Home is where you stay

Two day trip of cingjing and sun moon lake (July 2008)

It was the nonavailability of train tickets to Haulien that the venue of Sun moon lake got freezed for this weekend gateway.  It would also give me the opportunity to travel by the taiwan high speed train.

Saturday morning we journeyed by the high speed train to Taichung.  The journey was smooth  and fast at 270 KPH.  The taichung high speed train station is wonderful.  It has just enough number of coffee shops and restuarants.  All the high speed train stations have a complimentary bus to the respective city downtown area.    There is a bus which runs every hour from taichung train station to Sun moon lake via high speed train station and puli.  We caught this bus to Puli (took us around 1 hour).  On the way passed through many small towns.  The sight of the ping lang girls (betel nut ladies) in their skimpy outfits were a surprise for my wife.  From puli we took a bus to Cingjing Farm (1 hr journey).  I believe this bus can cross through the mountain and take you to the east coast (Haulien), please do verify about this.  The drive through the picturese mountain sides.  The roads are so steep that the driver turns off the AC.  You can visit  http://www.cingjing.gov.tw/index.php for more information.  This farm is perched at a height of around 6000 feet.  European styled mansions and guest houses can be seen on the way.  There are two point of interests here a small swiss garden and the cingling farm.  There are places to hike nearby too.  We spent a good deal of time watching the sun set.

The ideal time to visit cingling would be during the autumn / spring season.  Summer is too hot.  Cingling farm has a sheep show which should not be missed (But you get this only in the summer).  To see the intelligent dog round up the sheep’s and get them to their pens is worth a watch.  Having mostly seen this in movies, the live show was much more fascinating, we were awed by the dog and his master.  As we were in july we got to see the sheep shearing show too.  Being a weekend cingling was crowded like other tourist places in taiwan.  There is a bus which takes you from the cingling guest house to the farm and back costs 15 NT one way make sure you have the change.

We had a wonderful lunch at a vegetarian restuarant in Puli.  This one is right opposite the bus stop (The stop where we were asked to get down to catch the bus to sun moon lake).  Sun moon lake is a serene and beautiful lake.  We took a ride in the boat which takes you through the small island in the center.  Lakes have a way to make the person feel light and relaxed.  Sun moon lake brought in those feelings within me.  There is a bus which takes you around the lake to the various spots around it.  You can also rent electric bikes from the tourist information center.  We spent 4 hours there next time i would want to spent 2 days in this place.  There are places to sit and rest all around the lake nice landscaped gardens makes it relaxing.

The dragon boat festival is celebrated during the month of may. Dragon boats are sleek long boats rowed by a team of about 20 or more men. the boat has a dragon head at its front a drummer sitting in front gives the oarsmen the tempo/rythm for rowing. The festival is celebrated with a dragon boat race

There is a story associated to this festival. Long ago there lived a rightful minister. The king once did not follow the advice of the minister. Deeply insulted, he died by jumping into the river. Later the king realised his mistake and to remember the minister organised this festival. People row the boats in the river and throw rice into it. This was done to scare away the fishes so that they don’t eat the remains of the rightful minister.

The festival was held at the dansui river. Our spirits were high when we went to the venue as we thought there might be something interesting (probably a dummy race for the visitors) but we were slightly dissapointed. The festival had the look of a sunday market, games and lot of eateries. One particular game had a long line of participants: it was to balance a egg on its lengthier side, yes there were quite a few winners. The festival ended with a boat race and an display of acrobatics by students.

The weekend of July 23-24 was certainly a memorable one. There was adventure and lots of fun. It was a trip to haulien, this is my 3rd visit to this place and everytime it is a new experience.

The first one was with vishy, sahil and amitabh. During this trip we were the conservative tourists opting for a tour bus to take us around the Haulien scenic area.

The second one with hemanth and anul was by a car. The only good thing about this trip was that we tried out some surfing at a beach south of haulien. But the drive is too long and you will end up with too little for the outdoors.

The third trip is certainly I feel the best way to travel and visit. We travelled to Haulien by train early in the morning. There are trains for every half hour from the taipei main station. Take the fast one. We were lucky we got a seat, to be sure of a seat reserve it before hand. There is a travel information desk just outside the Haulien train station (towards right) and the people there are very helpful and will help you on anything related to your trip be it chalking out a plan or assisting in any reservations.

Renting out a car was too easy nothing asked, so as long as you get the car back in one shape everything should be fine. Our journey started after a good lunch and we searched around for the right turn to make it to the highway which will lead us to Taroke gorge. There is plenty of sign boards, but sometimes it becomes too confusing might be because the spellings on these boards are not consistent.

We drove along to the taroko national part which is along the central cross island highway. The road has some breath taking sigths, we stopped very frequently to take in the views and freshness in the air. We started of from the “eternal spring shrine”, walked along the “Tunnel of Nine Turns” and finished the journey at Tiansiang which has a pagoda and a very beautiful buddha temple. The roads along this highway has lots of twists, turns and long tunnels. This road is really an amazing piece of construction as it was built by bare hands without any of the modern equipements. You can have a look at some of the scenic spots from this website http://www.taroko.gov.tw/english/. The taroko part has a lot of trails, time constraints did not allow us to explore them but yeah I will come back again.

Day 2 of our trip was what everybody was eagerly waiting for rafting on the Siouguluan river. The trip starts of from Rueisuei. When we went there we were lost in the flood of people who had come to take this tour, the crowd was in excess of 500. we met a englishing speaking person who guided us through the steps to get urself with a life jacket and helmet. But then i had to appreciate the efficiency with which the organizers worked. People were divided into teams and each team kept on departing on the rafts one by one. In fact when we were on the raft we realized the fun of the crowd, there are more people to splash water, but ha ha yeah you do get your share of water. On the raft we were 10 people the five intu guys on one side and the 5 taiwanese guys on the other side (It was their last day of college and they choose to have fun this way). We started around 10 am, the river was a mix of smooth rides and stretches of rough water(this part was real fun). The smooth sections were all spent in having water fights or racing the with the other rafts. In fact some times it used be hilarious a boat would come very close to you and people would take water using tumblers (actually given to remove water from the raft) and pour it over the head of the person sitting on the other boat. It was fun all the way. We stopped at around one pm and lunch boxes were provided by the organizers. I got a veggie lunch box, and umm it was delicious. The second half of the trip was more adventurous, water a bit more rough and we had a nice time trying to sit ourselves tight during the rough stretches. At one time our boat almost got overturned. This stretch was quite exhauting and at around 3:30 pm we reached the final destination. It was almost near an estuary and offerred a beautiful sight, guess the evenings should be quite pleasant here. We had a small photo shoot with the indo-taiwan boat team, Dried myself up had a good refreshing honey lemon tea (Fong mein liu cha). Being exhausted everybody were mostly keeping to themselves enjoying a good nap on the way back to the Haulien train station.

We had around 2 hours time before we could catch the bus back to taipei with carol. So we went to a beach near haulien by taxi (costed around 150 NTD one way). This beach is somewhere behind the haulien airport. The beach is a rocky one with almost no sand. We guys just lazed out having a cup of coffee while enjoying the breeze. Had trouble catching a taxi back to the station, couple of shop vendors helped us out with this.

Over the past few days have been trying to find a place to play badminton and was not so successful on my own. Found a place called Zhong shan Sports Center (NO 2, Zhong Shan N. road, sec 2 lane 44.), this place is quite good has a swimming pool too. If you have a playing partner this would be a good place to sweat out. I later found out that most of the people who play actually form teams and then lease a court collectively for a specified duration. So having a localite to point you to a team would be the easiest way to play badminton here.

This is where my taiwan colleague malcolm helped me by introducing me to a friend of his Matthew. He stayed at a place near to neihu so I got the additional advantage of a pick up and drop. So this sat and sun morning was spent playing badminton with their team. Most of the members of the team were in their middle age, wonder where the younger generation went !!! But one thing is for sure that the chinese people defy their age when it comes to fitness. They do have an initial inertia when interacting with strangers but as they get to know this curtain drops and their warmth and friendliness comes out.

During a trip to the local supermarket we picked up some “Chinese salted egg”. It is supposed to be kept/cooked in a saline solution to hence the name. Tasted pretty salty ha ha. My taiwan colleagues told that it goes very well with porridges. They talked about the 1000 year or century egg, which is supposed to be made by storing underground for long periods of time. I remember seeing this but could never get myself to try it out. Anyway for that I guess i should rely on dutta who is an eat all (Eats anything and everything).

Around sunday evening the sky became darker, slowly a drizzle followed. A call to a friend jason confirmed that we will shortly have a typhoon passing over taiwan. A day off on monday was the news which made us happy. The night saw some heavy downpour and rough winds rattling anything not sturdy. Typhoon Haitang brought taipei to a standstill for a day. We were in the meantime having a test of our culinery skills, prepared some pretty yummy dishes. Well offcourse we did give some competion to kumbakarna also. Kumbakarna is a character in the hindu epic ramayana who is supposed to sleep for months to get up only for his food.

Taiwan has a lot of parks for a good walk, one such park near the place where we stay is beihu park. It is infact a beautiful lake and in the sunny days you will find a good deal of people angling there. A walk around it gave us a cool breeze with that distinct aura of freshness, a rare treat in a city.

Drinking is certainly a favourite activity… So how do you make it more interesting!! well play games while drinking. One such drinking game is…..

Frog Legs
You basically build up a progression in this game and the guy who goes wrong is the loser who will probably do a bottom’s up. So the series is like this … 1 Frog, 4 legs, “plock” (tell this word), “jump into water” (tell this word), 2 Frogs, 8 legs, “plock”, “Plock”, “jump into water”. and so on, so on ….. Pretty good game try with your friends.

Tipsy count
A person starts of by pouring an amount of drink into a glass (If you use whisky your game would probably end faster ha ha). In the next step everybody shows out a number using their hands. The number is summed up. You start counting from the person who started the game. The last person on whom the count ends is supposed to do a bottoms up of the drink (Kaanpey is the word). He now is the winner and search goes on for the next winner……

This was a game which we played at a chinese pub with some colleagues. David su is the champion at this game as he can never get drunk. In between the game we had couple of betel nut vendors interrupt us trying to sell their wares. We wound up at around 9:30 with all the married people returning to their homes. And now i had to decide what to do next.

So i decided to drink some more…. This time I went to a place called B1 (No. 71, Aiguo E. Rd. Taipei Ph: 02-2397-0506) To tell about this place we go there on the weekends because it is a drink all and at 500 NTD it is a damn cheap place. A pretty comfortable and youngish crowd is what you get. But on this thursday night at 10:00 pm I could not find a drinking soul there at that place.

I called up my friend in US (Mahesh) to pass some time and his suggestion was to go find a more happenning place. I did disturb him at his work but he still spared some time to talk the usual so so so stuff.

I then set out to find a new happenning place and lost my way on the way and ended up asking directions from an expat at a tea shop. He had some directions for me. The chinese shop owner came out joined in with his suggestions.

After a good walk across the daan park and a taxi ride I landed up in a an another drinking hole called Vaccum space (20X, Fushing south road). Some more drinks and talk was I guess how i wound up thursday.

Back home in a taxi was a very hiccup-py ( i just could not stop them) ride ha ha. How do you stop hiccups ??