My Trip to Taiwan
By: FrancEs Yee
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From here, we continued on for almost 2 hours to Chiufen, a mountain village nicknamed by the locals as 'Little Shanghai'. We had to take a 10-minute feeder bus on a winding, hilly and narrow road to reach this place. The end of the journey opened up to rows and rows of unique teahouses on the steep alleys selling all sorts of tea and local snacks and an assortment of other knick-knacks. Here’s where we got the best 'mochi', mini dough in different shapes and sizes, made of glutinous flour which was a little chewy and a little gummy with sweet fillings like green bean, red bean, black sesame, crushed peanuts, yam – you name it! I gave it a miss because I thought that I would only get them closer to the end of my tour but I was disappointed. Here was the only place one can get the individually packed mochis and regretfully, I came home mochi-less!
Having travelled for another one and a half hours thereafter, we arrived to Nanfang’ao, an attractive fishing harbour where we visited the main attraction, Nantien Temple. It was built right on the waters edge of the Nanfang’ao Harbour and was 3 levels high. There was a very impressive gold-plated statue of Matsu, goddess of the sea, on the second level and a jade one (below centre) on the third level. One can get the full view of the fishing port and the intricately carved roof of the temple from here, which made out to be a sea of colourful, curvy dragons (below right).
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4 hours later, we were in Hualien, the largest city on the east coast, just in time for dinner and ended the day with a traditional Ami-tribe aboriginal song and dance show.
14 June 2004 - East Taiwan
25km north of Hualien was Tienhsiang where the top scenic attraction, the Taroko Gorge lies (3 pictures below). An impressive backdrop of near-vertical marble mountains and a gaping rift in them, the marble canyon would have featured rushing whitewater river but with the summer skies, the river was pretty dry. Walking along the mountain edges and looking at those towering cliffs rising from the river bed was breathtaking! Hualien must be one of the most beautiful places in the east coast with its many suspension bridges, hiking trails and many hot springs.
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Being in the city of marble, we naturally made a stop at a marble factory where we were shown the end product of marbles, which included beautiful jewellery. Hmm, jewellery made from marbles? Amazing!
A day with the longest hours of travelling, we then embarked on a 7- hour journey to the southwest towards Kaohsiung, the second largest city in Taiwan. Upon arrival in the evening, we had some time for a bit of shopping at the Women Street night market. Definitely not enough time and a taster of more night markets to come!15 June 2004 - South West Taiwan and West Central Taiwan
With the biggest seaport situated in this county of Kaoshiung, it was only natural to be shown around. Briefly after that, we travelled 30 minutes north of Kaohsiung to suburban Tsoying, where the best temples were clustered around a Lotus Lake. We first stopped at a Taoist temple dedicated to Kuan Kung, the God of War (below left). Directly opposite of the Taoist temple was the Spring and Autumn Pavilion (below centre), standing on an islet connected to the south shore of Lotus Lake, where one enters through the jaws of a life-sized dragon sculpture. A stone's throw away stood the twin, seven-tiered Dragon and Tiger Pagodas (below right), which were joined to shore by a nine-corner bridge. It was believed that by entering the dragon's throat and exiting at the tiger's mouth symbolizes a good turn in luck.
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Next attraction, Fokuang Shan or Light of Buddha Mountain (8 pictures below) which was located about an hour away from northeast Kaohsiung. The grounds consists of several shrine halls surrounded by cool colonnades, pavilions and pagodas, bridges and footpaths, libraries and meditation halls, ponds and grottoes, and an exquisite Buddhist statuary. Near the entrance, the tallest Buddha image on the island stood at 32 metres high, surrounded by 480 life-sized images of disciples. Fokuang Shan is nestled amidst a dense bamboo forest.
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After lunch, we continued on for what felt like 4 hours towards Taichung, the third largest city in the west central, with the best climate in Taiwan. We were all taken to a hotspring for a dip but as I didn't have my swimsuit with me, I gave it a pass and had hard boiled eggs (boiled in hotspring) instead. Towards late evening after dinner, we had some time for some real shopping at the Chunghua night market. Shops run in a square and within it, a mosaic of shops with various goods available. Though I find all things to be generally quite pricey, I managed to buy 2 pairs of shoes at a bargain!
16 June 2004 - Back to the North
On a two and a half hours bus journey from Taichung, we moved on back to Taipei, the capital city of Taiwan. We proceeded with a city tour and the places of attraction included:
Martyrs' Shrine
Set against the backdrop of hills, the Martyrs' Shrine (3 pictures below) was built in honour of those who sacrificed their lives fighting for the Republic of China. The buildings on this compound, modelled after Ming Dynasty palaces, are skillfully crafted. Two military police officers stand guard at the front gate on Peian Road while two other officers guard the main shrine inside. The changing of the guards occurs once every hour and is quite an elaborate process.
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National Palace Museum
The National Palace Museum (2 pictures below) has an antique collection of nearly 700,000 pieces aged almost the entire five-thousand-old Chinese history. Among the collection were Chinese earthen ware like pottery, porcelain, as well as bronze, jade ware, sculpture, embroidery, calligraphy and paintings.
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Chiang Kaishek Memorial Hall Inside the hall, a ground-level library displays photos and mementos of the late president's life and a bronze statue of the late president (below right). Soldiers on guard at the Memorial are changed every hour. As we had loads of time to kill before dinner, we walked around town to scout for bargains and for some last-minute shopping. After dinner, it was another round of shopping at Shilin night market, one of the oldest and largest and Hwahsi night market, which sold exotic food like snake meat and turtle meat. 17 June 2004 - Home
The Chiang Kaishek Memorial (below left) is a large walled compound fronted by a traditional Chinese arched gate. The architecture is in Chinese style, topped with a massive blue-tiled roof, capped with a golden peak on top, producing a majestic appearance. The park covers a space of 24 hectares, with a wide open plaza.
Ah, it's always nice to know that I was going home. Home sweet home...
---------------- You will notice from reading my itinerary that many hours were spent on travelling from one place to another. Fortunately the attractions at every destination made it worth the while. On this trip, I found out that: Food to try while you are in Taiwan: Things that you might want to do (that I definitely missed out - with intention): And finally, I have neither tried listening to nor tried speaking nor tried understanding so much Mandarin in my life before! Note: Go for crash classes before visiting Taiwan. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I had to forget my spare batteries for both my camera and my mobile phone. And what was worst? I had a 32MB memory card in my digital camera instead of the 256MB one. Pfffttt! Special thanks to Eileen who made photo-taking possible for me after all. Love,
▪ The sky gets really bright at 5 a.m! Remember to have your curtains drawn if you want to sleep-in. Then again, being on tour wouldn't really allow much sleep, would it?
▪ Convenience stores (like Family Mart/7-eleven) do not provide plastic/carry bags. You are expected to hand/arm-carry your 1-litre bottle of water, your few packets of junk food and your assorted of other stuff you bought to try.
▪ Postcards aren't very popular. So make sure you snap more of your own photographs. *snap*snap*
▪ Public toilets aren't so bad after all. In fact, they were quite clean (or at least the ones I visited.
▪ The egg shells are white in colour (well, it's brown back home) (below left)
▪ The papaya milk (with blended papayas, fresh milk and evaporated milk) is a signature drink in Taiwan and it's definitely worth a mention here. Yum!
▪ Try fermented quail eggs: black, chewy and err...fermented, of course!
▪ Never, never miss out 'mochi'
▪ Try the "siu loong bao" (little dragon buns), shaped and tasted like pork dumplings except that it has gravy in the buns (above right).
▪ Try chewing on betel nut (not for beginners)
▪ Try the Taiwanese stinky tofu (probably less stinky that the ones in Hong Kong)
▪ Try the bittergourd drink (below left)
▪ Try their ever-so-famous intestines (of all sorts - they stink!) (below right)
▪ Try taking exotic snake soup, snake blood, snake meat (gross, eww!)
Fran
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