beauty Star Hotel where you can bring your dog to eat dinner with you. It was kind of empty the first few times we went by but they did have some decent business by the time we left the neighborhood. (What do you suppose they do with all the dog hair they sweep up?)
For you cat lovers, yes there are cats here but I don’t see them much. Besides, cats are the same everywhere, right? :)
Taiwanese dogs appear to be pretty independent and they are rarely tied up or leashed. It’s normal to walk ldown a Taiwanese street and see a dog lazily watching people pass by their storefront or apartment building. You also see the more active dogs doing a studious patrol of their own little area. You often see dogs walk down the street without a person nearby looking like a canine neighborhood watch when they walk in a group.
The dogs mostly ignore strangers. Sometimes they will make the effort to look a person over and almost always decide you’re not interesting. If they think you have food, of course they’re more interested but I’ve never seen a dog here act aggressively toward a person.
The dogs usually ignore other dogs in the area but I have seen a few squabbles, usually involving dogs on leashes. When another dog looks at you in a certain way, you just have to respond. You know what I mean.
Taiwanese dogs appear to be mostly mixed breeds. I have seen some pure breed dogs-- some Pugs, a Golden Retriever, and some Daschsunds--but these were exceptions. To me, they’re the kind of dog you look at and say “I wonder what kind of dog that is.”
The funniest/scariest thing is watching Taiwanese dogs ride with their people on motor scooters, sometimes on the back and sometimes down by the pedals. I saw a very small leashed dog hop off the scooter at a red light, run around the scooter, and then hop back on.
There is a restaurant down the street from the Beauty Star Hotel where you can bring your dog to eat dinner with you. It was kind of empty the first few times we went by but they did have some decent business by the time we left the neighborhood. (What do you suppose they do with all the dog hair they sweep up?)
For you cat lovers, yes there are cats here but I don’t see them much. Besides, cats are the same everywhere, right? :)
Tuesday, May something
I’m writing this in our somewhat posh room on the 22nd floor in the Far Eastern Shangri-La Something Something—Tainan. The hotel has 37 floors and I think right now we’re almost the only people here. I base that on the fact I have only seen two other people in the building, there’s an elevator immediately available every time we need one, and the staff run over to beg us for something to do every time we go into the lobby. Also, the guy in the gym followed me around the whole time I was in there.
We started the day with breakfast at the Ambience, then got on the “limited express” train to Tainan. That trip covers most of the west coast of Taiwan and only takes four hours. We went through some good sized cities, had views of the central mountain ranges to the east, and saw lots of rice plants and banana trees.
We arrived in Tainan about four and promptly were met at the door of the train station by a cab driver who was trying to take us out of turn. We went over to the first cab in line and he only took us after the dispatcher yelled at him. He took us about five blocks and charged us $100 NT. Well, we’re not in Tapei anymore.
After we checked into our room, we walked into the center of town and began the historic walking tour that’s in the Lonely Planet book. The walk showed us that there is quite a bit of money in this town—we walked past several blocks of obviously expensive mens’ and womens’ clothing stores and some well stocked electronics and music stores.
We made it to the Confucius Temple about 5:30 and found out that it closed a few minutes before. The ancient South Gate of the city was also closed. In fact, most of the historic sites closed around five, which was a change from Taipei.
After walking for a few minutes it was time to find something to eat, the most stressful part of every day it seems. We went to a lane that is supposed to have good food but it was mainly coffee shops and a couple of noodle houses. On the way there I had noticed a nice looking little restaurant on the main street so I suggested we try that. It was clean and had some people in there so we went in.
A guy in the front of the restaurant handed us a menu in English. It was a vegetarian restaurant. There are a lot of vegetarian restaurants in Taiwan because there are a lot of Buddhists but we had never been in one.The diners were a mix of young people, probably students at one of the local universities, and families with young children.
We got two set dinners which included everything from soup to desert and we ordered some dumplings. It turned out to be a huge amount of food with lots of green vegetables and interesting mushrooms. That was a great meal for about $4 US each. I think we'll go back there at least once since the other dishes we saw looked good too.
We wandered a bit more then came back to Shangri-La, watched a movie and crashed.
We started the day with breakfast at the Ambience, then got on the “limited express” train to Tainan. That trip covers most of the west coast of Taiwan and only takes four hours. We went through some good sized cities, had views of the central mountain ranges to the east, and saw lots of rice plants and banana trees.
We arrived in Tainan about four and promptly were met at the door of the train station by a cab driver who was trying to take us out of turn. We went over to the first cab in line and he only took us after the dispatcher yelled at him. He took us about five blocks and charged us $100 NT. Well, we’re not in Tapei anymore.
After we checked into our room, we walked into the center of town and began the historic walking tour that’s in the Lonely Planet book. The walk showed us that there is quite a bit of money in this town—we walked past several blocks of obviously expensive mens’ and womens’ clothing stores and some well stocked electronics and music stores.
We made it to the Confucius Temple about 5:30 and found out that it closed a few minutes before. The ancient South Gate of the city was also closed. In fact, most of the historic sites closed around five, which was a change from Taipei.
After walking for a few minutes it was time to find something to eat, the most stressful part of every day it seems. We went to a lane that is supposed to have good food but it was mainly coffee shops and a couple of noodle houses. On the way there I had noticed a nice looking little restaurant on the main street so I suggested we try that. It was clean and had some people in there so we went in.
A guy in the front of the restaurant handed us a menu in English. It was a vegetarian restaurant. There are a lot of vegetarian restaurants in Taiwan because there are a lot of Buddhists but we had never been in one.The diners were a mix of young people, probably students at one of the local universities, and families with young children.
We got two set dinners which included everything from soup to desert and we ordered some dumplings. It turned out to be a huge amount of food with lots of green vegetables and interesting mushrooms. That was a great meal for about $4 US each. I think we'll go back there at least once since the other dishes we saw looked good too.
We wandered a bit more then came back to Shangri-La, watched a movie and crashed.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Monday, May 4
Today we explored the coal mining district of NE Taiwan. This was a day trip since there are coal deposits all through northern Taiwan running right up to the city of Taipei.
A little history. Coal mining didn't start in Taiwan until 1918. The Japanese greatly expanded coal mining when they occupied Taiwan and exported the coal to Japan (along with camphor trees).
Today there's a narrow gauge railroad called the Pingxi line that runs on the same tracks that the coal trains ran on. The Pingxi line goes to northeast Taiwan towns like Shihfen, Pingxi, and Qingtong. Our plan for the day was to take the local passenger train from Taipei Main Train Station to the beginninig of the Pingxi line in Ruefang and casually explore the area.
The trip from Taipei to Ruefang took less than an hour and the first leg of the narrow gauge line took twenty minutes to Shihfen. The trip to Shihfen runs through a beautiful river valley that winds between lines of small mountains. It looked like parts of the some mountain were blown off years ago but we think all Taiwan's mining was done underground.
Shihfen is known for its waterfall and the Coal Mining Museum so we started walking and found the museum first. The part of the museum near the road isn't very promising--a bunch of gigantic, rusted hulks of a coal washer/sorter lies rusting near the road but it did get better. When you get past the rusted hulks you go up a long steep path and you're at the site where they dumped the coal carts onto a conveyor that took it to the washing building. Once you're here you get on a little train consisting of cleaned out, original coal carts being pulled by an original battery-powered, mini-locomotive.
Coal mining here was dangerous like everywhere else but it was also almost all done by manual labor. Men drilled the coal, filled the carts, and got the carts to the surface where women pushed them into place on trains and handled the dumping. There are even picture of five or six women pushing a full-size train car down a track.
The train takes you to the mine entrance but you can't go more than twenty feet into the mine. We were told that for safety reasons you aren't supposed to even have a light in there.The young guy giving us a tour told us that he went one thousand feet into the mine without a light and was a big hero for doing that. I think this may have been the location of an alleged coal cart mishap involving my sister-in-law Amy. The place didn't look familiar to Sally.
We made it to the waterfall about fifteen minutes after leaving the museum. Shihfen Falls is the widest falls in Taiwan and pretty high. Unfortunately some clever entreprenuer bought the land you need to stand on to actually see the falls so we had to spend $80NT each to get a view but it's really a beautiful waterfall so I'm glad I paid the fee.
I wanted to try another town so got back on the train after having some snacks and headed to Qingtong. The triain was not all that crowded since it was Monday so getting a seat was easy.The problem with this particular tourist attraction is that people swarm these towns on weekends and the businesses are all open but things are quieter on weekdays so many stores close.
Qingtong was dull. Most things were closed on their old (market) street and the only attraction we found were some dorms built by the Japanese for Japanese miners that were brought to teach Taiwanese how to mine. They were shooting a film of some sort in a local teahouse but you couldn't get close enough to see what was going on.
We made it back to Ruefang early so we searched for dinner. Sally did not understand the menus in the local restaurants but we picked a place and she did order fried rice (Taiwanese style), beef noodles, and some soup that she worried might have something to do with insects. In fact, it was clam soup with a bunch of fresh clams in it. The noodles and rice were good but the clam soup and the clams were delicious.The restaurant owner remarked that she thought we were locals since we like the local flavors so much (we ate it all).
Tommorrow to Tainan and Mazu's birthday.
A little history. Coal mining didn't start in Taiwan until 1918. The Japanese greatly expanded coal mining when they occupied Taiwan and exported the coal to Japan (along with camphor trees).
Today there's a narrow gauge railroad called the Pingxi line that runs on the same tracks that the coal trains ran on. The Pingxi line goes to northeast Taiwan towns like Shihfen, Pingxi, and Qingtong. Our plan for the day was to take the local passenger train from Taipei Main Train Station to the beginninig of the Pingxi line in Ruefang and casually explore the area.
The trip from Taipei to Ruefang took less than an hour and the first leg of the narrow gauge line took twenty minutes to Shihfen. The trip to Shihfen runs through a beautiful river valley that winds between lines of small mountains. It looked like parts of the some mountain were blown off years ago but we think all Taiwan's mining was done underground.
Shihfen is known for its waterfall and the Coal Mining Museum so we started walking and found the museum first. The part of the museum near the road isn't very promising--a bunch of gigantic, rusted hulks of a coal washer/sorter lies rusting near the road but it did get better. When you get past the rusted hulks you go up a long steep path and you're at the site where they dumped the coal carts onto a conveyor that took it to the washing building. Once you're here you get on a little train consisting of cleaned out, original coal carts being pulled by an original battery-powered, mini-locomotive.
Coal mining here was dangerous like everywhere else but it was also almost all done by manual labor. Men drilled the coal, filled the carts, and got the carts to the surface where women pushed them into place on trains and handled the dumping. There are even picture of five or six women pushing a full-size train car down a track.
The train takes you to the mine entrance but you can't go more than twenty feet into the mine. We were told that for safety reasons you aren't supposed to even have a light in there.The young guy giving us a tour told us that he went one thousand feet into the mine without a light and was a big hero for doing that. I think this may have been the location of an alleged coal cart mishap involving my sister-in-law Amy. The place didn't look familiar to Sally.
We made it to the waterfall about fifteen minutes after leaving the museum. Shihfen Falls is the widest falls in Taiwan and pretty high. Unfortunately some clever entreprenuer bought the land you need to stand on to actually see the falls so we had to spend $80NT each to get a view but it's really a beautiful waterfall so I'm glad I paid the fee.
I wanted to try another town so got back on the train after having some snacks and headed to Qingtong. The triain was not all that crowded since it was Monday so getting a seat was easy.The problem with this particular tourist attraction is that people swarm these towns on weekends and the businesses are all open but things are quieter on weekdays so many stores close.
Qingtong was dull. Most things were closed on their old (market) street and the only attraction we found were some dorms built by the Japanese for Japanese miners that were brought to teach Taiwanese how to mine. They were shooting a film of some sort in a local teahouse but you couldn't get close enough to see what was going on.
We made it back to Ruefang early so we searched for dinner. Sally did not understand the menus in the local restaurants but we picked a place and she did order fried rice (Taiwanese style), beef noodles, and some soup that she worried might have something to do with insects. In fact, it was clam soup with a bunch of fresh clams in it. The noodles and rice were good but the clam soup and the clams were delicious.The restaurant owner remarked that she thought we were locals since we like the local flavors so much (we ate it all).
Tommorrow to Tainan and Mazu's birthday.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Sunday, May 2
This was supposed to to be an easy day but it wasn't. At least I'm not writing this at midnight and making numerous spelling errors because I'm so tired.
There are two inevitable things in life--death and doing laundry. We started out the day going to the neighborhood landromat near the Star Beauty. The laundromat wasn't large but it had almost-new, high-efficiency machines that you don't have to add soap to. They even had an attendant on duty who helped us avoid disaster once.
Once the laundry was dry we changed hotels...again. This time it was back to the Ambience for two days that I reserved on Thursday through hotels.com. We have a Deluxe room this time and it's large and extremely pretty in a Japanese-minimalist design way and very comfortable. Okay, it doesn't have a pond in it but that's fine with us.
After we dropped our bags off at the Ambience, we headed for Taipei City Hall Discovery Center, several floors of displays about the city's past and present. Sally was particularly looking for information about the neighborhood she lived in when she was ten years old. She did find a picture of the canal that ran down the middle of the street near where she lived and some information on the history of the neighborhood.
We then found a very good coffeeshop on Zhongxiao Ave.and got some caffeine and sugar into our systems. I was very tired and needed calories.
Sally wanted to try to visit the Confucious Temple again so we went there in two steps. First, we took the Metro to Taipei Main (Train) Station and bought train tickets to Tainan for Tuesday. Then we got back on the metro riding north on the red line to Yuanshih where the Boan and Confucious Temples are.
We found the Confucious Temple pretty easily now that there weren't hundreds of Boan Temple marchers around. It's very different than the Buddhist and Taoist temples I've seen because there are beautiful grounds to wander in, something the other temples don't have (or need). We were just getting to the main hall when they announced that the temple was closing. Oh well.
We wandered over to the Boan temple a block away. There was still a steady stream of people coming in for worship and a small crowd was gathered across the street at the gate of what looks like the Boan Temple's community center. There was a group of young people inside the gate on an outdoor stage rehearsing a play that I think was going to be given today.
I had a better chance to look at the temple building itself today and it's very beautiful. Sally told me that the temple is a World Heritage site and a lot of outside money came in to restore it to it's current condition.
On the way back to the subway I stopped in a phone store and got a portable charger for my iPod (works for an iPhone in case anyone wants to buy me one). It cost $250NT which is about $7.50. I'm using my iPod as my watch so it's indispensable.
We took off and rode the subway to...the main train station. Sally bought train tickets to a small town in NE Taiwan where we'll get on a narrow gague railroad train and head into what used to be coal country. Apparently there are some Taylor family stories about an almost accident involving a coal cart. We're going there.
We took the subway east, again, to Fuxing Street. This is a fashionable shopping district that's new to us. We walked a bit north to a a Szechuan-style restaurant named Kiki that Jenny recommended. We got a sweet appetizer, a spicy pork and celery dish, and a salty dish (bitter melon and salty eggs). Yes, that meal cost ten times as much as buying stuff in the night market but it was delicious and a real meal.
We did a bit of guy shopping on the way back to the subway. I'd like to find some shirts to buy here since they're so much cheaper but the stores that we saw there were the equivalent of Abercrombie and Fitch.
We crossed Taipei twice today on the subway for about $5 each total.
We made it back to the Ambience early and I will try to get a good sleep tonight.
There are two inevitable things in life--death and doing laundry. We started out the day going to the neighborhood landromat near the Star Beauty. The laundromat wasn't large but it had almost-new, high-efficiency machines that you don't have to add soap to. They even had an attendant on duty who helped us avoid disaster once.
Once the laundry was dry we changed hotels...again. This time it was back to the Ambience for two days that I reserved on Thursday through hotels.com. We have a Deluxe room this time and it's large and extremely pretty in a Japanese-minimalist design way and very comfortable. Okay, it doesn't have a pond in it but that's fine with us.
After we dropped our bags off at the Ambience, we headed for Taipei City Hall Discovery Center, several floors of displays about the city's past and present. Sally was particularly looking for information about the neighborhood she lived in when she was ten years old. She did find a picture of the canal that ran down the middle of the street near where she lived and some information on the history of the neighborhood.
We then found a very good coffeeshop on Zhongxiao Ave.and got some caffeine and sugar into our systems. I was very tired and needed calories.
Sally wanted to try to visit the Confucious Temple again so we went there in two steps. First, we took the Metro to Taipei Main (Train) Station and bought train tickets to Tainan for Tuesday. Then we got back on the metro riding north on the red line to Yuanshih where the Boan and Confucious Temples are.
We found the Confucious Temple pretty easily now that there weren't hundreds of Boan Temple marchers around. It's very different than the Buddhist and Taoist temples I've seen because there are beautiful grounds to wander in, something the other temples don't have (or need). We were just getting to the main hall when they announced that the temple was closing. Oh well.
We wandered over to the Boan temple a block away. There was still a steady stream of people coming in for worship and a small crowd was gathered across the street at the gate of what looks like the Boan Temple's community center. There was a group of young people inside the gate on an outdoor stage rehearsing a play that I think was going to be given today.
I had a better chance to look at the temple building itself today and it's very beautiful. Sally told me that the temple is a World Heritage site and a lot of outside money came in to restore it to it's current condition.
On the way back to the subway I stopped in a phone store and got a portable charger for my iPod (works for an iPhone in case anyone wants to buy me one). It cost $250NT which is about $7.50. I'm using my iPod as my watch so it's indispensable.
We took off and rode the subway to...the main train station. Sally bought train tickets to a small town in NE Taiwan where we'll get on a narrow gague railroad train and head into what used to be coal country. Apparently there are some Taylor family stories about an almost accident involving a coal cart. We're going there.
We took the subway east, again, to Fuxing Street. This is a fashionable shopping district that's new to us. We walked a bit north to a a Szechuan-style restaurant named Kiki that Jenny recommended. We got a sweet appetizer, a spicy pork and celery dish, and a salty dish (bitter melon and salty eggs). Yes, that meal cost ten times as much as buying stuff in the night market but it was delicious and a real meal.
We did a bit of guy shopping on the way back to the subway. I'd like to find some shirts to buy here since they're so much cheaper but the stores that we saw there were the equivalent of Abercrombie and Fitch.
We crossed Taipei twice today on the subway for about $5 each total.
We made it back to the Ambience early and I will try to get a good sleep tonight.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Saturday, May 1
We started the day with a video call to H.
About ten we rode the city bus out to Yangmingshan, a national park containing a number of high mountains, that is thirty minutes outside Taipei. These are very green mountains, with forest climing all the way to the summit on most of them.
We had a nice talk on the way with an American ex-pat, a young woman who works for a World Bank-like NGO in Manilla and travels all over Asia on the weekends for fun. She looked young but she had a PhD in Economics from Stanford and was doing research on economic development in Asian countries. I asked her opinion on the micro-loan movement and she told us that her research showed that the loans to women created less economic development and less self-sustaining businesses than loans to men. We didn’t have time to debate the analysis since she took off in a different direction that we were going to go.
We took the park shuttle up to a central stop and begn to hike. One of the valley areas was filled with a carnival, complete with continuous announcements given over a very powerful amplifier. The sound filled the valley and drown out the sound of the birds, tree frogs and wind.
We kept walking and eventually wound up in a valley named Erziping that was filled with families pcknicking and playing . We hiked a bit more then went back to the bus stop. We took the shuttle down one stop to the active volcanic area where we saw smoke venting out of the mountain in a few place and smelled that wonderful rotten eggs smell.
We got back on the shuttle bus and then had the worst bus ride of my life. The bus driver went slaloming through the park at a pretty good speed causing the bus to constantly roll from side to side like a boat riding in the trougrh of the wave. After fifteen minutes of this I truly was nauseus. When I didn’t think I could take it any more we pulled into the visitor center parking log.
That night we went to Danshui for dinner and sightseeing. Danshui is a port city at the mouth of the Danshui River, a river th at runs through Taipei. Danshui probably used to be a very separate city since it’s probably thirty miles from Taipei but now the MRT runs there so it’s an easy thirty minute trip. Jodie had suggested we go there for seafood.
I did have some seafood soup and we had a grilled Mackerel Pike in a seemingly popular seafood restaurant right on the river in the old wharf area. They had something very like a blue crab for about $1.50 which is a very, very low price.
The whole riverside area has been turned into another mile long night market but the crowd here was a mix between teen agers and young couples with small children. There’s a beautiful view across the harbor to the town of Bali and the big Guanyin mountain that is directly behind the town. Also, there are several very old temples in the city.
I got the watermelon juice I’ve wanted for four days, Sally got a really bit ice cream cone and we came home.
About ten we rode the city bus out to Yangmingshan, a national park containing a number of high mountains, that is thirty minutes outside Taipei. These are very green mountains, with forest climing all the way to the summit on most of them.
We had a nice talk on the way with an American ex-pat, a young woman who works for a World Bank-like NGO in Manilla and travels all over Asia on the weekends for fun. She looked young but she had a PhD in Economics from Stanford and was doing research on economic development in Asian countries. I asked her opinion on the micro-loan movement and she told us that her research showed that the loans to women created less economic development and less self-sustaining businesses than loans to men. We didn’t have time to debate the analysis since she took off in a different direction that we were going to go.
We took the park shuttle up to a central stop and begn to hike. One of the valley areas was filled with a carnival, complete with continuous announcements given over a very powerful amplifier. The sound filled the valley and drown out the sound of the birds, tree frogs and wind.
We kept walking and eventually wound up in a valley named Erziping that was filled with families pcknicking and playing . We hiked a bit more then went back to the bus stop. We took the shuttle down one stop to the active volcanic area where we saw smoke venting out of the mountain in a few place and smelled that wonderful rotten eggs smell.
We got back on the shuttle bus and then had the worst bus ride of my life. The bus driver went slaloming through the park at a pretty good speed causing the bus to constantly roll from side to side like a boat riding in the trougrh of the wave. After fifteen minutes of this I truly was nauseus. When I didn’t think I could take it any more we pulled into the visitor center parking log.
That night we went to Danshui for dinner and sightseeing. Danshui is a port city at the mouth of the Danshui River, a river th at runs through Taipei. Danshui probably used to be a very separate city since it’s probably thirty miles from Taipei but now the MRT runs there so it’s an easy thirty minute trip. Jodie had suggested we go there for seafood.
I did have some seafood soup and we had a grilled Mackerel Pike in a seemingly popular seafood restaurant right on the river in the old wharf area. They had something very like a blue crab for about $1.50 which is a very, very low price.
The whole riverside area has been turned into another mile long night market but the crowd here was a mix between teen agers and young couples with small children. There’s a beautiful view across the harbor to the town of Bali and the big Guanyin mountain that is directly behind the town. Also, there are several very old temples in the city.
I got the watermelon juice I’ve wanted for four days, Sally got a really bit ice cream cone and we came home.
Friday, April 30
We spent most the day at our cooking class with Jodie Tsai, something I arranged a while ago. Jodie is the #1 Taipei attraction in Trip Advisor and we’ve decided that cooking classes are a good way to understand the local culture so I set up this class and negotiated with Jodie on what would be included.
We had the class in Jodie’s apartment in Southwest Taipei. The building is part way up a small mountain and the view from her patio window is amazing.
The three of us sat at a dining room table while Jodie explained basic ingredients of Taiwanese cooking and walked us through the preparation of basic sauces, easy sweet and sour soup, and green onion pancakes. The recipes are flexible and the cook can incorporate any flavors they want to .
The class was supposed to be four hours long but we stayed and chatted with Jodie for more than six hours, spending the last hour sipping the local oolong tea and talking about religion, small businesses, property values in the US and Taipei, and more. The most interesting part wase Jodie’s explanation of how she has reconciled her Christian upbringing with the Buddhism and Taoism that permeates Taiwan. She'd decided after a lot of study and throught that Buddhism is about seeking fulfillment through pursuing the values represented by the statues at the temples, not about worshipping idols and she's embraced that Buddhist point of view.
Jodie took us out to the Elephant Mountain walking trail, which requires going up and down a lot of very steep stairs. Two steps in and we were in a lush tropical forest. We didn’t get too far before we turned back and headed downhill.
We then walked to Taipei 101, the second highest building in the world. Taipei 101 towers over the southwest side of the city and you can see it from anywhere in Taipei and from the nearby mountains.
It was still light when we went into the building, but it was almost dark by the time we reached the 89th floor. The view of the city was pretty spectacular but it was difficult to orient ourselves so we could understand where everything was. We also walked up to the 91st floor to outside observation deck but it was pretty windy up there so we moved on.
The most interesting thing I saw there was the inertial damper, a 660 metic ton ball of steel that isolates the building from the earth. It hangs between the 91st and 88th floors, attached to the building with huge braided steel cables and sitting on a cradle of some sort. I’m still not sure I understand how it works but it was a pretty amazing sight.
We didn’t want to eat dinner in the posh food court at Taipei 101, so we headed back to the night market and had some jiaodze, rice noodles, and gelato (formerly known as bing chilling). I had a mango gelatto that was wonderful but Sally had Black Plum which turned out to be the flavor of those preserved plums we used to have.
We had the class in Jodie’s apartment in Southwest Taipei. The building is part way up a small mountain and the view from her patio window is amazing.
The three of us sat at a dining room table while Jodie explained basic ingredients of Taiwanese cooking and walked us through the preparation of basic sauces, easy sweet and sour soup, and green onion pancakes. The recipes are flexible and the cook can incorporate any flavors they want to .
The class was supposed to be four hours long but we stayed and chatted with Jodie for more than six hours, spending the last hour sipping the local oolong tea and talking about religion, small businesses, property values in the US and Taipei, and more. The most interesting part wase Jodie’s explanation of how she has reconciled her Christian upbringing with the Buddhism and Taoism that permeates Taiwan. She'd decided after a lot of study and throught that Buddhism is about seeking fulfillment through pursuing the values represented by the statues at the temples, not about worshipping idols and she's embraced that Buddhist point of view.
Jodie took us out to the Elephant Mountain walking trail, which requires going up and down a lot of very steep stairs. Two steps in and we were in a lush tropical forest. We didn’t get too far before we turned back and headed downhill.
We then walked to Taipei 101, the second highest building in the world. Taipei 101 towers over the southwest side of the city and you can see it from anywhere in Taipei and from the nearby mountains.
It was still light when we went into the building, but it was almost dark by the time we reached the 89th floor. The view of the city was pretty spectacular but it was difficult to orient ourselves so we could understand where everything was. We also walked up to the 91st floor to outside observation deck but it was pretty windy up there so we moved on.
The most interesting thing I saw there was the inertial damper, a 660 metic ton ball of steel that isolates the building from the earth. It hangs between the 91st and 88th floors, attached to the building with huge braided steel cables and sitting on a cradle of some sort. I’m still not sure I understand how it works but it was a pretty amazing sight.
We didn’t want to eat dinner in the posh food court at Taipei 101, so we headed back to the night market and had some jiaodze, rice noodles, and gelato (formerly known as bing chilling). I had a mango gelatto that was wonderful but Sally had Black Plum which turned out to be the flavor of those preserved plums we used to have.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday April 29
We had a nice breakfast at Rosestone with our host, Jenny, and Phil. Our host then gave us a tour of the place and we saw courtyards, plants, and antiques I had not seen in my earlier wanderings. We learned more about the history of the family and the building and the difficulties of keeping that very large place in good shape.
Our host drove us to the train station and we managed to get onto the previously full 10:45 train. This wasn’t a high speed train but it was a new train that, as Phil had explained to me, could lean on the turns and therefore go faster than the old standard train.
The standard train service in Taiwan is very reasonably priced, trains run frequently between the cities and the stations are convenient for most people. There are now true high speed trains on the west side of the island but those stations are, except for Taipei, a 20-30 minute ride outside the cities.
When we arrived in Taipei we proceeded to Shilin, the section of Taipei that we’ll be staying in for a few days. We walked a bit until our room was ready and quickly saw that Shilin is very different than the downtown area that we were stayed in earlier. Shilin is much wealthier, and is full of thriving small businesses, COFFEE SHOPS, and high tech companies. I hate to use the word but here goes—it’s vibrant.
As we strolled down a Shilin street we saw a lot of the small businesses, including the 7-11 had burning incense and offerings in front of the stores. Sally asked someone about the offerings and they said it was for the Earth god, who had a temple in the neighborhood. As soon as she heard there was a temple nearby, we had to walk the neighborhood streets until we found it about five blocks away.
A building had been built around the original temple building but after we walked through a busy group of people working on offerings, we found the original temple in the back . After viewing the Earth god and the other deities we sat down behind a five year old and watched a very elaborate puppet show with prerecorded music and special lighting. We noticed two more temples on the short walk back to our hotel.
We eventually got back to the hotel, rested for a bit and then headed for the Shihlin night market which is a block away from the hotel. We needed to eat so we walked into the big warehouse-like building that containes the equivalent of half the food carts from the Minnesota State Fair. We wandered through this maze of unfamiliar food and chose…nothing. Sally was working very hard to decipher the names of things but the names often didn’t tell you what a food was and I was just confused.
Finally we agreed to try chou dofu (stinky tofu), a big favorite in Taiwan and the People’s Republic. Stinky tofu is heavily fermented which gives it a different texture and it’s characteristic smell. We chose fried chou dofu which was wimpier than the chou dofu with goose liver soup done in ma la Szechuan style. It wasn’t bad.
We followed that with the local favorite, the deep fried little cookie inside a big cookie and finished with some sticky rice with meat filling. The total cost was probably about three dollars a person.
We then discovered the true size of the night market. We started walking down the major street running next to this food building and found a long street, really a large alley, lined with clothing stores and crammed with vendor carts. We pushed through the mass of thousands of teenagers for a while and the alley kept going and going and going. The market is really huge. We bought a couple of nice t-shirts for $160 NT ($5) and went back to the hotel.
We were in a really posh “free upgrade” room on this night. The room had (I’m not kidding) a second room with a pond fringed by fake rocks. I speculated that they wanted us to say “Wow, what a great room. I’d like to stay in here for another $1,000NT a night.” We did not tell the desk we wanted to do that.
BTW, there is a debate on Trip Advisor about whether this is a “love hotel” used by young Taiwanese couples. After some observation I think the answer is yes. Maybe the complimentary condom in every room is a tipoff.
Our host drove us to the train station and we managed to get onto the previously full 10:45 train. This wasn’t a high speed train but it was a new train that, as Phil had explained to me, could lean on the turns and therefore go faster than the old standard train.
The standard train service in Taiwan is very reasonably priced, trains run frequently between the cities and the stations are convenient for most people. There are now true high speed trains on the west side of the island but those stations are, except for Taipei, a 20-30 minute ride outside the cities.
When we arrived in Taipei we proceeded to Shilin, the section of Taipei that we’ll be staying in for a few days. We walked a bit until our room was ready and quickly saw that Shilin is very different than the downtown area that we were stayed in earlier. Shilin is much wealthier, and is full of thriving small businesses, COFFEE SHOPS, and high tech companies. I hate to use the word but here goes—it’s vibrant.
As we strolled down a Shilin street we saw a lot of the small businesses, including the 7-11 had burning incense and offerings in front of the stores. Sally asked someone about the offerings and they said it was for the Earth god, who had a temple in the neighborhood. As soon as she heard there was a temple nearby, we had to walk the neighborhood streets until we found it about five blocks away.
A building had been built around the original temple building but after we walked through a busy group of people working on offerings, we found the original temple in the back . After viewing the Earth god and the other deities we sat down behind a five year old and watched a very elaborate puppet show with prerecorded music and special lighting. We noticed two more temples on the short walk back to our hotel.
We eventually got back to the hotel, rested for a bit and then headed for the Shihlin night market which is a block away from the hotel. We needed to eat so we walked into the big warehouse-like building that containes the equivalent of half the food carts from the Minnesota State Fair. We wandered through this maze of unfamiliar food and chose…nothing. Sally was working very hard to decipher the names of things but the names often didn’t tell you what a food was and I was just confused.
Finally we agreed to try chou dofu (stinky tofu), a big favorite in Taiwan and the People’s Republic. Stinky tofu is heavily fermented which gives it a different texture and it’s characteristic smell. We chose fried chou dofu which was wimpier than the chou dofu with goose liver soup done in ma la Szechuan style. It wasn’t bad.
We followed that with the local favorite, the deep fried little cookie inside a big cookie and finished with some sticky rice with meat filling. The total cost was probably about three dollars a person.
We then discovered the true size of the night market. We started walking down the major street running next to this food building and found a long street, really a large alley, lined with clothing stores and crammed with vendor carts. We pushed through the mass of thousands of teenagers for a while and the alley kept going and going and going. The market is really huge. We bought a couple of nice t-shirts for $160 NT ($5) and went back to the hotel.
We were in a really posh “free upgrade” room on this night. The room had (I’m not kidding) a second room with a pond fringed by fake rocks. I speculated that they wanted us to say “Wow, what a great room. I’d like to stay in here for another $1,000NT a night.” We did not tell the desk we wanted to do that.
BTW, there is a debate on Trip Advisor about whether this is a “love hotel” used by young Taiwanese couples. After some observation I think the answer is yes. Maybe the complimentary condom in every room is a tipoff.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wednesday April 28 - Taroko Gorge
Hualien
We arrived in Hualien about eight o’clock on Tuesday night. Sally bought train tickets for the return trip to Taipei on Thursday (which is good since the trains were selling out) and we got in a cab and told him where we needed to go.
The cab driver did what I now understand as the standard procedure when you a cab driver doesn’t know where they need to go. He got us in the cab, headed into traffic and started calling around to see who could direct him to the unknown location. He knew the general direction and headed toward the ocean and then south. And drove and drove. At one point he didn’t want to go any further so he pulled into the space between the our lanes and oncoming traffic and stopped and talked on the phone. This went on a bit longer than I would have liked but eventually we stated driving again and found the B & B.
Our first impressions were not very positive. The room was musty, there weren’t any sheets (just a comforter and the mattress cover), and the bathroom was in bad shape. The first night we decided it was a camping experience.
But the place grew on us because our host was very kind and friendly, the breakfasts were very good and we met Jenny and Phil, the only other guests there who we wound up hiking with through Taroko Gorge on Wednesday.
Just a bit more about Rosestone Inn. Look on their website to see the grounds. It’s a beautiful traditional Taiwanese house with a spectacular collection of plants, paintings, carvings, etc. Unfortunately our host was in the process of running the B&B, raising her two granddaughters, and trying to keep up the buildings and grounds. That was way too much for her to handle (her husband didn’t help) and I accepted that was not a nice hotel but a very unique place in Taiwan with rooms for a few guests.
Trip to Taroko Gorge National Park
When we went to breakfast on Wednesday morning we met Phil and Jenny, a young couple from Broolyn. Jenny was born in Taiwan and is bilingual and Phil, like me, is not real lingual in Chinese. They told us how they tried to explore Taroko Gorge on their own the day before until they ran into several mishaps, like Phil’s backpack being hit by a falling rock as they walked along the road. They said they were going to look for a taxi to tour them through the Gorge.
We told them we had a driver and they were welcome to join us. Shortly afterward Tiffany Zhang, our driver came in. A brisk negotiation began that was mainly carried on between Tiffany and our B&B hosts who told her she charged too much, she should take the two new passengers for free. Poor Tiffany. Tiffany and the rest of us continued the negotiation after we left Rosestone and found some pricing that everyone liked.
The star of the day was Taroko Gorge. I’ve been to Yosemite and the Grand Canyon and I can say that Taroko ranks easily with those places. Basically Taroko Gorge has a fast river running through a marble canyon where the mountains on either side reach 3500 meters. The national park also contains beautiful tributaries rivers like the Shakadong River, a fast moving stream with blue tinted waters framed by twisted limestone formations. There are also several green peaks that we saw looming over us in the mist that are the highest in East Asia.
The group turned out to be very compatible. We really like Phil, Jenny and Tiffany and there was friendly, animated conversation all day. Tiffany figured out early that we wanted to hike so she took us to four hikes during the day. The park was not busy so our walks were usually just Sally, Jenny, Phil and I wandering at our own pace and discovering new things around every turn.
We finished with the walk down the heart of the gorge, the famous Nine Tunnels trail. It was so stunning that you almost forgot there were hundreds of other people walking with you (and often bumping into you and asking you to take pictures, etc.). We did a lot of people watching on that walk as well as Gorge goggleing.
I’ll post pix. Any description that I write would be worthless.
If you’ve ever seen a classical Chinese painting of mountains there’s always a big green mountain with wisps of mists hanging around the top. That’s exactly what it looked like that day because of the frequent periods of light sprinkles and then clearing. Sometimes you could see a mountain, with a higher mountain behind it and then a higher mountain behind that one. Tiffany said it was perfect weather to visit the Gorge.
The gorge is stunningly beautiful but also very dangerous. A young woman was killed a month ago when a rock fell on her head in an area where many people walk and Tiffany had a decent size rock fall and damage her car (which luckily she wasn’t in). Many of the guardrails and warning signs were dented by falling rocks and you could see some huge rocks that had fallen onto what used to be the road. And as I said before, Phil was hit by a small rock the day before we went so this happened all the time. Tiffany got us hard hats and asked us to wear them on some of the walks and we followed the many warning signs as we went. It was sobering to think that if an earthquake happened while we were in the Gorge (there are a lot of earthquakes in Taiwan), we would be lucky to escape injury.
We finished the day wandering through Hualien looking for dinner. We had turned down an invitation to go to a hot springs an hour away with Tiffany, Phil, Jenny and Tiffany’s husband.
We arrived in Hualien about eight o’clock on Tuesday night. Sally bought train tickets for the return trip to Taipei on Thursday (which is good since the trains were selling out) and we got in a cab and told him where we needed to go.
The cab driver did what I now understand as the standard procedure when you a cab driver doesn’t know where they need to go. He got us in the cab, headed into traffic and started calling around to see who could direct him to the unknown location. He knew the general direction and headed toward the ocean and then south. And drove and drove. At one point he didn’t want to go any further so he pulled into the space between the our lanes and oncoming traffic and stopped and talked on the phone. This went on a bit longer than I would have liked but eventually we stated driving again and found the B & B.
Our first impressions were not very positive. The room was musty, there weren’t any sheets (just a comforter and the mattress cover), and the bathroom was in bad shape. The first night we decided it was a camping experience.
But the place grew on us because our host was very kind and friendly, the breakfasts were very good and we met Jenny and Phil, the only other guests there who we wound up hiking with through Taroko Gorge on Wednesday.
Just a bit more about Rosestone Inn. Look on their website to see the grounds. It’s a beautiful traditional Taiwanese house with a spectacular collection of plants, paintings, carvings, etc. Unfortunately our host was in the process of running the B&B, raising her two granddaughters, and trying to keep up the buildings and grounds. That was way too much for her to handle (her husband didn’t help) and I accepted that was not a nice hotel but a very unique place in Taiwan with rooms for a few guests.
Trip to Taroko Gorge National Park
When we went to breakfast on Wednesday morning we met Phil and Jenny, a young couple from Broolyn. Jenny was born in Taiwan and is bilingual and Phil, like me, is not real lingual in Chinese. They told us how they tried to explore Taroko Gorge on their own the day before until they ran into several mishaps, like Phil’s backpack being hit by a falling rock as they walked along the road. They said they were going to look for a taxi to tour them through the Gorge.
We told them we had a driver and they were welcome to join us. Shortly afterward Tiffany Zhang, our driver came in. A brisk negotiation began that was mainly carried on between Tiffany and our B&B hosts who told her she charged too much, she should take the two new passengers for free. Poor Tiffany. Tiffany and the rest of us continued the negotiation after we left Rosestone and found some pricing that everyone liked.
The star of the day was Taroko Gorge. I’ve been to Yosemite and the Grand Canyon and I can say that Taroko ranks easily with those places. Basically Taroko Gorge has a fast river running through a marble canyon where the mountains on either side reach 3500 meters. The national park also contains beautiful tributaries rivers like the Shakadong River, a fast moving stream with blue tinted waters framed by twisted limestone formations. There are also several green peaks that we saw looming over us in the mist that are the highest in East Asia.
The group turned out to be very compatible. We really like Phil, Jenny and Tiffany and there was friendly, animated conversation all day. Tiffany figured out early that we wanted to hike so she took us to four hikes during the day. The park was not busy so our walks were usually just Sally, Jenny, Phil and I wandering at our own pace and discovering new things around every turn.
We finished with the walk down the heart of the gorge, the famous Nine Tunnels trail. It was so stunning that you almost forgot there were hundreds of other people walking with you (and often bumping into you and asking you to take pictures, etc.). We did a lot of people watching on that walk as well as Gorge goggleing.
I’ll post pix. Any description that I write would be worthless.
If you’ve ever seen a classical Chinese painting of mountains there’s always a big green mountain with wisps of mists hanging around the top. That’s exactly what it looked like that day because of the frequent periods of light sprinkles and then clearing. Sometimes you could see a mountain, with a higher mountain behind it and then a higher mountain behind that one. Tiffany said it was perfect weather to visit the Gorge.
The gorge is stunningly beautiful but also very dangerous. A young woman was killed a month ago when a rock fell on her head in an area where many people walk and Tiffany had a decent size rock fall and damage her car (which luckily she wasn’t in). Many of the guardrails and warning signs were dented by falling rocks and you could see some huge rocks that had fallen onto what used to be the road. And as I said before, Phil was hit by a small rock the day before we went so this happened all the time. Tiffany got us hard hats and asked us to wear them on some of the walks and we followed the many warning signs as we went. It was sobering to think that if an earthquake happened while we were in the Gorge (there are a lot of earthquakes in Taiwan), we would be lucky to escape injury.
We finished the day wandering through Hualien looking for dinner. We had turned down an invitation to go to a hot springs an hour away with Tiffany, Phil, Jenny and Tiffany’s husband.
Tuesday April 27
In the morning we took the subway to NE Taipei to see the Boan Temple, the diety in charge of medicine, and to visit a very famous Confucian temple. We knew that a festival was going on to celebrate Boan’s birthday but I expected the festival events to consist of some lectures and demonstrations.
We had only walked a few blocks from the subway station toward the temples when we saw a parade of men marching with a number of life-size figures representing deities, large woven signs, and small temple like constructions. We followed this group up an alley until they stopped at the next street because another parade from a Boan temple was already coming down that street. We followed the new group until they were stopped by more temple groups parked in the street. We walked down the street past the stalled marchers until we saw the Boan Temple, a very large, beautiful structure on one side of the street and a smaller, still ornate building on the other side of the street.
There was a reviewing stand on the side opposite the larger building and crowds on both sides of the street. When we arrived at the main parade area a very long dragon manipulated by five or six people was dancing in front of the reviewing stand while lines of marchers waiting for their turn stretched down all the streets leading up to temple.
We walked into the temple, which was set up the same as Longshan Temple with offering and incense inside the doors and the main worship areas in the center and the back. The temple was very crowded, full of people either worshipping, resting before or after marching in the parade, or assembling objects that were to be carried in the parade. It was also full of photographers which answered our question about the appropriateness of taking pictures.
We walked around a bit and then Sally got the standard bag of supplies for worship, and made a donation to the temple. I went to the area by the front door and got my own supplies and began the process of figuring out what to do with them. Inside the bag were incense (I knew what to do with that), a bag of corn chips, two candles, two packages of paper (paper money) and something small I decided was candy or food for an offering.
I was standing there looking at my incense and not sure where to light it when an older woman touched my arm and explained (in Chinese) what I needed to do. I suppose I continued to look dumbfounded so she kindly pointed directly at the burner set out for this purpose. I thanked her and headed over there.
In the main hall there was a group of worshippers on their knees at the front of the temple chanting a powerful, oddly familiar tune. Outside the hall there was a stream of people saying their prayers and moving on The hall was filled, like the other temples I has seen with five or six beautiful, large statues of the central deities, often with guardians nearest the front and additional smaller statues placed closer to the door.The chanting women were kneeling near the front in three rows. I placed my incense and moved on to the lesser, but still important deities in the smaller rooms behind the main hall.
I completed the circuit of the deities and met Sally. We wandered around the complex for a while (they had a new building in back) and then walked to the front of the temple and watched the parade from inside the door. There were people preventing onlookers from blocking the doorways, presumably so the prayers of the paraders would reach Boan.
At one point I found a place to stand in the courtyard in the middle of all the activity. As the incense wafted over me I listened to the sounds of chanting, animated talking, praying, and the noisy parade in the background and watched the careful assembly of ornate sedan chairs that sumptuously dressed statues would ride in. These were moments of perfect peace.
We lit our candles, dedicating them to our parents and children and I pulled my paper money out of the bag and pondered what to do with it. I did know that the point was to burn the money so it would cross over into the world of the dead and be available for my dead relatives. I was holding the money and looking around for the fire when a guy my age squeezed my elbow and explained to me, in Chinese, what I needed to do. When he saw how dumb I was he said “over there’ in English and pointed at, I thought, the front of the building I was in. Sally and I started walking in that direction but we were stopped by the crowd from going any further.
This guy was watching us,apparently, and when we were stopped by the crowd he came over and said “this way” in English and gave the Taiwanese version of “come on” which is a hand palm down with flexing fingers. I followed him to the open door on the opposite side of the temple and he said “building across street.” Oh, I said, that’s where we burn it. He looked pleased that I finally caught on. In English he asked where I was from and I told him the US. He smiled and left.
We were the only Westerners in the place the whole time we were there. Mostly people ignored us (except for my two helpful strangers) although I’m pretty sure I had at least three or four pictures taken of me when I was holding incense. Westerners are so odd!
At this point we crossed the street during a lull in the parade and found the burner for offerings, an industrial sized fireplace in a silo attached to the smaller temple building. I burned all my loot just in case my father could use the cash to buy a good position in the afterlife. Note: I do these worship activities out of respect for the people that do believe in them and because they do no harm to anyone.
We turned and watched the parade from the sidewalk for a while. It was a lot of fun but really, really loud. Every contingent from a city or temple had a musical group of several people playing a traditional nasal sounding flute which was amplified until it was VERY loud. Also, people set off strings of very high powered firecrackers at random times in the street right in front of us. I don’t think I have any permanent hearing loss because I lost so much hearing when I was a Postal Worker.
We decided at that point to go find the Confucius Temple since we had a train to catch in the afternoon and we were running out of time. We walked south for a while but didn’t find the temple. We did find hundreds more marchers headed for the Boan Temple, marching or driving down all the major streets in this part of town.
I’m writing this on the train to Hualien. The train goes up through the mountainous Northeast and then down the East coast of Taiwan. I finally got to see the mountains that cover most of Taiwan. It’s overcast but the green peaks loom in the gloom. So far we’ve passed through a number of small town and two small cities. I’ve seen my first rice paddies and now I’m looking at some very pretty cliffs on the ocean. Nice ride.
We had only walked a few blocks from the subway station toward the temples when we saw a parade of men marching with a number of life-size figures representing deities, large woven signs, and small temple like constructions. We followed this group up an alley until they stopped at the next street because another parade from a Boan temple was already coming down that street. We followed the new group until they were stopped by more temple groups parked in the street. We walked down the street past the stalled marchers until we saw the Boan Temple, a very large, beautiful structure on one side of the street and a smaller, still ornate building on the other side of the street.
There was a reviewing stand on the side opposite the larger building and crowds on both sides of the street. When we arrived at the main parade area a very long dragon manipulated by five or six people was dancing in front of the reviewing stand while lines of marchers waiting for their turn stretched down all the streets leading up to temple.
We walked into the temple, which was set up the same as Longshan Temple with offering and incense inside the doors and the main worship areas in the center and the back. The temple was very crowded, full of people either worshipping, resting before or after marching in the parade, or assembling objects that were to be carried in the parade. It was also full of photographers which answered our question about the appropriateness of taking pictures.
We walked around a bit and then Sally got the standard bag of supplies for worship, and made a donation to the temple. I went to the area by the front door and got my own supplies and began the process of figuring out what to do with them. Inside the bag were incense (I knew what to do with that), a bag of corn chips, two candles, two packages of paper (paper money) and something small I decided was candy or food for an offering.
I was standing there looking at my incense and not sure where to light it when an older woman touched my arm and explained (in Chinese) what I needed to do. I suppose I continued to look dumbfounded so she kindly pointed directly at the burner set out for this purpose. I thanked her and headed over there.
In the main hall there was a group of worshippers on their knees at the front of the temple chanting a powerful, oddly familiar tune. Outside the hall there was a stream of people saying their prayers and moving on The hall was filled, like the other temples I has seen with five or six beautiful, large statues of the central deities, often with guardians nearest the front and additional smaller statues placed closer to the door.The chanting women were kneeling near the front in three rows. I placed my incense and moved on to the lesser, but still important deities in the smaller rooms behind the main hall.
I completed the circuit of the deities and met Sally. We wandered around the complex for a while (they had a new building in back) and then walked to the front of the temple and watched the parade from inside the door. There were people preventing onlookers from blocking the doorways, presumably so the prayers of the paraders would reach Boan.
At one point I found a place to stand in the courtyard in the middle of all the activity. As the incense wafted over me I listened to the sounds of chanting, animated talking, praying, and the noisy parade in the background and watched the careful assembly of ornate sedan chairs that sumptuously dressed statues would ride in. These were moments of perfect peace.
We lit our candles, dedicating them to our parents and children and I pulled my paper money out of the bag and pondered what to do with it. I did know that the point was to burn the money so it would cross over into the world of the dead and be available for my dead relatives. I was holding the money and looking around for the fire when a guy my age squeezed my elbow and explained to me, in Chinese, what I needed to do. When he saw how dumb I was he said “over there’ in English and pointed at, I thought, the front of the building I was in. Sally and I started walking in that direction but we were stopped by the crowd from going any further.
This guy was watching us,apparently, and when we were stopped by the crowd he came over and said “this way” in English and gave the Taiwanese version of “come on” which is a hand palm down with flexing fingers. I followed him to the open door on the opposite side of the temple and he said “building across street.” Oh, I said, that’s where we burn it. He looked pleased that I finally caught on. In English he asked where I was from and I told him the US. He smiled and left.
We were the only Westerners in the place the whole time we were there. Mostly people ignored us (except for my two helpful strangers) although I’m pretty sure I had at least three or four pictures taken of me when I was holding incense. Westerners are so odd!
At this point we crossed the street during a lull in the parade and found the burner for offerings, an industrial sized fireplace in a silo attached to the smaller temple building. I burned all my loot just in case my father could use the cash to buy a good position in the afterlife. Note: I do these worship activities out of respect for the people that do believe in them and because they do no harm to anyone.
We turned and watched the parade from the sidewalk for a while. It was a lot of fun but really, really loud. Every contingent from a city or temple had a musical group of several people playing a traditional nasal sounding flute which was amplified until it was VERY loud. Also, people set off strings of very high powered firecrackers at random times in the street right in front of us. I don’t think I have any permanent hearing loss because I lost so much hearing when I was a Postal Worker.
We decided at that point to go find the Confucius Temple since we had a train to catch in the afternoon and we were running out of time. We walked south for a while but didn’t find the temple. We did find hundreds more marchers headed for the Boan Temple, marching or driving down all the major streets in this part of town.
I’m writing this on the train to Hualien. The train goes up through the mountainous Northeast and then down the East coast of Taiwan. I finally got to see the mountains that cover most of Taiwan. It’s overcast but the green peaks loom in the gloom. So far we’ve passed through a number of small town and two small cities. I’ve seen my first rice paddies and now I’m looking at some very pretty cliffs on the ocean. Nice ride.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Tuesday
It's raining, which is to be expected this time of year in Taiwan. We're going to the northern part of the city to see the famous Confucious temple and the Boan Temple. There's a big festival at the Boan Temple so it should be interesting.
We're going to come back to the hotel and head to the train station. I don't expect connectivity at the next hotel in Hualien but I'll write some entries to post later.
Talked to the kids via Skype video call. Almost like being there!
We're going to come back to the hotel and head to the train station. I don't expect connectivity at the next hotel in Hualien but I'll write some entries to post later.
Talked to the kids via Skype video call. Almost like being there!
Monday April 26
We got a relatively early start today after not enough sleep. The hotel breakfast buffet included strong coffee and a mix of Chinese, Korean and unidentified foods, some of which I tried. Different but good.
We walked about fifteen minutes to our subway stop and took the train to Longshan Temple. The subway is cheap, fast, and very clean and it covers quite a bit of the city.
Longshan Temple is a Buddist/Taoist temple that was build in the 1800s. The major diety of the temple is Guanyin, the goddess of Compassion, but there are a number of other dieties represented. In the entire pantheon of asian deities, Guanyin in my favorite since Compassion is, I think, a critical quality in how we relate to others. Compassion for others is missing more and more in the American political discussion.
While the temple is ornate and the statues of Guanyin and the other gods are all beautiful, the most striking thing to me was how busy the temple is. During the hour that we were there, a steady stream of people came in and presented incense to the gods, worked on divining their fortunes, or kneeled and read Bhuddist prayers. The temple-goers were of all ages and probably most of them were not Buddists or Taoists.
We got some incense and I said a few words to Guanyin about the lack of compassion in the world and I put some incense in both of the two huge bronze containers in front of Guanyin. I also presented incense to Mazu(who protects people on the sea), the deities that protect women in childbirth and the moon god (I think).
We then wandered around that part of town for a while looking for the Dizang Wat Temple where people petitioned the diety in charge of Hell. They ask not to be sent to Hell or at least not to be sent there for too long. When we found it, the temple looked like a garage from the outside as described in the guide book. It only had a few room but there was very cool and scary looking statues in there. We were the only people around so we didn't stay long.
There were a lot of alleys full of stalls selling nearly everything and we wandered through two or three. One of them was the herb alley which was packed with things I did not recognize. Other alleys had stalls and storefronts selling everything from clothes with Chinglish on them to live or freshly butchered animals. I got some veggie dumplings in one of those alleys that I thought were very good.
We walked north and saw the Qingshui temple, small but very pretty with very ornate carvings. We walked west toward the river and saw the Qingshan temple which was a beautiful building with three levels of prayer areas.
We looped back through a partially open night market and went to the new train station. We bought tickets there to travel to Hualien tomorrow on the Limited Express. There's a high speed train too but it doesn't seem like an extra hour is all that important when you have two weeks.
The main danger we face isn't heat (it was warm but not hot) or street crime, it's motor scooters. I think everyone in this city has one an they drive them on the streets, on the alleys, and on the sidewalks where they park them in large numbers. You have to always watch for them or you'll get hit. BTW, contrary to published reports, car drivers appear to be pretty good drivers.
After crashing for a while we went on an unsuccessful hunt for a restaurant that we saw in a guide book. We wound up eating at a similar buffet where the food looked very fresh but was kind of bland. While we were walking back we found some interesting other restaurants to try and an interesting outdoor art piece using laser light at the Museum of Comtemporary Art.
Time for sleep!
We walked about fifteen minutes to our subway stop and took the train to Longshan Temple. The subway is cheap, fast, and very clean and it covers quite a bit of the city.
Longshan Temple is a Buddist/Taoist temple that was build in the 1800s. The major diety of the temple is Guanyin, the goddess of Compassion, but there are a number of other dieties represented. In the entire pantheon of asian deities, Guanyin in my favorite since Compassion is, I think, a critical quality in how we relate to others. Compassion for others is missing more and more in the American political discussion.
While the temple is ornate and the statues of Guanyin and the other gods are all beautiful, the most striking thing to me was how busy the temple is. During the hour that we were there, a steady stream of people came in and presented incense to the gods, worked on divining their fortunes, or kneeled and read Bhuddist prayers. The temple-goers were of all ages and probably most of them were not Buddists or Taoists.
We got some incense and I said a few words to Guanyin about the lack of compassion in the world and I put some incense in both of the two huge bronze containers in front of Guanyin. I also presented incense to Mazu(who protects people on the sea), the deities that protect women in childbirth and the moon god (I think).
We then wandered around that part of town for a while looking for the Dizang Wat Temple where people petitioned the diety in charge of Hell. They ask not to be sent to Hell or at least not to be sent there for too long. When we found it, the temple looked like a garage from the outside as described in the guide book. It only had a few room but there was very cool and scary looking statues in there. We were the only people around so we didn't stay long.
There were a lot of alleys full of stalls selling nearly everything and we wandered through two or three. One of them was the herb alley which was packed with things I did not recognize. Other alleys had stalls and storefronts selling everything from clothes with Chinglish on them to live or freshly butchered animals. I got some veggie dumplings in one of those alleys that I thought were very good.
We walked north and saw the Qingshui temple, small but very pretty with very ornate carvings. We walked west toward the river and saw the Qingshan temple which was a beautiful building with three levels of prayer areas.
We looped back through a partially open night market and went to the new train station. We bought tickets there to travel to Hualien tomorrow on the Limited Express. There's a high speed train too but it doesn't seem like an extra hour is all that important when you have two weeks.
The main danger we face isn't heat (it was warm but not hot) or street crime, it's motor scooters. I think everyone in this city has one an they drive them on the streets, on the alleys, and on the sidewalks where they park them in large numbers. You have to always watch for them or you'll get hit. BTW, contrary to published reports, car drivers appear to be pretty good drivers.
After crashing for a while we went on an unsuccessful hunt for a restaurant that we saw in a guide book. We wound up eating at a similar buffet where the food looked very fresh but was kind of bland. While we were walking back we found some interesting other restaurants to try and an interesting outdoor art piece using laser light at the Museum of Comtemporary Art.
Time for sleep!
First Day, What Earthquake?
We're back at the hotel after spending the morning in the historic district. More about that later.
First though, I just read that there was an earthquake under the ocean close to Taiwan and buildings swayed in Taipei for 20 seconds. Huh? We didn't feel anything or see anything odd during the morning.
More later.
First though, I just read that there was an earthquake under the ocean close to Taiwan and buildings swayed in Taipei for 20 seconds. Huh? We didn't feel anything or see anything odd during the morning.
More later.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
We're Here!
After two flights totalling fourteen hours, two meals and two snacks, five or six movies (I only watched Crazy Heart and Blind Spot), a bus ride and a cab ride, we're relaxing in our room at the surprisingly stylish Ambience hotel in central Taipei. It's midnight and we're fried but I'm going to venture out to the 7 Eleven to get some bottled water (none in the room).
Sally is very excited about finally getting here and her Chinese has already been highly praised by the people at the hotel desk.
More tomorrow.
Wait...an immediate update. In the two blocks between here and the 7 Eleven I passed a number of restaurants and some businesses that were all open and full of rowdy, happy people. There's a crew working on the street in front of the hotel and lots of traffic on the street. It's midnight on Sunday night! I love it.
BTW, no problems at the 7 Eleven. I got a giant spring water for $30NT which is $1 US.
Sally is very excited about finally getting here and her Chinese has already been highly praised by the people at the hotel desk.
More tomorrow.
Wait...an immediate update. In the two blocks between here and the 7 Eleven I passed a number of restaurants and some businesses that were all open and full of rowdy, happy people. There's a crew working on the street in front of the hotel and lots of traffic on the street. It's midnight on Sunday night! I love it.
BTW, no problems at the 7 Eleven. I got a giant spring water for $30NT which is $1 US.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
One Week to Go
One week from now we'll be in the air over the Pacific. Seven days to get ready.
We're buying all kinds of stuff. We're buying little things like travel wallets, luggage tags, and foldable carry-on bags. We're buying t-shirts and lightweight pants to deal with the 90+ degree heat in Taiwan and umbrellas for the expected rain. We even bought another Taiwan guide book (Rough Guide) since it was there at the AAA and we got it almost for free. We're refilling prescriptions and I finished taking my Typhoid vaccine pills.
And I set up this blog. I'll be blogging as much as possible and posting pix if the bandwidth allows.
Stay tuned.
And I set up this blog. I'll be blogging as much as possible and posting pix if the bandwidth allows.
Stay tuned.
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