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Thursday, Taitung (4/13/2000)
7:00AM, softly in my sleep I heard a gentle tapping, which
then became a rapping -- an oh-so-persistent knocking at my door. It was
followed by someone saying something unintelligible in Chinese. I kicked
Chu-Wan out of bed because all dealings with locals are performed by her
office, not mine.
It was the hotel staff, delivering our "breakfast". It was a
breakfast we didn't even know was included in the room. It consisted of two
sandwiches. One was toasted ham & egg, the other toasted egg and pork lint.
To drink: Two hot cups of soymilk. I passed on "breakfast" and went back to
sleep.
At 10:00AM, a much more reasonable hour to be awake, we
headed out to find breakfast. There's not much in Jiben except traditional
Chinese food places, but finally we stopped a Mei yo Mei, a sort of
Chinese/American fast food chain, with a heavy emphasis on Chinese food. I
ordered a hamburger.
Once again I got food culture shock. My hamburger was made
of pork and chicken, I think. It had carrots and onions embedded in the patty
and was covered with cucumbers, sprouts and smothered in a red Chinese
sauce.
Yuck.
I would never have been able to identify it as a hamburger
if I hadn't known in advance what it was supposed to be.
Our excursion for the day was to the Jiben Forest Recreation
Area. We paid to enter and Chu-Wan pulled out a book shed been carrying around
on our trip. She took it into a special area of the visitor center and got a
"visa" stamp placed on specially marked pages in the book.
Apparently, you can take this book around to all the forest
recreation areas and get "collectors" stamps from each place.
I looked at the book and saw that there was one for
Kenting. Apparently, the day we went to Shetting, we could have gone to the
Kenting Park and got the stamp, but we didn't because there was an admission
fee. I felt cheated; we drove right past Kenting Park and didn't get the stamp.
It could be years before I get another chance.
Jiben Forest Recreation Area is mostly a jungle with no
specific "sights" to see. I really enjoyed this park because many of the trails
aren't even paved with stones, as seems to be the case everywhere else. It was
very refreshing to spend the day hiking.
There was one minor inconvenience: to start the hike, we had
to walk up the Hao Han Pwo
 or "Strong/Healthy Man Steps". It's 792 of
the steepest stairs I've ever seen, climbing up the mountain. There were
warnings about people with heart conditions, people with children or any other
health impairment not to climb them.
Undaunted, I made an assault on the summit. When we reached
the top of the Hao Han Pwo it was to discover a rather depressing sight. Even
though the sign said we were at the top of the Hao Han Pwo, the steps continued
on up out of sight.
We continued up. Along the way, we passed a lovely little
sign urging us to be cautious of all the lethally venomous snakes living in the
area. The picture of the cobra was easily recognizable, as was the 100 pacer
with its peculiar nose. The 5 or 6 others were mysteries to me.
It's said that Taiwan didn't have deadly snakes until the
end of WWII when Japan surrendered the island to the US (we immediately turned
it over to the Republic of China, then the government of Mainland China, so we
never actually governed or occupied the island). Japan had been conducting
biological warfare experiments on the island, in this case, snake venom
research. Rather than kill the snakes upon their departure, they let them go
into the jungles where they thrived. Taiwan now boasts some of the world's
deadliest snakes.
Undeterred, but watching our footsteps lot more closely, we
continued on. I lost count, but the total number of stairs numbered between
1,500 and 2,000. The path finally veered to one side and began a gentler, but
still step-laden path back down the hill. The path led us through prime
Formosan Monkey and wild pig areas, but we saw neither.
Despite the temperature and humidity both being 80 it was
great just to get out and hike without purpose in a real jungle. It was quite
beautiful and in many cases the trees were almost surreal.
At the end of the trail is an area were they've set up a
place to walk, barefoot, through running (cold) spring water. The stream has
been paved with various-sized smoothed rocks. This is supposed to be a
healthful massage for important pressure points on the foot, but to me it just
plain hurt.
After we left the park, we made a beeline to McDonald's; I
needed the reassuring (if not really edible) flavor of the hamburgers from the
friendly clown face of mega-corporate American imperialism.
We poked around Taitung and went to their black sand beach.
We spent a couple hours preparing for tomorrow's drive up the coast before we
left town that evening.
I terrified a few children with my height and one child
followed me around for half a block, jumping as high as he could and shouting
to his friends that he couldn't even jump as tall as I was.
We returned to our hotel and were assaulted by the
screeching, scratching tones of Karaoke being belted out at full amplification
from the hotel across the alley. It was the worst singing I've ever heard, and
it only lasted till about 1AM.
Friday, Taitung => Hualien
(4/14/2000)
We hit the road early, stopping at McDonald's for what was
expected to be my last meal until dinner. There was no chance of anything I'd
eat along our route .
We traveled north along the East Coast Scenic Highway, a
trek along Taiwan's almost uninhabited East Coast. Several small villages
exist, but the terrain is inhospitable, but dramatic and scenic.
Our first stop was Shiao Yehlieu and area of strange rock
formations along the coast. It was field trip day again and the area was
swarming with children.
We stopped at San Sientai, a rocky island just off the coast
reached by a footbridge. The bridge is about 150-200 meters long and
artistically designed to be in humps. It looks nice, but is a pain to cross, as
you have to climb up and down steps all the way. I'd had enough steps after
yesterday's excursion.
The island was very windy and I rapidly got a sun/windburn.
Supposedly, the main "attractions" on San Sientai are two rocks, one that looks
like female genitalia and another looking like male genitalia. We saw neither
of these, but I did see a rock that looked just like a frog. This may have been
one of the famous rocks, but I shudder to think which it was supposed to
be.
We stopped at a place called (in English, no less) "Water
Running Uphill" - which was just that, a place where the water appeared to be
running uphill. It must be an optical illusion, but it is a convincing one.
We stopped at Baishengdong, a place where eight natural
caves in a cliff have been converted to Buddhist shrines. The catch: they were
up the side of a cliff that could only be reached by steep stairs clinging
precariously to the cliff. Fortunately, there were only about 500 or so of
them. At the top, the rest of the trail was blocked off. There was evidence
that these stairs had been damaged, perhaps in last year's earthquake, and I
suspect that they hadn't been fully repaired.
Our drive took us across the Tropic of Cancer and so we were
officially out of the "Tropics" for the rest of the journey.
Because we had to return the car a day early, we had a
deadline and it was fast slipping away. We decided not to stop at any of the
other scenic points. This changed as we passed a place dubbed "Sweet Potato
Village" which, as we passed over the bridge, offered such a staggering view of
the valley that we both went "wow" and decided to go back and look.
Our "wows" weren't over for the day. As we pulled into our
hotel in Hualien we were absolutely floored by it. It was brand new and was
terrific. Each room had it's own garage, which the room was situated over. It
was more like a condo than a hotel.
We decided it would be a crime to have this room and not a
car, so we determined to take our current car back and get another one from
someone more reputable.
The car rental company didn't have offices in Hualien; they
simply sent someone up by train who then drove the car back to Taitung.
Returning of the car consisted of meeting their representative at the train
station and giving him the keys.
Upon our arrival there was no one in sight. There were also
no parking spots in sight. About half a block away, near a small park, was a no
parking area that was designated for short-term drop off and pickups. It was
full of cars obviously parking anyway.
We pulled in there and while Chu-Wan went to the station, I
staid behind to make sure the car was completely empty of our possessions.
Like a precision timepiece, this was when the policeman
arrived. He saw me, he saw the car, and he made a beeline for me.
He greeted me in Chinese, then asked me a question beyond my
level of comprehension. I put on my best dumb look and tried to explain that I
didn't speak much Chinese. He looked non-plussed. I tried to say, "My wife is
in there." (Pointing at the train station.) Still no reaction. I tried to piece
together an awkward sentence to the effect of, "I know here is…" I paused,
fumbling, stretching for a way to convey the concept of "no parking". In
frustration I said (in English, out loud, to myself) "How do you say 'No
Parking'?"
This got an immediate reaction from the policeman, "Oh, OK,
you know is no parking. OK. OK. Bye bye." And he drove off.
We rented a car from one of the many car rental places near
the train station and headed back to our room, where we ordered a pizza from
Dominos (The "All-American", which consists of a pepperoni pizza) and then went
for a walk around town before retiring for the evening.
An aside about Hualien: On my first trip to Taiwan, we had
traveled by train from Taipei to Hualien, using the town as a jumping-off point
for taking a bus to Taroko Gorge, a spectacular nearby scenic area. We saw
nothing of the town upon our arrival then except the train station and the bus
station. On our return from Taroko Gorge we had spied a McDonald's, and as I
was ill and starving, I desperately wanted to eat at McDonald's. While waiting
between our bus and train to return to Taipei, we searched for that McDonald's,
but never found it. We had picked a likely-looking direction from the train
station, walked a short distance and run out of town. I concluded that Hualien
was a tiny little town.
I was wrong, we had walked the wrong way. Hualien is
actually quite large (in comparison to the towns we'd been in recently), but
the railway station is at one end of town and if you don't pick the right
direction, there's nothing there to see. |
