When planning this trip we'd initially come up a bit short in looking for something compelling to do on the second full day. Taipei gets a fair few foreigners but isn't a major tourist destination, unless shopping is your thing. There were certainly things to do, but with only two days we wanted something a little more spectacular and unusual. We looked at a lot of "What to do in Taiwan" websites and noticed that one destination outside in the country was drawing a lot of press. A few searches to find pictures of it later, we knew where we wanted to go for Taiwan day 2: Taroko Gorge, with the tourist name of "The Grand Canyon of Taiwan".
We had an 8:30 train leaving Taipei to take us halfway across the island to the small city of Hualien, the closest city to the gorge. The Taipei main train station was a bit of a maze but we didn't have any serious trouble finding the right track and boarding. We'd paid extra for a fast train, which does in two hours which a regular train takes four to do. If Taiwan was a clock, Taipei would be at 12 and Hualien at 3. The interior of the island features a lot of mountains and rough terrain, so the tracks follow the coast around the outside of the island.
Picture from the train to Hualien.
Seats on the left side of the train, facing out towards the ocean, are supposed to be the most desirable as far as sightseeing during the train ride, according to what we'd read on the internet. We had seats on the right side of the train. However, we compared the view out both sets of windows (looking past the people in the other row) and I don't think they were substantially different except for the parts where there was a cliff right next to the train on our side when the other side could still see something. There were definitely some things to see, though not hardly a patch on what was to come. Some pretty dramatic terrain sprinkled with towns with a different look than what we've seen before - should be noted that Taiwan is a lot further south than Japan and borders on the tropical so the greenery is more like jungle. Ana thought that some of the industrial equipment we saw in fog looked like stuff out of Myst or possibly Lost, but I didn't get that vibe.
There was some pretty dramatic terrain though.
When we arrived in Hualien, we were low on New Taiwan Dollars (about 3 cents each) and needed to find a money changer to turn our 10,000 Yen bills (about $110 each) into something a little more useable. A major problem in our plan emerged when we were informed that the money changer was closed on Sundays, which this was. I guess tourists don't come to town on Sunday? I don't get it. Anyway, we were sort of mulling our options when an enterprising female taxi driver (trade name of Tiffany) approached us to hawk her transportation services, which she was happy to provide in exchange for yen. We'd been planning to check around taxis and different tour buses to see what gave us a good vibe and a good price as far as getting from the station to the gorge, and frankly Tiffany looked a lot less sketchy than most of the guys hanging around their taxis, so we hired her for the day for a flat fee of about $60US. We could have found cheaper options but as the day went on we became increasingly happy with the deal we struck.
Since we hadn't been certain how exactly we were getting to the gorge from the station and our arrival time back at the station we'd only purchased one-way tickets to Haulien from Taipei. Now that we had a taxi all to ourselves and a guide who could tell us realistically how long things take, we wanted to get train tickets back. It turned out that the station we got off at didn't sell tickets for the express trains, so Tiffany drove us over to the next station, about fifteen minutes away, pointing out landmarks along the way like "That's the cement factory." At the other station we got express tickets back on a train that was about an hour later than the one we wanted but nothing too problematic. I'd been concerned that only slow trains or possibly even no trains would be available and we'd be in for an adventure as far as getting back to Taipei and making our flight, so an hour's delay was entirely acceptable.
Hualien main street, or one of them
Tickets in hand (we paid with a credit card) Tiffany mentioned that she knew a store that might change money for us, and since we were going to have to change money at least once more before leaving anyway we were for it. It turned out to be a sort of stone carvings and jewelry store, certainly targeting the tourist trade. I don't usually go in for such things but they had some pretty cool stuff in there - if we weren't already spending a lot of money on this trip I would have been tempted by some pretty expensive sculptures and carvings. First we changed money, and got a rate I later looked up and determined to be extremely fair, bordering on them giving us money in the process.
The store was staffed by a family, and the longer we stayed the more members of the family came out of the woodwork to show us different things and offer progressively better deals. The younger women in the family would offer a discount or two and then start looking at the matriarch, who would step in as final arbiter of just how much of a bargain they would offer these wealthy young Americans who had wandered into their nest. Some of what they were selling was high-end jade, which was well out of our price range, but Ana got an interesting amber-colored transparent fossil pendant and I bought a present for my mother.
Pendant - it is actually transparent to light but I couldn't get that in the picture
Unplanned souvenir shopping transactions completed, we proceeded to the main event. Tiffany suggested we stop and get any food or beverages we might need for the day as prices around the gorge tend to be high, but we had already stocked up in Taipei and had her drive us there without further ado.
Taroko Gorge is really more a series of jagged gorges, with various roads, trails, scenic overlooks, temples, and bridges connecting it all together. The distance between different elements of the park means that you really need transportation to move between them, though I would not mind spending a week walking across it if given the chance. Tiffany, being a professional driver of tourists around Taroko, has sort of a standard route that sees all the famous attractions in a logical order such that you spend more time seeing things and less time driving around, and she could adjust some things to add or subtract time, athleticism, and courage required by the overall route depending on what the customers want. We had enough of all the above to do the full version of almost all the various attractions that did not require permits from the Taiwanese government, those being the really long and dangerous trails going up into the mountains.
This is the official entrance to the park, and this is also us watching Tiffany for signs that vehicles were about to run us over from behind
When we encountered tour buses we were really glad to have a taxi. They all went way too fast and didn't have time to stop, look at amazing things, appreciate them, take pictures, take more pictures with fewer goofy faces, etc. We'd be standing somewhere in silence, happily stunned by the scenery (we got a lot of good pictures but not a one does it justice) and then this rampaging elephant herd of mainland Chinese or Japanese tourists would pass by walking rapidly and following a man with a flag and bullhorn. That would not have been nearly as much fun, especially since none of the groups was English-speaking.
See? The picture is blurry because tour groups move too fast!
Tiffany's English was pretty good (she told us she couldn't get into college because it wasn't good enough and she'd be practicing on her customers since then) and she had some interesting facts and stories to share. For instance, we listened more carefully when she warned us about rockfalls and to pay attention to same after hearing that her previous taxi had been crushed by falling rocks. That explained the new taxi, I guess. She would also consistently volunteer to take pictures of us so we didn't have to hold the camera ourselves, which resulted in a relative profundity of pretty good pictures of us.
Aaaaand some goofy ones - she had a lot of ideas for pictures, some of greater and lesser merit
This is from the inside of that pagoda from the prior picture. Let's not discuss how many stairs were between these two shots...
So we explored the various attractions of the area and took in the stunning scenery for five or six hours. I'm going to let the pictures do a lot of the talking as far as the actual time in Taroko. Hope you've got fast internet...
Unfortunately the road to this shrine was closed for repairs.
Note the house in the background - this is substantially up high
One of the trails went through cave we had to go through that was completely dark, so we used the camera flash to navigate
I told her to act scared for this one.
You should really check out all the panoramic shots and movies on Flikr (link at the bottom of the post)
We saw wild monkeys twice - must have been a tour group because the picture is blurry.
Ana models the helmet we needed for part of the Trail of 9 Turns. I love the "not absolutely safe".
This is a good example of why the helmets are a good idea. Note the painted pavement was forced in on itself; you can still see the top of what used to be the surface sticking out of the ground.
Despite the fact that she conquered the rock in fair combat, she was not allowed to bring it home.
Photographic proof that I don't always look totally unnatural in pictures. The question of if I always look unnatural in real life I'll leave for another day.
Eventually, we finished up around the time it was starting to think about getting dark. Tiffany dropped us off in Hualien, a short distance from the train station, so that we could see a bit of the town and kill some time before making the train. I napped a little on the train and Ana mostly knitted I think. When we arrived back in the city, we had one more thing that we had to do before calling it a day and heading back to Singapore in the morning.
One of the most famous things about Taipei, and something that all visitors are supposed to go try, is the Night Markets. They're basically indoor/outdoor food and recreation areas with a bit of a festival atmosphere that operate year round. They're very popular for inexpensive food and a good cheap night out for people young and old. We'd originally planned to go to Shihlin Night Market, the original and largest, the first night we were in Taiwan, but fatigue had ruled otherwise. The second night we ate at Yuma and were much too full to go in search of cheap eats. So this, our final night, we considered it imperative to experience this aspect of Taiwanese culture, and also we were all kinds of hungry.
Shihlin Night Market Interior
The subway has a stop directly across the street from Shihlin, and we waded in not knowing quite what to expect. We toured down a few of the various aisles and took a look around. It looked like a few basic types of food vendors were in operation and most stalls were one of about five kinds. We'd read that sort of the signature dish of night markets in general was fried chicken, which sounded pretty approachable, so we picked the stall that everybody else was lining up behind, figuring it for the local's choice, and spent about $4 to get more chicken than I've ever seen in my life.
Large Fried Chicken Stall sign: some characters I don't know, but it has "big" twice
Which when you see it, makes perfect sense. Note the use of two hands to hold it.
After consuming that monumental dish, were pretty much sated and didn't feel much like testing some of the other stuff that was around - none of it really demanded it - though I would love to go back with someone who knows the night markets better and eat my way around some more. We opted to sample some candied strawberries on a stick, which turned out to be pretty good. With that, and seeing that the rest of the place looked like more of the same, we finally called an end to a really long, really exciting, and overall really exhausting day. (The same could be said about this blog entry. 2000+ words!)
Ana with candied strawberries. She shared...a little.
Aaaaand go see Flikr for the other ~325 pictures from Taiwan.
No comments:
Post a Comment