Taipei

 Blog 07-08-23 Tainan


Taipei and environs



My first day in Taipei, Monday, I booked a four hour bicycle tour of the city. It’s a strategy I like to employ to get a quick feel for any metropolis. What turned out to be different this time was that the Chinese characters on all the store fronts denied me the ability to create dependable memories of places I passed. When the trip was over I was not much more comfortable with Taipei than I was before the trip. What I should have done was to consult my Google Maps frequently throughout the journey thus orienting  myself to the area around my hostel (which was only a few blocks from the bike shot that served as the starting point for the tour). 

The tour leader was a petite, athletic young asian woman about 30 years old. There were supposed to be four other folks on the trip, all part of the same family, but the elderly parents who formed half the group bowed out. It was hot, about 95 degrees. The parents apparently didn’t relish a sweltering bike ride this day. The two folks who did show up were Asian-American accountants (married) from Orange County. 

The sojourn was, unfortunately, uneventful. There are many wonderful qualities about Taipei as I was soon to learn, but tourist attractions were not among them. We saw a couple buddhist temples, and the obligatory National Monument, which was very reminiscent of Lincoln Center in NYC. It was hard to concentrate even on these meager landmarks in the oppressive heat. By the end of four hours we were all spent, and happy to be back in the air-conditioned comfort of the bike shop. 


Taipei as viewed from the National Park.
I rested on Tuesday, taking the time to sign up for another tour, this one in the mountainous area northeast of Taipei. I navigated the wonderful Taipei subway to the meeting point for our foray. At 8am our guide checked us into a fifteen-passenger  air-conditioned bus that was full of chipper tourists. The woman sitting behind me was the wife of a businessman from the Upper East side of Manhattan. In the front seat was a short young software engineer from Singapore. Behind him was an Asian-American couple from Houston. The husband ran an import-export business focused on Chinese goods. To my surprise he said he exported almost as much as he imported. Behind them was a pair of Korean girls who looked to be about 23. They were from Seoul, of course. The other passengers I didn´t get to chat up so I have no biographical info on them. 

The tour was fun. We started out in a national park about two thousand meters uphill from the city. It was, like everything in Taiwan, immaculately maintained. At this writing I have been in Taiwan for six days; in that time I believe I´ve seen no more than six pieces of litter anywhere — in the city, in the bus stations, in the parks, anywhere. The park´s big attraction was the water buffalo. After WWII the island´s farmers began to convert from bison to machinery to do their work. Rather than slaughter the beasts (reputed to be almost inedible) they set them loose up here. 

The real highlight of this trip were the hot springs.


A vast stretch of land northeast of Taipei was discovered to be a volcanic hot spot with bubbling sulfur deposits all over the place. We were told that some of the sulfur deposits were eight miles deep, far enough to connect with the earth's magma. One spot turned out to be a pond of sulfuric waters reputed to be good for cardiac circulation. I was delighted to get a chance to soak my lower limbs in the healing waters for twenty minutes or so. The eight-hour tour ended where it began. I was fatigued but happy. 

Next day I rested again.

On Friday I spent the day visiting museums. All were state of the art, but without any exhibits worth mentioning. 

I need to catch a train to my next hostel in Tainan. Conclusions about Taipei to come. 

Cicada´s making their way up a tree after years of hibernation. 


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