Category: Taiwan2005

I awoke this morning by stepping in a cold puddle of water in our bathroom. No surprise that the toilet wasn’t really “fixed”.

Breakfast was provided as part of our room, a Chinese and western breakfast buffet. “Western” in this case apparently means they have toast and lettuce salad.

A note on toast. It’s a curious property of toasters here that they seem to be able to dry out the bread without changing its original color. “Toast” comes out just as white as when it went in. On top of that, butter isn’t always available, and often when it is, it’s some sort on non-refrigerated, canned butter that leaves a coating in your mouth that would not be considered dissimilar to petroleum jelly.

My opinion is that dried out white bread without butter is not toast but is instead “stale bread”.

There were two other items that might be “western” on the buffet: A tub full of water with slices of luncheon ham floating in it and another tub of water with scrambled eggs floating in it.

I could eat a Chinese breakfast of pork lint, pickled eggs and greens, or just stick with a salad. Vegetarians only eat rabbit food, so I figured I could survive one morning’s breakfast that way.

I was deeply disappointed with the breakfast but I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. People around here look at me like I just dropped in from another planet. My guess is they don’t get too many foreigners around here. It’s possible I’m the only opportunity that the clerk at Family Mart gets to practice his English.

I went to Family Mart and found one loaf of the special milk bread. I wonder if they put both oaves out at once, or hold one in reserve for later? What time of day do they arrive?

We’re here for two nights, so rather than go to the Shitou Forest today, we travelled by road to Sanlinshi. The characters mean “Pine Forest Stream” but they’ve been phonetically (and rather weirdly) translated into English as “Sun Link Sea”.

My father-in-law has a habit of stopping the car and pointing out things I ought to take a picture of, and, as it is digital and not wasting any film, I’ll usually snap the shot whether I think it is interesting or not. The only exception is when I think that stopping the car and getting out is endangering someone’s life or feel I can convincingly say, “I’ve already got a picture of that.”

Along the road up the mountains, he pulled over next to an overlook and suggested I take a picture, but instead of indicating the viewing platform, he pointed to a trailhead and suggested I “go up to the top” and take a picture.

Thinking that it was a short trail to an even more dramatic photo opportunity, I took the cameras and headed up the trail.

This trail was brutal! It’s one of the very, very few trails I’ve seen in Taiwan that isn’t paved. It headed straight up the hill and about 60˚, with nothing but roots and rocks as stepping stones. All along the way, every few feet, red and yellow banners were tied to branches, sometimes with something printed on them, but usually with just something handwritten.

Being tall has it’s advantage on the way up, I can cover more ground in one step and my height leverages in my favor while leaning forward. Going down would be the reverse.

The trail continued up and up and, although I was only feet away from a ridge, I might as well have been a mile away. I never came to a view, and the trail seemed never-ending. Eventually I found a small break where other people had cut across to go see the precipitous drop that was the ridge and I stopped. I’d been walking 15 minutes and knew Mr. Huang couldn’t possibly have meant for me to leave them there so long. Just then my phone rang. You’ve gotta love it. I was in the middle nowhere and had full cell phone signal. Fat lot of good that would have done, though. I’ve I’d gotten off that trail, there’s no way I could have made it back to the car, or probably anything else for that matter. At one point I could see the car, far below, but without ropes I could have never gotten to it if the trail hadn’t been there.

The call was Irene calling to tell me I wasn’t supposed to go to the top and so I headed back.

When I got back, Mr. Huang explained that the ribbons at the head of the trail were people marking/celebrating their successful traversal of the trail, and the ones along the way were placed there to find their way back and to help rescuers if case they didn’t return.

Sanlishi is a small place, situated around a small lake formed by damming up a mountain stream. It’s a pleasant place in the mountains, and we went on a mild “trail” to a couple waterfalls in the area.

Recently, Michelle has developed a fascination with bridges. She likes all kinds of bridges, especially “wobbly” ones. She and I took several trips back and forth over a cable suspension bridge in the area, bouncing up and down on the bridge for maximum effect.

At one point we waited at one end of the bridge while a guy and his girlfriend/wife took pictures at the other end. When there were done, they started across, the girl looking a little nervous.

As we headed across I said to Michelle, “Want to make the bridge wobble?” which she enthusiastically did. So, as we and they got closer to the middle, I whispered to her, “Go ahead and jump up and down.” I was expecting the girl to freak out, I was really surprised when the guy immediately turned green, looked at Michelle and said, “Don’t jump, don’t jump! Please, for goodness’ sake, please don’t jump up and down!”

Along the trail, we came across a toilet that had been damaged during the earthquake. it had been positioned behind a giant bolder. During the quake, the bolder split into pieces, a large chunk of it fell on the toilet, pushing the building down the hill and leaving it tilted. It doesn’t work anymore, but they’ve left the building intact so you can go inside. Standing in the crooked building is an odd feeling.

We ate in the park and I had another variation of Kung Pao Chicken. I heard Irene order it “very spicy” and it was on fire! Nonetheless, it was good.

The “town” outside the gates has evolved into an carnival, with a fun-house, arcades, a snow ride and carnival games. We tried the “921 Earthquake Experience” which simulated a 7.0 earthquake (not actually quite as big as the 921 Earthquake.) I don’t really want to experience such a thing, but, assuming the simulation is reasonably accurate, it’s just not I’d expect from years of watching TV and movies. It’s more like a train, rocking back and forth.

When we returned back to the cabin, the cleaning people had turned on the upstairs dehumidifier, so the water started coming through the ceiling again. We called the front desk and they moved us to a new cabin.

This one, designed for three families instead of two was more modern and less damp. The floor wasn’t perpetually icy, either.

Dinner was again at family mart, this time I had the chicken parmesan – sans parmesan. I avoided the hot dog chaser because yesterday’s was disgusting. Family Mart’s hot dogs come in two types “Original flavor” and “Chicken”. Original flavor was novel, but not what I’d associate with a hot dog, more of a cooked vienna sausage flavor.

Tonight, Michelle had the chicken flavor and it tasted identical to the original. At least she ate it.

Breakfast at Full House is an artist’s breakfast: One designed to keep you starving. It consists of one wafer-thin, sandwich sized slice of ham, an egg and half a banana.

We didn’t get going very early in the morning, so we checked out and headed for a ’round the lake drive.

Recently, back in Phoenix at a used bookstore, I found an old book (published either in the 50’s or 60’s) photographically showing the diversity of Taiwan. The book, called All of Taiwan has no copyright or publisher information. My guess is that it was a government produced inducement to tourists. It is written in Chinese, English and Japanese. Mr. Huang says he has some of these same books (I have another on Taipei only) and that they were published by the Catholic Church. Either way, there’s no declaration of authorship.

As Taiwan is such a changed place, I wanted to visit as many of the places I could and snap a photo of the same subject for comparison. My first subject, a small pagoda on the shores of Sun Moon Lake. Mr. Huang, who seems to have seen everything in Taiwan, knew right where it was.

We parked the the teacher’s hostel (another building largely destroyed by the 921 Earthquake) and followed the trail down to the lakeside. After a couple false starts, we found the pagoda. However, the vantage point that the photo was taken from was obviously completely gone. The only trail approaching the pagoda ran along the lakeshore in either direction, but the photo was obviously taken from an elevated vantage point.

Like all the hills in Taiwan, the elevated vantage point would have been a difficult climb through bamboo and other thick jungle vegetation. I tried to look into the area where the photo must have been taken and I saw a step, half buried and overgrown. With how fast the jungle grows, I couldn’t tell if it had been lost in the earthquake 6 years ago or bypassed years before.

“Just this once”, I said to myself, and started using the bamboo to climb up into the jungle. There were 10 inch ground-dwelling spider-webs all over the place, and Taiwan’s reputation as home to some of the world’s deadliest snakes wasn’t lost up me either. It took nearly 5 minutes to climb to the one remaining step. When I got there it was almost impossible to see the pagoda, but what I could see told me I was almost on exactly the same spot.

I snapped the picture and got out before any of the spiders decided to come out and see if my sandaled toes were tasty. One down, about 50 more pictures to go.

We went to a tea research farm with a commanding view of the lake (still hazy) and went to visit the temple with the world’s largest stone lions. Like everything else, the temple had collapsed in the earthquake and wasn’t yet re-opened last time I was here. It’s now almost completely open, with only some construction work going on in the extreme back. The lions themselves survived.

Instead of heading back to Puli and then on to our next destination, Shitou (or sometimes Hsitou or even Chitou), we took a “shortcut” over the mountains and through some pretty rural areas, down one-lane roads and half-collapsed bridges. We drove past farms growing bananas, grapes, oranges and rice. Mr. Huang stopped to show them to Michelle, much to the consternation of the drivers behind us on the one lane, impossible to pass because you just fall off the road if you try to drive around, road.

We stopped in the town of Shuili for lunch. I had beef noodle soup in a small family restaurant that claimed travel magazines recommended them for their food. They’ve been in that same spot for 50 years. It wasn’t really that good, but I was still hungry from breakfast.

We got back on the main road and headed for Shitou. At this point, the main road wasn’t much different than the shortcuts we’d been taking. It was dirt in places, had more half reconstructed bridges and was blocked by construction in others. I found it difficult to believe this was the main route to what’s been portrayed to me as a major tourist destination in Taiwan.

Shitou is, in fact, almost the last tourist destination in Taiwan that I haven’t been to. We tried to go several times but it’s always been, “Oh the storms washed out the roads”, “Oh, the earthquakes destroyed the roads”, “Oh, the mudslides destroyed the roads” or “Oh, your mother-in-law is afraid of the roads”.

Today there was no earthquake, no typhoon, no mudslides and no mother-in-law. We made it to Shitou.

Shitou has always been explained to me as “The Shitou Bamboo Forest” and from the few pictures I’ve seen it’s a wilderness of real, Gilligan’s Island-style bamboo. The great big stuff that you actually see people build scaffolding out of in Taipei. It’s all around where we’ve been the last two weeks, but not in the apparent quantity of Shitou.

So when we arrived at our hotel (The Mingshan Resort) I was quite surprised that there is no bamboo in sight. Instead, the hotel is a resort located in the prettiest pine forests I’ve yet seen in Taiwan. (They might be spruce or cyprus) Tall, 40 ft lodgepole-type trees abound, surrounding our cabin. Another big surprise is that the ground only slopes about 5 to 10 degrees, making for pleasant strolling. The rocks and the ground are covered in moss and because it’s still tropical, flowers bloom everywhere. A lot of the flowers are landscaped, to be sure, but the effect is still very nice.

It’s not too terribly cold, but is is damp. The humidity must be hovering near 90 percent.

The resort consists of regular hotel rooms and then an area of cabins. The hotel portion looks new and was probably rebuilt after the earthquake. The cabins look like they’ve weathered many a storm. Ours was really nice, with two levels, 2 separate bedrooms and living area. Like every cabin I’ve ever stayed in, there are shortcomings.

In traditional style, shoes were not to be worn inside and the wooden floor was unbelievably cold all the time. The cabin was also extremely damp – more so than outside. In each of the rooms there was a de-humidifier and I turned them both on before we went out to dinner

Irene tells me she choose the resort because it had a Family Mart convenience store on the premises. I don’t know if that’s really the only reason she choose it, but I gotta love her for it. Having a convenience store nearby means a steady supply of something to drink and snacks. It was even more important, Irene’s father felt the hotel restaurant was too expensive and the “town” was closed down, so we ended up eating dinner there.

It’s not as far-fetched as it seems, Taiwanese convenience stores have prepared meals, much as they do in the states, but they have a more elaborate selection. They also cook the food for you rather than having you use the self-service microwaves. I had a nice spaghetti dinner with a hot dog chaser (I was afraid the spaghetti plate wouldn’t be enough) plus part of a loaf of “milk” bread. Mr. Huang tells me that each Family Mart in Taiwan only gets two loaves of this special bread each day.

Only in Taiwan could a story that quirky be true. Sometimes I think they’re desperate to be Japanese.

It was good bread, but I don’t know if it was that good. Still, they only had one loaf and I was curious if tomorrow they’d have two. I determined to buy them if they had them as they would make a good snack on the road.

When we got back the downstairs bathroom floor was soaked and the downstairs bedroom ceiling was leaking water into the middle of the bedroom. We called maintenance who sent over a happy chap with an adjustable wrench. He told us the upstairs dehumidifier was leaking water and that was the cause of the ceiling leak. Solution: Turn off the upstairs dehumidifier. He tinkered around with the downstairs toilet for a couple minutes and happily announced everything was OK.

I couldn’t tell about the toilet, but an 8′ X 8′ section of the ceiling that had obviously been replaced and now was water-stained again told me that the problem with dehumidifier was one of long-standing and I wasn’t too thrilled about the solution.

It’s typical of the Taiwanese, though. Everywhere you go in Taiwan, you’ll see this attitude in their construction. You’ll see elaborate woodwork, tilework or fancy European plumbing that obviously a lot of thought went into, but on closer inspection it’s never finished. The edges are rough or the tiles are cut crooked. I have never once seen a bathtub faucet in Taiwan that wasn’t installed badly. The fixtures are a standard size, but the pipes never come out of the wall the right distance apart or level. Every bathtub faucet I’ve ever seen has complex elbow couplings that can be adjusted to level off the faucet.

It’s as if in everything they build reach a point and go, “Ah, near enough is good enough” and quit for the day. And people wonder why I don’t want to eat in a lot of the restaurants!

Despite my misgivings about the leaking ceiling and toilet, we went to bed. Even Irene had to admit the bed harder than a board. Living in America is making her soft.

As mentioned previously, I slept badly during the night. The room was very nice, but without heating or cooling, apart from nature. The temperature would not have been too bad, a little cold, but the only bed covers were something between a duvet and an antarctic survival blanket.

Underneath it you sweated like a pig, outside the sweat turned to frost.

Combine that with the byproducts of super-conductor research that have slipped their way into Taiwanese toilet technology: a toilet seat that can divest itself of all heat, achieving almost complete lack of molecular motion, and you have a mid-night bathroom experienced guaranteed to make you shout like Goofy.

In the morning we went to the actual farm. We’d been promising Michelle that she’d see the sheep, and she was anticipating the visit. No surprises for Taiwan, but the sheep farm was a large grassy area up and down the side of a mountain.

Although Michelle petted a few sheep, the sheep weren’t too interested in her unless she had food, in which case they were too interested in her and began crowding in large numbers.

At the very top of the sheep farm is a walkway which they call, variably, the “The Great Wall” or “The Great Walkway”, the latter being the most accurate term. The walkway is at the top of the mountain, which is sharp ridge. On it you can walk 100 yards or so absolutely on the ridge between two massive valleys, looking down the steep hill on either side. It’s unique in my experience. Again, it was a shame that the air was so hazy.

While Michelle was not as fascinated by the sheep as she’d given advanced indication of, she had a lot of fun with her grandfather walking up and down the grassy hills, which is more important.

Next we went to a place called “Little Switzerland”, another grassy area that has been transformed in a faux-European fantasy garden. I suppose Europe might look like this, but it reminds me more of the entrance to Disneyland. It has intricately-manicured flower gardens, lakes, fountains and giant fake bugs.

Again, Michelle and her grandfather we all over the place.

At one point, though, she got away from him. I was following along behind (having stopped to pick up James’ dropped hat) going up a hill and saw Mr. Huang at the top of the hill. I looked over and saw Michelle already 40 yards ahead of him running full speed the other way. I couldn’t see what she was running towards, but I knew Mr. Huang couldn’t catch her.

I took off after her and caught her just as she was arriving at the arcade she’d spied from the top of the hill. While I didn’t mind that she went to the arcade (we weren’t giving her any money to play the games) I did mind that she’d took off. She knows she’s not supposed to do that.

I had a talk to her about it, but since it was a relatively safe area, I wasn’t too harsh and let her continue to play.

After a while, everyone else arrived and we let her play a bit more. Once she’d played with every game, Irene told her it was time to move on and that she could play with one more game.

At this point she was apparently struck selectively deaf, and she absolutely refused to acknowledge that we were even talking to her. Irene tried to talk to her and let her play a little while longer, but she tried to run away and then, when caught, started screaming and crying.

At that point, my tolerance threshold got exceeded and I picked her up and walked her the 250 yards out of the park. All the while she was kicking and screaming that she wanted to be put down and go to her grandfather. Of course, everyone in the place was staring at us.

When we go out, I sat down at an outdoor table, still holding her in my lap, and she continued screaming and kicking 22 more minutes. (Yes, I timed it.) All the while, all I was telling her to do was listen to her mother, but she refused. Finally she gave up from exhaustion. I don’t know where that girl gets her stubborn streak from (OK, I do, it comes from her mother) but she’s going to have to learn she cannot out-stubborn me.

Once she capitulated, she was all smiles and sunshine again, but that ended our visit to the Chingjing Farm area and we headed towards our next destination: Sun Moon Lake.

To get there, we had to backtrack down the mountain to the town of Puli.

In May 1998 I first met my then to-be father-in-law at Taiwan’s CKS Airport. He picked Irene and I up at the airport in the very same car he has now, and as I shoehorned myself into the car, reeling from heat and humidity like I’d never felt before in my life, I conked my forehead into the passenger side windshield of his car, leaving a greasy stain.

Today I took a kleenex and cleaned that damned stain off the inside of the window. It’s been interfering with my in-car photographs for 7 years now and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe that’s where Michelle gets he stubborn streak from? One of us had to crack and clean that thing and it was finally me.

With a crystal clear (on the inside anyway) windshield, my father-in-law took us to see the “geographic center of Taiwan”. I’m not exactly how you determine something like that. I suppose if you could express the shape of the island’s coastlines as mathematic formulae you could use calculus to determine area and then work it until you had 4 sectors of identical area, the cross-hair point would then be “the center.”

No computer wizardry was used, though, as the marker for the center was placed by the Japanese in the early 1900’s during their occupation period. It’s in a nice little park in Puli.

Pity they were wrong. Later surveys moved the point to the top of the nearby mountain, and so I had to climb to the top to get a GPS reading for it. (N 23˚ 58.541′ E 120˚ 58.432′ , elevation 1856′ if you’re interested in looking it up on Google Earth)

Since I had the GPS out, I used it to track down the coordinates I had recorded (and were still in the GPS) in 2001 for Puli. It lead us unerringly right to the McDonald’s, so there we ate. That’s technology used for its highest purpose: leading you to a meal. (N 23˚ 58.360′ E 120˚ 56.914′)

We’ve been to Sun Moon Lake several times before and we were staying in the same hotel we did last time. It was eccentric, but very nice. It’s owned by an artist who uses it not only as a hotel, but also a meeting place for art discussion groups and to show off her wares. My father-in-law estimated we had another 2.5 hours of driving to get there, but the GPS told me the hotel was less than 9 miles away from Puli. Stranger things can happen in Taiwan where you can drive hours to travel 14 miles, but in this case his estimate was completely off-base, and we arrived via an almost straight line in under an hour.

Last time they were still rebuilding from the devastating 921 Earthquake (which happened September 21, 1999) that had flattened practically everything from the center or the quake near Puli out for miles in every direction, even toppling buildings in Taipei a hundred miles away. This time everything looked pretty much rebuilt and back to business as usual. Of course there were pictures everywhere of buildings that had been destroyed to remind everyone of what had happened.

We arrived pretty much at sunset, so we didn’t do much except walk around the dock before turning in for the night.

Apparently one of the nearby hotels had wireless internet, and if I sat on the bed in just the right position without moving I could catch an internet signal every once and a while to check my e-mail and post some pictures. Naturally with a new camera, I’m taking massive numbers of pictures which I can’t possibly all post to flickr. So far I’m extremely pleased with the camera, but disappointed that everywhere we go is saturated in smuck or clouds.

Last night when we left Danshui, we split up when we got back to the subway station near the house. I went to the drug store to pick up more Panadol, which doesn’t work well, but it is all they’ve got and Irene took James home by bus. I went overboard and bought a couple boxes (they come only in boxes with enough for 2 days), some cough drops and a soda. They don’t give out plastic bags in Taiwan and I didn’t want to buy one, so I stuffed my pockets, rearranging my usual pocket contents into unusual places for the walk home.

We slept with the windows closed last night. Irene doesn’t like it but it seems to help my cough. I’m completely convinced that I cannot clear off the last vestiges of this cold because of the filthy air.

Today we headed into the mountains again for a few days and my hope was that some good clear air would help. I couldn’t imagine that air could be any worse than Taipei’s the last few days. Before we left, I went down the street to get some Cong You Bing for breakfast. The typical practice is that you order the food, they cook it, they give you the food, you pay and leave.

Things went normally this morning until I reached for my wallet, which was missing, and I didn’t have enough change to cover the $45 bill (remember that’s only $1.35 US). My Chinese is good enough to order breakfast, but it isn’t anywhere near as expansive as to be able to say, “I’m sorry, my wallet is missing and I cannot pay you.” I could only try to look really embarrassed and mortified (not hard), mime a wallet falling out of my pocket (In fact, I suspected I just hadn’t put it in my pants when I got up) and saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over. I tried to convey that I’d return soon with the rest of the money.

After a confab between Mr. and Mrs. Cong You Bing, they agreed to accept the $35 that I had.

I got about halfway home when I discovered my wallet in a pocket on the wrong side of my pants. I had shifted it last night at the drugstore. (See? That earlier story was going somewhere. It was foreshadowing.)

I rushed back, paid them the rest of the money, along with another chorus of “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and went upon my way, complete with my full load of stress for the day before 8:00AM.

When we left around 9:30 we travelled by car, with Mr. Huang coming along for the trip. Our first destination, Chingjing – It’s a sheep farm. No, I’m not kidding, the Taiwanese can turn a sheep farm into a tourist attraction. (See previous travelogues for entries on “cows”.)

To get there, we travelled south on the newest North-South Freeway, one I haven’t been on before, towards Taichung. As we approached Taichung it became apparent that Taipei is in the pollution minor leagues compared to Taichung. The air was positively toxic. Too thick to be smog, I dubbed it “smuck.”

Just outside of Taichung, we stopped at a rest area. I’m told this is the most beautiful rest area on the entire freeway. It’s so wonderful that citizens of Taichung arrange meetings there and just go socialize and look at the stars. Of course, the really nice part about it is that no toll gates lie between Taichung and it so they can get there for free.

When we arrived, the air was still thick and nasty. As far as I could immediately see it wasn’t much different than any other Taiwanese rest area, consisting of a large parking lot, bathrooms, gas station and restaurant area. Of course, I almost couldn’t see Taichung, or the sea beyond it – which, considering the direction is is facing could no doubt be a nice place to see a sunset from.

The truly impressive part is the bathroom. The men’s room had 77 urinals (yes, they’re numbered) and 4 to 8 stalls. There were urinals for as far as the eye could see. They had installed urinals on every conceivable bit of wall space. I was half expecting them to be installed on the doors of the stalls, or at least have a second level for even more. I never could get a picture. As you can imagine, a busy rest stop doesn’t have many times when the restrooms are empty enough to snap photos.

Once out of Taichung I hoped the air would clear up, but it never did, even high into the mountains the smuck pushed its way up the valleys, rendering all the good scenic photo spots nearly worthless.

Typical of inland mountain roads, the road we were on was narrow, steep and winding, but not nearly so bad as some I’ve been on. What we did notice was that no one paid the slightest head to the double yellow lines; cars were passing cars on the narrowest of mountain curves, repeatedly missing certain death by inches.

When we did arrive at our hotel near Chingjing Farm, it was really quite nice, but like all the other hotels in the area, it occupied a small terrace hacked out of the mountains. Each with a commanding view of the valley below – or it would have if the air weren’t still solid haze. As the sun began to set, the clouds slowly moved in and displaced the haze, but by then it was dark.

I took a walk up the “road” (really, more of cemented goat track) to the 7-11. They must not get many foreigners in these parts because everyone I passed on the road had to say, “Hello” and “How do you do?” and then laugh when I answered back in English. Perhaps I have a funny accent?

I scouted out the area, and discovered that there was not only a 7-11 and a Starbucks, there was also a mini-mall complete with every form of sheep paraphernalia you can imagine – lotions, potions, shirts, hats, shoes, sheep ice cream and every type of stuffed sheep (cute and cuddly, not real and macabre) – and, most importantly a food court which had at least one place selling fried chicken.

We returned later as a family and had dinner, before turning in for the night.

I don’t know what the heck it is about this place, but I just get the darndest colds here and can’t shake them. Today I woke up and felt like I’d been setback to my worst day of the cold last week.

I can only imagine this isn’t so much a cold as a nasty allergy to Taipei. The air here really is foul, and we have to sleep with the windows open at night.

My plans for eating dinner got harpooned last night and I was starving when I awoke, that certainly didn’t help. Yet it was still 2 hours before we headed out to eat. First we tried Ding Tai Fung but as it was 11, the line was already enormous.

Then we headed for what was, I believe, the last Round Table Pizza in Taipei last time we were here, and no surprises, it’s now gone also. So much for “The Last Honest Pizza.”

Right over the top of Round Table Pizza is Ali Baba’s Indian Restaurant and on weekends at lunchtime they have all-you-can-eat for $399. The opened at 11:30 and we arrived at 11:35, perfect timing, so we thought.

First we had to get the stroller upstairs. It should have been easy as they provide a convenient elevator to whisk you to the second floor.

The problem is, the elevator is located half a floor up, and the only way to get to it is by stairs. What were they thinking?

We were the first to be seated and then promptly ignored. Others came in, in fact, the restaurant filled up, and they were all ignored. It turns out that the restaurant opens at 11:30, but doesn’t serve food until 12:00. At least we got to experience the authentic Indian ambience in the meantime – Indian music videos of Saturday Night Fever.

When the food was served, it was great. I had some really good chicken and mutton and something else I couldn’t identify but was really tasty. The meal also came with naan, which is Indian bread used to hold the sauce from the stewed dishes. That arrived 25 minutes after food was served. Also, the meal came with a drink, that was served about 45 minutes after the meal started.

Not much on service, but no complaints about the food at all!

By the time we got back to the house, I crashed. I had nothing left to keep me going. Meanwhile, Irene had arranged for us to go with the kids to her friend Phoebe’s place and meet up with several old friends. I slept right through that.

After she returned, and after I awoke, we headed out to Danshui, near the coast to look around. It’s rather like a night market and state fair combined. There was even an Indian (Native American type) band playing music on the waterfront. They weren’t bad, either.

Tomorrow, we head into the country again.

Not much of a day to write about.

In the morning, we went to the photographer to have an album made for Michelle and James. This is the same studio that did the album for Michelle when she was 6 months old, too. We liked their work then and they gave us a good deal this time, too.

Michelle was a lot less accommodating this time than last. Back then she, like James now, was just sort of propped up and photographed. Now Michelle needed to have her motivation and that made it more difficult.

Of course, they do makeup and hairstyles on her, which takes time and tries her patience – mine too. We spent the entire morning there and I hope the pictures of her will turn out well. She was so darned cute all made up, but she’s got that 3 year-old smile – the big fake grin that looks more like a dental exam than a smile.

From that point on, the day went downhill. I needn’t go into details, suffice to say that by the end of the day everything was a fiasco.

Sometime during the night there was a small earthquake, but I slept through it.

I’ve been generally disappointed with the Sony Cybershot lately. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good point and shoot digital camera and has served me well, but, I want to have more control of the picture process and this trip to Alishan has really driven it home for me.

Today I went and bought a new camera.

I won’t go into the details or merits, but it’s a pretty nice prosumer level camera. At this exact moment in time, for the money, it’s difficult to find a better digital camera. It’s a Canon 350D (Rebel XT in the US) and takes enormous 8 megapixel pictures, up considerably from the 3 megapixels that the Sony took. It has a complete automatic mode, but also has full manual control. It’s going to take me a while to figure out how to use the manual controls again.

I wanted to get it today because we’re going on another trip Monday and I need a bit of time to practice.

The bad news was, the camera shop was missing one of the pieces, so when we went out to buy it I came back with a firm price, a committment to buy and no camera. They had the part brought in from elsewhere and promised to call before the day was over so we could come pick it up.

We took a ride to the RT Mart, which Irene and I had never been to before. It’s more than a bit like Walmart Supercenters; a decidedly American-style combination of everything and a grocery store. I don’t know why, but I was really glad to see how crowded the store was. I could never figure out why American retailing practices hadn’t caught on here.

I wish we’d been to this place a long time ago, it’s just up the road from a nearby subway station, we could go there practically anytime we want.

Of course, while we were there, the camera place called to say everything was ready, but we had cold items that needed to be taken home first, and then James needed feeding and putting to bed.

Finally, a couple hours later we managed to go get the camera, just in time for a trip to the night market! We brought the camera home to put it on the charger for a bit and get ready to go and when the time came to leave, it started raining.

I wasn’t about to take the camera out in the rain, so… no pictures, except for this picture of Michelle, the first I took with the camera.

We slept in this morning, but since had to check out by 11:00 AM we still got up early enough to do something. While Irene and James packed, I took Michelle out for another hike.

I like Alishan a lot, but quickly realized that there are only a few trails you can go on and you simply cannot tramp out across country. The last viable trail we hadn’t hiked yet was the Giant Trees Trail #2. I essentially begins and ends in the same place as Trail #1, making a completely loop when combined. I didn’t know about the trail yesterday because it isn’t on the map signs around the park, but it was listed on a paper map we had in the room.

Once again we started at the top and went down and down the steps. This time we kept catching up, passing and then falling behind a tour group. Each time we passed, they all tried to talk to Michelle, who, for whatever reason, completely refused to acknowledge them speaking to her in Chinese.

This time I brought the GPS along and measured our progress. It’s so difficult to guesstimate how far you’re walking on stairs and feet sometimes feel like miles when you’re trying to pace a 3 year-old.

It turns out the hike was 1.15 miles and we averaged 1.3 miles per hour, although at one point we reached a blistering 5.5 mph.

When we got back to the room, Irene was watching the news. Today’s big story: 5 cm leech removed from man’s sinus cavity. The news story showed the leech wiggling around, being removed from a specimen jar and being placed on a chart of the mans sinuses to demonstrate where it was.

My question was: Why the hell wasn’t that leech dead? What kind of doctor humanely removes a leech from a man’s sinuses and preserves the leech’s life? And what was that man doing? Sleeping in a mud puddle?

Being checkout day, there’s not much to do except check out, store your luggage behind the front desk and sit around the grounds until the bus comes to take you to the train station.

We finally stopped at the coffee shop and had our “free” drink which was included in our package deal. It’s a good thing they were free because a single cup of black tea was $100NT, or $3US. I was glad that, during the breakfast buffet both days I managed to drink about 8 cups of tea or $24US worth of tea! If I’d have known, I’d have had more.

The coffee shop is outdoors and very nice and relaxing, but those prices were highway robbery. Other than that, the hotel still gets very high marks from me.

We caught the train without difficulty, and, in an effort to spread out and make room for everyone on the less-than-crowded train, we took seats all over the car. I was essentially by myself for the entire ride down the mountain and had room to pop open the iBook and play some computer games and try to work on this entry.

One thing can be said about the Alishan Forest Railway: The Japanese didn’t build it for comfort. The narrow gauge train rocks back and forth about 20 degrees making reading and writing somewhat difficult.

Although I’m not generally prone to motion-sickness, trying to read the computer screen was having a real go at making me sick so I gave up, stared out the window and listened to my iPod.

Inhospitable and remote as it was, as we’d pass through the wilderness, suddenly there would appear a small path with a person or children on it, caught in a single moment of their lives, usually staring at the train and seeing the object and not the people behind the windows, but sometimes (usually the children) waving.

It made me think about their lives and how completely clueless they and I are about each other. What were they doing the moment the train came along? What course in their life and brought them there at that moment, and where do they go once they’ve left my sight? Are they real or just phantoms of the mind?

I had too much time to think idle thoughts on the 3.5 hour train ride.

We also had extra room on the ride back to Taipei, but not as much. The kids were also being more demanding of Irene and she was pretty much maintaining order for the whole ride until we got back to Taipei around 9:30.

Even back at home, James was being demanding, so I went out and got some medicine for myself to try to kick the lingering cough from my cold. While I was out, I also picked up some mango ice for Irene. Mango ice is one of those bizarre concoctions that they have here, sliced mangoes, served over crushed ice with condensed milk on it. How anyone could even attempt to con people into buying a plate of mostly ice shavings is beyond me, but she likes it and that’s all that matters to me.

Well, one other thing matters: How to order it. I had to order by number and that should be easy enough but it just happens that mango ice is #4 on the menu. The numbers 4 and 10 in Chinese sound somewhat similar. 10 is easy, it sounds like the English word “She”, spoken with a rising tone. 4 is more like… shu or shr or shi or si, spoken with a down tone. it doesn’t quite have a proper phonetic equivalent in English, but, even to my ear they are easily differentiated.

Apparently that was not the case for my pronunciation when I tried to order. I kept saying “Shu” and she kept saying “She?” Luckily the assistance of another patron who could understand me and the judicious use of fingers resolved the issue satisfactorily, but I came away rather disappointed. I really felt that, at the very least, my counting to 10 in Chinese was intelligible. Apparently not.

Today was a long day!

It started at 4:20 AM when we got our wake up call from the hotel. At precisely 4:50 the hotel bus leaves for the train station taking most of the guests up to a vantage point on Chushan where you can witness the spectacular sunrises.

I’ve mentioned this before, this seems to be a particular Chinese thing, but, I could hardly miss the opportunity. The particularly special thing about sunrises in this part is the potential for the clouds to already be settled in the valleys below, producing the desired effect of the sunrise coming over the mountains and clouds below you.

The photos I’ve seen of it are spectacular. Last time we had a perfectly clear day. A fine sunrise, but no “sea of clouds.”

This time our day didn’t get started off too well. We got the 4:20 wake up call, but we didn’t walk out of room until 4:51. When we got downstairs, the bus was long gone. Not quite willing to give up, we started walking for the train station, about a half kilometer away, up and down steep, unfamiliar roads, in the dark, lugging two sleepy kids.

Amazingly enough, we made it to the train in time, and from there it was a relatively easy task to get to the viewing point at Chushan.

Then things started to go wrong. I was getting the camcorder ready and the battery indicator was good, 99 minutes of battery power left and as I looked at it, it dropped to 0 minutes and started flashing the dead battery warning. I didn’t have a backup with me. Hoping it was a logic error in the battery, I let it run and it did manage to last past sunrise, but at that point, I wasn’t going for anything fancy and figured all the video was a write-off.

I switched to the digital camera, which had fresh batteries in it. I turned it on, and suddenly it died. I can only assume an alien spacecraft was in the area and sucking the power from my batteries. At least I had spare batteries for that camera.

There was a slight layer of clouds filling the valleys as the sun came up, but I must say, the sunrise was a burst of fire coming directly over the peak on the mountains across the valley. They could not have positioned us in a more dramatic spot. Sadly my photographs cannot possibly do it justice. The crowd actually applauded the sun as it came up as if it were performing some clever trick for them.

At 6:50 the train goes back down the mountain and if you miss it, you have a 1.5 hour hike back to “town.” We weren’t about to miss it and didn’t.

Back in the hotel, breakfast (provided) was a western and chinese style buffet, whcih had plenty to eat. They even had “Chicken Nuts” (nuggets) but I didn’t have my camera with me to take a picture of the sign.

Rather than doing the sane thing and going back to sleep, we went for a walk instead, traveling around the same trail Irene and I hiked 7 years ago. It’s changed quite a bit, parts have been shifted and all the signs are different. Even the local legends have changed. The story of the 2 Sisters’ Ponds is now a completely different tale than it was when we were here before. That must have been one strong earthquake!

Hiking is grueling here, and the hills are insanely steep. They are nothing more than a series of stairs going either up or down. Irene, being saddled with James in the baby carrier was at a bigger disadvantage than me, dragging Michelle along. At least Michelle had bursts of energy, but James was always just extra weight on Irene.

The weather was great, and scenery fantastic so it made the burden easier, but we were glad to be back at the hotel for lunch.

Lunch was not included, so we got our choice from the menu. I chose something called “Chicken in Paprika” which turned out to be Kung Pao Chicken, but much, much better than any Kung Pao Chicken I’ve had before. It was really good, and a classic example of how food sometimes gets translated when taken to a different country. I’m going to have it again tomorrow for lunch, to be sure.

The restaurant, like most of the hotel, has picture windows all around to enjoy the view. While we ate lunch, the clouds slowly rolled in, enveloping us and the town in the characteristic afternoon blanket of white.

After lunch, Irene and James took a nap, and I hauled Michelle out for another hike. As you can imagine, hiking with a 3 year-old isn’t the most efficient means of transportation, but she was a real trooper. It helped that I offered to give her Oreos when we got back to the hotel.

I took her down the “Giant Tree Trail” which I’d not been on. The guide said it was an elevated plank-walk the whole way. That means it was an elevated series of stairs leading down and down and down. We lost altitude at about 1 foot vertical for every 1 for horizontal. I was dreading the walk back, and almost gave up several times, but Michelle wouldn’t quit. We were walking among the old forest growth, trees 800 to 2,000 years old, standing up towards 50 meters high with trunks 6 to 8 meters across. She had to walk to every sign and read the age of the tree and wouldn’t quit till there were no more.

At the bottom, we reached the Sacred Tree of Alishan, which was one of the old growth trees. It had been killed by lightening many years ago, but kept standing with little potted plants in its branches to give the appearance of life by the locals. The earthquake put paid to that little charade and the tree is now completely dead, but still resting there for tourists to see.

Luckily, the walk back was much easier going a different path. Nonetheless Michelle was exhausted when we returned. Come to think of it, so was I.

I had business to prepare for, a teleconference at 10:00PM (I told you it was a long day) and had to go over several documents and make notes. By the time I was done, it was dinnertime.

This time dinner wasn’t so good, at least for me, a Tofu dish, a pork dish which had a sauce even Irene wasn’t too crazy about and pork that might have been covering for a football and a plate of cabbage, cooked. There’s always breakfast tomorrow.

The conference didn’t go right. The call blipped my phone once and then wasn’t there. I never got a second call and sat in the lobby area waiting till 10:30 and finally gave up.

4:20 AM to 10:30 PM, that’s a long day when you’re hiking around. I’m not getting up for the sunrise tomorrow!