Category: Taiwan2005

As I mentioned earlier, the Alishan House Hotel has gone through an amazing transformation since last we were here. In fact, this hotel is wonderful, even more amazing in comparison to the sparse, utilitarian place it was last time.

It’s so amazingly improved, I would go so far as to say I simply couldn’t believe it was the same hotel. That’s not so far-fetched. The 9/11 earthquake that devastated central Taiwan did a lot of damage in this area. Famous landmarks were destroyed, railroad tracks and trails disappeared down the mountain and there was much destruction.

The only way I could credit this being the same hotel is if and only if it had been leveled and rebuilt from scratch. The only thing that remained the same were the wooden beds.

To describe this hotel, 5-star is pretty close. We’ve got every conceivable hotel amenity (minus a refrigerator, which, considering the only thing people consume cold in this country are foods best served hot, is no surprise). It’s clean, the staff are efficient, they’ve even provided in-room internet, which isn’t that unusual in this day and age, but I wasn’t expecting it way out here in the middle of nowhere.

It isn’t wireless internet and I didn’t bring a cable, but a call to the front desk got us one in minutes.

Each room has a glorious balcony, looking out over the valley, aimed in the direction of sunset. Clever really, since everyone gets up at 4:20 AM to go to a special vantage point to see sunrise anyway. Even the soaking tub has a picture window looking out across the valley.

The only negative I have about this hotel is that at 4:20 when we got up this morning there was a smell in the bathroom like all the porta-potties in hell were loosed in the room. I’m assuming it must have come up the floor drain somehow, but was gone when we got back after our sunrise excursion.

Speaking of sunrise excursions, I’ll post about that later, but as we caught the train to travel to Chushan (where you see the sunrise) we passed the Alishan Gou Hotel, which is the hotel we stayed in last time.

Mystery Solved.

If anybody ever comes to Taiwan, make sure you come to Alishan and stay at the Alishan House Hotel. If I could figure out how to do it, I would not be going back to Taipei and just stay here for the next few weeeks.

It’s 9:30 in the morning, I’m sitting on the balcony of our room, looking out over the beautiful mountains and valleys.

What could be better than writing about a beautiful day in the mountains? Oh yes, enjoying a beautiful day in the mountains… better get on with it.

I left a request for an early wake-up call, but didn’t get it. (I’m told I did, but said, “ok, ok, I’ll get up.” and then didn’t.

I can’t believe Irene fell for that, the oldest trick in the book – the old sleep-talking to stop someone waking you trick.

Anyway, we didn’t have much time when I got up – no time for breakfast, but I convinced them to let me run down to Mr. Cong You Bing and grab some food while they packed up the kids in the car.

It didn’t quite work to plan and we got started 10 minutes late. Considering that the train wouldn’t wait for us if we missed it, it was critical that we arrive on time.

Mr. Huang drove like a madman. More so than usual, dodging lanes, cutting through back-streets, cutting people off and in one case, ran a red light. Not like red light running back in the States either, in this case he deliberately came to a red light and then just slowly kept pushing his car into the intersection until the other traffic had to stop and let him pass.

No one else even seemed to think it was very abnormal, either.

We made it in plenty of time to catch the 3 hour train-ride to Giahi. (Last time I was here, it was spelled “Chiayi”.) We only had two seats and the train was packed, we spent the entire 3 hours trying to shoehorn four people into those two seats. The trip back will be similarly crowded.

October 1st was supposed to be the opening day of the Taiwan High Speed Railway, a Japanese bullet train that would cut the travel time from Taipei in the north all the way to Khaoshiung in the south to only 90 minutes.

The company building it ran out of money and is now truing to get the government to bail them out. I really wish it was working now!

Last time, we followed the same train schedule, but then we had to catch a taxi from the Giahi main station to the Forest Railway Station. 12:30PM arrival at one station and 1:15PM boarding at the other made for rushed visit to town.

This time, 7 years later, they’ve extended the Forest Railway line into the main station, so we had 40 minutes to look around and grab a bite to eat.

Wishing for a McDonald’s, but rewarded instead with a MOS Burger, we hauled our luggage two blocks around town and had a meal. Based on our last trip, I wasn’t expecting much to eat at Alishan, and this trip is a full day longer.

The run up into the mountains is still just as harrowing and impressive. The jungle, for it is truly a jungle of palms and bamboo, slowly gives way to pine trees, twisted and gnarled with age, covered in moss, sitting high up in the clouds.

The Forest Railway is another 3.5 hours, but this time there were enough extra seats that Michelle could have one on her own.

We arrived in Alishan around 5:00PM, the sun almost ready to go down, the clouds completely settled into the mountains. There was little to do but go to our hotel and see what awaited us.

We are staying at the same hotel we did 7 years ago, the Alishan House. Before it was a sparse hotel with wooden beds (as opposed to mattresses) and hot water only during certain hours of the day. We didn’t spend much time there, so it didn’t matter much.

The hotel has been completely renovated, but I’ll talk about that in another entry.

Michelle and I went out and took some pictures. I let her take her first photographs, with mixed results.

Recently, I read an article in a tourist magazine explaining “real” Taiwanese food and why most westerners have trouble stomaching it. it consists of incredibly fatty (more fat than meat) pork and lots of entrails. I mention that because that’s what the hotel restaurant served for dinner.

If anyone is interested, entrails look and taste like squid, just not as chewy. I pass that on based on Irene’s comments, I wouldn’t touch them.

I had some lawn clippings (bamboo shoots), pork fat (tasty, if you can pock the meat out – very tender) and some chicken soup and fruit. Not exactly my first choice of dinner but good enough.

Tomorrow we get a wake-up call at 4:20AM to see the sunrise. I’d better get good pictures!

Today was a national holiday here in Taiwan. I’m not even sure what the exact name of the holiday is, it’s always just called Double-10. It is, in theory, the day that celebrates the over-throw of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and the formation of the Republic of China. In Taiwan, nothing is that simple, especially when it deals with China. There are also people here who believe it is strictly a holiday of the invading, occupying Chinese forces that landed here and took over the island by force in the 1940’s.

Politics aside, there are thousands of ROC flags lining all the streets in Taipei. If I didn’t know better I’d say there was a factory in mainland China where these were cranked out in their millions. (I say, “if I didn’t know better” because while China may make all the rest of the world’s flags, this one particular flag would certainly get a team of policemen to lead a crowd of angry citizens to the factory owners door and then walk away letting the crowd have their way with him. Don’t laugh, they do that all the time. Damn, now this website will be banned by the great firewall of China!)

It was also the end of a three-day weekend in which many stores were closed and lots of people had time off work. It also means I wasn’t able to get Cong You Bing for 3 days instead of just the usual Sunday dry spell.

There’s supposed to be a massive fireworks display and parade, of which we saw neither.

Instead, we went to Taoyuan today for lunch. Why Taoyuan? That’s a longish story but, in a nutshell, Mr. Huang 2 spends a few days in Taoyuan at this time of year visiting family. He invited us down there for lunch not realizing that we couldn’t all fit in Mr. Huang’s (1) car with the two car seats in it, so, in the end Mr. Huang 2 drove to Taipei to pick some of us up and we drove the 1 hour 45 minutes to Taoyuan for lunch.

Oh? You didn’t ask “why”, you asked “what’s Taoyuan?” Taoyuan is one the seemingly endless urban sprawl pouring south of Taipei. On our trek there, at no point, did I feel I’d left one town on the way to another.

Here’s another fascinating piece of trivia about where we went: We drove 1 hour 45 minutes and arrived at a point in space exactly 14.1 miles as the crow flies from where we started. It had been raining in the morning, many of the vendors, particularly the one I wanted to visit, had been closed, and since we had to leave 2 hours before lunch, I didn’t get breakfast.

We arrived at a Department store which smelled wickedly good – it had both a KFC and a McDonald’s in the basement pumping out the delicious smell of fried chicken and french fries. Despite some slight glimmer of hope that we’d driven nearly 2 hours to eat at KFC, we ate in a Japanese buffet on the top floor.

Normally, that means I’m going to steal out as quickly as possible and head for the McDonald’s in an attempt to survive, but in this case they did have some particularly good chunks of grilled beef, marinaded in something completely un-Japanese tasting, cut into bite-sized cubes and grilled to medium rare. I had several plates of those and was sufficiently well fed.

I also had a slice of nice-looking chocolate cake, which could have been excellent except for a mysterious layer of some material that looked liked crushed cranberries and tasted like shredded carrots. The Japanese are an odd people!

Michelle went to town. She would, in turn, go to each of the adults at the table, take them by the hand, and lead them to the buffet so they could get her food. She was ever-so-cute when she’d do it and no one could resist. She ended up eating 7 pieces of cake, several bowls of ice cream and who knows what else in the process.

I left for a walk during the long afternoon of talking at the table, explored the store (typical) and then went for a walk outside. The day had cleared and the street was thronging with thousands of people. It was every bit as lively as downtown Taipei, if not more so.

When we drove back to Taipei, we passed the street with all the cameras. I’ve been thinking about upgrading my existing camera with a digital SLR for some time. I had finally figured out how to use a film SLR camera when the jump to digital came. Tomorrow, we’re going to be heading into the mountains and I’d really like to get the control possible with an SLR back before I leave.

As the camera shops appeared to be open, and having done some research on “good” prices on the ‘et before leaving, we headed out to see what we could find. In the end, the prices are good, but very comparable with what’s in the states if you shop. There are issues with warranties and I don’t carry $30,000 NT is cash with me, so I didn’t get one.

I’ll give it a lot more thought before we leave town on another trip next week, but I know when I’m up in the mountains tomorrow, I’m going to miss not having a new camera.

For dinner, we walked 5 minutes to Subway for a 12″ BMT and then next door for provisions shopping. My recollection is there’s not many food opportunities on tomorrow’s trip. “Provisions” turned out to be shoestring potatoes and oreo cookies – well, at least it is just like camping when I was a kid.

Tomorrow we take trains, trains and more trains for Alishan, high in the mountains. Hopefully it won’t be too cold, we aren’t exactly packed for winter weather.

Somehow I doubt I’ll have internet access, so I’ll keep these up-to-date and post them when I return.

We did go forage for food later, and I had another tasty meal at the Indian place in the night market. I tried a different type of food and I’m still convinced, with a little tweaking, this could be big.

We took some extra time to look around and came across this booth for candling. I thought this was only practiced by a handful of nuts on the States, but apparently, it’s big business in Taiwan.

Not only was every seat taken, but there was a line of people just waiting to have a burning candle in a plastic jug shoved into their ear so that foreigners with camera-phones could mock them.

This afternoon we had a bit of a surprise. Michelle started speaking Chinese. I suppose out of necessity she made the switch… wish I could do that.

Yesterday evening’s excursion was a bit much for my back, so I took it easy today, but we still went out for lunch (MOS) and a trip to the Sogo Department store. Irene was testing out her front-loading baby carrier, which will be necessary when we go to Alishan on Tuesday.

The walk wore us both down and we stopped for tea and a coffee shop. Everywhere I go, it appears there is wireless Internet available, yet I’ve never seen anyone with a computer using it.

We ate at home and they prepared pork ribs for me, 3 of them, and they were very meaty ones, too. So, that’s about 24 bites of food.

If James will just fall asleep, Irene and I will get out and forage for more.

I’m recycling this picture, but it fits perfectly with the theme.

Last time we were here, MOS had this complicated recycling station, which seems a bit excessive. There are places for trash, cardboard, cups, ice, certain types of plastic and food waste.

MOS being a Japanese chain, you just naturally expect something excessive and quirky from them.

But now, every fast food place has this arrangement due to government requirements on sorting garbage.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not dead-set against this idea, but it is gross having to pick through the old greasy bones and napkins to pick out the food waste.

At least MOS provides you with a sink right there to wash your hands, the other places do not.

I suppose Taiwan wants to be progressively environmentall friendly, but really, work on the stinking air pollution first! The air here is horriffic!

The Xiobitan station has several pieces of art, even the patio is considered a piece of art. With all civic art, you have to explain it in massively pompous ways to justify the complete waste of tax money it represents. Here are a couple from Xiaobitan:

This is the patio…

Eastside Square; The Sweeties

“Time is like a storage box, silently saving people’s memory in pursuit of eternity and happiness. As multi-layered light shines through the darkness, drops that symbolize joyful tears and sweat from work reflect their glow in the evening sky, and give off brightness that never goes dark. The organic lively lines on the ground recall the sweetness in memory, also taking the form of seats to carry the weight of people’s life. Passengers thus bathe in a great comfort.”

…or, to paraphrase, “A patio with lighted benches”

This is a big blog of melted plastic stuck to the wall…

Time Jelly

“The architectural wall seems to brim over as “metal cream,” softening all the definition and stiffness in space. It also creates an amazing visual impact. Shaped as melting toffee, it brings a sweet sense of happiness to our minds, spreading over passengers from all directions. Metaphors of happiness are placed in all rounded corners, easing the coldness and lonliness of every passing soul with a warming attitude.”

…or “The Blob”

Nights are the worst. That’s beginning to be my mantra. Sometime around 1-3 AM each morning I awake with a coughing fit. This morning it happened twice, both times I had nosebleeds because my nose is so weak from constant blowing. I had to get up and leave the room, so I spent time on the computers. The long and short is I lost several hours sleep which I made up for in the morning.

I slept right through Michelle’s morning class and awoke at around 12:00 with one determined thought in my mind, “Today I will eat at Subway!”

Just about that time Irene and Michelle returned from class to tell me her parents had bought beef noodle soup for lunch. So much for my lunch plans.

I was pleased to hear that, during her class, the teacher demonstrated putting blue and yellow paint together and making green. In Chinese the teacher asked the class, “where did the green come from?” The other kids gave answers (in Chinese) like “It came from the sky!” but Michelle said to the teacher, in English, “Blue and yellow mixed make green.” Luckily, the teacher does understand English and now realizes that Michelle does understand him when he’s speaking Chinese, which, with her behavior sometimes, you’d think she doesn’t understand English either.

It rained all day, but, despite my coughing fit at night, I finally began to feel better today. I decided it was time I’d futzed around enough and needed to get down to work. I’ve got some videos to shoot, pictures to take and stories to tell.

Truth be told, yesterday when I ended up at Nanshijiao station, I had been attempting to travel to Xiaobitan (小碧藫) Station. I had seen the station, which is new since my last visit, when we returned from Hsinchu. It was massive, sitting on top of a multi-level car park, looked to have a park on top of it and was sitting near the river, surrounded by the mountains. When i saw it from the car I thought, “This might be a great vantage point for looking at the city at night or even during the day.”

Despite the concerns of my mother-in-law that I was going out in the rain, I escaped. As I was leaving, my daughter ran to me and said I had to take an umbrella and that she loves me. It’s those moments that make it all worthwhile.

The rain was coming and going and when it wasn’t raining, I’d close the umbrella (which was a classic black, full-sized umbrella with curved handle) and use it loosely as a walking stick, with a jaunty twist to it that John Steed would approve of. In fact, I’m sure I could have passed for Steed, if only I’d had a bowler hat and wasn’t wearing a t-shirt that said, “I don’t give a rat’s ass” in pictograms.

When I arrived at the station, my instincts were absolutely right, it’s a great place for video/photography. In fact, two photo shoots were actually going on at the station while I was there. The clouds and rain prevented the mountains from being very clear and there wasn’t much cover, so I snapped some stills and panoramas for future reference. Then I decided to go for a walk. After all, it was only 5:07 in the afternoon.

Big mistake. Sundown is not long after 5:30 in these latitudes. I headed down the main road, thinking, just like yesterday, I’d walk a ways, turn around and come back. No problem. The difference this time is that I took the GPS along with me. I got a nice solid fix at Xiaobitan and was confident that I’d have no problem finding my way back.

And so, when I came to the fork in the road, I took it. Roughly speaking, I’d been heading north, with the road lightly curving to the east (or perhaps I was heading east, with the road slightly curving to the south.) Either way, my logic was that the fork was an acute angle intersection and that it would lead me back, roughly parallel and slightly behind the station. It didn’t matter because not only did I have a GPS fix, I also knew that the station was next to the river. I was heading roughly towards the river and knew when I got to it, I just turn right and would have to arrive back at the station.

The darkness came, then the heavy rains. If I haven’t mentioned it, Taipei sidewalks are often split into two parts, the part under cover of the above buildings and then a part out exposed. If you walk under the buildings you stay dry, but you cannot get a GPS fix. After I walked in the shelter for a long time, I began to get nervous as I should have arrived back at the station by now.

So I bit the bullet, stepped out into the rain and locked a fix. What it told me was frightening: It was pointing in entirely the wrong direction, as If I’d passed the station and somehow gotten back on the western side of it, all without crossing the original road I was on. It was pointing 225 degrees off my current course – behind and to my left.

It was impossible, I knew it was impossible. It couldn’t possibly be right. I decided to take a right turn down a back street, hoping to intercept the original road. As I turned, the GPS continued to point 225 degrees off my new course. Now I was 100% sure it wasn’t giving me a true reading.

I ambled, in the rain and the dark, down an ever increasingly twisted maze of streets, some tiny, some major thoroughfares, yet nothing was right. Finally the GPS began to gave me a fix in a direction that, while it didn’t seem right, at least stayed the same when I changed my direction. I couldn’t make a beeline toward it, so I continued to wander the streets, turning this way and that trying to stay close to on-course.

At last I came up behind a high school. I’d passed the front of Xindian High School as I was leaving the station, so I worked my way around the school hoping it was the same high school. It was, and finally the station came into view.

I had a lot of unpleasant moments out on the streets thinking I was completely lost, and not even being able to explain to Irene on the phone where I was.

I was really looking forward to getting home and then going out for a sub sandwich. Of course, the family decided to order Peking Duck instead.

After my obligatory four bites of greasy duck and two tortillas and the kids were put to bed, Irene and I finally headed out to get me a sandwich.

Just south of the house, on the east side of Xinsheng Rd here used to be a Subway. Last trip it had gone out of business, replaced by “Subzone”. This trip, Subzone is still there, but a Subway has opened across from it on the west side of the road. My idea was to go to Subway, but at the last minute decided on Subzone.

After a long look at their sandwich list, I decided on the “German Salami” thinking that the Germans probably make a pretty darn good salami. German Salami is Bologna. Still, I was pretty darn hungry and it wasn’t too bad, but I’ll eat across the street next time.

This was the first night in days that wasn’t completely awful. Still, I once again awoke at 3:00AM, coughing and needing to blow my nose. The problem with that is that everytime I cough or blow my nose, James cries.

There’s not much I can do. Irene keeps putting him in bed with us so when I awake with an uncontrollable fit, he’s just inches away.

In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I managed to sleep in till 9:00 again. Our plan for today: find a place to get another baby photo album taken.

I was quite pleased with the one we had done last time and want to start the search there. Irene has been getting other suggestions from babyhome.com.tw. So far all the suggestions sound too much like the baby photo places in the US that put wings and crap on the kids.

We stopped at TKK Fried Chicken for brunch. Although I’m not crazy about their chicken, Michelle had eaten well there the other day, so I was willing to give it another go.

While eating, I noticed the name of the place was Ting Kua Kua (hence TKK.) I had Irene pronounce the name of the place and this is another example of the problems with romanization in Taiwan. The name would probably be spelled “Ding Gua Gua” these days, so will they ever change their name to DGG? They’ve been around 30 years, so perhaps I’ll find out on some future trip.

Speaking of TKK, I failed to mention the other day that the TKK near Michelle’s classes is a two-story building. There’s nothing unusual in that around these parts, but what I thought was weird was that the kitchen is on the second floor, but you order and pick up your food on the street level.

All the while we sat on the second floor eating our meal, trays of food were being taken from a room near the toilets to a mysterious room in front and disappearing, with empty trays returning.

I finally got around to look, but couldn’t discover if there was a dumb waiter or a “food chute” leading to the first floor.

We went first to the photo place we’d used before and they’ve still got the neatest looking wedding albums out front, and had a nice package for James and Michelle, so we went ahead and scheduled photos with them next Saturday. Since we went with the place we used before, we didn’t have to spend the day dragging the kids around and we went back home.

Irene spent the rest of the day in our room playing with James, but I couldn’t stand to be in the house any longer and went for a walk on my own. it just isn’t fun if you have to haul the kids along.

I went to the Metro station, choose a semi-random destination station I’d never been to before and promptly hopped on the wrong train, ending up at a completely random destination I’ve never been to before.

I ended up at Nanshijiao (南勢角) Station, which I still haven’t located on anything except a subway map. Although it was a very crowded area, I really felt like I was out in the sticks. The mountains were close, the only “sights” listed on the local map in the train station were McDonald’s, KFC and a Texas Instruments plant.

I walked for 30 minutes or so towards the mountains, hoping I could reach them, As I approached, I saw a large temple on the side of the hill, but as I neared, the road turned away. I wasn’t carrying a GPS so I didn’t want to loose my bearing on the station, so I returned, still wondering where the heck I was.

That evening, grandma took Michelle to the park. After an hour, I was beginning to wonder where they were. Soon a call came in, grandma couldn’t get Michelle to leave the park, so Irene and I had to walk over and get her.

While we were gone, James, who was asleep and left with grandpa, woke up and cried inconsolably. At this point, I suspect we’ll never get them to babysit again.