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.