Second Day of Hiking

On Sunday we tackled Shulongjian, the highest peak in the area.

Here are some pictures of the way up.

The view from near the top.

If you look closely, you can see Taipei 101 in the far distance in the center of this picture.

After we ate lunch on the summit, the sky began to darken and storm clouds began to roll in. We heard thunder. We headed back down the mountain quickly - we never got rained on, although things might have become unpleasant at the top of the mountain had we stayed.

Jenna on the summit.

First Day of Hiking

We had the great fun of taking these stairs both days of hiking. They actually go quite a bit higher than you can see in the picture.

These two very friendly dogs belong to our hotel. Despite our efforts to dissuade them, they insisted on following us halfway up the mountain. They eventually got bored of us and turned back, making it safely back to the hotel on their own.

These stone benches kept showing up by the trail. They were helpful, when not overgrown with vegetation.

A crashed motorbike several hundred meters up. It was fun to think of scenarios of how it came to be right there.

Jenna takes a picture of mountain scenery.

We ate lunch near that electrical tower.

That tunnel is damp, slippery, and there is no trail leading away from the far end of it, making it seem pretty much useless to us.

Jingtong the town

Last weekend Jenna and I went to Jingtong, a town in Taipei County. It used to be a coal mining town and still retains some coal-mining-related tourist attactions (the museum didn't interest us); we went for the hiking and the chance to get out of Taipei. Jingtong's less than an hour away by bus and we could have made it a day trip, but we decided an overnight trip would have been more relaxing. We stayed at a very nice little place that might have been the only hotel in town.

Jingtong pictures:

This is Jingtong Railway Station, the terminus of the Pingxi Branch Line, a historic railway line that winds through this section of Taipei County. It was built by the Japanese in the 1930s and is very well preserved.

Many of the souvenirs you can buy in Jingtong have a old-time railway theme to them (as opposed to other touristy towns like Jioufen, which is full of souvenir shops but most of them are filled with generic Taiwan items, which have little to do with the town itself).

Brendan, Jenna, Cat

There was a cat wandering around, mingling with the guests at the tea house. She would sit in my lap and purr, but only for a minute before getting bored and wandering elsewhere.

We posed her for a few photos, though.

I wasn't wearing my contacts, and I took my glasses off for these pictures, so if have a vacant expression on my face, that's why.

Back to Maokong

Apologies for the long wait between updates. This past weekend Jenna and I went back to Maokong, home of tea houses, scenery and the high-tech Maokong Gondola.

The rather alarming sign at Taipei Zoo station. The gondola was far more busy than it was when we first went (one day after a well-publicized accident left passengers stranded in the cable cars) and we waited in line for over 30 minutes. Employees handed out free bottles of sports drinks to people waiting in line.

The entrance to Taipei Zoo station; the line was actually a great deal longer than it appears here. Fortunately it moved relatively quickly.

The view from the cable cars. The cars move quickly and smoothly. No air conditioning, though - the cars are designed to use a minimum of electrical power.

Maokong Station, seen from a bit of a distance.

Pictures we took of Taipei from the tea house as the sun set.

A misspelled sign near the tea house that someone decided to try correcting.

My first $200

That's a $200 bill (worth about $6 US). I got it in change today and it's the first one I've ever seen (the common denominations of paper money in Taiwan are $100, $500 and $1,000). That's Chiang Kai-shek on the front; the Presidential building in Taipei is on the reverse side.

I wonder why it is that governments mint or print certain denominations in such small quantities that most people seldom encounter them. Living in the United States, I hardly ever saw $2 bills, but the Mint must be printing enough every year to keep the (small) supply up. I wonder why the government doesn't either just discontinue it. or print enough so that they're circulated as much as the $1 and $5.

The Maokong Gondola

We went to Maokong this weekend. Maokong's a mountainous area just outside of the city, full of little tea shops, amazing views and a temperature that's a few degrees cooler than downtown Taipei. In the past we had to wait for a rather inconvenient bus or pay for a taxi ride, but this month the Taipei MRT opened the Maokong Gondola - actually a cable car - with four stops, running from Taipei Zoo MRT Station up to Maokong in the mountains.

The cable cars are quiet, run very smoothly, and were less crowded than I expected - I'd heard of 40-minute waits the previous weekend. This may be because we went up in the late afternoon and came back in the evening. It may also be because, the previous day, a mechanical failure stranded several hundred people high up in the air for several hours. (We don't read the local news quite as much as we should, and we didn't hear about this until after we got back. In retrospect, it explains a lot, including why gondola staff members seemed so nice to everybody, profusely thanking everybody for their patronage.)
This is a very blurry picture of the Taipei Zoo gondola station, but...

...here is a somewhat clearer picture, showing where people are boarding the cars.

This is one of the service stations between actual gondola stops. The cable cars don't stop here, but these stations are manned by MRT employees.

The view, looking down.

Taipei in the late afternoon.

Here's a view of the Maokong scenery from the cable car.

One more view of Taipei.

Penghu

It's time to post some pictures from my Penghu trip. These are a bit late, but I was distracted by a bad case of sunburn I got (my feet were so badly burned they required professional medical attention; they're healing well now) and by my own procrastination habit.

Maokong is the biggest city in Penghu - not that it's really such a large city. I got the feeling it would be a lot smaller if not for the tourist trade. It has at least one Starbucks.

We took a boat like this to Chipei on Monday. Chipei is where I had my first snorkeling experience.

The main town on Chipei. Chipei's a tiny island which is settled by people living off tourists - I imagine it becomes something of a ghost town in winter.

We saw dragon boat races on Tuesday morning. These pictures were taken at the harbor in Maokong. Three boats competed, and there was a fairly decent-sized crowd.

The beach on the main island in Penghu where we went snorkeling on Tuesday. The area over by the rocks in the distance is where Jenna and I found squid, cuttlefish, puffer fish, and other assorted creatures. Just a stone's throw from dry land.

The Matsu Temple in Penghu. It's said to be the oldest temple in all of Taiwan by some guidebooks (the English-language signs outside only claim it's the oldest Matsu temple in Taiwan). I'm sure much of the original structure has been replaced since it was built in the 1600s, but you can see some old woodwork and art inside.

A gnarled tree outside the Matsu temple.